20.08.2026 – Travel Diary: Sambourne House, Nigo exhibition at the Design Museum, Japan House, The Whitechapel Gallery

The day began with reading the news and meditation followed by chi building, light weights, a shower and breakfast. Language learning was next. Harry Potter in French, Urdu and Hindi. BBC Punjabi news and short stories for beginners in French and Spanish, a page each. On the commute to the first destination, I read Let’s Talk by Nihal Arthanayake, all about the art of conversation. I would finish the book during the day. My first finished book in a while as I am reading a few all together.

Sambourne House

A time capsule into the Victorian past with an overwhelmingly beautiful maximalist aesthetic. It was truly glorious to step into each room and look over the cherished family objects, many of them bought at auction and at bargain prices such as the chipped plates that were displayed on the wall. What added to the fascination was reading the room guides and learning how the family had acquired the objects and delving into their lives, how they truly lived on a day to day basis. For one house, there was so much to do.

The visit began with a video introduction to Linley the artist, the family and the house. The son Roy who had taken up the house was one of those boys that could not get on with education I noted, and had never managed to take the degree at Oxford.

The list of objects were intriguing. From the make do conservatory to the walking stick that had been manufactured from a crocodile spine, there was a glorious array. Roy’s room was full of photographs of actresses from the time, there were Linley’s cameras lying around, photographs of nudes, and a peculiar turtle shaped object near the fireplace which turned out to be a container for cigarettes.

At the end of the visit, as I was recircling the rooms, one of the volunteers came to speak with me alongside the fountain of all knowledge there who was called Stephen. We chatted about volunteering in these heritage sites and about some of the attractions around London.

Nigo Exhibition at the Design Museum

I went to this exhibition because I just happened to be in the area after Sambourne house. The story that they were telling about Nigo was that he wanted to rebel against the conformism in Japanese society. And therefore, he had gone to America and the west. As I pondered upon this tale, looking over his designs which I was not very partial to, all of the ugliest of American design copied out, I thought to myself why these non-Western people seem to think of the West as a revolution. All Nigo had done was to substitute American conformism with Japanese conformism. It was ridiculous. Yet they thought it was Revolution. Yes, it is Revolution to slavishly mimic the art and culture of the bullies in the world. To fawn over the powerful. Yes, that is the essence of Revolution.

I noted though, with a wry smile, that at the end of the exhibition, Nigo had become a Japanese tea master and learnt how to make Japanese porcelain in the old way. At least that was encouraging. He had gone to the west to rebel but had returned to his roots.

Japan House

After a lunch of reduced price sushi from Tesco’s, I had a quick look upstairs here as I had seen the exhibition downstairs about photography before. As usual, it was a delight to look over the tatami mats, the pearl jewellery, the wooden rings, the pottery and the dishes made out of lacquered wood, the stationery and the beautiful pens. To admire the Japanese infusion of art into everything that they do. I returned to the display about bamboo and reluctantly left the place.

The Whitechapel Gallery

I met up with a friend and she and I invested the ‘patchwork’ theme of the artworks downstairs, including a video of the bespoke suit industry, the contrast of Islamic carpet textiles inside with the British world outside in a series of photographs of windows (perhaps about the religious Islamic view of the world?) a gold and textile screen which hid a video and poetry about Chinese immigrants in Britain and also a video about Bengali muslin producers.

As we were down there, we were informed of a speech by Fozia Ismail about ‘A Song for the Xeedho’, about knot making from a Somali nomadic community of women. The speech was interesting and went on for about an hour. I saw the artwork as a reaction against Western art and its values. The art was communal, not individualistic. It was from a women’s tradition and not patriarchal. It was by nomads and not the settled. It was handicraft rather than fine art.

Upstairs, we saw some beautiful greenery made out of bronze and paint, saw an exhibition where you tasted Bengali food and then a video about Punjabi women in the fields talking about their life. We also saw the exhibition on the ‘OITIJ-JO Collective: TUFAN’. I took a series of photographs of my friend with the artworks throughout.

Items read today commuting to and fro from places:

New York Times

The Metro

The Financial Times

The Transalpine Gazette

The Red Bulletin

Music listened to today:

Batwara 1947 – The Movie Soundtrack

Nindiya Pari from Gandhi Talks

I finished off the day with wings, fries and a mountain chicken fillet burger at Chicken Cottage washed down with a tropical Pepsi. And a phone call with my girlfriend just before I got the tube back home at Liverpool Street.

Golden Girl Bridgette K Schnider (Degree Show 2026, The King’s Foundation of Traditional Arts)

25.07.2026

When listening, it is much more pleasant to have someone that talks with some bounce in their voice, some energy. Fortunately, when Bridgette introduced herself, her voice was abundant in this dynamic quality of bounce. We had both come in together at the very beginning of the exhibition in the morning on the opening and she shot a hello at us all on the front desk as I was filling up on the water on the table in this inclemently hot weather.

I met her very shortly afterwards at her corner in the exhibition and asked her to give me some direction to her work. There were two rows of exquisite open boxes along the wall which had been chased in gold. The boxes were full of sumptuous designs and objects such as sea shells and butterflies. ‘Gilding,’ she declared, or something of the sort. She was a gilder. She was the first one that I had ever met in my entire life.

‘What attracts you to gold?’ I asked her. She told me that gold was full of light. And that the light would last into the darkness of night. The artworks would glimmer with gold, catching whatever light was left. I did not investigate further and forgot to mention that one of my nicknames at home was actually ‘gold’ as well (‘sona’). For her, it transpired, gold was the day and the sunlight. Gold was the guardian of light.

Gilding, it emerged, was something like a magical alchemy. It involved an array of esoteric qualities like squirrel’s hair for the tip and rabbit skin glue. The whole practice of Bridgette’s degree course seemed to revolve around such rare materials – the Mughal inspired paintings that she had in one corner involved the use of a single hair to get at the details of the miniatures. In this gilder, I was confronting something of the spell caster. And perhaps it was magic to catch the sun in gold and the morning in the night with these works.

Aside from the Indian miniatures, which included a lovely falcon that had been presented amongst the rich and unique hues of (malachite?), Bridgette’s work was influenced heavily by Japanese gilding and by the Baháʼí Faith, which was evident on a closer examination because the boxes were accompanied by quotations from the religion.

The pieces were composed as boxes. Bridgette told me that this was because there was both an exterior and an interior which could be admired, the hidden and the visible, more to see and explore. And, as I thought, as the boxes could be closed, we had the closed and the open, the entrance into and the shut door of art which was still art itself. Was this an exploration of the visibilities and invisibilities of art? Was it a comment upon the content of art?

One piece particularly aroused my admiration and attention, which was the butterfly box. The butterflies echoed the box because they had two ‘wings’ and shared a mirror symmetry. The butterflies invoked the idea of the soul since the Greek word ‘psyche’ for the soul also meant butterfly. I wondered what Bridgette made of the soul although I did not ask her. Were these souls flying or landing on the branch in these butterflies? The barrenness and bareness of the branch contrasted strongly with the opulence and the elegance of the butterlies, nature versus the man made. The butterflies themselves lacked senses, eyes and antennae. They were abstract and disembodied forms with the blues of heaven and the spiritual set amongst the gold. They were a symbol of metamorphosis and change, perhaps again referencing alchemy from this gilder, the transformation of base metals and nature into gold. Gold as the ultimate apotheosis, the ultimate aim of the alchemist. Gold as telos, as perfection and completion.

The butterflies re-emerged in ‘Going Home’, which aroused more questions about whether the previous butterflies as souls had been landing or flying, whether they were coming home or flying away from home, whether they were orientated or disorientated. In this, the butterflies seemed to symbolise Bridgette’s own situation. She was an American artist that had been studying in London. Was she going to go back home or was she going to keep on flying through this world here?

‘Crown of Rememberance’ seems to share the same maze like insinuations in design like ‘Going Home’. If the structure is a maze, it appears that there is no escape. It is a self-contained world, the world of gold and art.

In ceramics, Bridgette dazzled with her colour schemes and her designs. There was many a beautiful piece which I could see in shops such as ‘Liberty’s’ in London.

I had another word with Bridgette just before I left. She works extremely hard at her craft and is evidently multi-talented as an artist. She is full of ambition and drive. I was impressed by her and her work and wished that I could do something to open some doors for her. In her outfit full of stars, she was clearly living in the same celestial sphere as the golden butterflies, but also here with us on this grey earth. Such is the reality of the artist that flies in the skies, the reality of the alchemist that deals with the base metals hoping for the magic and the transformation of gold.

Bridgette’s Contacts:

Instagram: colorandgold
Website: colorandgold.com

Arran Gregory: Omved Artist of the Month of July 2026

12.07.2026

Instagram: @arrangregory

In a spontaneous excursion to Omved Gardens, we came across an art gallery that was dedicated this month of July to Arran Gregory, a British-Sri Lankan land artist. He calls the environment ‘a collaborator’ of his work and ‘sees clay as a living organism’. Barefoot and with a crisp linen shirt, Arran was a friendly and charming presence in the art gallery. He radiated an air of tranquillity.

We first looked at a line drawing of a horse that Arran had drawn with what looked like an ink brush that disappeared into mist, much in the Japanese or the Chinese style. This was placed by the door of the exhibition and then the space proceeded to deconstruct it. The horse was drawn again and then it was disassembled and put together again by rotating the sections so that you got the impression of a type of cubism which explored, rotated and decomposed how the lines were put together. On top of this, you had patterns of sewing which stitched the rotated sections together, sometimes circles, sometimes other shapes like a staple. Something of a meditation on looking, how a whole is put together, perhaps an investigation of the gestalt theory of art which explores how art creates a whole. Certainly an exploration of how creating, destroying and mending are all put together and perhaps a reflection on human intervention into the natural world, how the destruction of the climate crisis can resolve itself into a conscious effort to put the world back together again in a different format which challenges anthropocentric human intention and perceptions.

In the midst of these reassembled pieces, Arran had constructed a circle of earth which he had raked in concentric circles. It immediately reminded me of Buddhist art and the raked gardens that they have in Japanese art, so I was getting that Japanese vibe with the work again. Arran told us that he had spontaneously had the idea of creating the circle. I thought it was very interesting. It was on the ground and in earth, so it connected our human gaze with the earth. Again, it was done in the form of a circle so it had the idea of completion within it, the completion that comes with adjoining the human with the elemental, the man-made with the natural.

Two other pieces caught my attention. One was a depiction of the phallic man of Cerne Abbes, a line drawing etched into the earth with an erection. A symbol of fertility. This was a striking image and full of meaning. The equation of the human with the earth and with art. The desire for a new fecundity in our union with nature. Arran told us that he was influenced by the land artist Richard Long, who also puts together nature, art and human vision into new configurations and meanings, an artist who is also feeling out the way to re-orientate us in nature.

The other piece I found very interesting was also line art. It was the outlines of two women that merged together. Again, this was about the reimagination of the human body. It was a sleek and elegant piece with the lines, the sinuous shapes of the beautiful human body. This was for me a template of many of the line drawings, since Arran had drawn animals in geometrical shapes through line art as well, an investigation of how the body could be mapped onto the earth and line art like Cerne Abbes (the pieces were called ‘geo’-(animal) – ‘geo’, of course, means earth).

Arran elaborated on the photographs of his earth sculptures that were integrated into the land much like Henry Moore’s art and showed us a video of nature reclaiming the artwork afterwards and creating new arrangements with the work too. Just like we found Arran earnest, charming and reflective, so we found his work. There was much to intrigue and delight in the exhibition and much to inspire further thought about the urgent need for our new immersion and continuity with nature.

REFERENCES

https://omvedgardens.com/journal/introducing-arran-gregory-our-artist-of-the-month-of-july

https://arrangregory.com

MA Performance: Screen Screening 1 – Central Saint Martins, UAL

Review by Dr. Suneel Mehmi

Platform Theatre, London, England

Wednesday, June 10 • 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM

My Mum has an Art Studio, by Zhang Jiaqi

MY REVIEW:

In India, the goddess of art and culture is Saraswati, a mother goddess. It is The Mother that gives inspiration and art. Similarly, this story sees the powerful figure of the mother as the instructor and enabler of creativity for a daughter that is suffering from creative fatigue.

The mother is shown as the greater voice of experience from an Asian culture which values and respects elders. She is also full of vitality, a quality that the daughter aspires to and therefore, one suspects, this is missing in her life. The mother seems to be the young one and not the daughter. The scene which clinches this impression is when the mother is encircled by a group of young dancers and dancers in the centre, entrancing all eyes with her energy. Therefore, just like the Mother Goddess, the Mother in the film is power. The power of creation. The film is the worship of The Mother, similar to Hindu religion.

The Mother’s studio was amazing, full of busts and plants, showing that she was one with nature. The daughter also describes the mother as amazingly beautiful, which invokes the Freudian idea of the desire for the mother too.

The mother’s role is set amidst a homecoming. Does the Mother represent China and its continuity of culture over thousands of years? Is there an idea that unity with the Motherland is the secret to creativity?

SUMMARY:

A daughter who hasn’t been home for years comes back exhausted and uncertain after graduation. Facing her first major life choice, she doubts if she should continue painting and struggles with reality.

At home, she notices her mother is different. The woman who always waited for her is now building her own life. In this gentle spring, they take a short but profound trip. The mother leads her to a hidden studio—a secret space she built for herself. During their time together, the daughter finally sees her mother’s persistence and growth, which helps her rethink her own path.

This is a journey of self-discovery and mutual understanding, a transformation for both mother and daughter. It is a homecoming and a rediscovery of the mother’s growth. In each other’s eyes, they show their true selves and complete a change of understanding and companionship.

–
Cast:
Daughter: Junhuan Cheng
Mother: Jiahan Bu
Dancing guys: Lytia Liu, Argo, Cheryl Ding, Jingyi Yuan, Xinxin Zhang, Frank Liu, Guosheng Sun, Zeyang Li, Changxin Ma

Director and Screen Writer: Jiaqi Zhang
1st Assistant Director: Xinxin Zhang
Script Assistant: Argo
Director Assistants: Xiaoya Wang, Hanchao Yang
Production Manager: Cheryl Ding
Production Assistant: Jingyi Yuan
Production Runner: Changxin Ma
Director of Photography: Songming Cai
Focus Puller: Frank Liu
Camera Assistant: Kai Wang
Camera Technician: Jiqin Zhang
DIT: Liangyu Huang
Gaffer: Yuyang Chen
Lighting Assistants: Guosheng Sun, Changjun Zhou, Fengchun Yu
Production Designer: Sers Shi
Art Director: Runyu Li
Property Master: Hai Zhao
Art Production Assistants: Muyi Fu, Zile Wang
Sound Recorder: Zeyang Liu
Editor: Jiaqi Zhang
Colorist: Xilin Zhang
Sound Designer: Die Lai
Composer: Junwen Wu
Poster Designer: Jiaqi Zhang
–

Berglas Effect, by Todd Chen

MY REVIEW:

This is an ambiguous meditation on the theme of domestic violence, which is what joins together all of the characters. Characters mirror each other in attempting to end domestic violence (against women), or attempting to revenge it. But their attempts culminate in murder itself, suggesting that there is no escape from violence (although feminist criticism might argue something very different here). In many ways, this is a comment upon human culture. There has always been an argument between peace and war, between violence and non-violence. The two are structurally connected, however much one tries to separate them. And in this sense, the film is a Derridean analysis of how much unites what is thought of as discrete. How there can be no separation.

The title refers to the sleights of hand and illusions that the film makers are creating with the script.

There were technical faults with this film which I am pointing out because these are students and therefore this is constructive criticism. One, the subtitles disappeared into the white at some points. I cannot understand (Chinese?) and therefore I missed some of the dialogue. Second, the face of the main character was blurred in a few scenes.

SUMMARY:

Berglas Effect is an attempt at a film creation in the suspense and crime genre with dark elements. This work depicts a series of consecutive tragedies triggered by domestic violence, in which three characters are drawn into the vortex due to their respective obsessions, and ultimately no one achieves true liberation.

–
Cast: Zhang Xu, Wang Hu Lei Lei Ben Zhang

Director: Song Yan Ze & Chen Jia Cheng
Actor Assistant Director: Huang Yin Luo
Script Supervisor: Li Guan Yuan
Production Manager: Wu Si Rui
Director Of Photography: Williams Zhang
Gaffer: Zhu Yan Tao
Production Designer: Song Shao Pu
Art Director: Wan Jing Ning
Special Effects Makeup: Cheng Zhuo Ya
Recording Supervisor: Chen Yu Fan
Production Sound Mixer: Wang Tian Jiu
Editor: Zhang Peng
Sound Designer: Chen Ruo Jing Chen Yu Fan
–

UPHILL, DOWNHILL, by Wenhan Qin

MY REVIEW:

This mountain is a metaphor for the uphill climb or struggle of life, and how one can get lost or disorientated within it. These youngsters climb the mountain to try and connect with the heavens, with alien life forms, with an advanced intelligence and the gods of the sky. However, they become lost. There is much pressure on them. They do not form that connection with the heavens that they so desperately want.

This is a young person’s idea of ambition. Ambition, however, should not be to connect with something greater, something that is not human. Ambition should be to connect to others, to one’s relations. In the film, the young man cannot connect with his mother. He ignores her phone calls and argues with her. It is relationships that ground us to this world, our origins that remind us who and what we are, where we are and where we are going.

Instead of asking strangers for help and thinking that they won’t just leave you to die (when that is what they will do, because you and everyone is expendable to them), and treating our nearest and our well-wishers as enemies, we have to accept that they expect things of us and we have to try our best to achieve those expectations. For our family and the ones that love us, we are not expendable. We are not just our careers. We are the ones that they love. And that should be enough. Why is it not enough? That is what you have to ask of this society.

SUMMARY:

A phone call from Xiao Xiu’s mother threatens to drag him back into a life he can no longer control. Desperate to escape, he retreats to an isolated mountain rumoured to receive mysterious signals. There, he encounters a young content creator and an obsessive inventor — each searching for a different kind of answer.

When one of them disappears, the mountain transforms from refuge into maze, filled with dead ends, unresolved choices, and a reality that keeps closing in.

UPHILL, DOWNHILL is a poetic film about young people stumbling through early adulthood — fleeing their fate, and anxiously hoping someone will show them the way.

–
Cast: Xiao Jiang, Huaiyi Zeng, Duo Hu
Director: Wenhan Qin
Assistant Director: Litao Li
DoP: Luyao Liu
B-Camera Operator: Peng Zhang
Focus Puller: Yazhou Cui, Chuandong Wang
Camera Assistant: Weizheng Li, Xiao Wang, MKX
Production Designer: Junyan Jiang
Art Assistant: Xiangcheng Wang
Sound Recordist: Jia Hu
Sound Assistant: Yongwei Zhang
Script Supervisor: Shiran Xu
Production Assistant: Dakang Lu
Still Photographer: Mingyuan Liu
Editor: Wenhan Qin

Thanks: Anne Beresford, Gabi Tropia
–

Last night, I dreamed I learned how to swim, by Yuyan Zhang

MY REVIEW:

Jealousy of the mother is apparent in this one, particularly the sexuality of the mother. The sexuality of the mother and modelling upon it is related to the burgeoning periods and sexuality of the teenager, suggesting that the film is possibly an examination of female role models in the construction of young girls and the firing off of mirror neurons in the brain and how these relate to vision (this is a film) and action.

The mother is also controlling. Therefore the expression of her sexuality is seen as a form of power perhaps. And this is why the young teenager is jealous and attempts to acquire that power for herself. One wonders what a feminist might make of this characterisation, that sex is power for women. Is this a stereotype? Or is the film debunking this stereotype?

The teenager is a spy and this is therefore about the construction of a scopic regime and surveillance, perhaps the idea of Foucauldian panopticism. The scene that is therefore of particular interest is when the young teenager cuts off the swimming costume that covers her whole body (like the panopticon) and exposes her body. There is the tension between exposure and revealing. The final ending has this too, when we are finally exposed to the sexual development of the daughter, although through the implicit rather than to the bodily. The aesthetic is revealing through concealing, showing through hiding, manifesting through veiling. I’m sure someone has written about this in terms of sexuality, that there is the dance between showing and telling.

SUMMARY:

Sixteen-year-old Xu Muze is forced by her mother into swimming class, anxious over her delayed first period. By chance, she sees her mother secretly dating the swimming coach and watches her become a different woman in a dance hall. Water mirrors her fear and longing. In a dream, she finally learns to swim, but can never catch up with her mother. She wakes to her first period. After seeing her mother, she truly sees herself for the first time.

–
Cast: Harmonie He, Jun Liu, Xiaobao Zhao, Benben 
Director: Yuyan Zhang 
1st Assistant Director: Qiren Xu
Script Assistant: Xinyi Li 
Production Manager: Diman Luo
1st Production Assistant: Tong Lv, Jiaying Wu
2nd Production Assistant: Yongqi Su, Zhuyue Hu 
Director Of Photography: Jiacheng Chen 
Camera Operator: Jeff Zhang
Focus Puller: Tuoran Li 
Gaffer: Shuhao Wang
Best Boy: Tianwei Bao
DIT: Yaokun Mo
 Art Director: Cong Le
Art Assistant: Ruimin Li 
Stylist: Xinjue Wu
Hair and Make-up: Xiaochen Zhu, Yanping Zhang, Yixin Chen 
Sound Recordist: Zhixuan Zhao
Boom Operator: Xiaoni Huang
 Sound Designer: Yufan Chen 
Colorist: Shiqi Sun
 Editor: Yuyan Zhang
–

Puann-hì, by Ding Wei

MY REVIEW:

This one appears to be gauging the contest between Western drama exemplified by Medea and Chinese traditional art forms which are interlaced throughout. It is about the idea that acting is about courage, what it means to be a woman that is not docile and weak, to be able to speak up and express oneself.

This was the most technically beautiful film for me, with its choreography and dream-like sequences.

The film investigated the theme of domestic abuse and, moreover, the man was the powerful villain because he was the landlord and held the financial power. Therefore, one might see the film as an exposure of the patriarchy and its misogyny driven by feminism.

SUMMARY:

A Minnan girl named A-ning, who studies far from home, is rehearsing for a production of *Medea*. Returning home during the holidays, she finds her homeland both familiar and isolating, uncertain where she truly belongs. The struggles of real life often make her long to become a powerful woman like Medea in the play—but in Minnan, Medea is dismissed by her grandmother as a foolish and selfish woman. She can’t help but wonder: without a dragon-drawn chariot, without myth, what kind of “revenge” do we need in the 21st century?

–
Cast: Faymin, Ding Yunchen, Huang Jiale, Li Weisi, Chen Xiufeng
Director: Ding Wei
Assistant Director: Li Yihan
Producer: Li Fan
UPM: Kilin Lin
DOP: Cai Songming
Camera Assistant: Jin Xiao
Puller: Huang Jinqi
Gaffer: Peng Junjie
Lighting Assistant: Tu Erqi
Production Designer: Fang Woni, Hu Jingtong
Art Assistant: Feng Yu
Stylist: Feng Yu
Sound Designer: Tang Chenhui
Sound Assistant: Peng Haiyun
Script Supervisor: Chen Yufei
Editor: Ding Wei
–

Xiang Qian Kan Qi, by Cong Le

MY REVIEW:

Castration (the Freudian losing of the teeth) figures as a major theme here, perhaps the castration of the individual by the state, since we are talking about a performance for the nationalistic Olympics here. If castration is not about power, what is it about? It is a powerlessness imposed by the powerful, the oppressors in the state that control representation. This was perhaps the essence of the body horror that we saw here, the hair cutting, the teeth being pulled out, even the contortionism of the heroine.

This was the most lavishly shot out of all the films which made me wonder how the budget was so big! The choreography made the film very beautiful.

This film seemed to be about the idea of disappearance in the body. Teeth disappearing. The body of the heroine disappearing. The lack that the state creates in the body…

SUMMARY:

Amid the Olympic fever of 2008, in a dance troupe with a strict hierarchy, the girls were compared, selected and replaced amid the undercurrents of competition. Qianqian tried hard to fit in with the rules, but the honour she eventually gained was to completely disappear from the most dazzling stage.

–
Cast: Xuanyu Zhang, Xuanyushan He, Peixin Li
Director/Writer: Cong Le
1st Assistant Director: Zhiyuan Li
2nd Assistant Director: Yuyan Zhang
Script Supervisor: Yi Lu
Choreographer: Xinyi Du, Jiayi Ding
Unit Production Manager: Fujiwara Kai
1St Production Assistant: Siyu Chen, Yujing Yang
Director Of Photography: Yinghai Hu
Focus Puller: Shiyong Li
1st Assistant Camera: Yingqiang Liu
Gaffer: Jun Yuan
Best Boy: Fadong Li, Zongyang Duan, Qun Yuan
Digital Imaging Technician: Ziwei Goh
Art Director: Zifan Wang
Prop: Fei Gao, Hui Tian, Chaochao Zheng, Zhenjiang Lu, Hongling Zhao
Costume Designer: Haoying Zhang
Stylist: Zhao Chen
Hair And Make-up: Zhiyang Li, Zeyu Wang, Yixuan Zuo
Sound Designer: Yiran Ma, Zikang Wang
Sound Mixer: Zikang Wang
Boom Operator: Yehan Li
Composer: Monstar Cao, Yiran Ma
Editor: Cong Le
Colorist: Shangbai Jiang

Platform 1 at the Bloomsbury Theatre – Saturday the 23rd of May at 6.30pm

SPOILER ALERT!

Mia Debenham and Marie Saint-Yves: Neptune-Ball AEGAGROPILE & Co v The ANTHROPOCENE WORLDWIDE CORPORATION performed by Arthur Wickham

A lecture from a lawyer about microplastics and how we end up becoming our rubbish by eating it. It could be seen as a combined demonstration of the persuasive arts of our time: medicine, law, environmentalism and science. All executed under the rubric of rhetoric. It is left up to the audience to decide their fate once the legal argument has been completed.

Molly Lau: Eon City

A video installation which showcased an imaginary city that was powered by bioluminescence. An investigation of architecture through light, evoking a European tradition and architectural imaginary of light which dates back to at least Saint Denis and Abbot Suger.

Gabriella Day: The ladder is an A

A video of the performer reading out a script which begins in darkness with a headlight focused on the page and ends with the same vision. First light and then reading. The body emerges out of darkness into the light and the text and then disappears into darkness from the light and the text. Is this an investigation of the before and the after of reading, its construction, origin and ending, its enabling by light and the body?

Beth Simcock

A read piece accompanied by a video of the art of the artist. The drawings drew an expression of admiration from my friend

Arthur Wickham: Bian Lian

A performance in which the artist peels off several masks off his face, does a handstand, dances and wears a building on his face too. There was a mention of the grotesque in art and how it relates to the culture of the spectacle, which perhaps explains the form of the masks. The dynamic appeared to be unveiling and its frustration as each time the mask was removed, there was another mask underneath. Eventually however, we see the face of the artist with the suggestion that under the art, the artist stands exposed, the striptease of the face appropriated to challenge gendered conventions of performance?

Da In Park: Entangled Steps, A Salt Prayer for the Haunted Garden: Reconciling Colonial Legacy and War Memories behind the Beauty of Cherry Blossoms. (For more, Saltprayer.com)

A mesmerising silent protest against Japanese colonialism and the implication of UCL within this with its Japanese garden through Korean ritual. The salt prayer is a ritual to cleanse ‘colonial rot’. The silence of the moment reflects the silencing of the colonised and invites reflection and healing for oppression.

Margot Wilson: Sacrificial Package. With Eva Titherington and Juliet Dodson

Two ladies in red overalls wind shrink wrap around the artist to the sound of some cassette players. Is this about the packaging of the female body and its commodification, the packaging of the artist? Is it about how plastic is reimaging the body in the era of the anthropocene? The two cassette players compete with each other and we see the slow circling of the female body by the two women. Because the artist has told me that she is a sculptor that works with shrink wrap and we see sculpture in the round, maybe this is a reflection on the process of creating sculpture for the round and on its viewing. Also perhaps a reflection on how this is the era of transparency, with plastic and glass, a reflection on its restriction for the human body as the artist tries to walk with the shrink wrap around her and her movement is severely impeded.

Juliet Dodson: Stage Fright

Persuading a large red curtained box to get into the spotlight when it does not want to. And therefore an exploration of visibility and disappearance on the public stage, the coercions of visibility and the association of invisibility with what? Freedom or insignificance and obscurity? The artist’s dilemma.

Rosalind Wilson: Stack

Building things with sticks which keep on falling down. A metaphor for something? The futility of human endeavour? A feminist comment about women in art? The life of the artist? An exploration of construction and destruction? The ephemerality of art?

Lily Hosotani: How old is this ___? With Molly Lau

An oversized tape measure which the performers measure tools with. I get the feeling that there is a sexual innuendo that informs this – the measuring of ‘tools’ by women. At the end of the performance, the performers measure themselves. An element of disruption is perhaps intended. In constructing something, it is usually space that is measured, not the tools that will be used to work on the space. And then why would measuring be extended to the self if there was some work of construction? Of course, the Ancient Greeks might be being invoked in a feminist revision – ‘(wo)man is the measure of all things’?

Eva Titherington: Running for the Hills

A group of figures huddled together with a painting of a red hill attached to them so that they are faceless. They all keep on repeating ‘she is running for the hills’. Seems to be a literal meditation on the repetition compulsion behind language and idoms. These idioms and language itself is created through endless repetition so the performers do it ad nauseum to build up the image of the red hills and insist upon it, highlighting how metaphor and visual imagery is also crucial to the act of repetition itself. So an investigation of the dynamics of language and their intersection with the visual, how we create shared images in our minds and thoughts.

Munaye Lichtenstein: The End is Knot in Sight

We see the performer pulling at the rope and then as the rope takes centre stage, eventually we see what she was pulling – herself. A comment about how we have to pull ourselves along through life, the struggle to get through things, a comment about the burden of the self in the journey through life.

Hannah Stanley: Billy & CO

A composer with an orchestral band that aims to control them but produces the worst music in the entire world. About control and consequence.

the conviction of legacy

21.05.2026

S: Does an artist fear death?

A: Why do you ask?

S: It is always a question with a question for you. There is a reason to think so. The artist attempts to capture that which is fleeting, a flicker in the wind. He will paint an animal or a woman. He will paint a baby or a feeling. He attempts to rescue the moment from death. He attempts to write eternity.

A: But does the artist think this when he works?

S: Surely yes. Surely those portrait painters of the past thought that they were preserving a likeness for all time. Surely their patrons thought that they were preserving a monument to all time. Read the poem ‘Ozymandius’.

A: Ozymandius is about the folly of power.

S: It is also about the corruption of time. The tragedy of time.

A: Only you are the one that I can discuss literature with. But do you worry about your legacy?

S: No. I have produced enough already. I can produce more, much more. What you do not know is how easy everything is for me.

A: You have found everything easy in your studies?

S: Yes. There is nothing complicated in anything that I have studied, law, literature or art history. Or psychology, criminology, anthropology, philosophy, history, any of the subjects I have studied at university level.

A: But you are not read. Your published work, your art, your photography. You are not famous.

S: Yet. I know that I have produced good work. Therefore, I do not worry. You cannot make the ignorant listen to sense. I am the truth. I have produced the truth.

A: Stop these scribbles and these sketches. Do something more substantial.

S: Why? Why do things that you get nothing from? I know that I am a genius. I have nothing to prove to anyone.

A: Remember that your name is the name of the Untouchables. The Oppressed. They need your shine. Don’t forget that. Don’t become selfish. Remember what other geniuses have said. Genius is a gift. You have to give and give and give. It is your duty. For the community.

S: I am listening. I have perhaps forty more years in me. And I will work, don’t you worry. I will work on substantial things.

A: Now, while you have the energy. Do not let this life defeat you.

the money monsters

02.05.2026

S: I read with disgust that London’s Whitechapel Gallery hired an Economist in Residence.

A: What’s so bad about that?

S: She thinks that she can tell us what the value of art and culture is, that is the most disgusting thing. All of us that get into arts and culture are trying to escape from these money monsters with their bullshit ideas of value. And this London institution is hiring precisely that kind of individual to talk about what’s important and significant about art and culture. For us to be represented by these jokers. What the fuck does she know about it? Does she have any training in art and culture? This society is a joke. The people that are least able to do anything are the ones that they employ and listen to.

A: Come come now. I’m sure she’s interested in art and culture.

S: Then she wouldn’t demean it by being there to appraise its value as an economist. And pander to this bullshit fascist and idiotic government and this audience of philistines.

A: I’m sure there’s more here.

S: This society can only listen to a fake. When it comes to people that care for art and culture, live for art and culture, produce art and culture, then they cannot listen. They force us into marginalisation. They do not value our interpretations or our ideas. Because they want to keep on doing the same stupid thing over and over again. And what is the most stupid thing? Money. That’s all that comes into their rotten heads. Everything is about money. Make everything about money. They have a monomania. Their language is about money. Their ideas are about money. And these are the people that you want in the museum representing what the museum is about? These are the people that you want in art, representing what art is about? Do you wonder why I am angry?

A: Relax. There’s nothing you can do about it.

S: There is something that you can do about it. There’s always something. Do you know, when Michael Jackson wanted to shoot the video ‘They Don’t Care About Us’, which is about protesting racism and how the government mistreats people, about showing reality, the Brazilian government banned him from shooting it. So he went to the Mafia. The Mafia looked after him. They took him to the favela. They made the video happen. The disenfranchised supported the disenfranchised. I know that there are more of us.

A: You are not Michael Jackson.

S: I believe anyone with conviction, strength and discipline can change this world. Just like Jesus stood for something against Mammon, so can I. I can stand for a world of art and culture that does not rely on money. I am living proof of it. I have my own publishers. I have my own books. I have my own blog. I have my own photography and art accounts. All done without requiring money.

A: You do not have fame.

S: I have something better than the value that these cretins accord to those that apologise for the injustice and racism of this culture. I have my own self-respect and I have love for my community, the community of Tigers. That love is evident in everything that I produce. I don’t have to show why I value the community in terms of money. My love is a love that does not cost money. My love that I express? It does not cost money. And that is why I am the genuine article. That is why I am the poet, the artist, the photographer, the writer, the scholar. The genius. I am above money.

Day 1 of Study Holiday

01.05.2026

It was close to the time of sleep. When we are closest to death while we breathe. Weariness was creeping in. But there was A. to talk with. Always A.

This was the first day of my study holiday from work. To complete a degree in Art History through my dissertation. The morning began with taking a lady with me to the ‘Sea and Seurat’ exhibition at the Courtauld Art Gallery, an event I had booked several weeks ago. The artist had been obsessed with the sea and the light upon it. Water that gleamed. The paintings, I noted, had been enabled by the advances in rail travel at the time.

Afterwards, it was a complimentary photo shoot that I had given to a client to build up both of our portfolios. I had actually just finished editing up the shots and sending them down to him. This was followed by the Stubbs horse exhibition at the National Gallery after lunch in the park behind Holborn Station (Lincoln Fields). Stubbs wanted to be anatomically correct, an exercise I find completely pointless as an artist. But then, I have photography to be accurate, art to be imprecise and imaginative. I live in an advanced technological age.

When I had finished the contemplation of all of those glistening flanks of horse, I met up with a friend at the guitar recital at Saint Sepulchre near Holborn Viaduct followed by photos of Nathaniel the young musician which I shared on my photography account. On arriving home, the dissertation, a long shower and then eating the family bbq and booking some weekend tickets for myself and my girlfriend and a friend.

I had spent most of the evening thinking about Indian art in Britain and most of the day in the world of art, spectator, scholar and practitioner. It was an art life. A connected life with a girlfriend and friends. There had been an unexpected message from a good friend of many years too after a while. It was a good first day for a study break.

Farthing Downs and Happy Valley – 27.03.2026

39,000 steps/17.31 miles (equivalent to 66.6 circuits of a soccer pitch)

Birds seen: parakeets, crows, possibly a raven, blue tits, pigeons, goldfinch, starlings

Highlights

The Flint Game

Strewn about all over this area, there were pieces of flint. We are hypothesising that the area might have been a major hub for prehistoric man. We were talking about the craftsmanship required to make the flints into weapons and then, suddenly, I had the idea that we should each of us have a go at doing it.

So my friend and I picked up two pieces of flint, one piece smaller and one piece larger and we placed the smaller piece onto a piece of flint that was embedded in the ground. Then, we struck at the corners and edges of the smaller piece of flint with the bigger. Unlike in cinema, there were no sparks. We were both wearing our glasses as eye protection. My friend went first and he struck out a piece quite quickly. I put it into my pocket and felt it. It was incredibly sharp. I did my piece next. It took a few goes to get going as I wasn’t firmly onto the embedded flint bed but then a satisfying sharp tooth came off. We had both reconnected with our prehistoric past. I kept both the pieces and now they are on my bookshelf in my bedroom. A reminder of what? Our ancestry? The trip? Friendship?

The Chaldon Doom Painting

After getting slightly lost, we entered Chaldon Church which was a pretty construction to do the art part of our walk. We were going to see the Chaldon Doom painting. This had been created by a monk that fancied himself as an artist and was about the sins, a bit like Hieronymous Bosch’s masterpiece, ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’.

As we entered, we came across two friends, R. and A. One was a young woman with dyed blonde hair who was the very picture of silence. The other was a stout man with black hair that chatted to us amiably about the mural because he was a local. His first words to me was that we are all a part of god so that we are all gods, a statement fit for a church. He had watched a video on YouTube about it and chatted to my friend about what he knew while I studiously read the labelled diagram of the mural and read the extended curator label about it.

The mural was reddish and quite ugly, although interesting to look at at the same time. The church was not particularly impressive but it was a novel experience to go to look at art and actually find a stranger that you could talk to about it. It never happens in London.

The View from Farthing Down

At the top of Farthing Down, there was this stone compass which pointed out all of the things on the wonderful view that you could get from this vantage point. We were looking at the mast for Crystal Palace, at Canary Wharf and also trying to see what else we could get our eyes onto. After you struggle up a hill, the view is the reward. And the rest and the sense of accomplishment that goes with it.

The Hive Garden in Coulsdon South Library

Noticing that there was a library around when we got into Coulsdon South, we decided to go in and check out the Ordinance Survey maps for our walk. Then, when we circled back to it to get on track onto our walk and were walking past, I noticed a charming little garden to its side. It was a delightful little construction, with little statuettes of fairies strewn about for the children. There was a wonderful yellow bench and it was wondderfully organised. Such a pleasant place for reading in the summer. We only spent a few minutes there but it was a lovely experience.

The Beauty of the Woods

We walked past decaying logs overlaid with green, green moss, past Yew trees and also delightful looking fungal growths on the ground. It was much warmer in the woods than in the outside world and also there was no rain like there was in the exposed elements. It was the usual but always relaxing and soothing immersion in nature. The birdsong was particularly beautiful, incredibly loud too. Like a concert that nature had put on for us specially.

Coffee in the morning

When we were drinking in Caffe Nero, we had a conversation with the Irish barrista. It turned out that the owner of the cafe was actually a Londoner and that he had only gone to Milan for university.

The Museum in the Pub

When we stopped for a drink at about two o’clock, the table where we sat in the pub had a framed document from the king at the end of the war, thanking the schoolchildren for their share in the hardship and struggles of the war. It told the children that they were worthy members of the sacrifices and the grit of the nation. This was an insight into that momentous time and the lives of the schoolchildren who lived then.

the worship of anger and the master of the field

27.03.2026

S: Recently, Imran Khan, a failed actor with no good films of his own and, really, a non-entity in Hindi film who was there because of his famous uncle, criticised Ranveer Singh, the hero of Dhurandhar 2 (‘The Master of the Field’). Khan said that he didn’t want to do any films portraying an angry man and this version of masculinity.

A: Thoughts? Are we preparing for another diatribe?

S: The thought is that we get all these people that are against anger. It is their culture. They want to kill anger. They think they are better than other people because they don’t have anger. They act like anger is a false emotion. In fact, anger is the most real of the emotions.

A: Proof?

S: Look at the Christian idea that you should turn the other cheek. And I remember reading a summary of a book that said the ancient writers all talked about expelling anger from the collective psyche. There is a conspiracy against anger.

A: People do not worship anger like you do.

S: I do worship anger. I worship the Dark Mother, Maa Kaali. Whose bloodlust is uncontrollable.

A: Why?

S: Do you know why The Mother has four arms? Because she is strength personified. Anger gives you energy. In the film that Imran Khan mocked, Ranveer Singh (a fellow Punjabi) says that not everyone can attain revenge. For revenge you have to have courage and energy. That’s what the film says. It is anger that gives you energy.

A: Proof?

S: Look at me. I am motivated by rage. Absolute rage. A rage that is unthinkable in this society. I got up after three or so years of debilitating illness because the Mother Goddess, Maa Kaali came to me. To get my revenge. I do seven paid jobs, more volunteering work on top of that, university study, a girlfriend, family commitments including mentoring and teaching my nephew. It is driven by absolute rage. The energy of anger. The energy of the Revolutionary.

A: You are Dhurandhar? The Master of the Field?

S: If it is not the Punjabi Tiger, who is it then? Certainly not Imran Khan. He can go back to his non-existence as an actor. India has rejected him. Me? They have accepted. I am their hero.