The Last Days of New York

So on Monday, just to remind us we were heading back to London in two days time, it decided to pour with a kind of rain that can only be described as torrential. Because we hadn’t brought our swimmers and snorkel we ditched our plan to walk The High Line and consoled ourselves with a serve of blueberry pancakes from the Clinton Street Bakery on the Lower East Side. 

Tori had told us about this place and we were under strict instructions not to be swayed by anything else on the menu as it would only lead to order envy. Pancakes and ONLY pancakes. And so we did as told and predictably Tor was right. We probably didn’t need the chocolate and peanut butter milkshakes that we ordered with them but it was in keeping with the chocolate salty sweet theme of calorie badness we’d established earlier in the trip at the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. Faffing about under awnings and trying not to get any wetter than we already were we then headed to MoMA to meet Bethany, whose convenient membership meant it was five and not twenty bucks to get in.

MoMA is the only museum open on a Monday and so it was predictably busy but we had a good couple of hours breezing through the major art milestones of the 20th century – Pollock, Picasso and the pop boys, including a rare chance to see James Rosenquist’s room installation billboard-esque painting F-111 from 1964-65. This extraordinary painting, that I remember studying in high school, is a brilliant damnation of what the artist has described as “the collusion between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, media and advertising.” 

James Rosenquist, F-111, 1964-65

The F-111 was a fighter-bomber plane developed and paid for by US tax dollars during the Vietnam War and in Rosenquist’s immersive painting parts of the impressive fuselage pierce through a series of disconnected commercial images that bear increasingly sinister overtones the longer you look at them, from a mess of visceral spaghetti to a young blonde innocent under a hairdryer that looks suspiciously like a missile-head - all in bright cheery hues. It’s an iconic work that was first exhibited in 1965 and to see it here was kind of awe-inspiring.

Doris Salcedo, Atrabiliarios, 1992-93

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Placebo), detail, 1991

We did the Cindy Sherman retrospective in a tidy 15 minutes, Bethany and I spending most of it putting out masters degrees to good use and discussing everything she’s made since about 1980 in a derogatory fashion. It wasn’t great. But we then had a pleasant 15 minutes twirling through the gift shop - of course – and so despite the soggy nature of the day it was good mix of food and culture and set the scene quite nicely for dinner that evening.

Several people had told me about Beauty & Essex and I’d booked us a table at this Lower East Side establishment several weeks ago. Lovely Boy wasn’t too happy about having to put a shirt and his Going Out Shoes on for the occasion but I assured him he’d be in good sartorial company once we got there. And as per, I was right. Beauty & Essex is as regarded for its menu as it is its location, at the back of a very cool pawnshop. 

You enter the storefront, selling antiques, old jewels and assorted musical instruments and head through an unassuming back door and into the bar. A huge chandelier hangs from above and plush dark sofas entreat you to sit back and get smashed on a roster of killer cocktails. Thankfully we had but one drink here before being seated in the restaurant, beneath beautiful old light fittings and a huge glass atrium roof.

The food is a tapas-style sharing menu in a range of culinary styles. We had five plates between us and it’s no exaggeration to say that each of them was exquisite and if the moment was in animation our eyes would have been consistently out of our heads in delight and ohmygodness. Tuna sashimi, beef carpaccio, braised short rib tamales, oven braised chicken meatballs and grilled cheese, smoked bacon and tomato soup dumplings that were so ridiculously good we had to order a second helping. 

And for dessert - warm cinnamon sugared donuts full of hazelnut creme and raspberry jam respectively, delivered in their own beautifully designed box. Holy hell they were good. I’ve had a lot of world-class meals in mind (yes, El Bulli, Fat Duck, I’m looking at you) but this was up there with the best. Great cocktails, incredible food, good service, in a brilliant, quirky, cool but not pretentious environment. We couldn’t have asked for a better penultimate New York night. Oh, and I forgot to mention the free champagne bar in the ladies bathrooms. Yes, seriously.

