‘Chocolate House Greenwich – Society, Intellect and Chocolate in 1700s Greenwich’

Old Royal Naval College

22.04.2024

This opinion reflects my personal views in my capacity as a private individual and does not reflect any consensus or anyone else at any of the organisations I work at or volunteer for.

Ascending up the stairs to the exhibition space on the mezzanine, you see a window through which you glimpse another world, another milieu, the past. It is a rare interior scene of a coffee house, one of the new forums for public debate that shaped the modern world. The customers are reading the newspapers that created the imagined community and fostered and nurtured the Western nation-state. Thus begins the historical journey into the Chocolate House in Greenwich. We are guided through a sort of window onto the past.

Behind another window, we then see the esteemed lady that ran the Chocolate House on Blackheath as one of the many women in history that have provided the world with its unique and wanted things. It is Grace Tosier ‘at the height of her powers’. Her eyes stare at us in the portrait through time. We are sharing her vision. She is the character that is leading us through things, the guide, the model: a strong, independent woman in a capitalistic culture. The heroine for this time and this society.

We learn that the Chocolate house served royalty. It then ‘became the Georgian equivalent of a celebrity hotspot’. So now we experience the glamour of the place.

The exhibition now shifts its focus. The story changes. We start learning about the origins of chocolate in South America, how it came to Europe, how it involved the morally reprehensible evils of a capitalistic society which evolved from slavery and exploitation. The trajectory of the story has shifted. We have come to a moral reckoning of the realities behind the glamour of the chocolate house. A confrontation with evil.

At this point in the story of the exhibition, like a huge wild monster from the imagination, we see a glorious display of the Cacao Tree rising up on the wall against a black canvas. The plant is covered over in insects. Why this image? The beauties of nature? The absolute origin of chocolate depicted without any varnish, perhaps, warts and all? The idea that the comforting illusions of capitalism, when the veil of ideology has been ripped off, reveal an insect-ridden reality?

The story of the exhibition journeys next into how coffee houses enabled ‘the free discussion of the latest ideas, unrestrained by the protocols of the royal court.’ In the light of what was before, the implications begin to produce a result: the free speech of this country is founded on the fruits of slavery and exploitation. It is an implicit link.

There are quite a few interesting pictures to ponder over at this junction in our journey which reflect the culture of the times, so that the task of time travel is further enabled.

Now, there is the context: Greenwich. So the place is elaborated.

A table draped in a table cloth reveals the production process of chocolate.

We then move onto the last years of the Chocolate House. And we see an image of what the building might have looked like from the outside.

Finally, the piece of the resistance: the final destination of our time travel. In a room, we enter the chocolate house. We are fully immersed now in the space. There is a life size reproduction of Grace Tosier’s image as we descend down the ramp to meet her face to face. A video plays in the space to complete the immersion not only through space in the room, but through vision, sound and characterisation. We have travelled backwards through time into the space of the chocolate house.

What do we make of this exhibition? It covers a lot of ground to make a coherent narrative: this was the chocolate house, with all of its social and political implications at the time, with its basis in capitalism, exploitation, slavery. With its enabling of social mobility at the same time for women like Grace Tosier in this context. All of the pertinent facts are presented. There is balance. And there is a stimulation of the senses with pictures and videos alongside the curator labels. There is the face of Grace Tosier to characterise the whole scene, as well as the images from the country of origin with the people there.

You get a sense of historical immersion in the chocolate house. You get a ticket into time travel into Greenwich in the 1700s – a unique virtual reality experience. An enabling of the imagination. A real journey into another place and time.

My overall sense of the exhibition is that it is interesting, unique, well researched and well thought out. In addition, there were labels for the children which would make them interested in this topic that they love too – chocolate (and the pictures to stimulate their imaginations). This was a conscience driven exposure of the past and its evils, the foundations of the public forums and the discussions that they bred that have lasted into the present, the foundations of the modern day nation state and its present evils in the evils of the past.

I did feel a certain want in the exhibition – I wanted to know more about Grace Tosier, the character that we meet face to face. A curiosity about her. But of course, the reality is that while we have a name and an image, we cannot expect a biography in a historical exhibition like this. Part of the fun is imagining her life, too. Part of the fun is being stimulated to know more – and the chocolate house exhibition certainly does this. So, in summation, a stimulating and unique experience which fosters a self-reflection on the economic and political origins of our public forums and our public discourse, what has made us and this state into what it is today, a real journey. A real experience of learning.

Future You: 21st Century Skills Exhibition

London Transport Museum

19-22 April 2024

These are my own personal views of the exhibition and do not represent any of the views at any of the organisations I am working in.

This exhibition is a triumph of energy and imaginative problem solving from the children, the future. It is a reaffirmation of the fact that the human race has always solved any problems that have come into its path and will do so again. That we do not lack inventiveness and ways of thinking around and through things. Even with problems that we have created for ourselves. It is a reaffirmation of optimism in the world and in the future of our children and the species. This world which we have spoilt can be fixed. That is the message of the exhibition.

Six primary schools were set an imaginative task in collaboration with the London Transport Museum – they had to find solutions for the climate change crisis. Aliens had told them that their planet was no longer liveable and they needed to start over again in an environmentally friendly way. The inspiration for their planet-friendly technology was to come from animals and plants.

As I walked around the masses of reclaimed cardboard boxes and lollipop sticks, the resourcefulness of the children was in abundant evidence. These cast away objects had been magically transformed. They had become something again. They had become the visions of the future. The tinkering of the children, with the artistic designs, showed their enviable creativity and collaboration skills.

Inventions were strewn about everywhere like a mad scientist’s frenzied laboratory:

‘The Helpful Bumblebee cleans the air and rubbish. The Earthly trees stop flooding and pollution as well as cleaning the Earth and so prevents coughing and sneezing. The Legendary Pigeon sucks in pollution through its nose.’ (Exhibition Text).

The models for each of the animal inspired inventions were cute and beautiful in their way – the innocent and sweet and simple beauty of children’s art and the infantile imagination.

The young artists and inventors had become curators too, and told us about the most interesting and important facts about the exhibits in the museum. It was beautiful to see what they had learnt and what had inspired them to share.

