About a month ago now, myself and some uni friends embarked upon a trip to London as part of our English Contexts group assignment for this semester. Our assignment was on the 'Monstrous and Grotesque' which was the focus for us to garner info in order to create a website on the theme, a compulsory part of which was to participate in a relevant field trip. After initially wanting to visit the
Bodyworld's exhibition (if you've never heard of it, I suggest you click the link to see what I'm on about! It's equally shocking and amazing and allows you to view the human anatomy in a way that you never thought you would!), only to find that it was currently at residence in Germany, we decided to visit the Damien Hirst exhibition currently housed at the TATE Modern in London.
The day got off to a pretty bad start when I missed by first bus, making myself late and then had to get on another train in order to get to Birmingham where I met my classmate. Upon getting to Moor St. Station and enquiring about tickets, we discovered that the train we planned to get would, in fact, cost £50 (!) instead of the £15 that we'd anticipated! I guess that teaches us for not pre-buying train tickets! Luckily, there was a cheaper train about an hour later which cost £25 which we decided to get instead.
This was my first time travelling to London, and I was pretty excited! Anticipating a long train journey (and thinking that I'd make pretty boring company), i stocked up on sweets and magazines and even brought my sketchbook along for the ride, although I needn't have worried, as even though practically everyone who had said that they would come had pulled out at the last minute, myself and my lone classmate managed to yabber on about next to nothing! It was a pretty hot (albeit wet) day, and once meeting up with our native Londoner who was back home for the uni Easter holidays, we set off to find the TATE.
For those who are unfamiliar with Hirst's work, he became infamous in the 1990's for creating pieces to do with recurring themes of life and death, however, controversially, these pieces often incorporated either live creatures or their carcasses. Perhaps his most famous piece, entitled '
The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' incorporates a dead tiger shark preserved in formaldehyde.
It was both disturbing an fascinating in pretty equal measures. Being so close to such a formidable creature was still somewhat daunting even though it was obviously dead and had been for a long time. The sheer size of it was unprecedented by me; I could have easily fitted inside it if I had lay horizontally, and although it was decaying with age, it was still a sight to behold.
Not so welcome was the piece entitled '
1000 Years', which was preceded by an awful rancid smell which was later revealed to be a severed cows head encased in a 7ft glass box that also contained masses of flies. It was not pleasant to behold, but then again, Hirst's work always appears to have set out to shock its audience.
For me, perhaps the best part of the exhibition which contained pieces from Hirst's entire career was the recreation of '
In and Out of Love', where canvases decorated with neatly arranged pressed butterflies was followed by a 'live' room where, upon entering, one was greeting with humidity and the sound of fluttering wings, yes, the room was filled with butterflies! The premise for this interactive instillation was for pupae to be attached to blank canvases, allowing the butterflies to fly into the room as they hatch. Even the canvases themselves appeared as works of art, as the fluids from the newly hatched cocoons dripped down the white background. It is in this instance that Hirst's recurring theme of life and death is shown in its entirety, with dead butterflies situated on tables beside rotting fruit creating a somewhat bleaker spectacle when placed in the same arena as the majestic fluttering butterflies.
After leaving the exhibition, our native Londoner acted as tour guide and gave us 'Brummie' folk a bit of a pitstop tour of the captial, talking us past landmark sites such as the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, the MI6 buildings, St. Paul's Catherdral, Covent Gardens and the London Eye. And of course, M&M World, which was secretly our main purpose for the whole trip ;)
