October Plenty Harvest Festival,The Lions Part

I went to see the October Plenty Festival at the weekend. The Lions Part a group of performers were running this Harvest Festival event an Bankside, Shakespeare's Globe and Borough Market.

There was a great Berry or Green Man, Corne Queene and other costumed performers including a Hobby Horse and a wagon of harvest plenty.In the Globe they put on a play, The Tempests Masque which was good fun and then there was a procession which I followed to Borough Market.

The market were celebrating Apple Day and it was interesting to see all the stalls, the Lions Part also performed another play and lead games and activities.Good to see some traditions being kept alive in London.

I was taking photographs for my exhibition on traditions and seasons, which will be up in the Hornbeam in a few weeks time.

Frieze Art Fair.

I finally got to Frieze this year. I had been meaning to go for some years and hadn't managed it. Frieze seems to get a lot of hype and I suppose is the main International contemporary art fair here in London.

Perhaps because I had expectations of it, I was a bit disappointed in the actual show. There were some good international galleries showing work that I found a bit different, but lots of work seemed pretty average really.I did like the commissioned project for charity collecting boxes though and the Berlin gallery folk inspired art work. The beautiful paintings with wax surfaces, deer, leaves and gold by Nana Funo caught my imagination and Ricardo Roggan's photographs of pine trees and wooded landscapes.

David Shrigley's cartoon style work had a whole space and he was on the stand doing hand drawn tattoos for visitors when I was there.

British Customs on Hampstead Heath

In my quest to find remaining British traditions I have been out about when the weather was fine and one trip was out to Hampstead Heath for the Conker championships, welly wanging and morris dancing.

The morris dancers were from Cecil Sharpe House, somewhere I still need to visit, and they had traditional costume including the hankies. Interestingly I did hear a few comments from people about how ridiculous they were. One Mom telling her children that in very negative way. What is it about the Morris that brings up such ridicule? is it just the hankies? Have we lost some of the actual power and real meaning of the dances? It will be interesting to find out more.

The conker championship had a lot of contestants, and it was one of the morris dancers who was last years champion and also won this year.


The welly wanging competition also saw some serious competition, actually it was all good fun there with stalls and info about the heath and other places nearby.



I took photos, noticing the long shadows as we're moving into that low Autumn sun now. The trees are only just getting their Autumn colours though. It will be good to get to the parks when they are really colourful.

Street Photography project

I have joined in with a new Street Photography project is a collaboration by The Photographers Gallery and Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren who have written the recent Street Photography now book.

The project started on Oct 1st and instructions are posted online each week by leading photographers to inspire participants in their image of the week. Any one can join in at any time and 1 photo can be uploaded to their Flickr group.Flickr group here
My 2 responses to the 2 weeks instructions, " If you can smell the street by looking at the photo, then it's a street photo" Bruce Gilden, and "Turn your attention to the four legged population" Ying Tang.