A nice touch was to show an old poster that imagined the future in London as a skyline with skyscrapers and flying vehicles. The idea that we have always dreamed of a better future for transport, that we have always had dreams which have changed this world that we live in for the better, that allow us to make a fantasy world that we live in in reality. The strength and far seeing sight of our mind’s eye.

This was a beautiful exhibition – full of dynamism, an adventure into a mad scientist’s laboratory. An excursion into possibility and the resilience of the children’s mind that can respond to the death of a world to create new life and new beginnings, to build a world entire, the world of the imagination. The desire for a better world from the innocent that have not been corrupted by dismay and stagnation in the selfishness and greed that is around us. But which rejuvenates itself in animal and plant life, in caring and positive change.

Echoes of the Blitz: Underground shelters in Ukraine and London

London Transport Museum in Covent Garden

Dr. Suneel Mehmi

01.04.2024

All views in this article represent my personal views as a private and political individual and do not represent the views of any of the organisations I work at. My expertise? My PhD involved the early history and reception of photography in its political and legal contexts.

‘Don’t survive it. Live it.’ These were the words that someone said to me recently. Survival is the most important thing for us as a species. In the field of psychology, they tell us that the human mind is geared towards survival. That’s where we get our intelligence from: evolutionary adaptations for surviving. But with survival, you have to live it too. You have to experience the fight.

The new photographic display ‘Echoes of the Blitz’ shows how we have to live through our survival. The exhibition ‘explores how Underground stations and metro systems provide shelter to citizens during periods of war – now and in the past’ [1]. How, when you are confronted with death and mortality, when you look death in the eyes, you fight for breath, sense and security. How you find shelter in unexpected places in extreme circumstances and still make a life for yourself. How throughout history and its rivers of blood, throughout the modern period and the supposedly ‘civilised’ Western world, people have hidden in fear to preserve their life, children, culture and heritage.

In total, the photography gallery displays:

‘70 striking images, including historical images from the Museum collection alongside 38 contemporary photographs by six renowned, mainly Ukrainian, documentary photographers.’ [2]

Some of the most recognisable images of the war have been of people sheltering in the London Underground shelters and these icons of memory are given an update and a new relevance through a juxtaposition of the scenes in the Underground shelters in Ukraine.

According to the London Transport Museum, what we are seeing is:

recent photography of ordinary Ukrainian citizens in extraordinary circumstances. They are shown sleeping, waiting, cooking, washing clothes, caring for their pets and creating temporary make-shift homes in Metro stations in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and its second largest city Kharkiv. These scenes are ‘echoed’ in the black and white archive images of Londoners taking refuge in Tube stations during the Second World War. [3]

The aim of the exhibition is to:

present strong parallels of human experience across different locations and conflicts. This exhibition documents the resilience of people in Ukraine and London during times of war and the reality of having to escape from aerial bombardment. [4]

Other comments have been made about the aims of the exhibition. Matt Brosnan, Head Curator, London Transport Museum, said that the photographs ‘show the resilience and tragic reality of war’ [5]. Stefan Günther, Project Manager, Photo, n-ost, said that the exhibition is ‘an opportunity to perceive the current war in Ukraine on a very personal level, away from the wider political and media glare’. [6]

I think that the exhibit makes concrete the idea of Ukrainians rather than Ukraine. All nations are fictions. It is the people there that are real. And in these photographs, we see the people directly and how they are having to live. And it is photography and its truth that allows us to see the reality behind the abstractions of the newspapers. It is photography that allows us to see them face to face and come directly into their lives. As a matter of fact, the frames of the exhibition invite us to do this. The black and white World War photographs have black frames. These photographs are framed and closed off to us – because as we know, the past is a foreign country. However, the photographs of the Ukrainians are not framed. We are in direct contact with them through our eyes and our perspectives. We are immersed into their world. There is no separation from us through the device of the frame. What is happening there is spilling out into our world, including us. Asking us to contemplate, sympathise.

Some historical details taken from the London Transport Museum website allow us to see the facts behind what is being portrayed:

London’s air raid sirens sounded almost every day for eight months from September 1940 to May 1941 and again between June 1944 and March 1945. Sheltering in Tube stations overnight became a routine. There were special admission tickets, bunk beds on the platforms, refreshments and, at some stations, libraries, music and live entertainment.

In Kyiv, sheltering in the Metro peaked at around 40,000 people at the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022. Some stayed overnight, others for days or weeks, returning to the surface only for groceries or to wash. Those who lost their homes lived underground for months.

Kharkiv, close to the border with Russia, experiences more frequent shelling. People spent more time in the Metro there, creating comfortable homely spaces with bedding, tents, carpets, decorations and toys. [7]

After you have read the blurb of the exhibition, the first photograph that dominates is ‘Woman in tent at Dorohozhychi station’ by Maxim Dondyuk, 2 March 2022. The woman defensively has her hand held to her shoulder, covering her chest: a striking image of someone in need of protection, someone that has to defend themselves from an unjust attack. She has to comfort herself with that hand on her shoulder. The woman stands out isolated from the crowd behind her that is not visible, vulnerable and isolated, perhaps like the situation of Ukraine itself – a country that has been left to fend for itself by the ‘civilised’ world of modernity which has disappeared when it is needed. She looks directly at the camera: she implores us to look upon her as the fate of her people, the innocent civilians subjected to the imperialism of the modern day state and its brutality, to their unjust greed and their uncontrolled and obscene desire for control, domination, land and resources. She asks us to acknowledge our role, the roles of our countries that have left her in this position. Does she ask us why? Her face is touched with sadness and suffering. She is in – through the connotations of the opening of the tent – in the dark den of despair, half-eaten by the hole, the absence.

