Last week I had a great day out in London visiting exhibitions. In the morning I started off at LCC to see a display of Tom Eckersley's posters. It was great to see some old school screen prints that were created to be reproduced and mass printed. The cleverness and beauty of the images really showed how graphic design became its own art form that didn't just exist for the sake of art but to serve a purpose of displaying information.

The next stop was the Science museum to see the 'Only in England' exhibition featuring work from Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr. I had not really heard of Tony Ray-Jones before I got to the exhibition and was mainly going to see Martin Parr's work but I actually preferred Ray-Jones. He inspired a lot of Parr's work in the way he captured British eccentricity. The display of Ray-Jones' pictures of English coastal towns  from the late '60s was fascinating. He managed to capture images full of narrative but also left a lot to the viewers' imagination as space between figures often created tension within the scene. I was pleased to have been inducted into the dark rooms the day before as I was able to understand more about the process of printing and looking at negatives. 

The day ended at the Serpentine Sackler gallery to see the Chapman brothers show. I hadn't seen any of their work in real life before so I was impressed by how much there was to see. Some of it was a bit too conceptually bullshit for me and the space was almost over crowded by the work but I loved the horrific landscapes made from small figurines. The attention to detail was immense and the commentary on consumer capitalism and our barbaric, destructive human nature was interesting. The 25 minute film that formed part of the 'Kino club' was pretty amusing as it acted as a sort of 'life of the artist' piss take. Sitting amongst mannequin members of the KKK was pretty disconcerting but also strengthened the Chapmans' message about how ridiculous they were as a group.