18'C and Sunny

We decided to take advantage of another day of perfect weather by heading down to Liverpool Street for a wander through East-End London, beginning with Christ Church Spitalfields,

a Nicholas Hawksmoor church that's always been closed on the many times we've walked past. It was open today and we went inside to have a look at its lovely renovated interior
before heading toward Brick Lane, where I was reminded about an art show I wanted to see, called The Future Can Wait. Many floors above street level, we wound our way up the stairs
and entered the enormous gallery space.
Billed as a survey of "exciting, young, and progressive artists" who are either London-based or trained, the show was a huge disappointment as we walked from piece to piece searching for something we liked. This was the only piece that I liked at all, entitled Precious: Brick Lane was more crowded today than I've ever seen it--I guess on nice summer days there are so many other things going on in London that people still end up heading to many different Sunday activities, but on this October afternoon, it seemed like everyone decided to wander down Brick Lane at the same time as us!
We finally made it to Beigel Bake to buy our usual lunch treats (salt-beef bagels with hot mustard) and decided to take our lunch over to Victoria Park. Along the way, I spotted this cute cyclist,
although when I pointed her out to Bob, he said, "Maybe she's a bike thief!" (London's made him just a touch more cynical!) It's been a while since we've been over to Victoria Park, and as with London Fields yesterday, the park was a lovely spot for a stroll. This was our view as we sat on a bench and devoured our bagels:
We walked through the south side of the park, where we exited because there was another art exhibit that's long been on my list to see, and as tends to happen with my lists of art shows, it took until the closing day for us to make it to the gallery. It was our first time at Chisenhale Gallery (indeed, on Chisenhale Street, a lovely street filled with great houses) and I'm glad we made the effort. The Hiraki Sawa show was amazing. Six video screens filled the large room and we sat and watched the installation from beginning to end--beautiful and serene, filled with subtle movement and connections between disparate images, Hako's sparse musical score made the viewing experience even more hypnotising. When we left the gallery, we found we were facing this striking extension to the otherwise conventionally brick Chisenhale Primary School across from the gallery:
We were going to walk back up into Victoria Park, but were craving some of Bob's masterpiece coffee, so we jumped on a bus home instead, picked up some vegetables and milk at our usual places in the neighbourhood, and happily settled into our coffees over yesterday's weekend Guardian.