Category: Video

Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey From City To Sea

An imaginary journey swimming from city to sea, inspired by Roger Deakin’s wonderful wild swimming book, Waterlog. If you haven’t read it, I would urge you to buy a copy here. The text to the film is all quoted from Waterlog:

“A swimming journey would give me access to that part of our world which, like darkness, mist, woods or high mountains, still retains most mystery. It would afford me a different perspective on the rest of landlocked humanity.”

This was filmed, on one glorious, hot June day, at six different locations heading south from London down to the sea, which lies just an hour from the city on the train.

Alastair Humphreys, August 2017

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Please also see the earlier blogpost – For Roger Deakin.

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Mio Pomodori (1)

On holiday in Italy last year, we were surprised and amazed by the supermarket tomatoes, so different to the usual British varieties. Now, with holiday season approaching again, I was looking back through our photos, and this one was pretty much the first I took. And then I discovered there were lots more that I’d overlooked, so here are a few of the freshest and ripest. Continue reading “Mio Pomodori (1)”

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Patience (After Sebald)

This modest, immensely enjoyable documentary is about one of my favourite books, The Rings of Saturn by the German poet and critic WG Sebald, who was born in 1944, taught for much of his adult life in this country, mainly at the University of East Anglia, and was killed in a motor accident in 2001. It was first published in German in 1995, translated into English three years later and is an account of a walking tour of Suffolk, the people he meets, the places he visits, and the historical and literary reflections prompted by what he sees and senses, taking his mind around the world. Suffolk becomes a sort of palimpsest for his eloquent, precise, lugubrious, often drily witty meditations about war, death, destruction and decay, about memories and continuities and the feeling that nothing entirely disappears. Continue reading “Patience (After Sebald)”

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Anish Kapoor At Lisson Gallery

An exhibition of painting, sculpture and three great amorphous lumps of whatever. If earth was flesh these might be rocks, torn from their sockets, wrapped like joints of meat in butcher’s muslin and displayed in bloodied gallery-size bites. Look closer and they’re dripping with glistening fingerprints, evidence of man’s inhumanity to the planet. I’m almost inclined to become vegetarian. Continue reading “Anish Kapoor At Lisson Gallery”

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Sovana & Pitigliano

From Saturnia it’s a short drive to Sovana, a small village with just a single street, beautifully paved in herringbone brickwork. There’s a ruined castle at one end and a cathedral at the other, and a piazza in the middle where we ate delicious lemon pizza for lunch. Continue reading “Sovana & Pitigliano”

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Entangled: Threads & Making

The Turner Contemporary at Margate, a light box of etched glass walls lined like graph paper, its warp and weft woven with Entangled: Threads & Making, the best exhibition I’ve seen in a long while.

…sculpture, installation, tapestry, textiles, and jewellery from the mid-20th century to the present day. It features over 40 international female artists who expand the possibilities of knitting and embroidery, weaving, sewing and wood carving, often incorporating unexpected materials such as plants, clothing, hair and bird quills. Continue reading “Entangled: Threads & Making”

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A Writer’s Retreat

Tucked away in a hidden valley, garden writer and author Anna Pavord’s carefully considered patch nestles up to the surrounding Dorset countryside. “I wanted to make a handshake between the garden and the wider landscape.”

Having originally met Pavord at a Wakefield and Northern Tulip Society show, photographer and filmmaker Howard Sooley first visited Sunnyside Farm as it was being laid out some ten years ago and is still charmed by its Through the Looking Glass qualities. “It’s as if there is a series of doors leading you from one room to the next with signs telling you to drink the potion,” notes the director.

Such are the rich textures, punctuated by bursts of colour from the shifting tulip, iris, peony moments, and packed with Pavord’s botanical fixations and experimentations… “Even though there is a lot going on, there’s this incredible sense of calmness – the garden never excludes the landscape, it’s always welcoming,” says Sooley.

Great Gardens: A Writer’s Retreat | Nowness

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