On pondering another adventure to the Metropolis

We had another adventure in London this weekend - twice in one month - whatever is going on!

London has something - noise, traffic, smell, crowds, expensive sandwiches, queues for toilets and thankfully, trained Harris Hawks in Trafalgar Square, apparently they save the council a £400,000 cleaning bill!




I am sure that I will succumb to temptation and venture up the M4 to see the Quilts Exhibition at the V&A before it finishes - it would be rude not to- if only to show a little solidarity for the six years of labour it has taken to bring the exhibition to fruition. However, I have to admit that having had a quick glimpse of the book to accompany the exhibition, I think I may be disappointed.

I have to say, and I know I should not judge without seeing the object, but to include a badly stitched effort by Tracy Emin, under the guise of it being ART, really does no justice to the craft and the workmanship of hundreds of quilters who produce beautifully stitched pieces which show enough thought in the process and execution to be called ART.

Folks who know more about this than me have responded to Germaine Greer's article in The Guardian to say the Tracy Emin did not even sew the quilt herself. Now I AM INDIGNANT. I mean, we might guess that Kaffe Fassett has an army of seamstresses working for him, but their work is exquisitely executed, so at least he is promoting the continuation of skilled work.

I definitely think that Greer had it right in her first thought that Emin's work is "
... a coarse travesty of women's craft practice".

8http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/mar/14/germaine-greer-textiles-quilts

I suspect that Emin's work was included to be purposefully provocative.

So, no doubt, I will be found at some point in the V&A this year, probably writing something critical in the visitor's book and emerging to look westwards in the full knowledge that life is much nicer if you just keep on going back on the M4 and if you are lucky enough, then down the M5 for a bit and turn off.

I wonder if anyone looking at the same sunset in Hartland Point turned their back on it and gave Londoner's a thought.





But if you want to see the art and craft of local women try checking out this website http://www.swq.org.uk/