Historic Royal Palaces

One of actionreplay's latest posts has just reminded me that I've got a joint membership card for the Historic Royal Palaces (i.e. Tower of London, Hampton Court, Kensington Palace, Kew Palace and the Banqueting House) in my wallet (valid until end August).

Will be making a few more trips between now and then to get my money worth out of it.

If anyone fancies making use of the other half at some point between now and then let me know.

A Question Begging To Be Asked...

If Platform 9 3/4 goes to Hogwarts, what's in here:

The Gainsborough Packet & Yoko Ono

As previously mentioned on the Sunday after DERT (I've somehow got 2 weeks behind on posting about things again) I went and explored the Baltic.

They had two major exhibitions to see

The Gainsborough Packet

As you go into the gallery, the first thing you came to, was a room showing Matt Stokes' 9 minute music film, The Gainsborough Packet telling the life of an ordinary man from Newcastle, Jon Burdikin, based on a letter to his friend Pybus sent in 1828. It's an interesting tale of a man who clearly tried his hand at many thing (from being a fireman to making fiddles) and includes many twists, such as him almost getting buried alive.

However, one of the things that really appealed, was the music. It was interesting listening to it, as there was something very similar to the works of Spiers & Boden and Bellowhead about it. Reading the information afterwards, it turned out Jon Boden collaborated in the composition and wrote the lyrics, so it's not surprising really. Other collaborators include Alistair Anderson, Tim Kerr and Sam Lee.

The Gainsborough packet is showing at the Baltic until 10 May 2009 and is well worth a look. For those further south, it's also showing at Project Space 176 in Camden until 28 June 2009.

Yoko Ono

The other major exhibition they had on was on the works of Yoko Ono. I didn't know much about her work before wondering around.

There was a lot there to make you think and question many aspects of culture and I ended up tying a wish to a tree and coming away with a piece of sky.

However, I think the item that impressed me most was "Amaze", a maze made of clear perspex.



It was very disorientating having walls you could see through and you were never really sure if you'd reached a dead end until you got right up close to it.

The exhibition was only on until 15 March according to the flyer, so it looks like I caught the last day.