The Chelsea Flower Show

I'm not sure if this counts as a museum visit, but it's certainly a special exhibition, so I figured it was worth writing up.

We visited the Chelsea Flower Show on Friday, and I was absolutely amazed by all that there was to see.  It is set up on the grounds of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, and it's neat to walk around that area.  Location aside, there are essentially three major components to the show.

1. The Main Pavilion: This is a huge tent in the centre of the show, that is probably the size of at least two (American) football fields, if not more.  Nurseries, shops and growers have displays in here, and they are phenomenal.  Many growers specialise in a certain flower (daffodils, tulips, dahlias, etc), or some stands were thematic (succulents and cacti, vegetable garden displays, etc).  The sites (and smells) in here were incredible.  In one direction, you'd get a waft from the strawberries that were growing, and then you'd turn around and confront a huge display of roses.  It was all impeccable, and incredibly beautiful.  Of course, the growers are there to make a sale, so you can order basically anything you see, and have it delivered straight to your door.
2. The show gardens.  Outside, sponsored gardens are built.  These range from the super modern, to the Japanese inspired, to gardens with wildflowers and rivers, to a replica of urban flats with small gardens.  We definitely preferred the more wild gardens to the perfectly manicured ones, but they were a site to see.
3. Shopping, shopping shopping!  If we actually had a garden, we could have done some serious damage here.  From wellies to garden ornaments to conservatories and greenhouses, it's all on offer.

It was a real treat to experience the legendary Chelsea Flower Show, and I suspect we'll try to get tickets again next year (when hopefully, we'll have a small garden of our very own!).  

Russian Constructivism at the Tate Modern

We had a three-day weekend here in England, so we decided to give our seriously underused Tate membership cards a little exercise and hit up the Russian Constructivism exhibit at the Tate Modern.  I wasn't sure what to expect and honestly, we picked it mostly because it was sort of crappy weather outside, and we were looking for an activity.  From these humble beginnings, the exhibition turned out to be fabulous (and seriously better than the Rothko exhibit we went to last year.)

The exhibition focuses on the art of Rodchenko and the lesser known Popova (primarily active in the 1920s and 1930s).  Other artists influenced by constructivism that may be somewhat more familiar include Hungarian-born contemporary Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.  It comprises 11 rooms, and starts with their paintings (many of which are bright canvases with interesting explorations of depth, planes of space, and flattening of appearance).  I especially liked a few paintings by Rodchenko that experimented with the intersection of several circles and different textures of paint.  

By far, the most interesting rooms focused on the more graphical arts of this time period.  These exhibitions included their art used for posters, book covers, and other "popular" arts.  I think the whole aesthetic of constructivism, which plays with lines, geometry and color blocking, really lends itself to these works on paper.  I was also really interested in the way the Russian alphabet and words in general effect the appearance of the graphics and the art.

I knew almost nothing about Rodchenko, and even less about Popova, before going into this exhibit.  I'm sure that I would have had a deeper appreciation of this exhibit if I knew more about early 20th Century Russian history and politics, but my friend Anne did try her hardest to fill me in and compensate for my abysmal knowledge.  Even for ignoramuses like me, these paintings and works on paper were fascinating, and I highly recommend a visit before the exhibition closes in the middle of May!