Things to Make and Do: London

I was really looking forward to my visit to London to see the sketchbooks on tour with the Brooklyn Sketchbook Project. In the event, it wasn't as satisfying as I'd hoped -- I don't want to come down too hard on the Project because I love the spirit of it as it comes across on their website, but in the flesh it didn't seem to work quite as well.
I liked the Canada Water Library building, where the sketchbooks were on display. It felt as though the curving staircase might lead to heaven:

Lots of people arrived, as I did, shortly after the library opened at 11am, but the Sketchbook Project people weren't expecting to get started until 1pm. They very kindly let us go in and they handed out some handfuls of sketchbooks for us to look at whilst they got their systems up and running. This turned out to be the best bit of the experience, because all one wants to do is leaf through the sketchbooks more or less indiscriminately, enjoying the strong sense of connection to the sketchbook-creator that you get from holding their work in your hands. Some of the sketchbooks were lovely. I felt that the ones that developed a coherent idea worked best.

Then, after a while, the Project people gathered up all these loose sketchbooks and took them back behind their desk. We now had to queue up at one laptop to register for a library card and then move along to another laptop to get access to a particular sketchbook. This didn't work for me. First of all I thought I'd get my own sketchbook out, just to check that it was holding up (it has some loose elements in a little bag inside) and also, more importantly really, to 'reconnect' with it. I spent so much time on it and put a lot of personal stuff into it, and it was quite hard parting with it last year. Alas, my book couldn't be found and didn't come up on their search system. I was very sad about this, perhaps out of proportion to the actuality. I felt my book and its emotional content were adrift, lost. I had to try to get over that feeling quickly as it was disproportionate to the actual situation. I ordered up a different sketchbook to look at but they never called me up to get it. The system of ordering up a book to look at just didn't work in my view -- surely most people don't want to look at specific books but just to peruse as many different books as possible. There were thousands of books neatly shelved behind the desk, but you couldn't get at them. No wonder my book has only been looked at three times -- it's like a lucky dip where the prizes are grains of rice. I confess I got quite down while I was there -- there was such a strong contrast between the lovely promise of all those sketchbooks and the arid reality of queuing to ask to see just one random book at a time (or I think you could ask to see two at a time but I didn't see any!).

I went out of the library and felt better immediately. Kids were whizzing round on their bikes outside. I decided to go to the Barbican to see the photography exhibition. It showcases the work of twelve photographers who were working in the Sixties and Seventies. I liked William Eggleston's work the best.

While I was chawing through a bagel down in the Barbican foodhall, the skies darkened and it began to rain. The beautiful lights in the foodhall shone out.

Then I rushed to the ICA to see The Queen of Versailles, spotting a man taking a stroll along a crane on the way:

I recommend the film, a documentary about David and Jackie Siegel, multimillionaires in Florida who were building the biggest house in America when the 2008 crash pulled them up short. As a study of the emptiness of wealth, it was fascinating -- the scene where the family opened their Christmas presents was very saddening, not to mention the fate of the family's pet lizard.
All in all, it wasn't the best day I've had in London (it didn't help that about a third of the entire Tube system was closed) but, as always, I tried to get as much out of it as possible. I like this rather Richter-like photo that I got by accident: