Cures

Bates's Salve cures wounds & sores, don't you know. . . .It might come in handy for this woman after her descent!

Bob and I stopped in at two galleries this afternoon, Gagosian and Victoria Miro; a Richard Sera piece we saw when the Gagosian put on a larger exhibit of his work was still on display there along with a new exhibit of Cy Twombly paintings, but Victoria Miro was definitely the highlight of our two art stops. The Collection is a mixture of art and dance exhibited and performed in shared spaces within a north London art gallery (Victoria Miro) and a south London dance studio (Siobhan Davies). The art and performance at Victoria Miro was spread over two floors of the gallery as well as its garden space, where the giant pinball props that comprise Yayoi Kusama's Narcissus Garden float and clink against each other in the pond as Susan Philipsz's sound installation Woods So Wild whispers to gallery visitors. "The garden's talking to us," Bob said, "Isn't that nice of it?"

Here's the view from the gorgeous top-floor gallery space where we walked amongst the performers as they variously danced, spoke, hummed, played instruments, and remained perfectly silent.

We liked quite a few of the works we saw, listened to, and immersed ourselves in (Bob had to be convinced that the one where you had to remove your shoes to enter a mystery door was worth it--and he wasn't disappointed), and now I'm quite curious about what's on display at Siobhan Davies. After we left the gallery, we walked along a bit of the Regent's Canal toward our bus home.

A swan floated beside us for a while

and rather quickly swam to the towpath when Bob called him over.

But when Bob decided to see if he wanted a pat, the swan went into chomping mode:

Maybe he thought Bob had food in his hand, or maybe he was just grouchy. We thought it might be the latter, so after Bob pulled back his hand while it was still intact, I stuck out my shoe to see what the swan would do. Sure enough: CHOMP!