I got up this morning and decided to be a tourist. Not a bucket and spade toting, hawaiian shirt clad, camera clicking type of tourist, but a tourist in the tradition of the grand cultural tourists of antiquity, who would roam the ancient world on a quest to see the Seven Wonders and understand the great mysteries of existence before they died, or, as later generations did, take in the marvels of renaissance culture. I would be a tourist and would see the Sights, with a Capital S. Only I would be restricted to Walthamstow. I would see the world through new eyes, enlightened eyes. And my long suffering companion would be coming with me on this journey, even if we already live here.
Our quest - to undertake an expedition as tourists to improve our minds and sample the art on offer in Walthamstow, laid on as a result of the dedication and planning of the good people at the E17 Art Trail. I have long enjoyed and extolled the virtues of shopping in this fair locality, now I would experience the higher things in life on a voyage of spiritual and artistic discovery with my wife.
The first question, as a tourist, though, was where should we go? We decided to let ourselves know that there was an Art Trail in a place called Walthamstow. But we had to pretend we'd never been here before, and not to know exactly where this Art Trail was. Being tourists, we decided we could not use any local knowledge built up through years of local residence to fill in the gaps. We would instead do what numerous intrepid tourists do every day in our fair city and wander around clueless. We would go from event to event, with have nothing but a wing, a prayer, small rucksacks with bottles of water, umbrellas and the address of our imaginary hotel. In an endeavour to have an authentic experience, we decided to experience the Art Trail using only the information it was intended we should have about it by the organisers. We examined their web site.
This told us that "maps are available from Saturday 9th August at Penny Fielding Beautiful Interiors, Inky Cuttlefish Studios, Images in Frames, Lot One Ten Antiques and major public venues." As tourists, of course, we knew where none of these places were or what we might find there, but hoped that the major public venues would be fairly obvious when we saw them, whatever they were. "Spaces all over town will be hosting free events with the work of hundreds of local artists on display." This was a hopeful sign - and thus reassured we decided that we could just turn up on spec in Walthamstow and plug into the event, as there would be things going on all over town. In fact, the website assured us, there would be so many such events, we would soon be falling over them: "Utilising every possible space as a venue, you won't just find art in the galleries and the museums, but also homes, gardens, shops, cafés, bars and restaurants, windows, sheds, lampposts, bridges, trees and hedges."
We decided that just to be contrary, we would approach our tasks as mythical tourists by arriving as if coming to Walthamstow on a 230 Bus. We had the Desert Island Luxury of a London A-Z, on the possibly dubious assumption that most tourists would be able and willing to lay their hands on one of those if they were adventurous enough to take a bus outside zone 1. The truth is, that my wife does not entirely trust my navigation skills, even though I've lived here for eons and would rather we had a map than that I embarrassed her in public again like I have done on numerous holidays abroad.
As it passed Blackhorse Road station and turned right, we would look out with nervous anticipation from our imaginary bus. We would be eager for where the action was and just hop off into the thick of it. A helpful local would advise where the High Street was, so off the bus we got. Hand in hand with my companion, (and pretending to be completely ignorant of the lay of the land) we would instantly start enjoying the art. Which is pretty much what we did. We walked from the bus stop before St James's Street Station and began our odyssey at the bottom of the High Street. And sure enough, there it was: the first exhibition.
Sonya Reynolds at Oxfam
At least I thought it was the first exhibition, but there was nothing at that stage to identify it as being part of the E17 Art Trail. In the window of Oxfam there were some paintings in bright colours (they looked acrylic to me) in two of the windows facing onto the street. There was no poster saying this was part of the Art Trail but on the basis that Oxfam is not an art gallery, I assumed this was indeed part of the Trail. They are quite good paintings by the way, particularly the ones which I think are depicting New York street scenes with bright yellow taxis rushing about. A couple of paintings were an idealised, rather naive, rendition of Norman Foster's Gerkin sitting by the Thames, without many of the other well known London landmarks spoiling the view. It would be nice to be able to name these works for you but there was no individual titling. The group was called 'City Scapes, a snapshot of city life'. There was a note from the artist in one of the windows, which seemed to be a general one rather than something specifically produced for this exhibition. It did however mention there would be some leaflets available, so I went inside Oxfam to ask about these. Sadly, none were available. My wife did find a few Art Trail leaflets which turned out to include the map we were after on one of those turning leaflet stands inside the door, so the trip inside was not entirely wasted.
On perusal of this I discovered that the artists mobile phone number has been provided. Sadly, as tourists, I had decided that no mobile would be available, so we could not phone the number to clarify things with the exhibitor. I am accordingly not able to fill in the gaps. We also realised that we were probably in the wrong place. Most of the Art Trail action was miles away at the other end of the High Street, but there were a couple of places we could stop off en route, so, putting up our umbrellas to fend off the first of many cloudbursts, my companion and I set off through the market.