Side dishes as accessories #love

Tuesday was our last full day and thankfully the rain had all but disappeared, leaving a humid, temperamental, cloudy sort of mess in its wake. In the morning we set off for the financial district once more, this time to visit the WTC Memorial. I remember acutely being here in November 2001, about to start my internship and feeling intensely the grief, vulnerability and horror of New Yorkers everywhere. I also remember wandering around this area and trying to absorb the enormity of what had happened here and standing with great sadness in front of the fences of Trinity Church, overwhelmed as they were with photographs, tributes and missing person posters. Just two years earlier I’d stood at the foot of the twin towers and marvelled at their architectural bravado. Now, well it’s hard to get your bearings amongst all the construction but in the middle of all this rebuilding is the memorial plaza and the two reflection pools – this strange oasis amid the chaos.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the visit but I’d followed the controversy and ongoing debate around the design competition for years and was curious to see it. The two reflection pools that sit in the footprints of the two towers are enormous, nearly an acre each, and incredibly deep. The second drop in the middle is so deep that you can’t see the bottom, no doubt a deliberate part of the design. The flowing water, the space, the depth all brought a beautiful gravitas to the encounter and I was both moved and impressed by the poignancy and simplicity of the space. 

There was no one way to read these gaping holes, that so many people feared initially would be read as unhealed wounds, but the flowing water had a meditative, soothing quality and a life force that gave space to reflect but that also gently insisted on the inevitable moving forward of time. The bronze lip around each of the pools is etched with the names of all those who lost their lives that day, in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. 

Some people had left flowers and messages but largely they were unadorned. Rows of trees offer shade and space to sit and while it’s currently ensconced in fences, when the surrounding buildings are completed it will be open to the surrounding streets and accessible from every side and its significant beauty will be fully realised. I’m really glad we went to see it and gladder still that politics, religion and frightening ideologues were so deftly negotiated (or indeed avoided) to create a space that can be interpreted, respected and remembered by everyone in their own way.

If the WTC Memorial offers one way to reflect on Manhattan’s architecture – past, present and future – The High Line is another. The initiative of a group of conservationists, architects, historians and local residents, The High Line is a public park built along an historic above ground freight rail line that tracks down 10th Avenue. 

It opened in 2009 and was extended in 2011 and now runs from W30th St all the way down to Gansevoort St in the Meatpacking District. The old rails are visible most of the way and it’s been beautifully restored with a wooden walkway whose width oscillates between the buildings and gardens of wildflowers the whole length. There are benches for birdwatching, a dedicated stream for cooling your feet and art installations along the way – from billboards to sound pieces to a very unique zoo and a very naked peeping man, the last two unofficial contributions…

We had a gorgeous stroll down these 20 blocks despite the malevolent weather above and Lovely Boy rewarded himself with beer and bratwurst at the Standard Hotel’s biergarten at the other end for a walk well done. If we hadn’t lost the best part of Monday to the weather I’d have loved to have spent some serious time around Chelsea and the Meatpacking District but all we got was a walk along 14th St towards the subway. Something else for the Next Time List…

Spot the naked waving man...

The High Line Zoo 

Getting back to Brooklyn we ambled along Smith St looking for Brooklyn bargains and working up an appetite for dinner. I was seriously tempted by the blackboard offer out the front of Beauty Bar – 10 bucks for a martini and a manicure but hard liquor before 6pm is never a good idea, even when the bar is exceptionally cute and the seats are old 1950s hairdryers. Next time.

The view up 10th Ave from The High Line

We’d saved Calexico, an award-winning Mexican joint for our last dinner – another food truck turned permanent residence in Red Hook but getting there, we were told there was a half hour wait for food and no-one, including the staff, seemed to have much of a clue what was happening. Which is a shame, as the guacamole was excellent and bode well for a good meal. Giving up after 40 minutes of mild confusion we went back to the Mexican place of our first evening and had a grand time eating too many mouth-watering soft tacos and enchiladas before rolling home yet again.

