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At last I head to the east end with Lizzie and the lovely Godfrey Worsdale from Baltic.
We visit Nicolas Deshayes' new chewing gum like works and the canvas being the vinyl block sheets used in toilet cubicles. As usual he is creating something incredibly unique like no other artist - he is a Franz West in the making.
Godfrey Worsdale and Nic
Then we head to a lovely little gallery called Supplement and acquire for the collection in the blink of the eye an extraordinary work by the young artist Gabriele Beveridge.
We drop into the Approach and view Alice Channer’s new work...
... and purchase this new sculpture for the collection.
We drop into Yinka Shonibare’s studio and Guest Projects. Yinka was munching away on a sandwich.
I was very happy to be there and he reminded me I was one of the first ever to take interest in his work and we have a key piece of his in our collection called Cha Cha Cha.
Downstairs we viewed the show curated by Adam James and Tintin Cooper and acquired a couple Adam’s shamanesque masks for the collection.
His work visually was a bundle of fun.
We were happy to see that Tereza Buskova was also part of the show.
I managed to fit in a visit to Birmingham and I was very proud to see at the Walsal Art Gallery our installation reinterpreted by Toby Ziegler. He had very much become very attached to aeroplane containers and was using them in different ways to emphasize his work. I was most impressed.
Nick Baker also came along and afterwards we had a lovely dinner at a pub which looked like an English version of a Ski Chalet. I loved whatever I was eating it was delicious especially the mushy peas.
Then it was off to Bilbao and what an amazing surprise it was to see this incredible building by Frank Gehry looming ahead on the horizon with Jeff Koons’ Puppy Dog at the helm. The Guggenheim and Tate gave a lovely event and Dimitri Daskalopoulos leading the way with his wonderful collection filling up many cracks and crannies in the twisting mechanics of a buidling. There were a few artists involved who came for a lecture, as did many curators.
There were only seven artists but it did look like a scene from the last supper, and how convenient the first lecture was by Paul Chan.
Then was the South African born artist Kendell Geers. He was quite magnificent and he was proudly talking about when he first showed his work at Jeanne Greenberg and voila there it was in the Guggenheim.
Here's Kendell Geers' work installed in the show.
Nice photo of him and Stephen Friedman
Then Thomas Hirshhorn spoke for a while about his cave and the interior was amazing.
It seemed to have grown since it was last shown at the Hayward.
Then Paul Pfeiffer talked about his 1966 World Cup work which was so incredibly installed in the museum.
Kelley Walker finished off his talk by skimming the surface with a very matter of fact talk which was jovial and light-hearted to my surprise.
In the evening the boys, Achim Borchardt-Hume, Simon Preston, Paul Pfeiffer and Francois Chantala took time to relax with a cigarette (picture taken by Victoria Preston).
Then there was a wonderful open forum conversation between all the curators Achim, Frances Morris, Nick Serota, Nancy Spector.
Nick Serota and Guggenheim director Richard Armstrong.
Richard Flood from the New Museum deep in conversation with Douglas Fogle from the Hammer Museum
We spotted a wonderful work by Jenny Holzer.
Then admired some of the Dimitri Daskalopoulos collection; it was sometimes presented to perfection. Ten out of ten to the Rachel Whiteread, Robert Gober and Kiki Smith room.
Then it was off to Israel for Jesus’ last Supper the Jewish Passover. It was an uplifting trip to cool young emerging Tel Aviv. My lovely husband had donated a whole hospital to the town and Lizzie and I had put together a lovely collection for the hospital with the help of Marie Shek, who curated the show assisted by Yuli Tamir who worked with the Shenka school creating some amazing photographic doors by Dekel Maimon.