It was about half a mile to get up to Snappy Snaps. We had a very pleasant walk through a vibrant and exciting market, with lots of street action and local colour provided by gangs of dvd sellers, Romanian three card trick merchants and traders of all nations shouting 'panda bo' as we passed their stalls. When I asked my wife what she'd thought of the paintings at Oxfam, she admitted that they were OK and very colourful, but she could not remember very much about them. It seemed that in the excitement of walking through the market, the images had actually been driven from her mind. I thought this an interesting comment. I suppose this may be why artists usually like to make sure galleries are as boring as possible as a contrast to their works when they set out their wares.
Andrews, by Nicola Tree at Snappy Snaps
We were even less sure we were at the right place when we arrived at Snappy Snaps, as there was nothing in the window that looked like an artistic exhibition of portraits, nor, again, was there an Art Trail poster on the door. (Confusingly, we'd passed a charity shop - 'a local charity for local people' - which did have such a poster on their door on our way up the High Street, but they were not hosting any events themselves).
We entered the shop. At first I could not make out the exhibition. Possibly this is because of the very strong competing images on the photogift display to the left and the promotion for wedding portraiture to the right of it. But once orientated, the photos in question were superb. There were also a couple of little freebie postcards of a couple of them which we could take away to refresh our memories later. The idea behind Andrews, is simple. My wife thought that taking pictures of Andrews was nevertheless a clever, subtle, scheme for the photographer to choose to define the scope of her work. Nicola Tree has photographed a number of people called Andrew in a setting in which they feel comfortable and which probably tells us something about how they would like to be seen. I think the most visually striking image is of the Andrew standing wetsuited and barefooted with his rampant paddle in front of his own canoe. The most intriguing, for me, is of the dark tied Andrew in his office, in front of a fly fishing painting, above which is a fishing rod but beneath it is an antique handsaw. My wife and I thought he may be an undertaker.
It was an interesting experience to appreciate art in the setting of the photography shop. We were the second visitors of the day. We got into a very pleasant chat with a young man who works there about poster production and resolved to see more of the artist's work in the Mall.
Women and Children First, by Nicola Tree at Waterstones
Wandering into the Mall without any intention of buying anything at all was pleasant. As we approached Waterstones I could soon see the female portraiture on display in the right hand window. Oddly though, it looked less like 'art' in this setting than Nicola's work had in the photographic shop. The frames of the photographs were wooden gold, I was actually reminded of the family portraiture which sometimes gets promoted from a deck-chair and picnic table in or outside Woolworths. This was only a fleeting thought of course, not confirmed by a focussed consideration of the works, which comprised women with their children in the relaxed settings of their settees. My wife, whose eyesight is not as good as mine at a distance and who did not make out the display until much later wondered whether the purpose was to make the photographs into a 'natural part of the shop', which is very clever if it's the case, if not a bit subtle.
As with Oxfam, there was no poster n the window indicating that this was part of the Art Trail, but the public seemed quite well educated about the purpose of the photographs, as I startled one lady muttering 'Art Trail' to herself under her breath by actually engaging her in conversation about the topic. I had momentarily forgotten the basic rules of London conduct: tourists are seen and not heard and that people don't talk to strangers in Malls unless they are selling them AA membership. When she had recovered herself, the lady in question told me that there were postcards of a couple of the works on the sales counter inside the bookshop. Indeed there were, but nothing to indicate that this was part of the Art Trail. The staff did however know all about the scheme and were enthusiastic supporters of it.
Art Grown on Trees
Before we left the Mall, a little recap of the leaflet caused by eye to alight on the comment 'Art Grows on Trees', in the top left hand corner of the paper where I was trying to fold it over to see what was next on the map. It did not have a number next to it so I could not be sure exactly where the trees were which the art was supposed to grow on. We went out into the Town Square to have a look. At first I could see nothing which looked like an art exhibition, other than what was on the huge TV screen which was dominating the space. We walked round to the picture side of it, but were disappointed to see it was merely pumping out the BBC to an indifferent public. There was no-one watching. Nor was there any art. There were flowers stacked up round the bottom of a tree in the middle of the grass, which a young man was looking at intently. I have to confess that at this point, I suspended my role as a tourist for a second and decided not to disturb his fascinated gaze with my curious presence - I knew these flowers were commemorating a real death, not an artistic contrivance of one. Where was the art? We could not see it at all.
