Serpentine's Pavillion, Summer houses and Red 137

Before National Gallery Session with Leslie (more about this later) managed to make it down to Kensington Gardens Serpentine Gallery to be dazzled by  Pavilion from Bjarke Ingels  and count them four Summer houses.

The Serpentine has been doing these Pavilions  for some years and I sadly missed the opening this year  but it still looks good.

Not sure how the Pavilion works in the rain and dark  but in daylight it looks great - semi transparent as a result of the modular construction it's got a great aesthetic and to my mind fits the environment like a glove.

Looks neutral and organic

Revealing in its transparency

Summer Houses 1-4

This by Nigerian Architect Kunlé Adeyemi is apparently an inverse replica of adjacent  Queen Caroline’s Temple .

Summer House by  Kunle Adayemi

This one (below)  by German architects Barkow Leibinger is (for me) all about the material - wood I couldn't help touching it!

It's  constructed with plywood skin on a steel tube frame and has a design that looks great from nearly every angle as well as from up above.

Lovely curves and geometry by Barkow Leibinger

This one had for me the Cricket Pavilion thought going even before I saw the design name Asif Khan - again it plays with the way we can look through it.

Asif Khan design - Somewhere for Cucumber sandwiches and Tea perhaps

And finally the one that is some ways the 'lightest' of all this by Yona Friedman a veteran French Architect

Something of the man and his practice in this I'm sure  

Red 137

and back to the  homage to Queen Caroline’s Temple, the Summer House at Kensington for Today's Red

There's no hiding place

Serpentine Part II and Red 200

Not Eastwood

The other exhibition 'Painting the Unseen' at the Serpentine Galleries in Kensington Gardens features a littler celebrated Artist.


The show  is by the late  Hilma Af  Klint a Swedish woman artist who expressly prohibited the showing of some of her Abstract works until 20 years after her passing.

A quiet piece

Could be an album cover

There's a clear connection with other Abstract artists working at the same time like Kandinsky but  in Hilma's work but a relationship too to botanical representations.


Indeed like many in Artistic circles of the time Klint was keen on Theosophy and the spiritual.



It may be that part of the reason that Klint does not ring a cacophony of bells when her name is mentioned is that she was a female artist.



What I felt was that many of the pictures I saw would not have been out of place on 1970's progressive rock band albums and that many of them were impressive but not attention grabbing.

Early 20th Century works by Hilma

From a little known 70's rock band?

I'd say go and see this exhibition but if you're pressed for time and a little superficial you might enjoy the works currently at Serpentine Sackler more.

Red 200

Feels like this Flower is perhaps edging towards pink

A pinky red

Part one current Serpentine Artists and Red 201

More on Serpentine tomorrow

Yesterday a visit to Serpentine Galleries I'd missed the previews of the two exhibitions that are currently on and always like to see what's showing particularly at The Sackler which lends itself to unorthodox artists and their works.

Lots of really colourful and non conventional work on show from two of the Artists associated with Das Institut Kerstin Bratsch and Adele Roder but many others also playing a part.

Lots of Neon which I like.


Anyway some pictures and I'd encourage London based folk to see what the fuss is about.

Neon and Palette what's not to love

Where's the body?

And where have I seen these?

Like Cave paintings

Big and Dramatic

The epithet  to Sir Christopher Wren ('If you seek his monument, look around' )  felt apposite as I looked over my shoulder at the work of Zaha Hadid oddly off to visit what is to be shortly the HQ for Zaha's architectural practice in Shad Thames (Currently Design Museum's Cycle Revolution Exhibition).

Nice one Dame Zaha

Red 201

A Red Pannier - The Cycle Revolution will not be televised

A bike not showing at the Design Museum