Here and there (and more Gormley)

Out and about in town last week, being part tour guide and part tourist in my own town.

Large flat bowl by Amanda Simmons at London Glassworks in Bermondsey

Mesmerised by suds and brushes going to work on a taxi, Bethnal Green

Lincoln's Inn gateway

Bar wigs - gowns - "Established 1689"

Tucked away in Covent Garden 

Chinatown

Lovely escape at the Geffrye Museum, Shoreditch

"Garden rooms" at the Geffrye

Dogwalker in Shoreditch

Charming cottages - and surveillance - in Canonbury

Coffee on wheels at Borough Market

And still they build, near London Bridge

Extension of London Bridge Station - the old arches

More from White Cube. First a glimpse of Untitled works by Virginia Overton, made of glass and Danby marble ... reflecting green leafy wallpaper with a design from the 1970s, playing on notions of the indoor and outdoor. In another room is a woodburning stove and enough wood to stoke it throughout the exhibition. Cosy.

 Layers of "white" wood and LEDS make the (Untitled) landscape above the seating in the corridor. Nice.

Antony Gormley's exhibition divides the large South Gallery into 15 small rooms containing 24 works - "dramatic physiological encounters"; as you wend through this maze, "each room challenges or qualifies the experience of the last".

The exhibition considers the relation of the individual to the built environment ... and "resulting displacement". It "asks whether we as citizens identify with the forces that determine inclusion or exclusion from city or country." Or so the handout says. Whereas we spent our time recognising "the people" and enjoyed the contrast of living humans moving about the rooms, appearing and disappearing, in contrast with the blocky forms.

The highlight was "Sleeping Field" (remember Field?) and suddenly "seeing" what it was about. Yes, those aren't just 517 elements of cast iron (which took 5 men 2 days to install, or was it 2 men and 5 days?) -

But how best to photograph these little hominoids?

"Hold" is made of 6mm weathering steel ...

... as is "Passage", a 12-metre long tunnel which visitors are invited to enter

You walk towards darkness, then turn around and walk towards light

"Gormley's approach to exhibition making is a test ground for perception, focusing on the mapping of our subjective experience and the potential of the viewer's projected empathy ... releasing us from any expectations of what sculpture is and how it might act on us."

The gallery's photos are here, and both shows run till 6 November.