Wonderland

 

 

 

Last time I walked through the City Park, around 1½ week ago, the cherry blossom trees there weren't in bloom yet. (They're of a later kind than similar trees growing in other parks closer to where I live.)  Today proved perfect for seeing them in their full glory, though.

The Big Green Rabbit used to stand in another part of the park, but as they're doing some changes in that part now, he's been moved to this spot instead. From this angle, it looks to me as if he's still wondering Why! (There are several benches nearby where people can sit and look at him, though.) 

The official title of the sculpture is Mate Hunting. 
(By Marianne Lindberg de Geer, 2008. )

Regardless of where in the park he stands, he always reminds me of the rabbit in Alice's Wonderland though. (Even though the rabbit in that book isn't green, but white). 

"Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"

Upside Down Weekend Reflections

 More autumn photos from earlier this week:

 

 

 

Not upside down - but
one ear up and one down!

Sculpture "Mate Hunting" by Marianne Lindberg De Geer (2010)

I'm glad I've been able to get out and about a bit with the camera. Even walking the same old paths, fine autumn days with some colour still left in nature are good for the soul as well as the body. On this occasion, the water reflections as well as the rabbit sculpture in the park served both as distraction from and reminder of still being in "Wonderland".

As the saying goes - sometimes a picture is worth more than a thousand words; so here is a collage I made from three scanned postcards of Alice in Wonderland illustrations...

Short translation: Not yet feeling quite confident about results vs side-effects of changes in my blood pressure medication, recently suggested by a new doctor (cf another recent post).

 

I might add that I think I have a physical check-up booked with a nurse this week, and also another phone appointment with Dr Who (whom I have still not met in person). I say I think, because when I tried to check online (as one is supposed to be able do now with some things, using digital ID), what I found did not quite match what I was told over the phone. And when I tried to call, it turned out they had shut the surgery down for a couple of days to go away on a staff training course. (I'm hoping a course in doctor-patient communications.) (Of course they referred to emergency numbers. But my questions didn't qualify for that...)

While waiting, here is another brilliant snippet from Very British Problems (copied from Facebook).

 

 

A Grin Without A Cat

“Well, I’ve often seen a cat without a grin, thought Alice; but a grin without a cat! It is the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!”
(Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865)

I suspect that even most people who never read the book are still more or less familiar with this quote. What you may not yet know, though, is that A Cat Without A Grin is also the title of the 2018 International Sculpture Biennial in Borås, Sweden. (But now you know!)

The brochure tells me that the theme was chosen “because of its relation to the surreal, and the interest in nonsense”.

Hmm… In other words: an excuse to mix and display a number of odd art exhibits without taking any responsibility for them to make sense… ; )

The exhibition was opened at the end of May, but it wasn’t until Thursday this week that I found a good opportunity for myself to go and visit the Art Museum, where most of the contributions are displayed this year. Some new or borrowed sculptures are also to be found here and there in the city centre – and some old ones have been temporarily moved to other locations. I made no attempt on this occasion to try and find them all – after all, I have all summer to go looking for them :)

However, walking through the Town Park on my way to the art museum, I happened to notice this new addition to the sculptures there:

It is named Stub or Yggdrasil and is here on loan from another town in the area, for the biennial. The name of the artist is David Myrvold. Yggdrasil is the name of a holy tree (ash tree) in Old Norse mythology – kind of representing the centre of the world, with its branches extending far up into the heavens, and its roots far into the underground. Various kinds of creatures live in or by this tree, and it is also connected to the main god Odin sacrificing himself there. What Myrvold wants to say by showing it as only a stub, I don’t know. But there is a glow within it (from LED lights, I suppose) to suggest there is life in it still… I think the spot to display the sculpture in the park has been well chosen, as it has been “planted” close to two older stone sculptures that also remind of ancient times and unknown mysteries (reminding of old stone monuments like Stonehenge and similar).

Along my way uphill to the art museum from the city centre, I also came across this piece:

This made absolutely no sense to me until I got back home and read the brochure I picked up at the museum. Quoting what the brochure says about the artist, Iman Issa: “Issa takes inspiration from historical works of art and objects and the way they are displayed in contemporary museological context. By creating new and minimalist sculptures with a resemblance to the original artefact and pairing them up with texts describing the object that inspired the new work, new interpretations arise. The presentation mode challenges our memory, our values and the importance we ascribe to language in this context.” (You may have to read that quote more than once – at least I did!)

There were also some photographs by the same artist on display at the museum, pretty much on the same kind of two-faced theme. I took some of them to be paintings, but the brochure says photographs.  I’ll have to go back for a closer look, I think. (There is no entrance fee for this exhibition so I can go as many times as I like.) I only snapped a photo of one that appealed to me because I like the objects as such (books, pens, papers…):

Iman Issa: “Replica For Illustration”, 2018 (C-print)

The biggest work of art on display indoors at the museum was this one:

▲ Seen from the ground floor.
▼ Looking down on it from the floor/balcony above.

La dépossission - Artist: Latifa Echakhch
A collapsed theatre backdrop  painted like the sky.
(”The sky is literally falling down on us”, the brochure says…)

My favourites exhibited at the museum were probably these two, though – playing with light and shadows, and kind of relating to that Yggdrasil stub in the park.

(I don’t find these in the brochure so don’t have the names of the artists)

There were also quite a few works of art in the exhibition that on this occasion did not “speak” to me at all… Remains to be seen if they will if I go back again!

Shadow Shot Sunday 2

Time for a New Year (Postcards for the Weekend)

GB-836775 – from Great Britain, November 2016

From the MacMillan Alice 150 Years collection
(100 Postcards from Wonderland)
Illustration by Sir John Tenniel, coloured by Diz Wallis

…the Rabbit actually took a watch out of
its waistcoat pocket, and looked at it…

I did buy this box of postcards with the intention to use them;
but I haven’t yet sent any of them… Maybe next year??

Not much time left of 2016 when I write this. Tomorrow is New Years Eve, and I will be busy most of the day preparing for my traditional party for a handful of friends in the evening.

So I think I shall have to save my Looking Back and Looking Forward thoughts until 2017; and for now I just wish you all

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Just Wandering (Outdoor Wednesday)

A stroll about my neighbourhood with camera in hand, thinking about this, that and the other…

(with quotes from Alice in Wonderland)

“How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another.”

“I wonder if I've been changed in the night. Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!”

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where -' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.”

“It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”

[Is he yelling or yawning, do you think?]

“You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can't tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit."
"Perhaps it hasn't one," Alice ventured to remark.
"Tut, tut, child!" said the Duchess. "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.”

“It's always tea-time.”

[So I went home and had a cup of tea.]