By the time our last day rolled around all of Lovely Boy’s list had been ticked – hotdogs, baseball, Times Square, Rockefeller Centre and the rest of the Big Buildings, Central Park, the High Line, the WTC Memorial and shitloads of Mexican food. I still had a couple left, chief among them the Guggenheim. They were mid-instal of their next major exhibition so tickets were half price - which made me twice as happy as the exhibition I wanted to see was the Francesca Woodman retrospective anyway. 

Francesca Woodman, from the House series, 1976

Woodman was a young American photographer working in the late 1970s and early 1980s who tragically took her own life at the age of 22. I can’t remember the first time I saw her work but I was drawn then, and again now, to her haunting images – studies of the female form, explorations of constructed and emotional spaces and self portraits that in retrospect perhaps offer a beautiful and desperately sad insight into her imminent fate as she seems to fight to disappear into herself and her surroundings.

Francesca Woodman.

Another obligatory spin through the gift shop, we then headed back to Brooklyn to check out deKalb market. DeKalb Market is a unique mini market metropolis made out of old shipping containers. It’s a mix of food, design, vintage and homewares and I can imagine when the weather is a little brighter the crowds descend on this place – but on a wet Wednesday afternoon we had it basically to ourselves. Lovely Boy stalked the food while I went in search of last minute Things I Didn’t Know I Couldn’t Live Without. Which, it turns out, was a vintage bauble ring.

By now we only had a couple of hours left before we had to leave for JFK which meant time for one last thing: a visit to the Brooklyn branch of David Chang’s Momofuku Milk Bar. We’d planned to swing by here for dessert the night before but having gorged ourselves on Mexican it seemed insulting to partake of world famous pie and not enjoy it. And so we went back for some candy bar pie. Think chocolate, gooey toffee, nougat, chocolate cookie crust and pretzels on top. It was so fucking delicious we couldn’t even stop to photograph the experience for posterity once we'd opened the packaging.

It was an appropriately sweet ending to our brilliant, inspiring, memorable week.

Getting back to London was totally tiresome but serendipitously I managed my third celebrity sighting in the dying minutes of our trip, clocking Clive Owen as he sauntered through customs at JFK. Holiday well done. See you again soon New York. Yes?

Where was I? Oh yes, The Met.

I love the Met. In all four visits to New York I’ve still not seen all of it but the two constants have been the Impressionist Wing and the apple martinis on the balcony overlooking the grand foyer. As far as first impressions go this not so humble ticket hall certainly sets the agenda for everything else you see/do/consume/bow down before while here. I remember reading years ago that a wealthy widow bestowed a considerable chunk of her fortune to the Met on the proviso that it was spent filling the foyer with enormous arrangements of fresh flowers every week. So Upper East Side. So fabulous.

Let me begin to tell you about New York...

If the swift hand of fate (or a better application essay) had sent me to NYU six years ago who knows where I’d be now. In all likelihood, probably still in Manhattan. The whatifs are always fascinating as long as they don’t come tinged with regret and while I’m not sorry for the alternate life adventure that’s since come my way, a large chunk of my heart is still firmly spiked atop the Chrysler building and refusing to budge.

Everything and nothing has changed about New York since my last memorable visit 10 years ago and the only disappointment was not having enough time to get totally entrenched in every nook and cranny of the city. As the husband said, well we’ll just have to come back. This was Lovely Boy’s virgin visit and even he had his nigh-insurmountable expectations met and then exceeded, which was simultaneously a relief and not remotely surprising given the weather, the architecture, the adventures and the cocktails we suffered through in the name of a good time.

My favourite photo from the whole trip
and taken completely by accident...

