Fibreglass nazis and footballing burkhas

Well we're just back from our first ever trip to Venice and a good time was had by both parties. Fantastic weather, beautiful views and a lovely hotel, lovely meals ( if a little expensive), classical concerts (Vivaldi of course and Opera arias )and some Wacky Art.

The best Gallery we thought was Mapping The Gallery which featured mostly 'installations ' ( My favourite of which has to be Dinos and Jake Chapman's brothers' work 'Fucking Hell') Representing the 2nd World War and made from minute fibreglass figures, each with individually crafted faces, it offers a truly apocalyptic vision of what appears to be the end of the World. I felt a little uncomfortable walking around and hearing German voices. Having taken four years to make and originally entitled just 'Hell', it was destroyed by a fire and they had to rebuild it. You can picture their faces when they walked in their studio and saw the damage. I think the added expletive is all the more understandable given the circumstances.

I I also liked a work which was a 'football match' featuring subbuteo style figures dressed in burkhas versus figures in US marine uniforms under a suspended meteor. A talking point for the dinner table.

After this our anticipated visit to the Guggenheim seemed somewhat mundane apart from the above photo. Kandinsky and Pollock seemed positively ordinary, although I did like Umberto Boccioni's Dynamism of a Cyclist in the cubist room.

If you like Modern Art I would strongly advise you do these two galleries the other way around to avoid disappointment.

The next day we went to an interesting exhibition of Stanley Kubrick's photos from before his Clockwork Orange days.

I'm going to stop now because I'm starting to sound pseudy and we wouldn't want that would we?

As I looked down to see my Breakfast boiled egg dribbled down the front of my new jumper I realised you can take the girl out of Stoke but you can't take the Stoke out of the girl. Ah well maybe someone will pay me to put it in a gallery.

Until Next Time - Yours By A Man with a Big Willy