I wrote this for the Essential Surrey website – essentialsurrey.co.uk.
Our choice of make-up reveals interesting little things about us, while paradoxically covering us up. Trends in cosmetics reinforce current beauty ideals, social attitudes and economic conditions. With this truism in mind, an exhibition that explores the evolution of make-up and its shifting form and function is surely the most glamorous way to track and digest these changes.
Continue reading Glamour On The Go Exhibition
Movement was very important to artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954). His art has a particularly playful energy, and none more so than in his later works. Health problems in the early 1940s meant that his physical mobility was limited, but he would not let his creativity be held back in the same way. He created a new method of working by using cut out shapes from painted paper to produce a new form of art. The exhibition at the Tate Modern explores Matisse’s development of this technique: The Cut-Outs.
Allow me to introduce you to the perfect companion for Summer. The Little White Dress.
You will have heard of Letters of Note. It has been an online sensation that has divulged the secret thoughts of significant figures in history by publishing their clandestine letters. A collection of otherwise undisclosed feelings and ideas between fascinating characters and interesting people. Now there’s a book, a beautiful, illustrated, hardback book.
I went to the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show on the Press Day – the very first day of the show.
Yes, that is Monty Don holding a hedgehog.
I am reliably informed that she was very wriggly!
Private gardens in Shere are opening their gates to the public this Sunday 29th June.
…in pictures
I went to the penultimate day of the Charleston Festival in Lewes, East Sussex, which was marking its 25th year. I heard Charlotte Higgins and Adam Nicolson read from their new non-fiction books on Classics. Charlotte Higgins’ ‘Under Another Sky’ was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.
A few years ago I was given a private tour of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London and I had special permission to photograph the space. I felt very privileged to be able to wander around with my camera, free to capture the changing light across the seating, beams, stage and even backstage area.
Tulips are like colourful wine goblets, sprouting and spouting from the ground and there is a fantastically riotous clang of tulips at this very moment at RHS Wisley.
Design for a Neo-Palladian Villa overlooking Waynflete’s Tower, Esher Place 1730-1735An exhibition examining the life and work of William Kent, one of the leading designers of early Georgian Britain, has opened at the V&A museum.
Continue reading William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain at the V&A Museum.