We opted to stay in Brooklyn for the week because I’d found a brilliant loft apartment in Carroll Gardens for the bargain price of £60 a night (good luck trying to find that on Manhattan) and everything we’d read said the Brooklyn that was edgy and fledgling 10 years ago was now thriving and hip in that kind of almost-yucky-but-still-definitely-cool-despite-it’s-hipster-hipness hip. You know what I mean. Leafy streets with brownstones, streets populated with great little restaurants and pop up bars and quirky shops – Like Soho and the Lower East Side but without the frenzy. And all only 20 minutes from Manhattan. I mean, total no brainer as far as I was concerned.

Our first cultural outing the afternoon we arrived was to the supermarket where the proliferation of EVERYTHING made for a pop tarts do pop art shopping experience. Fridge stocked we then went for a meander down to the Brooklyn promenade to make the most of the balmy sunset. On the way I had my first celebrity spot of the holiday. Nothing will topple the experience of standing in front of Christy Turlington in Starbucks 11 years ago but I was determined not to let the week pass with anything less than three sightings and just two hours in I clamped eyes on British actress Emily Mortimer, pushing a stroller full of screaming child down Smith St. It was a promising start but the flutter was forgot the minute the skyline came into view... 

We spent a good hour ogling the city from afar before heading back to Smith St and after a mortar full of guacamole (and some exquisite pulled pork tacos) for dinner the day was done.

Being LB’s first visit to the city there were a few imperatives we needed to check off the list right at the start of play. So, Thursday morning, bright and relatively early (for me at any rate…) we headed into Manhattan and straight to Times Square. Glitzy, trashy, super touristy – tick. 

From here it was to the Rockefeller Centre and the express lift to the roof. The views atop the rock are arguably better than those from the Empire State Building if for no other reason than from here you can actually SEE the Empire State Building in all its architectural glory. 

Being a gloriously sunny day you could also see miniature people strewn all over the lawns of Central Park enjoying the weather. Clambering back down to street level, we meandered down Fifth Avenue to the New York Public Library and then had lunch in the shade in Bryant Park. If the gallery and not just the gift shop had been open next stop would have been the International Centre of Photography but it was and so it wasn’t and thus we took off for Grand Central Station (and the free wifi in the Apple Store as it turns out). 

The view towards Central Park from the top
of the Rockefeller Centre. Not bad...

A reading room at the New York Public Library

With over 100 platforms it’s the biggest railway station in the world but delightfully, all that chaos is elegantly tucked away and so all you’re left with is clocks, oyster bars, grand staircases and one seriously breathtaking roof. Grand by name…

By this time I was in desperate need of a sit down and a drink and thanks to my extensive pre-trip research we ended up at a bar on Lexington Avenue with a rather lovely view:

(Un)fortunately this only whet our collective appetites for rooftop drinks-with-views so after an accidental ground level by-pass of the Empire State Building we took ourselves to a bar aptly called 320 Fifth, being as it was, at 320 Fifth. This view was just as impressive and getting there before the post-work crowd set in meant we had prime seats among the palm trees.

Because I’d been tour guide and mistress for the day, dinner decisions were Lovely Boy’s and so after some more accidental architectural encounters (this time the Flatiron Building), we found ourselves on Canal St, heading downtown to Chinatown for Peking Duck on Mott St. It would be safe to say we rolled out of there after inadvertently ordering a banquet but it was a fitting end to an epic day.

Flatiron Building in all its loveliness

Canal St in all its madness

Friday morning we’d planned to tick off another major tourist must-do: the Statue of Liberty but we’re tourists, not idiots, and there was no way we were going to stand in queues for up to two hours to get tickets and then onto a bloody boat and so, after a wander around Battery Park, we kyboshed that plan and headed to the Financial District. Wall St, the Stock Exchange, Century 21. All the highlights. The art deco buildings throughout Manhattan are so truly beautiful and even amongst the ugliness of all that commerce the buildings insisted on a grand elegance that gave the area a sort of romance not typically found in financial centres...