The flier said that "local artists are invited to make pieces of art to hang in trees in Walthamstow Town Square to be 'picked' by passers by'. from 9.30am. I realised that I hadn't read it properly and where I had been expecting large installations in the trees, transforming the environment, I should be looking for different clues. I was wondering if we were too late when my wife pointed (or maybe she just thought it - we are telepathic these days) to what looked like an advert for a lost cat pinned to one of the trees on the walkway from the bus station to the market. As we approached, we could see there were other such pinned up items twisting in the wind and a very soggy Art Trail poster. There were little wet plastic bags with pictures in them. At even closer proximity,we could also make out other objects hanging on strings to little buds and twigs protruding from the trunks. I selected a Wendy Le Ber Digital Art Print of 'Deep Blue Buddha'. It was interesting just how oblivious the general public were to these riches ripe for the picking as they went about their busy commerce. Even as we stood discussing the works and making our selection, no one paid us tourists any attention. There will be more Art on Trees next Saturday. As it began to rain, we decided to go into the Library to take stock.
The Library
Libraries are a staple of tourists on rainy days. Most days there are hushed crowds of tourists gawping their way round the old British library reading room at the British Museum, expectantly in hope of what? To see Karl Marx, surprised to have a soul after all, lean over in his chair and pass on spiritual stock tips to Lenin? Will the ghost of Jinnah smile at Ghandi and offer compromise over Kashmir? Is HG Wells to eternally offer Orwell a trip in his time machine past 1984 to Gordon Brown's 2008? Here in Walthamstow Library, we made for a couple of comfy chairs and re-appraised the map, yet again. I knew there was something to see in the library but couldn't remember what. There had been no posters about the Art Trail in the entrance that we'd seen, though to be fair, we'd been distracted by a conversation about the fish in what is a locally famous tank as we'd walked in. I kept forgetting I'm not supposed to know these things.
The map said there were some photos of Kreuzberg. Kreuzberg is in Berlin, and like Walthamstow has a fairly well established Turkish community. I pondered the damaged plaster up in the ceiling behind the librarians' station- serious damp there - and then decided I would ask a librarian in the children's section. She confirmed there was something to do with the Art Trail, somewhere in a corridor. Some chap was having an argument by the public computers which caught everyone's attention for a moment; tourists are always quite well attuned to crowd scenes I've noticed. I wandered about until I came across the photos and then went to collect my wife, who was resting her feet for a moment. There were two sets of photos - Peter Tomlinson's German pictures and three inkjet print studies in Abstract Plant Forms by Dan Green, beside them in the corridor. Not simply because the Kreuzberg photos were of a subject matter which reminded my wife and I so much of our own home, we found the abstracts more fascinating. The close up shapes are worth a few minutes contemplation. Described as abstract art, there is a beauty to the orderly mathematics in the apparent randomness of the natural world. It depends how close you can get to see it.
Architectural Photography by Sir Colin Hampden-White at Ludlow Thompson
A flagging spirit as a tourist is easily uplifted with the judicious application of food. As we left the library we decided to fortify ourselves with some bananas from a market stall. Munching these got us over Hoe Street and in front of an estate agent's window to see a group of photos displayed in amongst some houses for sale. There was no Art Trail poster on the premises to promote the photographs.
The pictures are small and have no captions. I have no idea where the top one is a picture of - its a detail of a glass roof somewhere. The second photograph is at a tube station, the third is of some generating equipment and the fourth is a tunnel with a light at the end. There is no sense of scale, which may or may not be profound artistic statement. The fifth photograph is a picture of the London Eye such as tourists like ourselves could well be expected to be taking if we'd not set out to see these photographs instead. The sixth photograph is of some balconies and the bottom one is of a mosque roof.
I suppose it's the knighthood, but I was expecting more, at least in the size of the works. Is that unfair? The subject matter would have lent itself to some quite stupendously massive prints, but instead the photos were almost insignificant. As driving rain set in, we did not linger.
All That Jazz, by Mark Goddard, at Strettons
When we got into Strettons, it was well and truly bucketing down. There was nothing in the windows to see, so we went in to get out of the rain and asked where the exhibition was. A very nice man who seemed to be in the office on his own explained that it was not up yet: he expected it would go up on Monday. As the rain was not stopping, we had a long chin wag about the property market and the prospects for the next couple of years. We were obviously not in the market for anything, so it was a very relaxed chat rather than a sell. I have to say he was quite realistic and knowledgeable. He was articulate in explaining his analysis of the local housing markets, even if he seemed a bit optimistic to me about the possible impact of the Olympics locally in the coming years, so I did not feel at all disappointed on missing out on All that Jazz by the time we moved on up St Mary Road.
Forty Lives - Fabulous at 40something women on looking good and living life to the full at Hair Design and Academy
Neither my wife or I could quite see why these photographs are included in the Art Trail. They did not look to me like art, so we walked past them. I have no idea who took the photos but they just look like the kind of images we are bombarded with continually by people trying to sell us something.