Nice to have some days off from work, and they were made even better by Sheryl’s arrival the day before. Having met her at the airport at 7am the previous morning, as well as having had a bit of a late evening after meeting up with Zara n Jarrett in Fulham at a pub to watch the Australia vs Serbia world cup match, meant that we had a fairly lazy start to this day. Eventually, we made our way to a nearby bakery/cafe for “brunch”.With London experiencing some rather unusual warm weather, we set out along the Thames on the opposite side of the river to the Houses of Parliament. Enjoying the sunshine (I was quite happy to finally have reason to wear shorts! but I digress...) we made our way past what we were to discover was Lambeth Palace, and eventually to the Tate Britain.
[It’s worth noting that this is not the Tate Modern, which is a different gallery altogether.]
Anyway, in we went for what turned out to be far longer than anticipated as we discovered what turned out to be some very interesting exhibits - not to mention some time spent just trying to find our way around through all the rooms.
The Art and Sublime exhibition is worthy of note as one section that took our interest for some time, as did the futuristic exhibition that featured Danish actors trying to do American accents while portraying several of the previous century’s major science fiction writers. They were discussing their particular theories of how they believed the future of our civilisation would play out. Quite cleverly done as they debated their particular visions and how they linked to each other.
The Turner galleries were worthwhile, as they had an additional exhibition about his techniques with Line and Colour. I found this a little more interesting than Sheryl, mostly because
Turner was one of the artists I had studied at school...The piece you see here is by an artist who was considered quite controversial - and not only for this portrait and a pose that was seen as scandalous at the time. He also painted glasses on some of his subjects in their portraits, which was another act that "pushed the envelope" of the artistic world at the time. The times they are a changing... or is that were...
We did find our way back out into the sunshine, having now both ticked off a particular gallery that we had wished to visit, we continued back towards Westminster. This time we stayed on the northern side of the Thames to stroll through the Victoria Tower Gardens and past the Houses of Parliament.
It was then a cruisey evening in the restaurants near the hotel, to await the evening arrival of Mum n Dad...