Mott St, Chinatown

From here we headed to Soho for sunglasses and a hotdog from a street vendor - both high on LB’s shopping list (and/or the only things…) Prince, Spring, Wooster, Broome – cobbled streets and beautiful buildings cosseted in old metal fire escapes like a mouth full of orthodontics. So lovely. And after a lustful wander around here it was lunchtime and so to Katz’s Deli on Houston St we went. This was another LB request – in case you haven’t jigged by now most of the must-do’s on Lovely Boy’s list were actually Must-Eats and because he’s a boy a plate full of meat between two bits of rye bread was a non-negotiable addition to the itinerary.

Katz’s is an iconic institution and the walls sag with photos of all the celebrities who’ve stopped by for a corned beef concoction. It’s the “I’ll have what she’s having” deli of Meg Ryan lore but I think even without that orgiastic claim to a piece of pop cultural history the place would still be slammed with people every lunch time. We had the misfortune of sharing a table with an obnoxious American man who, in the course of a sandwich, managed to tell us how obscenely rich he was, about how many houses he owned, which he’d paid for in cash btw, about his cosy relationship with several whisky distillers in Scotland who “like to look after him” on his twice-yearly visits and then about how hungover he was from the all night bender he was still coming down from. And if that alone didn't sour the sandwich experience then his temerity to bitch about the price of said sandwich given his apparent millions certainly finished things.

It was the kind of encounter that could only be fixed by a chocolate salty pimp, also known as the signature creation of the Big Gay Ice cream Truck, which now thoughtfully also has a shop on E7th St. I’m not sure if it was the rich vanilla ice cream, the salted caramel, dulce de leche or chocolate coating but I was completely unable to finish it - though not without effort I need to add. It was a serendipitous defeat though because heading to the bin meant walking past the window of a little vintage shop that had in the window what would be my first New York purchase: a white leather 50s clutch with turquoise and marcasite detailing at the clasp. Happiness can be bought and it only costs $20.

After all that bread and meat and icecream and dulce de leche the only thing that was going to counter all these calories was some culture and so next was one of my Must-Do’s: The Met. 

Emerging on the Upper East Side, inadvertent celebrity spot no.2 was Tea Leoni walking her dogs. It was a blink and miss it moment but for my money, in this part of town, A-list means Monet, Van Gogh and the rest of the gang in the Impressionist Wing of the Metropolitan. I’d lured LB here on the promise of two things: an apple martini and a carefully curated tour through just the highlights............

(Things I Still Have To Tell You About: Tomas Saraceno, Brooklyn Flea Markets, Rooftop Cinema, Other Flea Markets, Blueberry Pancakes, MoMA, The WTC Memorial, the High Line, the Guggenheim and One Seriously Amazing Meal in a Pawn Shop.)

A state of mind that needs New York

David Shrigley offers some motivational words at the Hayward Gallery

I would love to say the radio silence of the last few weeks was the result of glamorous nights out, fantastically exciting work assignments and the inclination to lie in the sunshine and not on the sofa but that would all be total fucking bollocks. I’ve barely left the house, work has been frustrating and there’s been nary a ray of sunshine since late March.

Basically life has been awash in beige and not even a diehard love of pith has been enough to motivate me to write/moan and consequently possibly punish you all with my beigeness. Consider my silence community service if you will.

Spring despite itself... taken moments before I was smacked
in the face by a cyclist. Yes this has been my life lately.

So it started with that chest infection. Which lead, thanks to a weakened-to-non-existent immune system, to the rising of an, it turns out, latent tooth infection. In the same tooth that endured root canal last year. Why have root canal when you can have RE-root canal I ask you? Throw in hormones and an appalling case of homesickness and you kind of get the drift. The misery was so exquisite it could find company with no one.

