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April 13, 2003
Sue's 15 Minutes of Fame
It's a beautiful day. "I don't want to sit inside blogging and browsing the web on a beautiful day like this," I thought. "I want to sit outside blogging and browsing the web." So I'm now in the garden, watching the children playing in the hammock while Steven fixes the stabilisers on Marianne's bike. The garden's a bit of a sight, having had almost no attention this year, but it's still mostly ok as long as you don't look closely.
On Thursday Sue Mason and I went to the National Portrait Gallery for the opening of Self Portrait UK. Several thousand self-portraits were submitted from all over the country, and they chose 70 for the touring exhibition, of which one was Sue's biro picture of herself belly-dancing. Now, this looks exactly like a thousand other Sue fillos that you may have seen (plenty of examples here). But this one's in the National Portrait Gallery so we're basically thrilled.
The opening was jolly, and fell into three parts. First, everyone looked at the exhibition, somewhat subdued, sipping wine. Then they took us into a lecture theatre and spoke for a bit, and showed us some of the short films about the pictures that will be on Channel 4 next week (after the news). And then we all drank a lot more wine, all the artists started talking to each other, everyone said how much they loved each other's portraits, and so we continued until they slung us out and we waddled home drunkenly.
Our favourite self-portrait was by Suzy Mason (no relation), who'd submitted a Sainsbury's receipt and written 'You can learn more about me from my shopping basket than from my face'. Damn right. You can go and see the exhibition from now till July, and entry's free.
Posted by Alison at April 13, 2003 01:11 PM