The Most Irritable Fountain You'll Ever Meet

With the closing dates of several shows looming, Bob and I met at Bond Street station today to check out a few exhibitions before they disappeared. In the end, I was quite pleased with the variety of art that we saw in such a short walk. Our first stop was at Sarah Myerscough Fine Art for Turning Wood Into Art, which was filled with amazing examples of the ways in which wood can be used to make striking vessels.

Next was Helly Hahmad for its show of 1960s Picasso pieces,

and then to Flowers Central for the latest spectacular large-scale photographs by Canadian Edward Burtynsky.

To get to our last destination, we cut through Burlington Arcade, originally built in 1819.

Although we've walked past many times, I've never noticed that the last shop at the Piccadilly end of the arcade is a branch of Ladurée, the French shop famous for inventing the ganache-filled double macaroon. The shop was very gold--I mean very, very gold! The staff must get a headache working inside the shiny shop:

I suppose the gold sets off the colourful array of macaroons though:

In an unintentional contrast of scenery, our last stop was at the plaza outside The Economist offices, where this is what we saw:

Laura Ford's Rag and Bone brings the cute and cuddly characters from Beatrix Potter stories into the harsh reality of London. The sculptures were all striking, but somehow this one seemed the most melancholy, especially after walking past all the material excesses that positively fill this part of London.

With our mini art crawl over, we hopped on the Jubilee line down to Waterloo station, and arrived in time to catch all of Empirical's first set at Queen Elizabeth Hall's Front Room. Infectious and impressive, tonight's performance showcased the band that Jazzwise magazine claims "could turn out to be one of the most important bands in UK jazz history" and to whom it awarded its British album of the year.

Although they said they were coming back to play another set (which was amazing, considering this was a free show and their first set was more than 45 minutes long), we decided to head home at the intermission so that we could make dinner. Before we left Southbank, we had a peek at two temporary outdoor installations at the nearby Hayward Gallery. The first, Ugo Rondinone's neon "dog days are over" announced its message in the January night, while the second installation, just below the neon, warranted a closer look.

Mocking the summer fountains that appear at Southbank, Bethan Huws's unconventional noticeboard becomes "the Hayward's winter fountain." It definitely made us smile.

Up on Waterloo Bridge, as we walked to the bus stop, the neon curve of "dog days are over" took on a nice resonance with the curve of the London Eye, visible in the distance.