Anyway, I’ve slowly been pulling myself up by the bootstraps. Work has been better, drugs have helped with the dental dramas and endorphins have somewhat softened the blows of homesickness. But the biggest band-aid of all has been researching and planning our trip to New York.

A trip to Selfridges for medicinal purposes

Two more sleeps and we’ll be on our way and I can barely keep inside my skin for the excitement. It’s been 10 years since I was last there and it’s always had a place in my heart. In fact I cried last time I was there because I didn’t want to leave and swore the next time I came back it would be to stay. For good. Obviously that’s not the case but I’m making an honourable exception because Lovely Boy has never been and it’s top of his “I’m Not Moving Back to Sydney Until I’ve (Insert Adventure Here)” list. And I suppose in the interests of full disclosure, I could do with a dose of my favourite city (sorry Berlin – total Sophie’s Choice moment).

When I was 21 I spent three months in this incredible metropolis ostensibly doing an internship in a small commercial gallery in Chelsea but really, actually, having the most life affirming, life changing, most fucking brilliant time. All those clichés about New York – the energy, the diversity, the confidence – they’re all true and if you’re an impressionable, under-confident, awkward early twenty-something who’s open to the experience, it just seeps into your soul. You can’t help but soak it up. It was a pivotal moment for my erstwhile younger self and I still have acutely real memories of it all. The jazz bars, the architecture, the energy, the nightclubs, the art, the shopping, the hangovers. It’s going to sound hackneyed and a bit smug/ridiculous/over-earnest so read quickly but the truth is, New York was the first place where I really felt liberated enough to let myself just be myself, without judgement or question or apology. And god it felt amazing. I was me without the backstory and the angst and the uncertainty. Me at face value. It was a powerful lesson and one I've arguably failed at times to remember since.

I imagine everything and nothing has changed in the city since I was last there and I can’t wait to appreciate it all, all over again. 

Francesca Woodman

Not that we’ll have much time for idle basking in the forecasted New York sun. I’m already worried we’re not going to have enough time to see and do and eat and experience everything we want to. Nasty street hotdogs and a baseball game are high on Lovely Boy’s list. Mine is considerably longer. Tomas Saraceno on the roof of the Met, Francesca Woodman at the Guggenheim, the Brooklyn Flea, all the other fleas, David Chang’s Milkbar and award-winning Mexican in Brooklyn, rooftop cinemas, the High Line, Sephora, the view from the top of the Rockefeller, dinner in the back of a pawn shop on the Lower East Side… the list goes on.  

The High Line

While my body hums with anticipation, the wait has been made bearable by dental distractions and one recent lovely cultural outing. Several months ago, while relatively inebriated, Lovely Boy, Tori, the Hungry One and I booked tickets to see Tim Minchin’s musical version of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, a Royal Shakespeare Company commission that has finally made its way to London. The relatively inebriated part is important because for a while there we forgot we’d even booked the tickets and when we remembered we couldn’t then remember when we’d booked them for or who had the email with the tickets to print. A series of careful deductions solved the mystery and on Thursday we found ourselves at the Cambridge Theatre in Seven Dials.

Tim Minchin’s genius is well established and the success of Matilda was made abundantly clear recently when it won seven Olivier Awards, including one for Minchin's song book. The set was extraordinary, the precocious talent that was the young Matilda was extraordinary and Minchin’s witty lyrics brought a spiked, intelligent, knowing humour to the dark themes of Dahl’s classic. It took two whole days for the sweetly demonic “My mummy thinks I’m a miracle” refrain of the opening song’s chorus to unclaw itself from my brain. A funny, brilliant man if ever there was one.

I’m not sure if we’ll see anything on Broadway while we’re in New York but if we don’t manage it I suspect we’ll just add it to the list for next time. As long as it’s not another decade. 

Rain, rain....

