Strange Encounters

My Top 3

Ran into Gemini (aka Bert Hackett), the recently-retired Birmingham Post cartoonist, at the weekend. Nothing too weird about that, you might think. Except that it was in the shop at the British Library, just round the corner from St Pancras Station. We were on our way back to catch a train and Bert was down for the weekend to stay with his daughter.

Years back I recall climbing on to an escalator on the underground and being aware of someone stepping on behind me. ‘Dad!’ came the excited cry. It was younger daughter. She was travelling from college in Portsmouth to Edinburgh to visit a friend hurt in a road crash. I was travelling to a magazine office to work and our paths crossed at that instant on that step of the escalator.

We were in Britain’s No 1 city to take our last chance at seeing the Hadrian Exhibition at the British Museum. Fascinating in giving a new perspective on this rather overlooked emperor, but too full of people, and not nearly as good as the last blockbuster show there, the Terracotta Army.

The other attraction at the museum was the Statuephilia show, featuring pieces by contemporary artists tucked away in strange galleries. Perhaps the two best known are Marc Quinn’s Siren, a gold-covered statue of Kate Moss in an unlikely yoga pose, and Antony Gormley’s Case for an Angel, a smaller version of his most famous work near Gateshead.

Ron Mueck has been turning out hyper-realistic figures on a huge scale for years now. The Easter Island figures are a clear inspiration. Mask ll is a self portrait made very large. Haunting.

Which is more than can be said for the Damien Hirst exhibit, a collection of plastic skulls smeared with household paint, like those disc paintings which come out of his studios.

The most intriguing piece, inspired by the museum’s Egyptian collections, is by Tim Noble and Sue Webster. Two heaps of apparently random mummified creatures stuck on poles are transformed by a spotlight into profile portraits of the artists in shadow on the wall (pictured top). This alone is worth the trip.

No trip to the museum is complete without a walk down to Lambs Conduit Street, where Mrs Langley can indulge her fetish for limited editions at Persephone Books.

Meanwhile the grandchildren and I had a great time burying ourselves under piles of golden leaves fallen from the plane trees in Coram’s Fields, just over the way. Great park, excellent swings etc and a brilliant and family-friendly genuine Italian restaurant (Ciao Bella) on the corner of Lambs Conduit Street.

The sculptures are on for a couple of months at the museum and there are several related shows and events. www.britishmuseum.org has all the gen. All sorts of strange encounters to be had there - and at the British Library just down the road from Euston Station.