Barbican and an unintended blog break

Sorry for the unintended vacuum here, I've been keeping busy and for some reason I don't enjoy blogging as much at the moment (any tips to get me back on track?). 

Last weekend I went to see the Ragnar Kjartansson exhibition at Barbican. It was possibly one of my favorite exhibitions I've seen in my life so far. Unfortunately last Sunday was its last day, but I'm sure it might travel somewhere else next. Quite often artists do little exhibition tours, just as bands on tour or whatever. Go see it if you enjoy half naked young men scattered around amongst thousands of beer bottles, playing guitar. Or if you would like to see my favorite piece, The Visitors, an absolutely amazing video art installation where different musicians are filmed in separate rooms of a castle playing their instrument and then shown at the same time on different big screens – together it's like a symphony.

From 8 am to 8 pm a Sunday in July

8 am. I wake up but stay in bed, reading. Peter is snoring like a baby beside me and I admire the color combination of our bed linen.

I'm currently reading a thriller called 'Sharp objects' (or 'Vassa föremål', cause it's in Swedish) by Gillian Flynn. So far I don't like it very much, but it might just be the translation that annoys me.

9 am. By now Peter's awake and in a hurry for work. We're having breakfast that might not look it, but tastes good – ginger juice, lemon tea, mango yoghurt and vegan ham sandwich.

While P is all stressed I'm taking my time, enjoying my day off.

10 am. After breakfast I'm doing my weekly face cleaning routine – cleanse, scrub, mask. When the mask is drying up I do the dishes which hasn't been done for a couple of days. I really hate doing dishes and can't wait to have a dishwasher one day. 

11 am. I take a shower and get dressed. I rarely wear makeup on days off since I always wear makeup to work. It feels nice to let the face breath now and then, especially if you've got skin as mine that's always been a bit of struggle (oily one day, dry the other and super sensitive in between).

Then I cut off the seam on my Levi's jeans, never getting bored of the raw edges look apparently.

12 am. I'm taking the bus to Dalston junction to change for another bus to take me elsewhere. Wearing my newly cutoff jeans, a white linen shirt from Gina Tricot, old Birkenstock's and a straw bag from Beyond Retro.

When I jump off the bus this is what I see. But no, I'm not spending my Sunday in St Pauls Cathedral.

1 pm. I'm getting hungry and decide to have lunch on my own at Pain de Quotidien. Pea and feta frittata.

2 pm. After lunch I walk over the Millenium bridge to Tate Modern.

My plan to see both the Mona Hatoum and the Georgia O'Keefe exhibitions fails when the price is around £15 for each exhibition and there is no combined tickets.

I decide to go for the Mona Hatoum exhibition since all the tourists seem to be there for O'Keefe. Plus Hatoum is much cooler. I manage to snap some photos before an angry guard tells me not to. 

3 pm. I've seen the whole exhibition and found my favorite piece – this photograph called "Van Gogh's back".

4 pm. On my way home I do some grocery shopping since all the shops close at 5 on Sundays. I treat myself to some sunflowers and realize this is the second reference to Van Gogh today. 

5 pm. I have a Pimm's while pinning things to my Pinterest and waiting for P to come home from work.

6 pm. I start preparing dinner. We have this rule that the person that's home from work first (or if you're off work) is the one who cooks. So this day it's my turn and I decide on prawn tacos with a nectarine and avocado salsa.

7 pm. Dinner's ready ---> time to eat.

8 pm. On Sundays P works at this coffee slash bike shop and once in a while he brings home leftovers like raspberry and apple tarts. 

Now I'm so full I struggle to move. I guess I'll spend the rest of this day watching reruns of Girls in bed and making plans for the upcoming week. How else would you spend a Sunday night, really?

Averard Hotel

This Saturday I took the tube to Lancaster Gate.

To meet up with these two and to check out the exhibitions at Averard Hotel.

Averard Hotel used to be a really fancy Victorian hotel which then got abandoned and now hosts one exhibition a month for eight months before it's turned into luxury flats – we all need more of those, don't we?

We wasn't overwhelmed by the art itself, it felt a bit like an art school exhibition, but the space!

The space was amazing.

We decided to go to the next exhibition as well just to visit this place again.

Sannah and her umbrella matching the art.

Afterwards we went to a pub close by before we took the tube back to east to share a bottle of wine at The Bridge and have Vietnamese at Kingsland Road. 

Art x 3: Sarah Ama Duah

Sarah Ama Duah is a designer living in Hamburg but who got her roots in Ghana. She is working somewhere in between fashion and art and creates crazy but magical costumes made of hair. I don't know much more about her so I let the pictures speak for themselves.

All money on art supplies, no money for food

Since I enjoyed the brush on glazes at the ceramics course so much I decided to buy some acrylics to try out painting. But then when I went to the supermarket afterwards, to buy some bread and milk and pasta, I didn't have enough money to pay for it. The myth about the poor artist seems to be very true. At least painting was both fun and relaxing, sitting on the floor in the stairwells, listening to Dorisburg.

Art x 3: Tristan Pigott

I came across Triston Pigott's paintings the other day and fell instantly in love. When it comes to art, traditional two dimensional paintings aren't usually my thing but this is just wonderful. I like the mix of photo realism and visible brush strokes and I love the themes and subjects. There's so much recognition from both personal experience and just "general hipster life" that I guess they speak to a whole generation. Or what do you think?

All the pictures are from Artnau.

Art x 3: Karla Black

Karla Black is a Scottish sculptor and Turner prize winner (Fancy schmancy art prize). She often works with things that connote girlie stuff, like pastel colors,  perfumed soap and sheer materials and the result is subtle and a bit quirky. I've seen Karla Black shows quite a few times and it's always with pleasure mingled with something not that pleasant, like a room full of colorful soap sculptures with a scent so strong it's almost unbearable. Almost. 

All pictures are from my Art map on Pinterest.

Art x 3: Tomás Saraceno

Cloud Cities, 2011, at Hamburger Banhof, Berlin. I saw another version of Cloud Cities at Istanbul Modern in Istanbul last year and loved it!

This piece is called 14 Billion, 2010, and where exhibited at my former job, Bonniers Konsthall, in Stockholm.

On Space Time Foam, 2012, HangarBicocca in Milan, Italy.

Third artist in my x 3 is Tomás Saraceno, an Argentinian artist who works with large scale installations. I love the mix of organic and geometric forms that seems to be constant through out his work and the interactive parts in some of the pieces. I read somewhere that his Cloud Cities are influenced by the way internet and for example Wikipedia is built up by people who piece by piece adds on more information. However, it's beautiful.

Art x 3: Mariele Neudecker

All pictures are from thisiscolossal.com.

Mariele Neudecker is a German born artist who lives and works in the UK. She's making these fantastic aquariums and peep-show landscapes that reminds you of old romantic paintings like the ones of Caspar David Friedrich. She's literally taking these two dimensional paintings and making them into three dimensional pieces of art, calling her ongoing project Tank Works.