Welcome to FreeState

We didn’t have a street party but I had a Blue Peter moment and we all got into the spirit of things regardless!

Pimm's anyone?

It’s my turn to do the window installation and I’ve plumped for an image from current exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of photographs by E.O. Hoppé.

During the ’20s and ’30s, as well as his celebrity sitters, Hoppé photographed British street life, sometimes using a hidden camera to produce images that explored issues of class. The NPG exhibition has over 5o photos of everyone from bell ringers to tattoo artists, street musicians to nightwatchmen. This one was taken in 1922 and felt immediately evocative.

The Pearlies, Master William Dennis Simmons by Hoppé, 1922

The exhibition is on til May 30th so do go!

The Brit Insurance Designs of the Year exhibition opens to the public today. I had a sneak peek at the Design Museum last night and came away with a firm favourite; the installation by Jason Bruges Studio. Called Mimosa, it’s a responsive pixelated surface that really captured an organic personality and was first created for Philips Lumiblade.

Mimosa. Image courtesy of Jason Bruges Studio

It is rare for a piece of technology to create such a sense of calm and poetry. I’d love to see it on a really huge scale.

Adam and I visited Oxford’s two great museums at the weekend, The Pitt Rivers (a mini natural history museum) and The Ashmolean.

Beginning with the Pitt Rivers, it was so refreshing to visit a museum where you feel in control. This is mainly due to it’s manageable size and open architecture. The highly glazed roof is breathtaking, the vitrines show concise storytelling and you could touch a lot of stuff. There’s nothing wrong with low-tech display when it’s done this honestly. Also, the absence of tea and cake made a change – so many museums and galleries feel this is a must but end up doing it badly and often charging a fortune.

Then to the Ashmolean, the renovation of which saw Rick Mather become a finalist  for this year’s Stirling Prize. A triumph in rejuvenation with a seamless blend of old and new, yet I came away disappointed with one thing; the staircase. It’s at the heart of the building. It is the heart of the building. If you like, it’s the money shot and, as such, should have been crafted with-in an inch of it’s life. One flowing line, cascading back and forth down the side of a mountain. Instead there’s glass, a hand rail and patch fittings, all following unrelated lines. But Albion (age 4) had fun flying paper aeroplanes from it. (Oops! Nearly thrown out of another public building!)