In terms of its historical importance, the exhibition features one of the first ever photographs that were taken when the war broke out and the Ukranians sheltered in the underground stations. Viacheslav Ratynkyi, that on the very first day of the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022 he went down into the Metro and brought a camera so that he could document the situation. [8] The people have used the edges of the stairs along the walls as seats to create a clearing in the middle so that others can move up and down. They have been resourceful to give themselves make-shift seats that would be extremely uncomfortable to sit upon for long periods of time. They have had to adapt for survival and protection as a group, a group and species bound together by necessity and the cruel games of the politicians and the modern day states that are supposed to serve and protect them, the states that are supposed to be bound by the laws and justice. In response to the unjust throne of the state and its modern day king, who cannot sit as he should, the people sit heroically and patiently, in solidarity and suffering. They begin the long wait for peace, the desire of every thinking and feeling human being. These people are the human contrast to the inhuman face of power and brutality, the fascism of the modern-day state.

When I say I am Indian and come from India, it is the India of the people, not the India of the politicians or the intolerant and oppressive citizenship that they want to create. The state that they create is not India. What they create is corruption. We, we the people, we are India. And here, in this photography exhibit, we have the Ukrainians and Ukraine. These people are not defined by the war. In this exhibit, we see them doing the things that we all do every day: listening to music, learning, reading, dying their hair. Holding each other for comfort. They are victims of the state and the politicians. But they have organised themselves. They have created a space away from the brutal games of the state and its quest for total domination. Across world history, across the suffering that man has created, we look at the victims of the politicians and how they have tried to carve out another space and another reality beyond what the unimaginative and corrupt state has imagined. People who live through their struggle for survival. With resilience. As I look at these photographs, I know that one day, the modern-day state with its evils will fall. It has to. Because the spirit of the people will one day overcome the absurd egotistical limitations of geographical and racial boundaries. You can see this in the people and the photographs. You can feel the power of pure being. The desire to move out of the control of others. The spirit of resistance. The spirit of overcoming. Because these people are not trying to create a nation state down there in the underground shelters. They are trying to create a human community: a sphere of protection and life. It is a world meant to foster life – the world that we are trying to create by countering domination with the philosophy of live and let live, by countering selfishness with the desire for preservation, by countering the desire for destruction and death with the desire for life and the future.

If you want to see what a real hero looks like, don’t look at the soldier with blood on his hands, the killer for the state. Look at the everyday hero that fights for survival in an oppressive world and the games of control around them by trying to create another reality – the reality of peace and life. Freedom from death, envy, killing, exploitation. Freedom from the state and its obscenity and blood lust. The people that have created history, tradition and culture by surviving – by fighting to survive and live through that survival – and not by dying and killing in war.

[1] https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/news/new-echoes-blitz-underground-shelters-ukraine-and-london-photography-exhibition-now-open#:~:text=A%20new%20photography%20exhibition%3A%20Echoes,now%20and%20in%20the%20past.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

Review of Tsunagu/Connect: Uncovering the Lives of Japanese Women in the UK. (Barbican Centre)

18.02.2024

My mother is a migrant from India. Many of my relatives and friends are migrant women. I volunteered for years teaching migrant and refugee women English. Although I have heard my mother talk about why she came to the UK, I haven’t heard in much detail about what these women think of their arrival here, their journey in becoming British – even when I have asked them about it. You get snips and pieces: women that feel the hostility of this environment and the judgement of the people here over them. You get a sense of the insecurity and loneliness, the lack of belonging, when you watch them orchestrate their lives around phone calls and video calls back home, when you see that their closest friends are other migrant women from their home country. You sense their confusion about life here in London and the people here from the comments that they make. Tsunagu/Connect was a chance to hear what they wanted to be heard said about all of these topics.

Addressing the neglect of the topic, this exhibition is about the personal experiences and memories of migrant Japanese women that have come to the UK since the end of the Second World War. Over 30 Japanese women were interviewed to provide the oral histories for the exhibition on a one to one basis.

One of the stated aims of the exhibition is to overturn the ‘myths about Japanese women as passive and obedient housewives and provide an insight into the complexity, diversity, and agency of Japanese women in the UK’.

I picked out a few of the exhibits that caught my interest. I didn’t have time to listen to the audio descriptions. Masayo Aizawa chose to talk about her father through a strange object which she remembered him through, a calculator. She spoke about his harshness and the fact that he was traditional, that she could never express her gratitude to her father and that she only understood him late in life. This exhibit was interesting to me because it is often arbitrary objects that we associate with people. Because this was an example of a migrant woman reflecting on the people that she left behind, that she couldn’t get to know as well as she wanted to, that she had to separate herself from. And at the end of the exhibit, she says that she is like her father – it is just the illusion of separation. Perhaps this is what these migrant women feel – that their connection with the people around them in their countries of birth is unbreakable, one of the greatest influences on their lives. Perhaps this is what gives them stability and belonging, their identities.

Elizabeth Fusae Thurley spoke about what has been the astounding fact that I have witnessed throughout my life – that someone can come into a new country without knowing anything about it and at the greatest risk of precarity. Sometimes, they don’t even know the language. Elizabeth had come with a man with no job, no house and whose parents were against the marriage. She astonished herself with her bravery. You have to have courage to leave everything behind for a hope. She reminded me of my grandfather who came to this country from India and left everything behind him for the hope – the future for the children. Elizabeth came here in the hope of love: she got it.

Atsuko kamura spoke about how strange the people seemed here when she came: ‘The people sitting on the tube looked like as soon as they got off the train they would go and kill themselves’. That quote conveys the radical sense of defamiliarisation that these women experienced when they came to this country. But it carries a sadder tone for me – she came here for her happiness. But what she found when she first came here was sadness. What you think will make you happy in life often makes you sad. It is the way of the world.

This is conveyed most vividly in the story of Haruka Kuroda: ‘soon after I arrived in the UK, I was extremely homesick. I didn’t speak a word of English and for about 3 months, I called home every day using collect calls – remember those?! – costing my parents over £1000 on the phone bill each month!’

The dual kinship of the women here to their home countries and to the UK was apparent in the desire of Miyuki Tanaka to have her ashes floating in the air around Japan and the UK. After all, when they are here, the UK becomes their home. But it doesn’t always supersede their original home for all these women. Home is home is home. You can have more than one home – and what could be better than to have many places to call a home?

