Sometimes an urban drift really doesn’t have to be all that dramatic. Yesterday’s went from Green Park to Oxford Circus, which neither I nor anybody else would think of as prime drifting territory, but it had its moments.
First stop, and in fact most of the reason for the trip, was the William Eggleston exhibition at the David Zwirner gallery.
It was great: a smallish show of big pictures, and it was truly wonderful. In general I’m all for exhibitions that take place in unconventional and alternative spaces, but sometimes you go into a white, bright, high-ceilinged space and you understand why some galleries choose to be that way.
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| Picture from David Zwirner Gallery. |
Next, up behind Oxford Circus, it was time to new, and perhaps last, look at the Welbeck Street multistory car park which used to look like this:
but now looks like this:
and will soon look like nothing at all, as it’s about to be demolished.
Oxford Circus, of course, was recently one of the scenes of the Extinction Rebellion protest, which I walked past, or through, a couple of times, and it all seemed fairly good humoured, and there was no problem getting in and out of the tube station, but we know not everybody saw it that way.
Although there were many complaints about the real or imagined middle-classness of the protesters, I didn’t see anybody objecting on the grounds that it was “too white.“ Maybe middle-class is synonymous with whiteness. On the other hand there were these two who were slapping on the white face:
and there was this guy, who carried his whiteness with a twist:
