Where do I begin...

Where do I begin...

I met up with Jessica Morgan from Tate and Muriel Salem from Cranford collection. Sam at Haunch of Venison takes us around the Glasnost show which is very educational all about Russian art in the 80s.

We check out the new works of Rina Banerjee: her drawings were also spectacular.

I dropped into Stephen Friedman to see Tom Friedman’s new work most elegant.

I visited the studio of Richard Woods who we are commissioning to clad a little house in Finland for us.








It was an insight to see his ideas and his assistants at work he has some wonderful projects coming up in Antwerp and Aspen Colorado.







This evening the weather was glorious and yes.... there was a rainbow and it was definitely pointing its way to Chalk Farm to 176 but instead I headed in the direction of Westminster. I passed the new home of David Cameron and Nick Clegg feeling a sense of satisfaction that all was settled now and all parties' feathers had been well ruffled and none of them have any chance of becoming complacent in the next few years.

Poju and I visit Tate Modern for the tenth anniversary.

It was a very elegant evening and I had been nicely seated between Patrick Brill, who is Bob and Roberta Smith and Vicente Todoli.

I felt very proud of the Tate Team even if all of them were not there. I told Nick Serota ‘Onwards and Upwards' which I think must be his motto.







Poju had decided we should stay in Claridges that night and as we arrived Scott Douglas spotted us and there we were amongst all my lovely friends, Heather Kerzner, Tracey Emin, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Matt Collishaw, Polly Morgan, Keith Tyson, Maia wife of Damien Hirst, Jerry Hall and my friends Ron and Jen Beller.

Mary Quant and Scott.









Sue not wanting her photo taken.












Tim at my feet.
















Tracey was quite sad because she had just been on a visit to Auschwitz. I told her she was incredibly brave to do such a thing as I could never visit such a place seeing as my in laws had both been there and survived miraculously.

David Bailey taking photos on his Iphone. Things have moved on in 40 years!









Keith Tyson was looking super fit as he is training for his triathlon.

Tracey had somehow managed to bump into Sue's fist on the way home in the Taxi and received a bit of a shiner.

The next evening we dropped by to Fatima Maleki's amazing dinner for Young Tate Patrons. Everyone so enjoyed themselves and I managed to eat some of Fatima's amazing Iranian cuisine.

Then we headed off to Amanda Eliasch's birthday party where she was an emerging butterfly.

She looked totally magnificent and so did all her beautiful girlfriends.

Heather was there again and her true beauty was shining through.

Amanda looked like a Queen or should I say Goddess.

Tim Noble had found a new Studio assistant.

Lizzie has headed to Finland to our summer home where she is meeting Mathew Day Jackson and Nick van Woert and Dave McDermott. I will join them too.

With Cindy I dropped into the Catlin Prize where we met Medeia Cohen.

We both bought a painting by Adam Dix who was also part of Future Map where we gave the prize.

Miyo Yoshido stood in front of her sculpture of the uterus being sold in the black market for thousands of dollars and she showed her preggy stomach at the same time.

I bought my second work by Sonny Sanjay Vadgama.

We stopped by to Alex Delall's space where Flora Fairbairn has a show called Concrete and Glass, where I met a very young artist, Charlotte Warner Thomas, who had archived an old man in a council block whole life and it was beautifully done.

I had lunch with Tracey Emin, Marsha Lee my friend Cindy and Ed Vaizey.








We had much to discuss and I mentioned how strange it would be if he heard he was given his Govt position over lunch and straight after that we were all celebrating!

Hot off the press!!

Ed Vaizey the moment he heard he was Minister of Culture. I was fortunate to be dining with Tracey Emin, Marsha Lee and my friend Cindy and Ed. Hurray!

May

I had a fabulous trip to Israel - it was fascinating. I was very lazy too and managed to get some rest. I arrived at Fresh Paint and found it incredibly difficult to navigate even though the charming Igal Ahouvi was my host.

However Yifat Gurion spent a quite morning with me and showed me everything. I saw some wonderful art works: many new and up-and-coming and some great talent.

Yifat in front of work of photography by Dror Daum.

Irit Sommers' Kinetic show seemed the most exciting to me.






