Vienna

2 April 2026

We had a lovely time in Vienna last week, visiting the Schonbrunn Palace - the summer residence of the Hapsburgs - where we walked through the room where the six year old Mozart first performed for the Empress. We enjoyed the Gustav Klimt collection at the Belvedere Palace and walked through the Prater amusement park to see the famous Ferris wheel. We went to the Musikverein to see a great concert by The Orchestral Association of the Society of Friends of Music - Vienna's oldest amateur orchestra (founded in 1859 - 11 years before the Musikverein opened). We also visited the stunning Kunsthistoriches Museum and the Albertina - a lovely art gallery within a beautiful Hapsburg palace. We had a day trip to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, where the Old Town is very pretty, with pastel coloured buildings and open squares. We also went by train to the small town of Melk (population 2,000), set on the banks of the Danube in Lower Austria, which is dominated by the dramatic, imposing and enormous Benedictine Monastery, Sift Melk, which sits on a rock, high above the town. Back in Vienna we managed to get cheap standing tickets for the Vienna State Opera where we saw 'The Bartered Bride'. We were in the ground floor standing area at the back of the stalls with a surprisingly good view. It was great to see the inside of the opera house and to see the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. You can see a few of my holiday photos here. 

The Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham

5 December 2025

Last weekend we were in the pretty town of Cookham on the Thames in Berkshire to visit the Stanley Spencer Gallery. It’s a lovely little museum celebrating Cookham’s most famous resident. The gallery is currently focussing on Spencer’s final unfinished painting ‘Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta’ - a painting frozen mid-creation. This huge canvas has been lowered from its usual position high on the wall to floor level to allow visitors to examine it closely. It is fascinating to see, in the unpainted sections, Spencer’s grid lines and sketches. Throughout autumn 2025 a conservator from the Courtauld Institute is working in the gallery, carefully examining the painting, and explaining her work (and Spencer’s technique) to visitors. Stanley Spencer died in 1959 but there are still some Cookham residents who remember him pushing his pram (filled with paints and brushes) around the town to find subjects for his works. The pram is now displayed in the gallery, as are sketches for Spencer’s incredible war frescoes in Sandham Memorial Chapel which we visited at Burghclere, Hampshire, in November 2023. 

'Walk the House' by Do Ho Suh

23 July 2025

On Wednesday, I was at Tate Modern in London to see 'Walk the House', an exhibition by the Korean artist Do Ho Suh, which was recommended to me by Gavin Stride. Do Ho Suh grew up in a traditional 'hanok' Korean house, a wooden structure that can be disassembled and moved to another location, literally 'walking the house'. But as he has moved across the world and lived in a variety of places, the artist says he feels his childhood home is still following him and walks with him.

Nest/s by Do Ho Suh

The exhibition includes beautifully delicate translucent pastel-coloured fabric recreations of rooms from Do Ho Suh's various houses, complete with fabric versions of the light switches and doorknobs. But the highlights of the exhibition for me were the rubbings. He covers buildings with paper and then takes a rubbing (like a brass rubbing) of the walls. He then uses the paper to recreate each building in the gallery. The most impressive of these is a one-to-one model of his childhood hanok in paper. 

The exhibition makes you think a lot about home: the place where you live and the fabric of the buildings - particularly those fittings, light switches, and handles, of which you have a tactile memory, and which remain once your possessions have been removed. The home walks with you. 

'Walk the House' makes an interesting companion piece to ‘Come As You Really Are’ by Hetain Patel (reviewed here in September 2024) and Samantha Manton's 'Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen' (reviewed here in March 2025). All three exhibitions explore and celebrate everyday lives and everyday creativity.
 

'Mars' by Luke Jerram

22 July 2025

On Sunday we were at the Open University in Milton Keynes to see 'Mars', an artwork by Luke Jerram which is part of the Milton Keynes International Festival 2025. This seven metre sphere, looking like a tethered balloon in a courtyard outside the main Open University building, is covered with high definition NASA photographs of the surface of Mars, giving you the opportunity to walk around it and look directly at the surface of the red planet. Each centimetre on the internally illuminated surface corresponds to 10 kilometres on Mars. We also went inside to the main lecture theatre for a talk by Dr Elliot Sefton-Nash, a planetary scientist working at the European Space Agency. He is currently working on the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Rover, which is scheduled to be launched in 2028 and should arrive on Mars two years later, as part of a series of missions to study the potential for life on Mars. He explained how the conditions on Mars mean that the surface of the planet provides a clear, detailed record of its long history in a way that the ever-changing surface of the Earth doesn't. Exploring the surface of Mars is therefore an opportunity to understand its past in detail and to look for evidence of whether Mars has ever supported life. Although his talk treated us as scientists, and was quite hard to follow in parts, he was still a very engaging, clear speaker, and answered audience questions at the end very effectively. It was a fascinating afternoon, and after the talk we went back outside to look again at Luke Jerram's miniature version of Mars. 

