Exhibition

I enjoyed the exhibition, although I thought it was a bit thin for £12, especially considering that many of the pieces are on loan from the British Museum, where they are freely on view.  Last exhibition I paid that for, there were dozens of fabulous Picassos on view, worth a lot more (and gathered from further afield, and much more fragile) than most of these.  However, I thought it had been well put together.  I particularly liked the "Theft by Finding" room, where ancient sculptures were put against similar modern ones for comparison.  The wooden Narcissus, a flower given a human form, I found fascinating.  The duck weight, I can't remember from where but it dated from 2,000-1500 BC, was probably my favourite piece of all.  I loved its simplicity and that the maker had bothered to make a functional object into a sculpture; also that he had obviously had to do it within the constraints of its weight.

In the room with ceramic objects, I glanced at one cabinet and didn't like it much, and the other and liked it very much - and yet, they weren't that different to look at.  I just don't get English 'between the wars' pottery, Bernard Leach and the like.  The other cabinet, which held Chinese ceramics, I was drawn to.  Hard to explain, even to myself.  Also in that room was Barbara Hepworth's Three Forms, which I love.  The next room was given over to two large statues, one by Hepworth and one by Henry Moore, and I can never get too much of either of them.  Then there was a room with a hanging installation of sheets of coloured perspex, which I liked, and then one with a large construction of bolted-together metal, painted red, which I didn't.  I mean, not much to dislike, just meh.  I liked the long pavement of chalk rocks, and the hanging street-like thingy with stuck-on half bricks and bottle, but not the 120 bricks.  I rather liked Damien Hirst's fly-blown barbecue, but would have liked it better had it been disgustingly crawling with maggots...what?  No, go on, you have to have been there.  I liked the photograph of the artist, wearing a pleated skirt and doing a handstand on a beach - "a discrepancy between the felt position and the seen position" - which reminded me of the shell sculpture by Maggie Hambling on the beach at Aldeburgh, although (not having looked it up) I don't suppose they look the same in the least.

All in all, I don't find that it's necessarily the age or the form of a piece of sculpture that matters to me.  Knowing nothing, I just react.  I am dreadfully inartistic, but if I could do anything I would like to sculpt.  I'm too ham-fisted to try, and too ignorant to know what I'd want to do and be frustrated by a lack of skill.

I didn't buy anything in the shop, although I was tempted by small mugs decorated with delightful Tracy Emin sketches of birds and cats.  I think.

Not much of an art critic, hey.  Heh.  Unless you've seen it, you won't have much clue what I'm talking about, either.  Sorry, darlings.

Tomorrow, I venture to Norwich to visit Roses.  Am I not a lucky Z?