Xu Bing: Travelling to the Wonderland

On one of the many grey and rainy afternoons so far this month I took a little trip to the V&A to visit the new installation in the Italianate courtyard. It is a piece by the Chinese artist Xu Bing entitled Travelling to the Wonderland.

Initially I was underwhelmed, the grey sky and light drizzle didn't set it off to the best effect and from a distance the work didn't have much impact. However, as soon as you get nearer to the work, walking round it, taking in the details and exploring all of the different aspects it pulls you in and is reluctant to let go.

The work is inspired by a Chinese fable by Tao Qian about an idealistic world where the inhabitants live unaware of the outside world. This explains why the installation feels so much more effective when you get closer to it. The work is arranged in a circle and from the outside of the circle you have to come in close to the work and peer inside of the ring of stones. Evoking the message of an enclosed and exclusive world that we can only seek to see and understand.

When you do get close enough to peer into this world there is plenty to discover. Interspersed among the rocks collected from around China are a whole range of ceramic houses, figures and animals.

The work evokes the incredible diversity of the incredible country of China including rocks from around the country, branches from a number of different plants and ceramic models of traditional buildings from across history. 
 

The installation also includes a fusion of modern and traditional materials such as the smoke machines and the Liquid Crystal screens build into some of the houses. Such as the one in the video below where we see cartoon characters having what looks like a skype date. This fusion of old and new is a fitting metaphor for modern China.

 If you are visiting with children then you could even set them a bit of a treasure hunt.

1. Find a fish
2. Find a drowned house
3. Find a bridge
4. Find a zebra

I will definitely be returning one evening to see the installation by night as it looks stunning with the reflections off the water, the smoke and the dramatic lighting.

Enjoy your trip to Wonderland.

Ok so they might not have been 100% right on the end of the world but it's not all bad...

Well here I sit on the 21/12/2012 and luckily the world is still spinning, the polar ice caps are intact and there are no flaming meteors heading for earth ... touch wood. So this seemed like a perfect time to have a little look at Mayan Art.

The Mayan's were a highly developed civilization located in what we now know as central America. Putting to one side their lack of psychic powers, lets face it a feat that no civilization is likely to truly achieve, they had a developed written language of glyphs, they built huge cities such as Tikal which reached a size of approximately 6 square miles and they even developed calenders. The glyphs which are decipherable have given historians a fantastic insight into Mayan culture.
Sadly as with all early civilizations the art works that remain represent only the tip of the iceberg and what an awe inspiring iceberg it would have been. In London's British Museum we are lucky enough to have 6 of the lintels (a type of architectural detail) from Yaxchilán.

Yaxchilán is a complex of temples located on the Mexican side of the border between Mexico and Guatemala. The fragments in the British museum would have belonged on structure 21.

A birds-eye view of the complex... thank you google maps!

These reliefs which according to their glyph inscriptions were commissioned by the king Bird Jaguar IV (awesome name) show the fairly gruesome practice of blood-letting common in Mayan culture and most commonly undertaken by societies elite using a stingrays spine. This instrument can be seen in the hands of the women (Bird Jaguar's wife) in the carving immediately below.

If you want to visit these incredible pieces they are located in Room 27 of the British Museum which focuses upon Mexican art. Oh and it's free!

And for more fascinating in depth information about the reliefs head to : http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/cultures/the_americas/maya.aspx 

Hollywood Costume: A Smash Hit

This exhibition is thoroughly enjoyable and perfect for this time of year. I went with my brother, mother and some old friends from America and there was something for everyone. My brother was slightly skeptical at first about going to an exhibition all about clothes.... But as soon as we went into the exhibition it was clear that clever curating had provided a broad range of costumes from diffuse eras and film genres, with a fairly even split between costumes for men and women. Making it fabulous for a family day out during the Christmas period although pre-booking is definitely a good idea as it has proved very popular. We managed to just turn up on a Monday and get tickets at 3. 45 so it is always worth giving it a try. The V&A has such a fantastic permanent collection anyway that if you can not come by tickets there is always a great back up plan.

Of course there is much more to this exhibition then just looking at the clothes. The curators, Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Sir Christopher Frayling and Keith Lodwick, have placed the costumes alongside pertinent companion quotes from the designers, the actors or the directors. These make you really examine the costumes and give some insight into the important role that they play within the creation of not only the image but the character.

Possibly one of my favorite sections of the exhibition, pictured below, addresses how the transition from black and white films to colour cinema has effected costume design. Here the lighting is manipulated so that the costumes themselves can be seen in black and white and then in colour.

Of course a big part of the fun for myself, being quite a girly girl, was picking which costume I would most like to take home. Of course there were numerous contenders but I think I managed to cut down to a short list of the stunning dress from Atonement, the beautiful Shakespeare in love dress  and the slinky gold number that Kate Hudson wears in How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, complete with the to die for Harry Winston Necklace of course. On the other hand my brother went for the magnificent red cloak of Dracula. If you are going with youngsters or even just for fun I recommend this virtual shopping approach as a light-hearted way of looking around the exhibition. Particularly useful as due to the exhibitions popularity the rooms are crowded and without being seriously persistent you were not always able to have a good read of the information.

The exhibition is infused with a really nice feeling of fun especially in the last room where you must not forget to look up.....

I thought that looking at all the care, attention and delicate craftsmanship that goes into costume design I wouldn't ever be able to watch a film in the same way again. But as I realised when I went home and re-watched on of my favourite films, Breakfast at Tiffany's, the magic of great costume design is precisely that you do not realise you are looking at costume design.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/exhibition-hollywood-costume/