I’ve had a very quiet last 10 days thanks mostly to the free gift of a chest infection that came with my cold two weeks ago. A strongly worded talking to from Mum sent me to the doctor on Monday and I’m now working my way through a heavy dose of antibiotics. Oh the joy. I think because I tend to diagnose hypochondria before anything else I didn’t actually stop to consider my inability to breathe properly and what that might mean. I’m still quite exhausted, wan - in that fabulous Victorian sense of being both weak and white – and going through the tissues, but am stubbornly on the mend. And would be pushing on even if I wasn’t.

Thankfully the weather has co-operated marvellously and provided ideal indoor weather throughout – we’re talking heavy rain with thunder and lightning, single digit temperatures and a bracing wind. Delightful. And they’ve just forecast the coldest May in a hundred years so that should be something to look forward to. Or should I say to look forward to escaping. See you soon New York.

I wish I could say I took this with an arty filter...

The weather has been rubbish since Easter really. The winds and spitting rain on Easter Sunday that accompanied us on our trip to Hatfield House only gave the big, dark manor an even more austere feeling. And last Friday when we went to dinner in Notting Hill it was the chillies in the Pad Thai at the Churchill Arms and not the should-be-balmy-season that warmed our bones.

Hatfield House, Hertfordshire

I’m not sure if I’ve written about the Churchill Arms before. It’s this totally quirky pub in Notting Hill, on the 27 bus route towards Kensington High St and is probably best known for its evolving foliage. At Christmas time it’s covered in small fir trees and lights – in Spring (otherwise known as now despite all evidence to the contrary) it looks like this:

Inside it’s a hoarder’s delight. Everything hangs from everywhere a la higgledy-piggledy – ceramic pots and pewter jugs dangle from the roof; signs, certificates, photographs and strange charts jostle on the walls, skewed perilously, and throughout the bar and into the always-busy Thai restaurant out the back, there’s even more foliage. Heading to the loos feels like an amble through someone’s neglected greenhouse. And because of all this and more, the place is something of an institution and is thus regularly jammed with people. We were there with some freshly betrothed Aussie friends for an overdue catch up and had a grand time talking wedding planning survival strategies between mouthfuls of noodles.

Inside The Churchill Arms

This weekend has also been punctuated by some great meals. On Friday we had Argentinian steak at Buen Ayre on Broadway Market with an extended collection of some of my most favourite Antipodeans and then last night we caught up with Tor and Andy at Wahaca, the ultimate triple treat of great friends, guacamole and salty margaritas.

Today has been blissfully uneventful. I’ve pottered about the house while Lovely Boy’s been out and I have unapologetically enjoyed having the whole house to myself. Space is such a rare commodity in London – headspace, personal space, regular old space space – that lately I’ve been taking every opportunity I can to be home alone. I did occur to me today that next weekend I might take myself off to Regents Park for a picnic with the papers and to find some open space to occupy. But then of course I looked at the forecast. 

A Martin Creed crush and a date to Sketch

I rather love the work of Martin Creed. There’s a manly sort of whimsy to much of it, leaving aside his more-realist-than-needs-be Sick and Sex films, which I encountered for the first time at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham in 2008 while still studying my MA. There are times when an image really shouldn’t get stuck in your head…

But there’s a deftness too in the way he ascribes art amongst the ordinary and everyday and a sense of amusement too, more than perhaps humour. I’m not sure if you would call it conceptual art punctured by an unpretentious realism or realist art with a witty and knowing surrealist bent.

Martin Creed, Work No. 227, 2001

Creed is perhaps most famous for winning the Turner Prize in 2001 for his Work No.227 – the infamous room with the lights that turned themselves on and off. But I’m thinking of his 2008 Duveen Commission for Tate Britain, Work no. 850, where an athlete ran the length of the Duveen Galleries, full pelt, every 30 seconds, every day from July to November and Work No. 409 (2005), that’s now installed in the JCB lift at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank. Here, a recording plays every time the lift is used: a group of singers’ voices rise and fall as the lift ascends and descends. It’s both theatrically daggy and unapologetically it is what it is that you can’t help but like it.