I reflected on the exhibition for a good while. Was it a success? Was it a failure? Some of the stories were about the bravery of these women, their pioneering entry into art school. Some of them were about their bravery in love, like I have mentioned above. Some of them were about the sadness, the struggle. The narrative of the exhibition is to present these women as heroes in the traditional mould – someone brave that faces adversity, that overcomes, that achieves, that finds a place in the world. The exhibition wants us to think of these women as strong. As strength. But I have a question. When the whole world is dominated by the West, when this country has a superiority complex, when the whole world is being Westernised, when people in this country think that every other country is misogynistic and a restriction on women’s freedom, how innocent is this narrative? Isn’t it just part of the problem? Is the only way a woman can be seen as a hero is to embrace the West? The Indian watches. The Indian judges. The Indian finds the exhibition wanting. What strikes the Indian is the sadness of coming to this land. To endure here. The disappointment. The defeat of the dream. That is what I found in this exhibition.

Suneel’s Favourites in Astronomy Photographer of the Year – National Maritime Museum

05.01.2024

https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/astronomy-photographer-year/exhibition

Since I work in the area, it is quite convenient for me to see the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition during my lunch breaks. So I often go down to see it. I love looking into the sky of stars and look at the universe which envelops us, the larger world that gives us perspective and power. Because we are all part of something larger. We are the consciousness of the universe, if it has one. We are its only known intelligent life forms. And she is our mother.

This is a universe that has been taken away from us through the narrow mindedness of the world, through light pollution, urbanisation and industrialisation. That view of the skies which was us for thousands of years and millions of years when we were not yet quite human has been taken away from us by Them. This exhibition gives us back our continuous inheritance. That is why it is important to me and why I love it.

Here are some of my favourite images from the exhibit and why:

Filip Hrebenda ‘Green Snakes’

A photograph of green aurorae, the coloured lights in the sky. Amongst reflections of water and and stark black lava-esque mountains and ridges. Green is one of my favourite colours and you can see the hazy greens here melting into the skies. The leading lines of the reflecting water lead the eye towards the peak of the mountain, giving an effect of the sublime – overwhelming power that engulfs us. It is a truly awesome and epic shot which leaves us in awe at the beauty and the mystery of nature.

Peter Hoszang ‘The Green Glow’

The same subject as before – the coloured lights in the sky and the mountains. This one has less of a warm feel because there are more blues. And there is also ice in the waters. It is a different vibe, but with the same sublime feeling, since the lights in the sky dwarf the snow-capped mountains.

Monika Deviat ‘Brushstroke’

The aurora – the coloured lights – again green, look more abstract here because they are only seen against the night sky and the stars. The aurora is divorced from the setting. The artist says it looks like a brush stroke. The image is effective because we concentrate on the lights without any distractions in the background. Simple and focused, isolated. The beauty of light, pure and simple.

Vincent Beudez ‘Butterfly’

Purple, white and green aurora in the shape of a butterfly. Amazingly poetic and beautiful. The word butterfly is associated through tradition with the ancient Greek word ‘psyche’, which means soul. Wouldn’t a soul – if such a thing existed – come in the form of a butterfly of light? Radiant, ravishing, roaring.

Katie McGuinness ‘Close Encounters of the Haslingden Kind’

A stunning view of Haslingden’s Halo – a panopticon sculpture – amidst the night sky. The shining structure pictured against the movements of the night sky through a time lapse capture really caught my imagination with the blue and the white hues. It was a moment where you realise that the future that they imagined, the technological future, has actually become a reality for us now. The technology, the art, the structures that we make, seem like something that has come almost from an alien intelligence that is years ahead of us in thought and technology. But it is us that did it. We are the alien intelligence.

Angel An ‘Grand Cosmic Fireworks’
Dancing, fluorescent lights above the Himalaya mountains (atmospheric luminescence made of plasma and electric discharge). What is there not to like? There is something like seaweed about the lights that are almost immersed in the clear water of the skies. It is a scene which I could never have imagined and this is what gives it its power. Things like this are happening beyond our eyes, our comprehension, our ken. They enlarge us when we see them.

Chunlin Liu ‘Autumn Milky Way Arc and an Orion Bolide’

There is something so exceptionally Chinese about this image of the Milky Way arc, something so emblematic of the art. The horizontality of the image for one thing, the delicacy of the skies that have been rendered, the mountain scene which we associate with Chinese ink brush drawings. Amazingly beautiful, delicate and wonderful. A loving homage to the perspective of a culture which has been fostered carefully through thousands of years of an art tradition.

Vikas Chander ‘The Dancing Trees of Sumba’

These mangrove trees are shaped in such a way that people call them the dancing trees. They look as though they are frozen in a dance posture. Against the beautiful sky reflecting in the water which is like a mirror, they are incredibly elegant, a reminder that nature thrives in the universe, it dances in the dance of creation.

Mehmet Ergun ‘The Great Solar Flare’

I think of myself as the Sun (my name is Sun-eel). This amazingly detailed, textured view of the sun and its awesome power is really an iconic image. So bold. The sun fills the frame, giving that air of dominance as the ruler of our galaxy.

Alex Savenok ‘C/2021 A1 (Leonard) in the Sky of Israel’

Above the Negev desert and its picturesque ridges, we see ‘a celestial visitor in the night sky’. The image looks like the covers of science fiction books. It doesn’t seem real. Yet this is our earth at night time, if only we had the opportunity to see it. A taste of what we have had to miss because of the industrialised world and urban living. A taste of what we have had to lose, that connection with the skies and the reality of this planet, this universe, our mother.

Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau ‘Crescent Moon in a Magical Sunset’

A beautiful crescent moon in an orange, yellow and white sky. A sense of the crescent swirling in the clouds, full of movement and dance.

James Baguley ‘The Dark Wolf – Fenrir’

A homage to Norse mythology – Fenrir the wolf caught in red (a molecular cloud surrounded by red hydrogen gas). A reminder of the phrase that ‘Nature is red in tooth and claw’ – a lesson to be learnt from a perusal of this image. If anyone knows the mythology of Fenrir – I used to read mythology books as a child and was obssessed with the myths – this picture would become pregnant with meaning. With the themes of fatherhood, destruction, trickery, imprisonment, the animality of the human…

Steeve Body ‘The Majestic Tarantula Nebula’
Runwei X and Binyu Wang ‘The Running Chicken Nebula’

Both of these are a ‘cosmic ballet’ in glorious and awe-inspiring colour. Showing that human made abstract art can’t rival the play of forces in the universe to create patterns in the universe on a colossal scale as works of art. Full of fire and life.

