I travelled from Birmingham to London on Thursday to hand in my prints and also to take a look around some exhibitions.

The first one I HAD to get to was Ben Edges Children of Albion. His paintings and sculptures adding modern twists to old cultural UK based ritual practices.

The exhibition space was Fitzrovia Chapel, which beautifully links to my research paper, where I briefly explore the intrinsic link between exhibition space and sacred space.

One thing I did learn from this visit however, is that my social anxiety has gotten alot worse since I left London five years ago. I was incredibly confident in my abilities and would speak to anyone about art, art direction, creativity. This trip taught me that this skill has dwindled and I need to focus now on cultivating it again in order for me to be able to engage with other artists. I think the crux of it, is that I’m scared of building something for myself again and then it be taken away. So I’m making myself small, which I no longer need to do

BEN EDGE- CHILDREN OF ALBION

TATE MODERN

I decided to also have a wander around the Tate, which I’m glad I did because there were some pieces that I’d seen before and loved revisiting along with some new ones that aligned with some previous explorations.

One, for instance, was this beautiful piece by Jacqueline Humpreys from 2018 where she turned her painting into digital code and then painted over then through stencil. I still want to explore working with code, along with my pieces of AI themselves. This would need me to re take up knitting which I’ve been slacking on alot recently whilst doing my research paper.

THIRST- WELLCOME COLLECTION

Before getting the train home I popped into Wellcome collection to see ‘Thirst’, these were the pieces that caught my eye the most. But to be honest the most useful piece to me that day was a quiet room that I sat in with headphones on listening to rain drops.

The work to the right is similar to how I imagine my coded knitting draping.

EXPECTING: BIRTH, BELIEF AND PROTECTION

Despite being incredibly tired by this point, I got another surge of energy when going to ‘Birth Belief and Protection’ which was the main reason for the Wellcome visit. Again RITUALS. This time old relics that look at rituals done to help with birth and pregnancy. I find this topic specifically interesting due to the clinical nature that birth has taken. I particularly loved the scrolls, reminding me of my favourite mystery, the voynich manuscript. This scrolls were prayers to be said to prevent vaginal hemorrhaging, miscarriage, for love, birth and against various ailments and demons.

I briefly also visited the sign language collection, this was one of my favourites along with a sign in huge wooden block on the wall saying ‘I AM NOT CROSS’ speaking to the fact that its very hard sometimes to get across emotion when also having to act out ‘cross’ when you are saying you are ‘not’.