A beautiful sculpture at Alon Segov Gallery by Sigalit Landau.








The winner of the Igal Ahouvi prize.









On the way to Jerusalem we headed to Bat Yam museum, Wendy Fisher's head stuck in a Will Hunt Sculpture.








On the way to the Israel Museum, I visited a small Museum called the Museum on the Seam, where Ivan Navarro's door was installed.

A work by Philip Rantzer in the show.
















The show was called HomeLessHome and the curator, Raphie Etgar, created a wonderful show. Incredibly well-thought show and everything placed to perfection. BRAVO.














Hema Uphadyay, Where the bees suck, there suck I










A large sculpture by Ohad Meromi at the entrance to the Israel Museum.
















Then Jerusalem, where we visited the unfinished Museum but incredibly James Snyder pulls it off and manages to invite 500 amazing benefactors from all over the world. The museum, when completed, will be spectacular.

The Girls: Nicole Klagsburg, Hazel Collins, Georgina Cohen, Pamela Crystal, Ayelet Elstein.








Anish's sculpture was magnificent. We all hung out together in the evening in the wonderful old bar, the most special in the world.























Anish and Georgina Cohen
















Loushy

MAY DAY!

MAY DAY!

We visit Ryan Gander’s show at Lisson and then the hard-working Toby Ziegler in his studio which we discovered was not far from 176.

We watched Toby and his technicians at work. Something exciting is happening!

Then I head to Rachel Harrison Dinner at the Whitechapel - the place has never looked so vibrant. All the spaces were intimate and full of people in no hurry to leave. Rachel’s show was warm and filled the room beautifully. She however was not willing to let me take her photo and accused me of being a BLOGGER - in a nice way of course.

I sat next to Philippe and he asked me to take his photo so here it is...

I sat opposite Freddy and Muriel, Iwona Blazwick and Andrew Renton on a huge big long table at the Rochelle School.

Coincidently the next evening in Berlin at Andreas Gursky’s dinner I was sat in exactly the same place opposite Muriel and Freddie but this time with Monica Sprüth. The new Gursky work was spectacular - views from NASA Satellites.

I also sat next to Carl Freeman who was very happy that we had acquired Fergal Stapleton’s works and he asked if I would take his photo so here it is...

I dropped by to Haunch of Venison where Damien and Michael Joo were the stars. I bumped into Tim and Sue, Michael Landy (first time in Berlin), Gillian Wearing & Keith Tyson who is getting ready for his Triathlon and is on great form. Damien’s revolting work....flies all over the picnic table - yuck!

Lizzie, Maitreyi, Bernd, Anna-Catharina Gebbers and Christian Ehrentraut - My Anglo-German Gang!

Then they somehow managed to drag me to a the Dice club where everyone was very happy and Marc Almond was singing the night away. I spotted one of his biggest fans.

LA was there in full force Sean Regan, Glenn Ligon, Peter Doig, Steve Hanson and Javier Peres with his dream team. We were all dancing to Rory’s Reggae then to Spencer Sweeney’s ensemble.

I caught up the next day with Hurvin Anderson in the street who only last night we were dancing away with.

We loved the group show that Pavel Büchler had put together at Tanya Leighton Gallery. We bumped into him with Douglas Gordon. I asked Pavel if we could meet again as I really liked him. I reserved a slide show on plastic bags by Sean Edwards.

Martin Klosterfelde showed us his new space an old printers shop still intact Isaac and Freda Uziyel joined us.

We paid a visit to Johann König and the work he was showing was by the artist David Zink Yi - he had created a forest of silver palm trees.

We admired the laid back atmosphere at the Berlin galleries – even on the busy Gallery weekend.

Our highlight was bumping into Tom Burr at Neu Gallery’s MD72 space - it was amazing to meet him and talk about his work. We have recently acquired some of his work for the collection.

Our last stop was to see Sebastian and Sylvia at KLEMM’s where we bought another Alexej Meschtschanow work called ‘Baltic Boy’. A lovely way to finish of our pleasure trip, sadly no time for Museums but we managed to visit over 30 Galleries in 24 Hours...!

Our farewell to Berlin was a naked man emerging from the U-Bahn... Happy Labour Day!