Design Heaven: London College of Communication Shows 2023

13.06.2023

Show Two – Design and Screen: 14-17 June

I sauntered down to the London College of Communication Shows 2023 to see the animation videos. I sat in a packed theatre for a while recalling what it was like to be in that space and at a physical university again. However, after about two hours I wandered out and immediately outside there was a delight that I hadn’t expected – books and design projects created by the students. So I decided to have a look and to pick out some of the projects that I especially enjoyed. All of the projects were beautifully presented, lovely to look at, all stimulating. The students in this country’s university are blessed with great creativity and inspiration, as well as dedication and hard work.

Ananya Dalmia – Maachis

https://www.ananyadalmia.org/

A project by a fellow Indian from Delhi about the visual designs on Indian matchboxes. Ananya collects the matchboxes and has a considerably sized archive of the things. The matchboxes have to communicate visually because India is a visual culture and also because it has a high proportion of illiterates and people that have very different languages from each other, so any text-based message becomes problematic. My favourite in the show, for obvious reasons. I loved her drawings of the goddess Kali and the eyes with the bindi in the middle – it is an obvious fact that a lot of these matchboxes would be in a religious area for lighting incense. Ananya writes ‘these pocket-sized time capsules not only document historical and cultural themes but also embody the kitsch style of India’ and that they embody ‘a visual language that celebrates culture, uniqueness and vibrancy’.

Kate Ruscher – The Game of Life: America Edition

https://www.kateruscher.com/

On her website, Kate writes that she began her creative journey at just two years old. The design she put forward was dark, unique and thought-provoking. Her board game design is based on the premise that life is precarious in America because of guns, so ‘what do you want to do IF you grow up?’ The scenarios in the game are based on real tragedies. As she writes ‘While the board is full of colorful tiles, the black background reflects the dark reality of this uniquely American problem beneath the surface’. This was perhaps one of the most political of the designs and the one that tackled social problems the most (although, in fairness, there was another design about how beauty standards affect women, too). As a transformative message that brings the lived reality of gun crime immediately to the viewer and reader, this was a very successful piece.

Helen Greenwood – This is time for us

Instagram – helen.greenwood_design

This project explored how time could be represented through depictions of the motions of the solar system, but also how Helen’s ‘personal time has been shaped by love and loss’. The book that she presented was done in black with very ordered and controlled illustrations dominated by geometry. This was an interesting project because, of course, for aeons, humans have charted their passage through life with reference to celestial bodies, astrology being one of the main examples. Of particular interest was how a modern-day individual was trying to make a relationship to the wider cosmos through a frame of reference that was non-mythological and non-religious, that was scientific in scope and intent. Can we only relate to the whole of the existence of time and matter through such a rational lens? Or was the non-rational (and rebellious) part the inspired creation linking text and image, which relies on imagination and the linking of things that modern day, secular society has deemed as largely non-related?

Tung Dang – Bloom

https://www.behance.net/songsongtung

A beautiful book full of botanical illustrations by a designer originally from Vietnam. The book is based on the 5 stages of grief theory and is intended as a ‘spiritual friend’. The style struck me as quite restrained, subtle and sophisticated. However, there was substance, since Tung says that the flowers represent resilience: ‘not matter how damaged they are, they will grow and bloom again’. This design is interesting because we live in an an age of environmental disaster, with an ‘instability and uncertainty’ that Tung references when he talks about the survival power of the flowers. Yet we can always look to the power of nature for inspiration and, yes, healing. Anyone that has felt the healing power of trees, plants and animals will love this design and feel an emotional connection with the human being connected with earth, his home. This was one of the most universal and enduring messages in the exhibition, a message of survival against the odds.

Tszka Auyeung – Technology Sobriety

Instagram – @_ousansui

Beautiful designs of furniture, resplendent with all the colours of the rainbow, which contrasts with the transparency of glass. Perhaps we should call it ‘prismatic furniture’ for it reminds me of Newton’s discovery that a transparent prism contained within it all the colours in the spectrum. This project combined AI to create home environments, so it is very current and demonstrates how a responsible and controlled use of AI can transform design possibilities, and ‘lead to more creative and innovative designs’ as Tszka writes (and demonstrates so wonderfully). The future of AI must be that it is subject to human control and inspiration. It is a tool, not a substitute for what makes us uniquely us.

Jingjing Lu – Visual Horizon of Life Philosophy

https://julielu720.wixsite.com/atalanta-jing

This design was intended to make philosophy more comprehensible by presenting it in visual form, a departure from verbal and text-based communication styles. We often use visual presentation in the form of pie charts and bar graphs for maths to help us more readily understand what is abstract, so why not apply the same principle to philosophy, which is also abstract and complicated? What made this project unique for me, was not only its brave originality, but also the fact that it combined Oriental and Western philosophy, so it had that global frame of reference which is so attractive to me. The book and materials were beautifully presented in pink and also relied on a subtle and sophisticated aesthetic.

Michelle Liu – Shapes of Fortunes

http://www.michellelnt.com/

Michelle’s design is ‘a brand that provides a range of shapes that are associated with different types of good fortune’. As form, each shape was unique and visually interesting – they are formed out of plastic, I believe, and are models or sculptures. The contemplation of each shape should be interesting. Michelle studied in Hong Kong and is influenced by Chinese art, which makes me think that the shapes draw a resonance in the long historical tradition of the Chinese looking at oracle bones and their shapes in order to determine the future and success, a message of comfort for the human from the non-human. Why is it that a shape – or any inanimate thing for that matter – can be associated with the idea of luck? Luck exists – we see it all around us (call it fate or what you will). Can it be materialised in concrete form and how? The shapes show us why someone would think this is the case and why they believe that they can capture the fleeting and elusive forms of luck (or fate).

