‘Eyes Lies and Illusions’ is the name of the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery along the south bank of the Thames. Cleverness saturated the show that focuses on a historical development of compelling visual trickery. Julia Malim and I peregrinated from Praxinoscopes to catoptric displays to Zogatropes. Some contemporary and decidedly artistic works greeted us as well: from Duchamp’s rotoreliefs to Christian Boltanski’s shadow puppets and Tony Oursler’s ‘Blue Dilemma’. Of interest among the funhouse mirrors and persistence of vision chicanery was a walk-in camera obscura filled with the upside down soft focus of the grey London city outside. Another memorable piece was a wine glass carved from a dark stone whose profile was a wine bottle. The afternoon’s National Portrait Gallery was engrossingly unprovocative and elegantly tedious.

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I type with white freckled hands on a white keyboard. After assisting Ben with painting a little of his flat, numerous police sirens blur past the window, a story below. Ben is in South Africa now, a nine-hour flight that results in a one-hour time difference. With a whole flat to myself, I prepare to spend the night with some other friends – a friendly family with a frenetic pace that will be slightly calmed down now that the father and the son have left for New York to take part in a marathon (yes, a marathon). Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday after a brief walk west along the north Thames with my kind cousin host, Ben, and a friend (Ben’s friend Claire), we crossed the silver Millennium Bridge towards the Tate Modern. Housed in the former Bankside Power Station, the gallery is strangely unremarkable from the outside: a mass of boring brown brick with a tall central chimney.

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