Rhinestones

Ten days ago to see the exhibition of rhinestones, that is to say the work of Mickalene Thomas at the Hayward Gallery. A lady in her 50s who presently lives in Brooklyn. The nearest thing to a website I can find is reference 2.

 A cold morning with a cold breeze, but there was a bit of sun about. I decided that it was obviously the day for an outing for the art seat of reference 3. A seat which has not, in the event, had that many outings.

I started with the closed road under the West Hill rail bridge. The lake had gone but we did have a large hole, decorated with fragments of large pipe. No activity that I could see. But I did learn that the problem lay with supply rather than with waste and that there had been some outage for some people. Not least the school, up the hill behind the trees in the snap above, which had to close. No water no school is the rule - which was probably a bit of a pain for those parents who were both working - a good proportion of the total these days. I agreed with my informant that we were paying the price for skimping on the maintenance of our ancient services infrastructure for so long: the shareholders of Thames Water might have done alright, but we got cheap water and we did alright too. At the time it seemed like a great deal for everyone.

Onto the train, the exit from which at Waterloo was enlivened by a quick round of the mouth opening game with a spirited three year old girl. Not having agreed a handicap up-front, I declared myself the winner.

It turned out that one got two exhibitions for the price of one at the Hayward: the main course was the Thomas, but one also got what one might call art-porn of  Linder Sterling, the rather older artist  from up north, to be found at reference 4. We started with Thomas, which was, as things turned out, the right way round.

A reasonable number of visitors, but the place was big enough that one got plenty of time with the work that one wanted to give time. No problem with snappers and no problem using my seat. I noticed that some - but not all - the attendants were using the very same seat, but no-one found it necessary to comment on or ask about mine. But there was the identifying lace, visible at reference 3, in case that anyone had.

A lot of the work was big and it had been handsomely put on by the Hayward, which I thought was a splendid space for this particular exhibition. A lot of the work did involve a lot of rhinestones, presumably stuck on with some invisible contact glue. I did not notice any on the floor so the glue must have been up for the job.

The work looked big, flashy and expensive, not least the cost of materials and the cost of handling, and I wondered about the sort of homes that it found. Hotels, the atriums of office blocks and the homes of the very rich? Far too big for a regular home.

Thomas also had a line in interior design, of which I think we were offered two.

A close up of the largest work, part of which is visible above. Maybe 5m by 2m? I think the dark green patches are some of the rhinestones. Reproduction does not capture what the real thing looked like very well: the glitz is missing. Which sometimes did not work if the light caught it wrong or one was in the wrong position.

What would Picasso have thought about it?

The real thing, by way of comparison. Maybe twice the width? I have never seen it for real, but this image makes the Thomas version seem rather cosy. A bit improper really.

One of at least two versions of this one. One that one could, perhaps, hang in our suburban villa (as it is described on the deeds).

The pot plants are entirely fake. Are they a sort of joke? Did Thomas participate in putting this room together? I dare say if I had stumped up to buy the book of the show, I would have been able to find out, but experience suggests that I buy the book of the show and then proceed hardly to give it any time at all. If any.

An interesting exhibition which I am glad to have seen. I may even be back.

Onto the Sterling, where we found this piece of hand-tufted carpet. I think actually, more by way of a collage with a bit of hand tufting at the margins. Given that Wetherspoons are into custom weaving for their floor coverings, maybe we could get them to take an interest in this sort of thing? Perhaps for their Soho branch?

There were also a lot of clever photographic images. Three of which can be seen back right above. Some tiresome, some interesting.

It seemed rather busier than the Thomas exhibition, but that may have been that it was a bit later in the day (a Saturday morning) and that it was a much smaller space.

Sampled the cafe afterwards to take a red apéritif. And a couple of the small custard tarts which I think originated with the Portuguese. More filling than they looked! All very pleasant.

Off to the Green Room on the other side of the southern approach to Waterloo Bridge, for lunch, starting out with a spot of Albariño 'Pazo de Mirasoles'. Plenty of it about on the Internet, but the nearest I could get to the manufacturer was reference 6. Nor could I find it in the archive, despite the image on the label looking familiar. Went down OK, whatever.

Quite busy, quite busy enough to give the place a good atmosphere, and there was a short Saturday lunchtime menu. But long enough for our purposes, even if we had been expecting rather more.

Prawns to start. Good, and more of them than might appear above. Generous with the bread too.

And a rather better burger than the second half might appear above. Much better than the All Bar One offering in Regent Street.

A bit careless about putting ice in my JW, but the waitress did grovel a bit and it was cheap enough.

Outside, pleased to find that the arty graffiti noticed at reference had vanished. OK as a bit of ephemera, but not as a forever item.

Waiting to cross York Road to the steps up to the station, a short shouting match with a couple of small girls in their buggies. They were rather surprised when I joined in, but they took it in good part, as did their mothers.

No aeroplanes. But a spot of Drabble at Raynes Park. I took one of the two on offer, thinking that taking both was a bit greedy.

On exit from the train at Epsom, a reprise of the mouth opening game. Interest but not emulation.

The trolley at reference 7 on exit. But no tomato juice in Waitrose, just an empty spot where it should have been. And only spiced up tomato juice in M&S - plus lots of those juice cocktails. 

There did not appear to have been any hole action during my absence. Were they waiting for some vital part to be delivered from up north? 

Or perhaps just from some outer reach of the Thames watershed. Maybe Swindon, to the west/left of Reading in the map above. I suppose that the watershed or basin corresponds more or less to the area covered by Thames Water.

However, I have learned that the Windrush, as well as being an important ship, is also a tributary of the Thames, rising in Gloucestershire. Presumably, at one time, there was a whole fleet of merchantmen named after obscure tributaries of the Thames. Families of plants sometimes got the same treatment, with, for example, the members of the Borage class of Second World War corvettes (or something of that sort), being named for members of that family of plants.

I asked Gemini about watersheds and water boards and he explained that the two are not the same, although there is plenty of overlap. He offers various reasons why this is so and suggests digging a bit deeper into the Thames Water website, which I then do. Differences seem to be concentrated in the southeastern quadrant - but it would take a while to unpick them all in detail.

Another win for Gemini.

The haul. Tomatoes and red grapefruit from Waitrose rather than M&S, despite the absence of tomato juice and the recent absence of red grapefruit from Waitrose. I had forgotten which, but the tomato packaging gives them away. BH has been reading the Drabble off and on - an author, as it happens, I remember my mother using. Now 85. Probably why I picked it up.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickalene_Thomas.

Reference 2: https://mickalene.herokuapp.com/works.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/stockholm-2.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linder_Sterling.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso). 3.5m by 7.75m.

Reference 6: https://www.parrafamilyorganic.com/. Maybe the right people, maybe they are better at wine than websites. To be fair, the section intended for the Chinese does seem to work.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/03/trolley-802.html.