 

‘Come As You Really Are’ by Hetain Patel

13 September 2024

This week I visited ‘Come As You Really Are’, Hetain Patel's exhibition as part of the ArtAngel project ‘The Hobby Cave’, in which Creative Lives is a partner. Located in Grant's, a former department store in Croydon, this celebration of the nation's hobbies is a miraculous treasure trove of the bizarre, inspiring, heart-warming, nostalgic and peculiar. Although there's plenty of craft and art on display, the exhibition seems dominated by collections, exploring the creative act of curation, from a case containing Kit Kat branded merchandise to a full wall display of vintage plastic carrier bags to a slightly creepy small room packed with My Little Pony toys. 

 

This is a strange and wondrous array of how people choose to spend their spare time and their creative energy. The exhibition is beautifully displayed and arranged. It makes you feel like you're following a weird treasure-hunt trail through a darkened forest or exploring Willy Wonka's abandoned chocolate factory. Indeed, there's one glass case full of pebbles painted to resemble classic chocolate bars. 

It's an exhibition you could return to many times: there are so many tiny hidden delights in each corner. But it's a very idiosyncratic, slightly unnerving experience, like walking through somebody else's dream. Hetain Patel is remarkably respectful, and clearly enthralled by, the pieces contributed by people from across the UK, never ridiculing or mocking and presenting every endeavour with equal prominence. It was great to see so many people wandering around the free exhibition. Everyone we spoke to thought it was wonderful: it was all smiles and gasps of excitement. ‘Come As You Really Are’ is a unique and amazing experience, hard to do justice to in words. Bizarre, impressive, life-affirming and joyous. The exhibition is in Croydon until 20 October and you can book free tickets at: https://artangel.org.uk/project/come-as-you-really-are/

 

Leighton House and Sambourne House

14 April 2023

On Saturday we were in London to visit Leighton House in Kensington, London, the home of the late Victorian artist Lord Frederic Leighton. One of a series of houses and studios designed and built by artists in the streets around Holland Park in the 18060s, Leighton House has recently reopened to the public after a major refurbishment. It’s an amazing building, packed with textiles, pottery and other objects collected by Leighton on trips to Turkey, Egypt, Syria as well as his own works of art. The building is part showpiece, part home and part studio and the exhibitions about Leighton and his contemporaries are fascinating to see within the house where he lived. We also visited the nearby partner property Sambourne House, which was the home of the illustrator and Punch cartoonist Linley Sambourne - a contemporary of Leighton’s. This is a more conventional Victorian town house, but the lavish decoration and furnishings are a celebration of late Victorian society. And every room is crammed with Sambourne’s drawings. Both museums are well worth a visit.

'Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps' by JMW Turner

17 February 2023

One of the things I most enjoy about playing in an amateur orchestra is discovering, learning and understanding music I didn’t previously know. And the more you find out about a piece of music, the more you appreciate it. We have just started rehearsing for our next Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert, on Saturday 25 March, which is a complete programme of works by female composers (see: https://www.nso.org.uk/). One of the pieces we are playing is ‘Turbulent Landscapes’ by Thea Musgrave - a suite in which, like Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition', each movement is inspired by an artwork, in this case paintings by JMW Turner. Each movement also features one member of the orchestra as a soloist. I am beginning to get to the grips with the significant challenge of playing the solo horn part in the third movement, ‘Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps’. I thought I should have a look at the painting so I searched for it online and went down a fascinating rabbit hole. Turner’s picture depicts, as you might expect, Hannibal and his soldiers (complete with elephants) crossing the mountains in the face of an oncoming storm, during the Punic War in 218 BC. But what I hadn’t initially realised was that Turner was painting it during the Napoleonic Wars and it is really a jibe at Napoleon. The French painter Jacques-Louis David had previously painted a triumphant portrait of ‘Napoleon Crossing the Alps’ over the Great St Bernard Pass in May 1800 and this was Turner’s response. Turner shows Hannibal/Napoleon as a tiny figure on an elephant in the distance, overwhelmed by a whirling blizzard as mountain-dwellers attack his troops. Turner’s painting was first exhibited in 1812, and was considered to have been prophetic when, later that year, Napoleon was forced to retreat from Moscow by the Russian winter (the subject of another famous piece of music - Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’). So as I practise playing Hannibal’s rallying cries to his troops over the ominous rumble on the approaching storm, I am now also reflecting on the subtext of the Napoleonic Wars.

Van Gogh Self Portraits

21 April 2022

When we visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, in October 2019, rather than just following everyone into the first room on the ground floor, we thought we would try to beat the crowds by starting on the top floor and working our way down. Unfortunately this wonderful gallery, devoted solely to the life of Vincent Van Gogh, tells his story chronologically, starting with his birth. We managed to start our visit (spoiler!) with his suicide and bizarrely then followed his progress as a painter backwards! Despite this we really enjoyed the museum - and would highly recommend a visit. Last Friday we were at the newly refurbished Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House in London to see the Van Gogh Self Portraits exhibition. In total Van Gogh painted 35 self portraits: this exhibition has assembled 16 of them, including some of the most well known. It’s a small exhibition, but that allows you to spend plenty of time with each picture. And because it is the same face featured in each portrait, the contrast in styles and techniques feels even more fascinating. It’s a lovely exhibition, and it was also great to visit the Courtauld’s permanent collection and to see the beautifully restored rooms which only reopened last November.

