On Saturday, Ola and I went to the Dan Flavin retrospective at London's Hayward Gallery, on the South Bank. I'd read about it a couple of months ago and had been wanting to go for a while… as it happened, this was the last weekend of the exhibition. Flavin's work is made up of fluorescent tubes, most famously starting with a simple tube displayed diagonally on a wall. He progressed to more elaborate lattice works and geometric arrangements. I'm not an artist or a critic, so I'm not going to go into any deep philosophical musings here… I quite liked the exhibition, and found it interesting and pretty visually pleasing (particularly the green "fence" which seemed to fade to white as you looked at it). Ola thought it was hilarious and didn't really think much of it as art, which is an opinion I do tend towards. We were sitting in the cafe afterwards and got into a conversation with a gentleman who turned out to be an art critic, and who disagreed with us quite profoundly – clearly, Flavin is an important artist of the 20th century. In the end, it was one of those exhibitions that we "had to see" but I think our artistic interest lies more in the fare served up by the National Gallery. There's a much more in-depth discussion of the Flavin retrospective at the Hayward over here.
Afterwards, we went for a wander around the South Bank, and saw the newly refurbished river side of the Royal Festival Hall. Although the RFH itself is still up in scaffolding, there are a variety of smart, glass-fronted shops along the base of the building, and they certainly look much more modern and appealing than the 60s concrete buildings that surround them. I also took some photos…
More on the photography front… I recently tried out the PhotoBox printing service. Expect a short review in the near future, when I have time to blog more.
