Mike Nelson and Frank Bowling

Showing at Tate Britain now. 

Asset Stripper by Mike Nelson (till 6 October) -

 Frank Bowling (till 26 August) -

This one reminded me of the Mother Holle story but its title is Moby Dick.
In the version my Oma read to us, when the girl returns home
she shakes the featherbed one last time and out fall golden coins.

"Sam'Sentinal" 1999 -Small-scale work consisting of stitched
and glued sections of coloured canvas (influenced by his
mother, "maker of everything in the line of sewing")

"Wafting" 2018 - Bowling laid canvases on the floor, tucked up their
corners, and let pools of watery paint dry. 

The fabric was made in China and brought
from Zambia by a grandson

We also had a close look at Sixty Years, a new(ish) display of works from the collection showing key ideas in recent British art as represented in the work of women artists.

And at some of the great floors throughout the building -

Camera shenanigans

"Disrupted geometry" - obviously a lot of people won't find this at all interesting! -

 I'm trying hard to resist taking photos of marks on the ground, but sometimes......

 A screenshot of a funny thing the camera decided to do with a panoramic shot -

Military parade, Horse Guards (accidental encounter)

 And a couple of pix the camera decided to take when my attention was elsewhere ...

Running in the sun

Today was the London Marathon. We watched from Waterloo Bridge, a couple of miles from the finish. It was the hottest on record - and apparently water ran out at several points.

The view towards our view, at the other end of the bridge in front of Somerset House -

The crowd - and runners - stretched all along the riverside
(click photo to enlarge)

We got there just as "the fast guys" were passing -

The first of the elite men goes by, with cameras
on motorbikes and the roar of the crowd

A louder roar for Mo Farah, third in the race but breaking
the British record with a time of 2:06:22

With a background of cheering and clapping, thousands of runners passed through the dappled shade of the new-leaved trees and threw their shadows onto the hot, glaring pavement. There were bright colours, and there were costumes - including lots of tutus, some vegetables, a caveman, and Big Ben; sorry no photo of that one, but it must have been hell to run in ...

 and an endless stream of runners, some of them walking for a while -

We walked along the South Bank and over Tower Bridge to find that the barriers were being packed up -

But "runners" - now walking - were still en route - the people with less training, perhaps, but lots of determination -

Quite a few costumes...

... including these guys from Gotham City

 There comes a time when the route has to be closed and the signage taken down -

 Time for all the rhinos to head home ...

There's a lot of cleaning up to be getting on with ...

Of the 40,000 runners, more than 38,000 finished, 386,050 had applied for the race, a third up on last year.

Drawing Tuesday - Museum of Childhood

The board games section was well lit, and there was a handy seat. I settled down in the corner....

"Home made board game 1959. The Cass family
 invented and made their own family board games
between 1930 and 1980."

 ... ignored the children ...

Schoolkids delighted to have a play in the sandbox

... and got absorbed in the shapes of these letters -

 They took close looking and some experimentation, and still don't seem right!

 Sue polished off some glove puppets by Mary Bligh Bland, 1980s -

 ... and went on to an automated doll from the 1890s -

 Janet K made inroads on the dolls houses donated by Rachel Whiteread -

 Carol rearranged items from one shelf of a display -

We marvelled at the range of skill - or of shapes of tiles -

applied to making the mosaic floor. This was a job given to female prisoners in the 1870s. The entire floor - 6000 squares! - is made of two patterns within the square -

Can you spot where a lapse of attention got it wrong during the laying of the floor? And would you be able to find that place on the actual floor?

Drawing Tuesday - Tate Modern

The day started, for me, with a quick look into the Soviet exhibition ... it needed more time than was available, so needs going back to; it's on till 25 Feb.

Postcards in the "Red Star over Russia" shop

 I settled down in front of this "pavilion" by Cristina Iglesias -

My drawing was about figuring out the structure and guessing the words...

 Jo found a tee-shirt in the Soviet shop intriguing -

 Carol gathered glimpses of the area around the Tate -

 Joyce found a work by Louise Nevelson -

 ... as did Judith -

 Janet B was intrigued by a floating sculpture and its shadow ...

 ... which was tonally reversed in her photograph -

 Mags had been to a nearby textile exhibition, A Sense of Place, and brought along the booklet

 ... and showed the work she's doing in her current painting course -

 Carol's extracurricular activity was a tiny felted pot -

 Janet B brought along the drawing she did in Dundee last week -

 Several of us had used the same leaf-rubbing technique at various points ...

 Several of us went along to the textile exhibition, by ViewSeven - here are some general shots.

 And the gallery floor was fascinatingly patched!