‘Laura Knight: A Panoramic View’

25 February 2022

Dame Laura Knight (1877 - 1970) was one of the most popular English artists of the twentieth century. On Saturday I was at Milton Keynes Gallery to see ‘Laura Knight: A Panoramic View’ - an exhibition curated by Anthony Spira and Fay Blanchard bringing together over 160 works from public and private collections to provide a fascinating overview of Knight’s career. A painter in the figurative, realist tradition, Laura Knight embraced English Impressionism. She was the perfect candidate for a biographical exhibition because her work falls neatly into a series of distinct periods, styles, locations and subjects. After her early works, painted while she was living in Staithes, North Yorkshire, she spent the First World War in Cornwall where she produced a range of rural pictures. After moving to London, Knight’s attention turned to ballet, painting some of the most famous dancers of the day from Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Later she went on a tour with the combined Bertram Mills and Great Carmo's Circus in order to paint circus scenes. During the Second World War, Knight was an official war artist, producing portraits and posters in the socialist realist style to bolster female recruitment to the war effort. In 1946 she painted scenes from the Nuremberg war crimes trials, spending three months observing the main trial from inside the courtroom. The MK Gallery exhibition focussed on each of these periods in her life in chronological order. It was a fascinating collection of the work of this prolific and varied artist. You can see a selection of Laura Knight paintings at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-_pqbr6EjM
 

'A Flavour of Flitwick' Fun Palace

11 October 2019

On Saturday morning I was at Flitwick library for the Fun Palace, 'A Flavour of Flitwick'. There were plenty of people taking part in creative and science activities, including lots of very young children. They were painting and drawing, engaging in a foreign language quiz and practicing the strange art of bookfolding (see: https://youtu.be/S0asVzuW7y4). Local air cadets were supervising a paper aeroplane challenge, a group of adults were playing whist and there was a lot of Lego on the floor. Someone was tentatively tapping out a tune on an upright piano and a circle of chairs, each containing a ukulele, promised more music to come. It was certainly a fun environment, with people genuinely enjoying themselves and trying new things for the first time. This was one of 390 Fun Palaces that took place across the country last weekend, see: http://funpalaces.co.uk/

Govan Craft Cafe 'Colour Workshop' by Impact Arts

14 May 2019

On Tuesday afternoon I was at Elderpark Community Centre in Govan for the Govan Craft Cafe Colour Workshop. The Craft Cafe is a regular free creative programme for people aged 60+, delivered by Impact Arts every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The Colour Workshop, part of the 2019 Luminate Festival, had attracted several newcomers as well as many Craft Cafe regulars. When I arrived at the all-day drop-in session there were about 30 people busy exploring colour through a range of visual art techniques. Charlotte Craig and her team were helping the participants to make circular mandalas to experiment with colour mixing. I joined in with a group making a giant mandala in the sunshine outside the Community Centre, wetting a large circular piece of paper with water before sprinkling powdered pigment on it to create a beautiful array of swirling patterns. It was interesting how this group creative activity naturally led to a rich conversation. The companionship and fun that people get from taking part in the Craft cafe was plainly evident.

‘When We Were Young’

27 October 2017

Also on Wednesday morning I visited the Scottish National Portrait Gallery photography exhibition ‘When We Were Young’ which uses photographs drawn from the National Galleries of Scotland collection to explore various aspects of childhood. It documents the experience and representation of childhood to coincide with Scotland's Year of the Young Person 2018. The exhibition is divided into thematic sections on Family, School, Work and Play and includes some amazing black & white photos from the 1840s through to contemporary digital photography. There are many stunning photos on display but my favourite was the enormous print of Wendy McMurdo’s 199 picture ‘Girl with Bears’, which you can see online at: https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/57370/girl-bears-royal-museum-scotland-edinburgh

WeCAN workshops

27 October 2017

On Tuesday afternoon I was in The Studio at Edinburgh Festival Theatre for two WeCAN workshops as part of Luminate 2017 - Scotland's creative ageing festival. WeCAN Edinburgh is made up of a group of organisations who deliver creative activities for people with dementia and their carers. The organisations include: Alzheimer Scotland, Festival Theatre, Art in Healthcare, Hears and Minds, Dance Base and Music in Hospitals. On Tuesday the Festival Theatre hosted two dementia-friendly workshops delivered by Dance Base and Art in Healthcare. I joined a group of about 20 people with dementia and their carers for a session of seated dance moves, which proved to be a surprisingly rigorous workout that was great fun. We then moved to tables in the bar area to explore visual art techniques involving chalks, watercolours and pencils – responding to the inspiration provided by an exhibition of works from the Art in Healthcare collection. It was a lovely afternoon, with lunch and afternoon tea laid on by the Festival Theatre, and it was great to see people getting over their inhibitions and expressing themselves creatively in a variety of ways in a very friendly and supportive environment.