Tate Britain from the floor

This is a kind of guest blog post. Well it's a joint effort, I scribed.

Introducing my eleven, very nearly twelve, year old son.

Who I "made" go to Tate Britain with his mum, sister and friends.

Getting the following photos came about quite by chance, when he inventively and creatively got himself out of the "it's boring" place when he began documenting his visit on his mobile phone. He insisted on bringing his phone with him because he was going to be bored. As far as I could tell, this was so he could ignore us all and play games on the train into central London. But he didn't play games.

He took photos. And played with the settings on the camera.

First the panorama setting, "in the massive hall".

"Mum, that's you in the photo and a man who walked along while I took the photo so he's in it twice"

The photo below is taken by me. I found the boys like this, on the floor taking photos, happily ignoring the stares by staff and visitors.

These are some of the photos my son took whilst lying on the floor in the Christina Mackie sculpture.

"This is a diagonal panorama that didn't work because the net is split into three."

Then they tried it in the other galleries.

Next he played with the 'cartoon' setting, experimenting on me in the cafe first.

I hate photos of me, and contrary to what this looks like, I was having a really nice time.

He couldn't wait to get back to the "massive hall", but some of the attraction was being able to skid around on the shiny floor.

and then take photos of these "two sisters, who look like like mine in the future".

Here's how he described the paintings that he took photos of.

"This is three boys playing in a tree with a dog and a lethal weapon, a bow".

"This man looked important."

"Horses grazing, the white horse is the odd one out."

" A weird pose."

"Trees. These trees looked special because they were hidden behind a cloth."
(They were under a cloth, hidden away from the light.)

"I'm not being rude but that was the first black guy I saw in a painting in the museum and it proves that discrimination in those times was real."

"Jesus healing a sick woman."

"A Roman Colosseum."

"She looks like she's lost."

"This looks like the lady from the boat who has fallen in the river and looks even more lost."

"Me."

"I was bored so I found out what my phone could do."

I've been thinking about why I've written this post, bothered to show this to others. It's not about my son, or me, or the seemingly worthy Easter holiday trip to an art gallery, to the Tate Britain. But I wanted to flag up the ways children can access museums and galleries. And, dare I say it, the creative and inventive ways mobile phones can be used in museums. We took sketchbooks with us, even me. But my son did it his way, it wasn't planned, it wasn't expected. But I love the results, he loved the day, and next time I suggest visiting a museum or art gallery hopefully he won't protest quite so much, "because they're fun".  

I wish I had the courage to lie on the floor in art galleries.

Details about Tate Britain on the website here.
Take kids, a camera and see what happens.

Cotton to Gold

Two Temple Place in London is only open to the public for a few months each year.

Every year, in this magnificent building, there's an exhibition of publicly owned objects and art-work from museums and galleries from around the UK.

This year it's the turn of Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery, Haworth Art Gallery and Towneley Hall Art Gallery & Museum with the exhibition Cotton to Gold.

What have these three museums and galleries got in common?

All have objects collected by industrial entrepreneurs in the North West, bought with wealth amassed through the booming textile industry in Lancashire in the late 1800s. These men were magnates of industry and trade and they had spare cash, a lot of it, to collect stuff.

Collecting has always been a hobby, and one that has been part of the story of museum collections. You can read about this in my post, 'Cabinets of Wonder: Royal Albert Memorial Museum', here. 

We are told, 'Displaying these collections together, the exhibition highlights the circumstances of their exceptional accumulation, asking what such groups of objects can reveal about their owners and the rapidly-changing times in which they lived'.

So who are these men, what did they do and what did they collect?

Here are a few.

Robert Edward Hart, rope maker,

with his books, ...of Hours.

And coins. Roman, Greek, Byzantium and British.

 He got the set, one from each Roman emperor from Augustus to the 3rd century AD.

Gold coins from the reign of Elizabeth I.

The daughter of the king played by Damian Lewis. We had a little Wolf Hall chat with another visitor.

Seriously though, these coins in front of us were in circulation 500 years ago, used to buy things. We think that's quite something.

Thomas Boys Lewis, managed the family's cotton spinning mill,

and collected Japanese prints.

"I'd like to knit a scarf in either of these two colourways".

