Cultural Adventures

It’s crazy to think of what people think of me as a Hullite now compared to a couple of years ago.

Prior to Hull being the UK’s City Of Culture, most people would have had me down as some kind of cultural oaf – yet now, Hull is synonymous with cultural offerings, and of course, being from Hull means that one is now highly regarded in cultural matters.

People from Reading are proud to have a new burger made in their honour.  People from Hull are proud to now be regarded as exemplary custodians of culture.

Whilst Hull may now be the centre of culture in the UK, London still has a few offerings, and I have been on my adventures recently.

Starting with Russian protest art at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea (thanks for the election wins, by the way).

It included features on Pussy Riot, Oleg Kulik and Pyotr Pavlensky, whom I am sure that you are all aware of – Oleg being the man who “artistically” acted as a dog, Pyotr being the man of stunts such as nailing his bollocks to the ground on Red Square in Moscow – ouch.

Alongside these were some rather defecating depictions of world leaders.

 

 

Jeez what the hell is going on with the layout?  That’s why I don’t start new blogs on Blogger.  Anyway…

There were also some cardboard boxes.  I like boxes.  Which is pretty useful working for a storage company.

Much better layout.  Speaking of design, I then also went to the Design Museum in Kensington.  In terms of the building, I really like what they had done – but it did seem quite a waste of space.

The actual exhibitions were rather crammed and badly designed – often with no logical flow.

It was of mild interest to see the collection of old electronics, but so, so much more could have been done with the exhibitions themselves.

Nicely designed toilet though.

A couple of weeks later I went to watch a pantomime for the first time since I was a young child.  In a caravan.  Oh yes I did.  It was really clever, 20 minutes long, amalgamating Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, around the modern-day theme of sexual harassment in the workplace.

I highly enjoyed it – and might go see their next performances at Vault Festival in February/March.

Then we went to look at a Gingerbread City – which was Instagram heaven.

The last one was my favourite as I just thought it represented modern life brilliantly.

These were all gingerbread buildings created by firms of architects, and on display at the “Museum” of Architecture – a very small museum consisting of one room that you could visit.

And of course, I did some culture in Hull.  There were 4 installations of robotic arms, programmed in different ways to represent communication.  Some communicated with each other, some communicated with us, some communicated with space – and the final one communicated with the statue of William Wilberforce.

Interesting – not overwhelmingly amazing but thought-provoking to an extent.