Microsculpture by Levon Biss (+ My Insect Photography Exhibition)

Microsculpture by Levon Biss (+ My Insect Photography Exhibition)

Fri 12 May – Mon 27 Nov 2023

British Library

12.06.2023

* NOTE: My amateur shots above. All images are copyrighted, but please ask if you want permission to share.

In the time when I had leisure at my command, I spent many happy moments in my garden photographing the microbeasts. I would scour the grass and the leaves, upturn the stones, scrutinise the spider’s webs, look in every nook and cranny. And there! I would find it, a beautiful little minibeast. The camera dangling around my neck would be de-lidded, I would focus the shot several times before I got one good image and I would try out several different angles to try and get the best shot. It would take a good while, the camera would shake because I was focusing on something so tiny, the shooting was basically impossible when the critters were moving around, and I had to take a good many steps to the side before I could get the insect out of the shade for a good, lighted image.

I worked with cheap apparatus (not the cheapest, but fairly close to it). My parents had bought me an entry level digital camera that was on sale as a present and I attached magnifying lens filters to the standard lens. This was the cheapest option instead of paying several hundred pounds for a macro lens. Even the activity itself was cheap – aside from a battery charge, it was basically free (an important consideration for why I did it – I was studying my PhD – which included an analysis of fictional representations of photography – at the time). Even the photo editing was done on free software (at first).

It was with some curiosity as to how a professional approached the task that I went down to the ‘Microsculpture’ exhibit at the British Library (one of my favourite places in the whole world, it must be said, as a bibliophile and a researcher). Levon Biss used the focus stacking technique in which you take multiple photographs from different angles and combine them together in an image that gives consistent depth of field over the whole shot. The results are nothing short of miraculous and awe-inspiring. Yet, for me, the amateur, there was always the thought: it was because he had more money, technology and resources than me that he could produce these photographic masterpieces.

The insects are set against a black background. They glisten like petrol, as though they were doused in the stuff. They are incredibly colourful and one wonders at their ‘fearful symmetry’.

The advances in technology have provided the conditions for these striking images. Biss was able to take thousands of photographs to combine together to give the perfect focus over every aspect of the form of the minibeasts. And there was the wonderful microscope that he had been using as well. All the painstaking labour that it would have taken to get each individual shot and then combine everything was all digitised and done relatively speedily. There was also a massive scientific endeavour which allowed Biss to retrieve such beautiful specimens from the insect archive. Although the exhibition bears his name, there are so many people involved in this contemporary process of photography: scientists, archivists, inventors, businessmen… I’m sure I’m not doing much justice to the list.

What were my impressions of the specimens? I am a lover of nature. I am also a lover of design. The specimens were almost presented like samples of design and this is the intent of the exhibition which emphasises them as microsculpture: a focus on the evolutionary adaptations of the bodies of the insects. There was a cross-fertilisation between product photography and nature photography. I liked the results, but I wonder how less scientific people would think of presenting living bodies as pure function. For me, the functional aspects contribute to the beauty seen. But I believe that we are just bodies and nothing more, machines that think based on the arrangement of matter of which we are composed.

The Western mindset is different to my Indian mindset. The West sees things and bodies as discrete objects. Hence, there is the insect against the black background, a solitary individual. I, the Indian, see things in their context. This is why I photographed in the garden, with real backgrounds. The presentation of the discrete, individualised insect is a reflection of a culture that values ‘independence’ (which is impossible, since we live in a network of dependency and relations). The exhibition is asking us to identify with these creatures as isolated and atomised (dead) objects: a reflection on this contemporary world.

My overall impression of the exhibition is the pure love of the crystal sharp, enhanced, blown up image that I was not able to produce. As an amateur that worked for free for my own amusement, I was nowhere near these productions. They are the result of massive investment, many hands, cutting edge technology. They are an inspiration. But in the history of photography, they are the work of a tiny minority. Us amateurs still rule. And, compared with my own humble shots, these highly finished and sharp images lack something in their presentation of a perfect, direct, ‘straight’ shot. They lack the element of chance, imperfection, technological limitation. Those ingredients created shots with more character and more drama, to my mind (I am talking about photographs that are my memories, my babies, my loved ones, over whom I am possessive). If the exhibition is science, if the exhibition is for the animal lover, the direct vision is what is wanted (let us not pretend it is objective and unmediated however. Selection and arrangement and angle all play their part). If the exhibition is seen as a demonstration of skill rather than technical proficiency, I would query whether it was really better than my potterings about in my back garden with basic equipment. But this, of course, is purely subjective: envious, of course. It is a good, pioneering exhibition and I would like to buy the book.

Kumihimo – Japanese Silk Braiding by Domyo Exhibition

Kumihimo – Japanese Silk Braiding by Domyo Exhibition

Japan House (Free, book in advance)

Only until 11 June 2023

07.06.23

Silk is splendour. Silk is shine. Silk is skill. This wonderful material comes from the East and is one of its most remarkable achievements, the mode in which it has produced masterpiece after masterpiece, all of them wearable. The world of fashion is surely indebted beyond measure to the smooth, radiant designs that have been produced in the medium. For me, the beauty of the East is conveyed in the four letters of the name ‘silk’.

It was then with some big expectations today – as a lover of silk (and art, craft, fashion, Asia and the Japanese, as well as the art gallery and the art museum) – that I made my way down to Japan house for the very first time to view the Japanese Silk Braiding (Kumihimo) exhibition. As I came in, I received smile after smile and received a friendly, first class reception from the staff that were on. I was also handed a pile of goodies to take – a beautiful bookmark featuring the coloured silk braids in a rainbow of hues, a wonderfully designed and informative guide, and also a strikingly designed poster (or flyer) for the next exhibition that is coming up (WAVE – Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts, 6 July to 22 October 2023).

Japan house gleams with a minimalist white interior design. It reminded me somewhat of an oyster shell which contains the precious pearl. I was in a hurry after work so I could not take in everything but I got the general impression of painstaking cleanliness and the inspired arrangement of things and interiors that is the hallmark of the modern Japanese aesthetic.

The exhibition ‘explores the history, techniques and potential of kumihimo silk braiding’, with some focus on the craftspeople of the Domyo workshop which has been in business since 1652 CE and is in its tenth generation of artists (guide).

