Frizz

Went to the Mark Rothko exhibition at Tate Modern on Saturday - an absolutely wonderful exhibition. Especially the room with the Seagram Murals, they are breathtaking… you have to be prepared to sit with them though… don’t go rushing around. D and I stayed until we got kicked out, there were only a few of us left and it was a real privilege to be there almost on our own.

Also looking forward to the Francis Bacon at Tate Britain and the Annie Leibovitz at the National Portrait Gallery.

So how cultured are you really?  I got 9 out of 10, but some guessing was involved.

Just made it to the Anthony Gormley show at the Hayward before it closed. Went with C and we both panicked at the same time in the Blind Light installation, when we were trying to get out and realized we weren’t where we thought we were. Imagine a closed space with only one exit - bright wet, hard to breath in, mist that only allows you to see about a foot in front of you. I think it was OK to panic.

I took part in a performance piece on Saturday at Tate Modern “Did you ever want to be someone else?” and this is me with the face of artist Mathieu Briand… I know, I look hideous and scary and just horrible. It was a laugh though, we did the performance in the turbine hall mingling with the visitors. It was fun with the mask on just going up to complete strangers and doing weird things - the mask gave me a wonderful sense of freedom - so it really was like being someone else. The performance was a bit boys own - with pretending to shoot, die, and be captured high on the list - my best bit was dying dramatically; I slid down the wall at speed. There was one part where my group had to stand facing a wall with our hands on our head and wait for instructions, so just as I’m getting tired I have something pointed at my back and I’m told to move… I hadn’t been expecting that and it was quite powerful to suddenly understand the bigger picture - that we must have all looked like we’d been ‘captured’.

Even though we all had the same mask on, it looked different on each person depending on the size and shape of their face, but it did give everyone an angry face and even though I knew it wasn’t how they were feeling, it was really hard to dismiss what I was seeing and my instinctive emotional reaction was to be afraid, that was very interesting to realize just how powerful an instinctive reaction to someones expression I could have. It was quite a relief at the end to be reacquainted  with peoples real faces when the masks came off.