Exhibition, Performances, Displays

▲ The Grand Budapest Hotel – Wes Anderson The Archives, Design Museum, London – I always enjoy exhibits at the Design Museum in Kensington and this was one of the best. Well up there with Stanley Kubrick, another favourite film director’s exhibition in 2019. The Archives captures Anderson’s love of finicky detail, his creation of artefacts that pop up constantly in his films, his storyboarding, even on his very first film Bottle Rocket, the puppets, the stop-action models, the costumes, it’s a whole universe of madness. I realise if I haven’t seen all of his films, I can’t think which ones I have missed. The Grand Budapest Hotel a favourite of course and sure enough the model of the Grand Budapest Hotel façade is here, looking grand.

▲ Stop-motion animation puppets and props from Fantastic Mr Fox in the Wes Anderson The Archives exhibit at the Design Museum

▲ Es Devlin’s Other Worlds, The Design Museum until 4 April 2027 – she’s an extraordinarily busy designer, principally theatrical and exhibits, shows, displays, concerts and the like. And extraordinarily well documented as well, somebody who believes in collecting her archives. The bookshelves are ‘A kinetic, rotating triangular structure (measuring 8 meters or 26 feet wide) that turns above a circular mirror, creating an illusion of infinite depth. The collection features more than 2000 paperbacks spanning over 500 titles pulled directly from Devlin’s personal studio shelves and shaped by her 30-year career.’

▲ Lyon House Museum – Truck Babies (1999) by Australian artist Patricia Piccinini. I’ve been to the Lyon House Museum in the Melbourne suburb of Kew before and I’ve also encountered Patricia Piccinini’s strangely surrealistic art before as well – in 2021 at Flinders St Station in Melbourne, in 2019 at the Cairns Art Museum in Far North Queensland.

◄ Have a Good Death by Jackson Farley, a wonderfully weird tapestry at the So This Is No Fantasy gallery in Fitzroy in Melbourne.

▲ The Flight Out of Egypt, Richard Dadd – Beyond Bedlam, Royal Academy – I’d never encountered his art (or even heard his name) until I walked out of Hatchard’s Bookshop on Piccadilly in London and found myself drawn to the exhibit right across the road. Richard Dadd was ‘an English painter of the Victorian era, noted for his depictions of fairies and other supernatural subjects, Orientalist scenes, and enigmatic genre scenes, rendered with obsessively minuscule detail.’

That was all fine until he went off to Egypt and the region in 1842 where he suffered some sort of breakdown while on the Nile, initially thought to be sunstroke. Back in England the following year he murdered his father, convinced he was the devil, and spent the rest of his life, over 40 years, first in Bethlem psychiatric hospital (also known as Bedlam) and then in the new Broadmoor Hospital in Crowthorne. I lived in Crowthorne for a couple of years, many years ago. Dadd kept painting, but of course never achieved the sort of recognition he would have clearly enjoyed had he not been locked away.

▲ The portrait of Henry VIII is a direct contemporary copy of a 1537 painting of the king by Hans Holbein the Younger, destroyed in a fire in 1698. The colourful ceramic is by Felicity Aylieff, part of her Expressions in Blue exhibit at Petworth House. This piece is not blue, most of them were.

I joined a National Portrait Gallery tour to Petworth house, a ‘stately home’ about 50 miles (80km) south-west of London. The house has been occupied for 800 years ago, during which time the family accumulated a huge art collection, van Dyck, Turner, lots of Roman sculptures, it’s really overwhelming. The last Lord Leconfield, however, had no interest in the house or the art (or foreigners) and ‘after inheriting’ he devoted his time to ‘hunting, shooting and fishing.’ Whatever it is an amazing collection and the house also featured an amazing exhibition of king size (‘monumental’) porcelains by Felicity Aylieff which she created in Jingdezhen, that Chinese ceramics centre which I’ve bumped into so often. Some of those pieces were truly monumental, ‘up to five metres in height.’ Some of them seemed larger than that! Unfortunately the exhibit closed on 27 September 2026, right after I was there

If you have any interest in Chinese ceramics you will inevitably encounter Jingdezhen and in 2017 on my Bangkok to London ‘Silk Road in MGBs’ drive I spent a day there, visiting Australian ceramic artist Alexandra Copeland and her husband Leigh. Earlier this year I spent a day in Hong Kong doing some walking on Sharp Island and visiting the new Hong Kong Palace Museum with a gallery featuring fine ceramics from Jingdezhen.

