Finally got to go to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and as you may guess from the below photos, I enjoyed the Palm House the most. The jumble of bone-like architecture and monstrous tangled plants was beautiful.
The Imperial War Museum
This title should have been Dali's Universe, it was where we were heading but turns out we need new maps as the place had shut down a year and a half ago. Ah well. So we instead went to the IWM which kind of appealed to me for the same reason as the Palm House; once I headed down into the lower exhibition space I got lost in a tangled web of interconnecting rooms and glass lined corridors that seemingly jump between conflicts from different times and corners of the world every few meters.
On reflection, the relationship between the exhibits was an odd one. It's making me think of Peter Greenaway's film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover in that you see a grotesque story in an opulent setting; I found myself in a weird state of disgusted awe. In the IWM I would one minute be fascinated by the ornate and clever culturally characterized artifacts carefully illuminated and composed, then I'd turn a corner and be greeted by a corridor of looming stark photographic portraits of the victims of these conflicts with anti-war quotes drifting through them. I was aware through it all, that I was meant to feel this internal conflict, the same way that Greenaway intended to keep his audience fascinated by the elegant violence, the contrast was designed to confuse your reaction. Though the Holocaust exhibition they had in there probably had the most constant language.. I suppose because the Holocaust was a pretty much entirely dehumanized act; there was an inarguable distinction between victim and oppressor; no grey area to stew on or avoid. The silence in that space was thick and sombre and the thinking of the folk that came out was I suspect, fairly unified.
Here are a couple of images of artworks I found off t'internet that were in the Women War Artists temporary show running alongside the permanent displays. The first I really responded to.. don't want to say 'liked' ha, but the Artist had been commissioned by the IWM to accompany British troops on the QE2 bound for the Falklands, and stayed on with them in their journey far longer then she'd been asked to to record events. She had a note with her saying 'If anything should happen to me - the only important thing to save is the portfolio of drawings please' with a return address attached. There were a few of her sketches in the show, the below one was the only one I could find online from it..
"Welsh Guardsmen from the Bridge" Linda Kitson, 1982
"The Sottish Women's Hospital: In the Cloister of the Abbaye at Royaumont. Dr Frances Ivens inspecting a French patient" Norah Neilson-Gray, 1920
"Human Laundry" Doris Zinkeinsen, 1945
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