Phew! Scorcio! We’ve had a great week enjoying the English summer – six days with no rain and temperatures in the high 70s to 80s! Absolutely marvellous and great while it lasts. Keep up the good work! It’s also been another busy, busy week – two trips to London, two galleries and a West End show, lunch at Wahaca as well as a mid-week gastronomic masterpiece at the Dun Cow Pizzeria!
On Monday Sallie and Rod went off to visit friends in Stoke on Trent for a couple of days while Ms Playchute and I took ourselves off to London to hand in our applications for our Chinese visas. Having been through the process last year, we were familiar this time with the routine. So, we did not waste a day travelling up to the embassy only to find it closed. Instead, we went straight to the Visa Processing office for our pre-arranged appointment. The friendly young lady inspecting our documents spotted one or two issues which we needed to address, i.e., it might be handy if you actually signed your documents but I suppose she’s used to dealing with idiots such as ourselves.
While we were in London we took the opportunity of visiting an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, the BP Portrait Award which was excellent.
Selected from 2,557 entries by artists from 80 countries around the world, the BP Portrait Award 2016 represents the very best in contemporary portrait painting.
From parents to poseurs, figurative nudes to famous faces and expressive sketches to piercing photo-realism, the variety and vitality in the exhibition continues to make it an unmissable highlight of the annual art calendar.
Now in its thirty-seventh year at the National Portrait Gallery, and twenty-seventh year of sponsorship by BP, the first prize of £30,000 makes the Award the most prestigious international portrait painting competition of its kind and has launched the careers of many renowned artists.
Neither Penelope nor I thought all that much of the winning portrait (Girl in a Liberty Dress) – it was pretty “ordinary”, I thought, and we both felt there were several which were more to our liking.
The second prize, Silence, was a stunning and highly evocative portrait of the artist’s dying grandmother lying on a hospital trolley. Even when you put your face within two inches of the canvas (actually a board in this instance) it was difficult to tell that this was, indeed, a painting rather than a photograph. You can see a range of those selected for exhibit here.
Our second trip to London was on Thursday last week. We went up with Sallie and Rod to see the Royal Academy Summer Show 2016 at, surprisingly, the Royal Academy of Arts.
Famous as the world’s largest open submission show, there are certain things the Summer Exhibition delivers on every single year: a panorama of art in all mediums, a remarkable mixture of emerging artists and household names, and more to see and explore than any other exhibition you’re likely to visit this year.
And it certainly was a panorama of art! Inevitably, there were pieces which left me cold and there were others which I thought were very good and which I very much enjoyed. I have to confess, the sheer number of objects was somewhat overwhelming ranging from large sculptures to smaller paintings and other “installations.”
There were several pieces made from “Found Objects” similar in some ways to the stuff Sandy produces. I think he should definitely enter next year as his stuff is considerably better, in my view, than quite a bit of what made it into the exhibition. And, just have a look at some of the prices!
There were also several pieces by our former Radway neighbour, James Butler – some excellent bronzes and a charming painting of a Girl with Hands Folded.
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After an hour or so in the gallery, we wandered up the road to our favourite restaurant, Wahaca. I know I’ve written about Wahaca before but it never disappoints. It serves Mexican street food and we first discovered it about ten years ago. At that time, there was just the one restaurant, a short walk from Covent Garden. Now, there are 22 locations country-wide including Liverpool, Manchester and Brighton. Although we hadn’t planned it at the time, we also ate at a Wahaca on our trip up to town on the Monday. We wanted a light lunch and decided to wander along the South Bank to see if we could find any street wagon-type food. There were a couple to choose from and we elected to grab ourselves a burrito each from one just by the river. Only when we had finished paying and were starting to eat this bulging burrito did I notice that the food truck was branded with the Wahaca logo. Delicious!
As well as the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition on Thursday, we also were up in town to see Motown at the Shaftesbury Theatre which was great fun. Sallie and Rod are friends with someone who had some investment in the production and they were able to acquire some “house tickets” for the Thursday matinee. It is, of course, the story of Motown founder Barry Gordy Jr and the development of the Motown record label. Great songs and great impersonations of all the old Motown stars – Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and a fabulous performance by a young lad playing the young Michael Jackson. It was a lot of fun and quite a challenge to abide by the instructions given to the audience at the beginning of the performance not to sing or dance unless directed to do so by the cast.
Wednesday night we had the inaugural “firing” of Greg’ New Pizza Oven which I have to say was a considerable success. Nick and Lucy had given it to me either for Christmas or my birthday last year and this was the first opportunity to test it out. It sits on the barbeque and gets blisteringly hot at which point you slide your pizza into the oven. A few turns and a few minutes later out comes deliciously tasty pizza. The first two I made which Sallie, Rod and I split were OK but the last one I made for Ms Playchute (she had been out late at the gym) was very good indeed (IMHO). There were a few helpful comments about needing to leave the pizza in the oven just a bit longer to ensure the dough is cooked through but otherwise I think we had a mainly satisfied clientele for the first firing. If the weather would only co-operate a bit I can see this becoming a fairly regular dining ritual.
I’m afraid we cannot yet offer a delivery service but I’m happy to take orders from anyone with a reservation to the Guest Wing.
The BIG, BIG news this week, though, is the incipient emergence of Ms Playchute’s Gladioli along the front path. They have been threatening to reveal themselves all week and yesterday morning the first brave bloom stuck its head above the parapet.
Much love to you all,
Greg