Hackney Wick gets Wickeeddd!

I had my first Hackney WickED experience yesterday and it was wonderful!

Open studios, music, flea markets, cinema and all for freeeee!

I went along with my friend Lucy on a beautiful sunny Saturday – great weather for exploring, not such great weather for photographs, especially when you’re armed only with an iPhone! I tried anyway…

I had no idea there were so many studios packed into this cluster of warehouses and disused factories in the East End. It’s also home to the main Olympic Stadium which rises up from the grid of industrial units like a spaceship, just landed.

We spent the afternoon wandering in and out of the towers of this concrete jungle to various booming soundtracks coming from huge sound systems set up in the streets, stopping for a beer now and then. Lovely!

We settled down in a friend’s flat in The Peanut Factory for lunch which she’s opened up as a Ghanaian restaurant, after the success of the last two years I’m sure it’ll be open next year too! We tried the famous Peanut Butter Stew followed by the Guava and Lime Sorbet, all home-made, all delicious!

Art-wise the standard was pretty high; I liked more than I disliked, and for me that’s impressive!

Absolute favourite were the works of Endri Kosturi, just really refreshingly interesting and well done paintings.

The etchings of Rossen Daskalov, surreal paintings of James Trimmer amazing feather lampshades designed by Latorre Cruz also caught my eye.

We could have easily done two days there, with so much to see I think we only scratched the surface – next year I will definitely be giving this little place the huge amount of time it deserves! 

Berlin: Tacheles brings contemporary art to the derelict Kunst Haus! must-see!

Walking through one of the more ‘colourful’ districts of Berlin one evening, Scarlet and I discovered the old Kunsthaus and it doesn’t look as tame and oldy worldy as you’d expect. The artist group Tacheles have taken up and stamped (or rather, spray painted) their mark all over every inch of this six storey building and are now spilling onto the streets and any piece of waste land they can find.

There’s all sorts to be seen: amazing jewellery, illustration, painting, metal work, woodwork – you name it, you’ll find it! The artists are from all over Europe, I got chatting with the Dutch artist Tim Roeloffs and the Belarusian painter Alex Rodin; their work was completely different but both appealed to me in different ways – take a look!

Tacheles is a beautiful place, unconventional in every way but the warmth of the artists and the community they’ve built outshines the decrepit nature of the building. Yes it’s dingy and dark, yes the stench of urine is almost unbearable, yes it’s falling to pieces but as we worked our way up the treacherous spiral staircase to the top we grew to love it.

Alex Rodin’s work is in the top of the building and with my fear of heights it was looking like we weren’t going to get there but I’m so glad we did. He was the oldest of the artists we met and his space was a church-like gallery of huge canvases, lit from above through great sky lights. I wish I could have taken photos but on my teeny tiny budget I couldn’t even afford the one euro donation, the paintings are really out of this world though. Alex Rodin’s pieces actually impressed me far more than most of the work I’ve seen recently in London galleries, now that’s saying something!

On a very sad note…Tacheles is being forced out of its home. The council are demolishing the building as it is essentially a squat, a brilliant bohemian dream but a squat all the same.

We signed a petition to try to SAVE TACHELES and you can do the same here… 
http://super.tacheles.de/cms/

It’s one of the most amazing places I’ve ever seen, no exaggeration, just because it’s a collective of 80 people from across the world who want and have managed to fight for the same thing and that’s simply a space to do the things they love to do.

So help them keep fighting!

p.s. I must apologise for the standard of most of these photos, I was overexcited and experiencing the after effects of vertigo for most.

 

 

 

 

Berlin BABY!

Berlin is a city you cannot get bored in. There’s art and history round every corner and it’s just full of life. Everywhere you look there’s something happening and although we extended our stay there to five nights we only just scratched the surface.

Berlin’s famous for its street art and some of the most amazing works appear at East Side Gallery: a section of the Berlin wall that has remained in tact and has been painted with layers and layers of murals by artists from all over the world as a memorial to those who suffered because of it and a celebration of life after its fall.

Zurich…I wish I was a millionaire so frickin’ bad…

Zurich! Gorgeous, beautiful, painfully expensive Zurich!