▲ Love by Peter Blake, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester – we continued from Petworth to this gallery noted for its pop art including this work by Peter Blake. Is he Britain’s best known pop artist? Well he’s certainly well known for creating the Beatles’s Sgt Pepper album cover. I bought a Babe Rainbow sheet metal print by Peter Blake in the early ‘70s, my daughter Tashi still has it.

◄ Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of the late Queen’s fashion ever mounted and is on in the King’s Gallery on the south side of Buckingham Palace. The exhibition has proved so popular that it’s six-month run has been extended to one year, finishing on 18 April 2027. I was able to enjoy a relaxed viewing – not that I have any real interest in royal dress fashion! – at a King’s Trust dinner in the gallery. These two pink old lady dresses would have to be a favourite.

One was worn by the Queen in 2012 when Daniel Craig, as 007 James Bond, arrived at Buckingham Palace, stepped over the corgis, and accompanied the Queen as they helicoptered to the Olympic Games opening. The other pink dress, well that was worn by the Queen’s stunt double who parachuted from the helicopter into the stadium. Maureen and I were lucky enough to be in the stadium as the Queen made her spectacular arrival.

▲ Holy Pop – one of my favourite 2026 exhibits in London was Holy Pop at Somerset House. It was terrific, checking out little personal shrines to assorted heroes, Elvis Presley, Prince, Dolly Parton, Marc Bolan, Britney Spears, including all sorts of people as fridge magnets, Andy Warhol and assorted others.

◄ Margaret Preston self-portrait – Australian artist Margaret Preston has an exhibit, open until 31 January 2027, at the National Gallery Victoria’s Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square in Melbourne. I could certainly identify a Margarat Preston painting – still lifes, particularly flowers, and lots of them, and the exhibition certainly has heaps of flowers – but I discover she had other later periods, there are a few rather nice nudes, some Australian landscapes (she resented that there was much more recognition of landscapes than her still lifes) and some interesting indigenous-connected work, particularly from her later years.

But she was also criticised – later on – for ‘appropriating’ indigenous references without ever recognising her use of them or fully understanding what she was ‘copying.’ It’s an interesting story.

▲ Cosi Fan Tute, Opera Holland Park – Maureen’s view (and when it comes to opera her view counts for far more than mine) – is that this is an utterly stupid opera with a highly questionable message and it goes on for too long. Well I must know something about opera, because I 100% agree. The too long definition in particular, I am simply screaming for it to be over towards the end. Finish, please finish, let me get out of here. Despite which I have seen it several times and it does have a different location every time. In Aix some years ago it was in Eritrea (suitably Italian), very shortly afterwards at West Green it was Dad’s Army in the UK. There was an Australian one – I think – where the mystery (part of the mystery is that they are totally unrecognized) suitors are charming Albanians. And tonight we are in Napoli. Forget the interesting location, the whole thing is stupid, stupid, stupid.

◄ The wonderful Rebel Heart: Love Letters & Other Declarations exhibition is open until 27 January 2027 in the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne.

Effectively it’s a It’s a collection of ‘love letters’ – and love symbols, like the padlocks craze of recent years. Some of them are historic, like letters by Redmond Barry who founded the State Library 170 years ago. He was a harsh judge, not only did he have Ned Kelly hung he was also very rough on Kelly’s unfortunate mother and he was renowned for his ruthless sentencing, but he also carried on a long relationship with Louisa Barrows – couldn’t marry her, but certainly stood by her and is buried with her. They had four children, all of them recognised.

◄ Abhi Kibriya & Razai Ghazal – Afghan refugees, their love bounces back and forth in Afghanistan and in refugee camps, until they finally marry in Dubbo, NSW.

I was also moved by Aileen McColl and Filipino sailor Agapito Castillo, her relatives and the Australian government tried to stop their relationship – neither of them would accept that as their letters prove.

Then there are fan letters to Nick Cave who also comes up with 10 love songs. Or bead bracelets for Taylor Swift. And text messages bouncing back and forth on phones, a wall of phones cycling through these messages

▲ Louis Vuitton shop, Singapore Changi Airport – is it art? I don’t know and I’m certainly not a Louis Vuitton fan, but these shelves of curious little vehicles in their airport shop were wonderful.