Music
I’m not sure how to categorise Just Call Me God at Union Chapel. It categorised itself as ‘Music Theatre’, but I think I’d prefer Play with Music. John Malkovich played a generic dictator at the end of his reign when troops with an embedded journalist arrive at his underground concert hall. There is music throughout, most played on the chapel’s organ (hidden, so I never knew it existed) but some electronica. It was a bit of a one-off which I rather liked.
Art
At the Royal Academy of Art, America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s and Revolution: Russian Art 1917-32 proved to be a contrasting but brilliant pairing, being so close in time but worlds apart in other respects. I loved them both.
The Syngenta Photography Award Exhibition, Grow / Conserve, at Somerset House featured many diverse pictures on various environmental themes. It was really well curated and mostly fascinating. It’s a pity it’s had little publicity.
Lockwood Kipling: Arts & Crafts in the Punjab and London at the V&A was a fascinating insight into the life of Rudyard’s dad who taught and curated arts and crafts at a time when the A&C movement was at its height. Fascinating.
I managed to see the painting Flaming June at Leighton House Museum, where it was brought together with four other late Leighton paintings, before it returned to Puerto Rico. It was also a treat to be in the Arab Hall again, one of my favourite rooms in one of my favourite London houses.
Hopping across town to another favourite London building, Two Temple Place, for Sussex Modernism: Retreat & Rebellion, a fascinating collection of art by people who had made homes, friends and connections in the county, like a Who’s Who of early 20th century British art and design. Great to see the carvings and stained glass again too.
Film
Viceroy’s House seemed the perfect choice for the day before I departed for India and I did enjoy it, though maybe not as much as I was expecting to. I loved the fact that it was made by the British Indian granddaughter of someone displaced by the partition.
Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog 