Last Saturday

Last Saturday, we visited Hauser & Wirth, the extremely sophisticated art gallery in the heart of the Somerset countryside.  It is an interesting place, although a bit random in such a rural setting.

The current exhibition appealed to me rather more than I thought it would.  You can read more about it here, http://www.hauserwirthsomerset.com/exhibitions/invisible-reality-20160212, although I have to say I can't make head or tail of this synopsis - far too intellectual!  Basically, it was a series of quirky ways of making use of old aluminium cooking pots and pans.  But then I love to cook, and I enjoyed seeing the old frying pans, balti dishes, preserving pans, North African tea and coffee pots etc, even though some of them had been completely flattened and compressed into a series of rectangular pieces to hang on the wall!  I couldn't help thinking about all the meals which had been cooked in those pans, and how many mouths they had fed in their working lifetime.  Anyway, I took some photos which I hope gives you the general idea!

This brass ball is in fact the backside of a massive piece, shaped like a cooking pot, with barbed wire inside.  A curious combination.

The centrepiece was the reconstruction of a little wooden Indian building, with a billowing length of white fabric streaming out of its roof, while pieces of thin metal, fixed to the walls, were flexing to produce an unnerving, extremely loud noise which quite unbalanced my hearing.  It was all a bit weird, and I made a quick exit from the exhibition space before I fell over!  

And then out into the Oudolph Field.  The garden, designed by Piet Oudolph, which I saw in its first year last summer, is now looking like every other garden at this time of the year.  Rather dull.  The gardener working away in one of the beds was a very disillusioned chap.  The soil is poor, despite it having been shipped in for each flowerbed.  Drainage is poor, and he is not optimistic about the longterm health of the garden.  Time will tell.  In the meantime, the rather bizarre building at the far end, which I call the slug, is even more evident than it was before, because there is nothing else to distract the eye.  

Although delightful to see, I was a bit dismayed to discover kingcups (marsh marigolds) flowering in the garden's pond.  These shouldn't be out for weeks yet.

The inside of the slug isn't too bad.  The space is quite pleasing, and its walls are translucent, which is rather nice.