Gothic and Surrealist Art in London

Current Art Shows in London seem to be tying in with the two themes explored in our recent runway show; Surrealism and Gothic novels.

At Flowers Central, Tim Lewis showed some animated creatures with a surreal sensibility. Dismembered arms, reminiscent of the crawling hand in Bunuel’s ‘Exterminating Angel’, drew endlessly on scraps of paper.

Tim Lewis's dismembered arm

A tiny bird perched in a red Jimmy Choo shoe trilled out a tune based on its own DNA and an ostrich-like creature wandered around the room, stopping short of bumping into the crowd at the private view.

The Jimmy Choo bird nest

Meanwhile at the White Cube in Hoxton, Harland Miller has curated a terrifically dark Gothic show called ‘You dig the tunnel, I’ll hide the soil’. This show features works inspired by the stories of Edgar Allen Poe and includes work by 34 artists; among them Damien Hirst, Julian Schnabel, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Tracey Emin, Cerith Wyn Evans. The private view was a bit sad because the artist Andy Fairhurst had just committed suicide; his piece in the show reinforced the general Momento Mori effect.

Men in white coats do the forensic thing

Harland Miller had a performance piece with white clad people behind what appeared to be a police tape line in Hoxton Square. The show continued from the gallery into a brilliantly sinister place, the underbelly of Shoreditch Town Hall. Here we saw many clever pieces, one of the most emotionally provocative being by Jason Shulman. When you breathe on a tiny mirror the image of a man’s face appears as if conjured out of the ether.

In deepest darkest Shoreditch Town Hall

The Independent on Sunday came to photograph me at home for a ‘Room of My Own’ article - the results appear in this Sunday’s paper (20 April). To prepare for the photo shoot, I ordered lots of brightly coloured flowers from my florist, McQueens. They put them in a series of tall test tube like vases and they looked wonderful by our bright Marc Quin frozen flower prints and my own ‘Immortals’ series.

Beautiful flowers for the Independent on Sunday photo shoot

While our teenage children were still on holiday, we had a week in Norfolk. It is a great time of year to go, as the lambs are just entering the fields for the first time, after the winter snow.

Lambs loving the sunshine in Norfolk

Long afternoons inside, hiding from the inclement weather, with tea and cakes, Scrabble and Monopoly, were broken up during sunny spells with such delights as a seaweed fight on the beach.

Seaweed fighting on the beach