02 April 2009

The Stroll

Spending a day in the sweet London sun wouldn't be the same if I didn't do my usual street stroll of gallery hopping, vintage book buying, and concept store discovering. Last month's Harper's Bazaar had a great review on Cecil Beaton, costume designer, socialite, and renowned fashion and people photographer who is going to have many of his famous portraits hung in the Chris Beatles Gallery. Call me on being way to excited to check if the portraits were there, I lugged Lumz, who is fast becoming my fashion twin to the gallery on Ryder Street to find out (after being locked in the gallery for a good 20 minutes) that Cecil's show would start on the 22nd of April. I believe the right word to use on such lame occasions is .. pooy.

My annoyance was fast diminished when we walked across the street to the White Cube to find Fred Tomaselli's layered colourful works of art on the Mason Yard walls.

Instead of summing up his work myself I clipped this expert from the press pages,

"Tomaselli has always been an avid collector, regularly scouring various newspapers, fashion magazines, field guides, botanical or anatomical illustrations, for an array of images that he cuts out to collage and embed in his paintings. He arranges a variety of eyes, mouths and hands, with their various perspectives and expressions, so that they are ‘all coming together in a drunken chorus’."
Walking to Regent Street we also stumbled into the most romantic vintage bookstore I have come across so far, Henry Sotheran. It was stocked full of vintage Vanity Fair's and Cosmopolitans, each as a lil as two pounds. I bookmarked this space as a fave space to scout out every time I was in the area promising myself that I would only limit myself to two book buys each time. I ended up buying a hefty encyclopedia textbook on Cecil Beaton (with no internet at the apartment in Notting Hill one must entertain oneself). The day closed with a walk about into Beyond the Valley, a cool concept store that sells illustration, t-shirts, one-off graphic jewelry and also doubles up as a gallery and studio space.

Fred Tomaselli



Henry Sotheran's bookshop


beyond the valley














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