What is a great source of pride to Asian people (Indian) like me is the fact that our civilisation has been around in continuous form for several thousand years, unlike other ‘great’ civilisations that have fallen. So, I was glad that it was a similar story here with the Kumihimo. The silk braids have endured in some form in Japan since the time of the Jōmon people and early pre-history (if not in silk). We are seeing old knowledge extending into the present and into the future with technological advances in this exhibition, as new worlds of geometry and mathematical genius are being created with continuous forms throughout the greater part of post-ancient human history.

However, the Japan exhibition is not parochial. There is a global dimension to the braids because they have been shared across cultures across the world, which the curator was careful to show. There are examples from Tibet and Peru, for instance.

I was mesmerised by the videos showing the making of the silk braids. The one where the cords were dyed purple and washed in a vessel of water was a piece of art in itself, a metaphor for the act of creation out of the waters that have given humankind birth and belonging on this planet.

It was fascinating to see the use of the silk braids on armour as well as in religious sutras or scrolls and for such uses as the ‘internal organs placed inside a sculpture’. The designs were wonderful, a real virtuoso exhibition of the combination of skill, maths and technology to create beauty. My absolute favourites were, firstly, the ornamental braid from the Buddhist temple Hōryū-ji. It is a majestic piece in red and gold, with diagonals like the third eye of the Hindu god Shiva (to me). There are golden beads interlaced in the design which remind me of the organic shape of seeds. Secondly, I loved the other ‘multiple diamond’ designs done in brown and creme, achingly wonderful. Again, I particularly enjoyed the deconstruction of historical costumes such as a Victorian dolman which the workshop has used to recreate these splendours of the Japanese people.

Of great interest to me (science is another one of my hobbies) was the use of Kumihimo to create new mathematical structures and experimentations in concrete geometry. The model that had been created was an amazing piece of design innovation and a contribution to our shared knowledge as a species. Such is the influence and intellectual power of the Japanese people, all based on traditional knowledge and its reworking into modern day life – an example and a contrast for the countries in Asia that have been colonised and want to forgot their customs and local knowledges in favour of economic servitude to their erstwhile colonisers and their knowledges (or rather, complex of power/knowledge).

This silk braid exhibition is an experience that I will never forget. It had everything: a beautiful setting, beautiful people, beautiful things, a beautiful philosophy, a beautiful lesson. I have always admired the creativity, discipline and historical stewardship of the Japanese people and they never disappoint me with their arts and crafts. Japan house is a testament to the radiance of the people of the rising sun, and so is this exhibition. And to Japan’s generosity to the world. For as I made my way out of the exhibition, the smiling lady on the counter offered me a crane made out of origami which I had admired. It is just another of the gifts that the Japanese have given me in this life, this glorious culture that adopted our Indian religion of Buddhism and became our brothers and sisters.

The Infinite Colourful Light of the Moving Kaleidoscope – The Spaces In-Between, Tottenham Court Road

The Infinite Colourful Light of the Moving Kaleidoscope – The Spaces In-Between, Tottenham Court Road

08.04.23

FREE ENTRY

Art by Rupert Newman (light artist) and PixelArtworks

It happened unexpectedly. A fine example of serendipity, the right place at the right moment. I had just spent a few hours browsing in Foyle’s and a small independent second-hand bookshop and was just making myself towards Tottenham Court Road. I was musing over the books I had seen and I was thinking to myself that I certainly wasn’t rich enough to have all the books that I wanted to read and to have to keep in my own personal library and to share with my kids. That privilege was reserved for the billionaire or the British Museum.

And there it was. The Infinite Colourful Light of the Moving Kaleidoscope… An awe-struck mass of bodies within a space carved out by futuristic light, right next to the station.

The space is described as a ‘digital portal’ and we are meant to ‘discover a prismatic new experience’. The location of the site is important because it is ‘In-Between’ spaces. One of the installations (or ‘spaces’) reacts to your body as you stand before it. The display is in front of you, above, around four walls. It is a type of immersive, interactive art (four dimensional, they sometimes call it). The experience is touted as semi-religious and the installation is described on a panel as a crystalline cathedral of light’.

So this is why I call it ‘The Infinite Colourful Light of the Moving Kaleidoscope ‘. Light, of course, is associated with Christianity, with enlightenment, progress and truth, things that capitalists like to give lip service to when they put us out of work because of computers and technology (it is always right to rail against the so-called technological progress of the capitalists, since this is the weapon of their hubris). I was in a Chapel service recently and they called the Christian God’s kingdom a place of ‘infinite light’. Art is akin to the Christian religion in our age, perhaps its best substitute. When you go to an art gallery, there is a hush like there is in the chapel. There is a reverent lowering of the eyes before the icons of the age, just as they gaze up at the icons in a religious setting. All the visual display is impregnated with a colossal and sublime meaning, with divine beauty that is not of this earth… For art is considered to be of the spirit for some (not for me, it is still earthly and profane).

As I moved within this computer generated, geometric space, encased in the ingenuity of man and machine, within light, art, animation, music, the energy of the crowd, I was certainly impressed. It was a novel experience. It was a beautiful experience. Yes, it was even a beautiful experience.

Yet where was the meaning behind it all? I read the panels for each of the three different spaces. There were the described themes. Firstly, ‘A Step Beyond’, the immersion in another digital world. Yet how different was it from the contemporary enveloping of the subject in the age of the computer? Was the artwork just priming us as digital subjects, a repetition of what was happening in our technologically mediated reality? Secondly, ‘Transcendence’. Yes, the art is beautiful. The beautiful forms of nature are rejuvenated in an encounter with geometry. The translation of the subtle mathematics of the world into the mathematical language of geometry. But what does the viewer get from this? A strict regularisation and stylisation of the beauty of what is for what can be imagined is the staple of most art, which is abstract at heart (even within supposed realism). But what is the status of this new abstraction for us now and why are we being placed within it in this space? Is awe for nature to be replaced for the awe of what man and machine in unity can now do, what imagination and computer code can achieve? ‘Tessellations’ was more of the same thing: animated geometric patterns filled with light. A world of code that surrounds us, like the Matrix, changing, transforming, not sending out any obvious message, not allowing any thought but awe…

Perhaps the difficulty is not the lack of the message but the lack of the training we have to try and understand abstract art and the elusiveness of meaning in abstract, geometric art itself. Perhaps I do not understand the proposed religiosity behind the installation. Certainly, geometric art figures in Islam in Mosque designs and calligraphy as an expression of faith. Perhaps there is a feeling of endless harmony and connection with things that the piece is supposed to evoke. I did not get this feeling. I got the beauty. I did not get the sense of the digital sublime which all the spaces were meant to evoke. I did not feel engulfed, threatened (perhaps the wonders of the technology are supposed to threaten to usurp man). I lack fear – Punjabi men are afraid of nothing and no-one. Especially not code or geometry filled with light. For me, the exhibit was a good waste of time just before I got onto the Tube, but not an inspirational experience or one which provoked much thought, except for the vague idea that I could get together a venue for something like it and make a bit of money off it… To be really honest, it was like being in a screensaver.

Hallyu the Korean Wave Review – Victoria & Albert Museum Exhibition

01.04.2023

https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/hallyu-the-korean-wave

At home, they sit in a neglected and increasingly dusty pile – with my other language learning books picked up mainly from charity shops – or the internet when the owners lost their interest in learning them (14 languages in total and building). Untouched, they are marked out for future study when my life is not just about work and academia, carefully compiled: a set of Korean language books. I picked them up in a free hotel book sharing point in a country where they have many Korean workers (it is not Korea, my friends).

Although I never got onto the Korea loving bandwagon with ‘Gangham Style’ or ‘Squid Games’, and I didn’t watch the film that won the Oscars (‘Parasite’), I have taught several Korean people when I used to volunteer to teach English to refugees and migrants over five years. I watch some K-Pop, although it is just one band called (G)-IDLE as I like watching the young women dance and perform and I enjoy the cinematography of the music videos. So it was with this light acquaintance in need of improvement and because I wanted to see the Friday Late at the V & A that I meandered my way at the end of the night into the ‘Hallyu the Korean Wave’ exhibit.

The exhibit is exciting, eclectic and vibrant and speaks to the young. Inundated with interest, the walls showcase Korean film, music, beauty and fashion. All of the senses are awakened and rejuvenated by an immersion into a colourful Korean cultural life.

When you go in, you are confronted with several screens showing ‘Gangham Style’ and its parodies. Of course, this song is synonymous with K-Pop and is probably one of the only contemporary songs that everyone in cities around the world probably knows. We get to see the audacious pink suit that Psy wore for the music video. But the surprising thing to learn is that the song and the suit mock South Korea’s ‘hyper-consumerism and material pursuit’, using the district of Gangham as an example. The suit is a sneer at what the elites wear in that area and the iconic dance moves are snipes at posers and wannabes that emulate that kind of lifestyle.

If Korean culture is currently chic, then the next section of the exhibit makes us reflect on the historical miracle of how a colonised, war-torn country which was ravaged by the Cold War and also ‘one of the most violent conflicts in modern history’ in the Korean War of 1950 has followed a ‘remarkable trajectory’ to become a ‘leading cultural powerhouse by the early 2000s’. The formula seems to be ‘governmental control, daring strategies and IT innovation’, alongside quick hands and quick minds.

I will write about the parts that excited me the most in what followed on the journey through the massive space that the exhibition enfolded. A long term fan of athletics and gymnastics, I was entranced by the Volunteer guide uniform for the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. The clothing draws inspiration from the national costume which is called hanbok. The outfit is beautiful, graceful, an accomplishment of functional style inter-weaved with the Olympic spirit and colours. It is the perfect metaphor of endurance, of a people that have kept their traditions while becoming truly international, even though enmity and colonisation attempted to destroy their way of life. Here, as elsewhere in the exhibition, I was reminded of the affinities of Korea’s history with India’s. In fact, there was even a Hindi film poster which showed a pirated (‘adapted’) Korean film, which influenced my finding of affinities with my motherland even more.

It was also a surreal experience to see the wig worn by Choi Min-sik in ‘Oldboy’. This is probably the most memorable Korean film I have watched. When I was immersed in this filmic universe, I just assumed that the wig was the actor’s real hair. In the exhibit, removed from the face, the wig was patently, even insolently artificial. Yet it still teemed with an energy, almost like that of life. The make up and hair director of the film, Song Jong-hee intended to infuse the wig with wildness to convey the ‘feral emotions’ and the effect of the years of incarceration on the protagonist of the film. To me, raised in Hinduism and Sikhism, where hair is sacred and the god Shiva is known for the strength of his hair, the hairstyle raised the resonance of India, religion, power, feelings hard to express or even describe.

A particularly interesting section of the exhibition was the exploration of beauty standards in Korean culture, since the nation is a ‘global trendsetter’ in this area. The historical background until the 1910s (perhaps longer?) is seven hundred years of maintaining beauty as a ‘moral obligation’ as attractiveness symbolises not only social status, but also virtue.

Where did I spend the most time in the exhibition? I sat before a big screen watching a compilation of snippets from K-Pop videos, admiring the crystal sharpness of today’s video cameras, the lightning flashes of Korean dance moves and the stunning physical beauty of the people. It was intoxicating. Yet, as I watched, the critical part of my mind kept on turning over the question of whether what I was watching was something authentic and organic, something different, or just indoctrination and influence from the Western world, a parroting of the Western music video. I am still not sure.

Surely, ‘Hallyu the Korean Wave’ is one of the most memorable exhibitions that I have been to. I was also pleased to see that the exhibition seems to have been put together from Korean descent people, which seems to give it the authenticity that is lacking from Orientalising Western depictions of Asian people such as Indians. I learned a general history of modern Korea, was amused, inspired to learn more, ever more determined to one day make a serious foray into the language. I felt the unity of Asian culture as a man of Indian descent, almost a sense of belonging. Out of the three exhibitions I went to in the V & A that day, the exhibition was my personal favourite. I never felt even a moment of boredom in it and my attention was focused entirely on the exhibits.

https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/hallyu-the-korean-wave