Took Friday off and headed to the Hayward. Having been to an entertaining evening celebration of all thing Hayward a few weeks earlier (Antony Gormley special guesting), was even more keen to go to the Psycho Buildings exhibition that’s been the cultural talk of the town of late.
If you like buildings and you’re a bit psycho you’ll love Psycho Buildings. Apart from messing with your conceptions of what architecture is, it’s fun and plays with the gallery space in interesting ways.
The most famous thing is the boating lake, which generates big queues at the weekend, but as I was the first one in on a Friday morning was quiet. The couple who’d dashed straight there were already flailing around in the water – focusing more on how to move in any given direction rather than on the unusual perspective on the Eye and Westminster. I wandered onto the pontoon, but declined the boating opportunity. Felt a bit silly on my own. And it was really windy!
Sadly, the other “cool” thing was closed. There’s a giant bubble that everyone can walk into but a select few can crawl onto half-way up. But the crawling bit was closed.
Two installations really caught me. The first is an exploded room – gives you a 3D version of a Matrix-style 360 degree freeze frame. Astonishingly well done. The second was Rachel Whiteread’s village of dolls houses. I’m not a big Whiteread fan – at least not of her earlier stuff. But this was cool. Both eerie and comforting, Tim Burton and I Love Lucy. The blurb claimed she’d found/bought all these dolls houses. I’m struggling to believe this. Anyway. Go. 9/10