Martin Creed, Work No. 850, 2008

Aaaanyway. Creed’s latest work can be found at Sketch on Conduit St. Sketch is many things – achingly cool among them – but in amongst the kinetic sculptures, members bars and impressive cocktail lists there’s also a restaurant. I’ve been to Sketch once before – to the bar with someone who knew someone who worked on the door and I caught a glimpse of the restaurant then on my way to the famed bathrooms (google it to believe it). At the time, it had wallpaper in the form of some sort of video art, with deer ambling their way across the walls. Now, the restaurant has Martin Creed.

Specifically, it has Work No. 1343 and Work No. 1347, two works specially commissioned in the first of a programme of artist-conceived restaurants at Sketch. The commission specifically is to create an environment that is “at once an exhibition, an artwork and a restaurant” and that was all I needed to know to make a booking for Lovely Boy and myself over the Easter long weekend. Tori would be horrified, chef Pierre Gagnaire would likely be offended, but I didn’t even bother to look at the menu before making the booking, such is my Commitment To Contemporary Art.

Martin Creed redefining a pop-up menu at Sketch

Lovely Boy thought we should postpone, what with my hacking, gagging and trailing tissues but I was nothing if not charmingly stubborn. And I’m so glad we went. And not just because the food was as good as the art.

Martin Creed Work No. 1347 & Work No. 1343, 2012
(With the lights on....) Image c/ Sketch

Creed’s two works take in the floor - Work No. 1347 - 96 different types of earthy coloured marble from all around the world, arranged in zigzag formation across the room and then Work No. 1343 – basically everything else. Creed has taken out the tables, chairs, cutlery, glassware, crockery, light fittings, lamps, bar stools and video art and replaced everything with something unique. It’s a dazzling partnership of art and function as handmade meets mass-produced with antiques, contemporary design and junk store chic coming together across decades and continents to create a dynamic, colourful, clever but resolutely unpretentious space where no two objects are the same.

A nice press image c/ Sketch

We were sat at a yellow Formica table, my seat an old wooden swivel chair with inlaid designs and a horse embroidered cushion and my wine glass a memento from the Willesden West Rotary Club. The gentleman at the table next to us was sitting in one of those lecture hall seats with the attached desk while across the room another chair was covered entirely in what looked like leather post-it notes. Each wall had its own large-scale work of art and only the bar staff matched in their smart black and white striped shirts.

Some more press images c/ Sketch

It was such an engaged, lively, lovely environment to be in, with the mishmash of lights overhead washing the space in a warm, intimate light and the way in which the outdoor furniture negated the ostentatious Chanel jewellery of its sitter across the room. Our waiter told us that every evening the room is rearranged so no two experiences are the same. It’s like that childhood birthday game where you move amongst the chairs in time to the music but instead of one being removed, it’s simply replaced. And happily, no one goes without cake.  

Our collection of wine and water glasses

Refreshingly, given the whole set up, the service was totally without pretension and the staff were as informed about Creed’s work as they were about the menu. Broadbean soup with goats cheese for entree, veal blanquette for main and sorbet and macaroons for dessert, the food was a perfect mix of interesting and delicious and I can still taste the bubblegum in Lovely Boy’s dessert, something called a Malabar featuring Bourbon vanilla-infused milk, strawberry mousse, bubble gum ice cream and marshmallow. Bloody hell it was good.

As an art experiece, it was joyous – humorous, democratic, memorable. As a food experience, it was sophisticated and fun. I’m not sure what else you can ask for, but my admiration for Creed continues, as does my love for non-traditional art-filled, art-fuelled environs.

It was such a special night, one of those crazy truly London-only moments, reinforced by the amble home down Regents St to Piccadilly Circus tube. I have to confess it wasn’t a cheap night but then, only Damien Hirst puts a price on art right?