Arthur C. Bowdler and his beetles from all over the world, was a successful manufacturing chemist and factory owner.

Joseph Briggs, a fabric designer, not only collected Tiffany ware but worked for him, he was his chief assistant.

George A. Booth, an iron founder from Preston collected stuffed birds.

Some in cases,

and some not.

Some with claws nearly as big as our hands.

George Eastwood, who began his working life, aged 10, in a local mill, and as far as I can tell, made his money with a party planning business for the rich and famous of Manchester, collected ivories.

James Hardcastle collected book illustrations.

Nothing is known of his life, just his collection.

Wilfred Dean who made gas-heated washing machines and boilers, collected life-drawings by John Everett Millais.

Millais was a pretty significant figure in the art world, was this investment or a genuine love of drawing? In answering this question, I find out that Wilfred Dean was closely involved in the development of Towneley Hall Art Gallery and 'played a significant role in its purchasing decisions'.

There's a bigger picture surrounding the accrued wealth that financed these collections, which is recognised in the exhibition.

Questions about the hardships workers endured, ivory, taxidermy, child labour are acknowledged. As said in the museum interpretation, 'Doubtless prompted by the hardships endured by their workers, the industrialists of the North West supported a wide range of cultural causes that benefited the inhabitants of the cotton towns. ...they funded museums and galleries, founded local orphanages and schools, and donated money to local churches and Blackburn Cathedral.'

I'll leave that thought with you. The balance of workers' conditions and philanthropy. Was this just a thing of the past?

Cotton, where it all began.

Cotton to Gold is on at Two Temple Place until 19th April 2015.

Details on their website here.

As well as the exhibition, you get to see inside Two Temple Place. we loved that too.

If you'd like to see inside, check out this post by blogger Fun60, 'Two temple Place'.

Thea Porter: Fashion

I was asked if I wanted to see the Thea Porter exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum

by two lovely bloggers, Hatty Uwanogho and Jane Martin.

What better way to get to know each other than hanging out in a museum.

Thea Porter of Irish, Russian, Jewish, French descent,
loved the exotic,

colour,

trimmings,

braids

and the ephemeral.

She made clothes to enjoy with little concern for washing and dry-cleaning.
But who cares because these are 'exotic clothes made for beautiful people at beautiful prices'.

But she did also produce Ready to Wear collections.

Setting out in 1965, as an interior designer, Thea Porter was asked to make clothes by her customers. Fashion became 'another form of upholstery'. 

She made clothes for men, Pink Floyd. Check out the album cover.

The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger, Cat Stephens. You get the picture.

The military jacket, one of her signature shapes, she made for men and women.

Thea Porter made clothes to enjoy, 'to put on and not worry about, clothes to get on with life in'. That kind of depends on what you're getting on with. I'd never be able to even load the dishwasher in these sleeves, let alone do the washing up.

But there was a nod to some practicalities in life.

She gave women the chance to ditch the bra, with a tight bodice that gave them the lift they needed.

This was very popular.

And this outfit came with a skirt if it wasn't a shorts kind of day.

So three bloggers visit a fashion exhibition. What of our tastes?
I love this green and those butterfly wings, "I could wear that. I want that dress".
I can't have it, it's on loan from the V&A.

But Hatty would wear these, she "doesn't wear tight trousers".

Would we wear all this colour?

Well Jane does.

 Whether fashion is your thing, or not,
you can still admire the work of this dynamic creative woman who began her career as a designer, in London in 1965, aged 38 and had her first fashion show age 41.
 I'm going to take that away with me. A career in fashion, in anything, taking off in her forties!

This may be where it all began.

With that dress.

You know, the outfit you loved as a child that you will never forget.

Mine was a burgundy suedette grandad collared, pin-skirted dress that my granny made for me one Christmas. I felt so grown up in it, alongside my other cool present. My Christmas single, Jona Lewie, Stop the Cavalry.

Thea Porter is on at the Fashion and Textile Museum, London

until 3rd May 2015, details on their website, here.

Can I recommend their free exhibition highlights tour, every Wednesday and Friday at 1pm.

We had a great tour of the exhibition. Thankyou FTM.

If you want to know what my fellow bloggers get up to,

click on their names for links to their blogs.

Hatty Uwanogho and Jane Martin