(no subject)

[blahflowers]

It has been open less than twenty-four hours and someone had already thrown some money in the fountain. A ten pence piece. An austerity offering. Maybe it was Jeremy Hunt, dashing out from behind one of the many trees to make a desperate wish to keep his job.

Despite being drawn back here every year I've tended not to be impressed by the Pavilions the Serpentine Gallery displays by it's side for the Summer months, they've tended towards the anonymous and blocklike (last year) or the self-conscious and wacky (2006's offering), the kipper tie as architectural statement.


But I have to say I did like this year's offering. Partially submerged but supported by a cushion of guff from the Gallery and the architects wittering on about 'excavating the previous galleries that stood there' like the worst episode of Time Team ever it's an art pillbox, waiting malevolently for those approaching from all directions. "Aah, Emin and Hirst! For you ze art war iz ovah!"


With my usual talent for going on a day when it was overcast and cool there was no way to judge how it will deal with the heat (the Sun is obviously a Republican, it's currently due to rain on Sunday) but there are a variety of different places for people to perch including some little toadstools that felt like they might be cork. If someone doesn't post pictures using them for a game of skittles before the end of the summer than I will have obviously overestimated the skill of Londoners.


Herzog and de Meuron I don't know from a different hole in the ground but Ai Weiwei is everyone's favourite Chinese import at the moment despite his less than impressive Tate Modern installation from 2010 where everyone carefully ignored how the millions of seeds were manufactured in conditions that looked not only suspiciously sweatshoppy but also that might cause any number of respiratory conditions in his workers from all the dust that it was judged Tate visitors mustn't inhale. He wasn't let out of the country to attend the opening apparently. No doubt the central committee took one look at the price list at the Pavilion Cafe Booth and were too busy laughing at the imminent collapse of Western Capitalism to sign the form to let him leave.