Travel Tip: On night trains, do not get couchettes! This is what you’ll end up with…

We hop onto the train at Cologne only to be put to bed immediately by a gruff German guard, stacked up on three levels to the roof of the cabin in alarmingly close proximity to all sorts of odd people you meet on your travels. To add to this, the train is rickety so you’re rolling around in a teeny bed up to about 5ft off the ground with one little foot long bar to save you from plummeting to your death or bouncing over into someone else’s bed. Quite unnerving. Also several times we were woken up, barked at in German as we cowered in our bunks and left – my German’s not too bad but it’s not that easy to translate a screaming German man in your face at 4am.

It all improved once we got to Zurich. Suddenly we decided we were rich, rich beyond your wildest dreams! We paid 12Francs for a shower (about 11 quid) and tottered off in dresses to have breakfast at a patisserie.

Zurich Foodies…

Bircher Muesli is officially the most amazing breakfast creation.

Buchmann’s plum croissants are a MUST to complete the Zurich experience. Melt in the mouth heaven.

Anyway, tasty things aside, we then proceeded to totter up a hill (which we later found out was in fact a mountain) in sunnies, flipflops and our best attire. The sweat, blood and dirtied dresses were completely worth it for the view though. We spent the two days we had in Zurich just walking and sighing at the sights – it really is spectacular.

Of course we couldn’t do much else in Zurich as it’s terrifyingly expensive.

Romantic destination number 2: A July mini-break in Zurich.

Itinerary: Sip on cold champagne whilst shopping for diamonds and pearls by day, and by night watch the sun go down over the lake from a hotel in the mountains…

Maybe next year!

Eurotrip…Back to Brussels!

Eurotrip: Second stop.
Brussels!
Brussels was one of the many places that as we got off the train spurred on the question “so, why did we chose this place again…?” This happened regularly as our trip was organised in a 14 hour stint at two laptops in my friend Scarlet’s house aided by wine and pastry as is necessary when your face is glued to a screen for that long. Numb bums and sore tums were the result – oh and possibly the best 26 days of my life.
Brussels is an odd place, extremely beautiful contrasts with the extremely ugly and you’re never sure quite what’s around the corner. However the one thing you can be sure of in Brussels is that whatever it is – Gothic architecture, hideous office buildings, flea markets and junkshops, or (possibly the favourite) beer – it’ll be BIG.

Brussels, best for: Flea markets, junk shops and beer!

Naughty Chloe.

Earlier this year, March to be precise, I jetted off to New Zealand to see my extended family and *gasp* never even posted up any photos! On rainy English summer days like today, sometimes it’s nice to look at photos of somewhere you can actually rely on the weather! Don’t even get me started on summer rain…

We spent one night in Hong Kong on the way to NZ and one in San Francisco on the way back, both places I’d love to spend more time in. Here’s a few piccies from beautiful mountainous Wanaka, and chillier coastal St Clare in New Zealand and just a couple from San Francisco too. It’s been a year of travel and I’m a very lucky girl.

Eurotrip soundtrack…

 

Just a few songs that transport me to a train somewhere far far away travelling from one amazing city to another – enjoy!

Oh dear, indie kidzzz..

IAmsterdam!

Brilliant for cycling…best. day. ever! If you’re in the Dam, get a bike and get to the very beautiful Vondlepark and drift about all day like the Dutch. For the full ‘Dutch bike experience’ try copying some of the locals’ moves: singing while cycling, eating while cycling, on the phone while cycling, whistling while cycling, walking your dog while cycling, smooching while cycling – the possibilities really are endless.

However we stuck to the conservative gliding along and trying to somehow control a set of huge handlebars, avoiding several dogs, electric cars and canals. It was tricky but we survived.

Can’t say the same for this other bloke…

Old Movies

I’ve been fiddling about on the mac with a few 8mm films I had put onto video this past uni year, the final film got me a First – hurraaahhh! So when I find it I’ll pop it on here. These are a few film stills from the footage where the film’s split into two scenes. I accidentally paused one of the clips on one of these images and then became obsessed with these tiny split second instances where two scenes appear on one piece of film.

The film’s are 1948-72 and absolutely beautiful…and filmed by my very own Grandparents! I never knew they were such fantastic film directors.

It’s made me wonder how much we really do know about our elder and wiser family members…hmmmm?

 

It’s been too long!

My poor blog’s been sitting here neglected…lonely…stagnant for about a month now – shame on me! I’ve been working on a project exploring naive western assumptions about religious clothing and veiling and the experiences of veiled women…taken a few pics, played about with a few images and am planning a performance to take place next week.
Here’s a few piccies….

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