Merry Monday pursuers everywhere! Tomorrow I am going in to have my evil mutant wisdom tooth of doom surgically removed and am taking the rest of the week off – I therefore have a thousand and one things to do today but am I doing any of them – HELL NO! Hoho. Instead I am championing odd cheap exhibitions everywhere, as usual.This week I was joined in my cultural pursuit by the lovely Sam, or PhD Sam as he has been known when gracing this blog previously. We had originally intended to go to the Surreal House, or whatever it’s called, at the Barbican. This was Sam’s idea and alas I hadn’t quite made the link in my head that this was about SURREALISM, rather than just being some weird installation piece. Therefore, come Sunday in the City the last thing either of us really wanted to do was be intellectually and artistically challenged and instead were desirous of looking at some pretty pictures, preferably old ones. Thus at the suggestion of clever Sam we headed instead to the lovely, and much underappreciated, Guildhall gallery– GOOD call!
The Guildhall is totally ace. For one thing it is only £2.50 to get in which includes both the exhibition and the rather wonderful permanent collection AS WELL as arguably the best bit = the Roman amphitheatre in the basement!!! You therefore get three things for the price of one woohoo! Would highly recommend a visit to the amphitheatre alone if for nothing other than the funny illuminated green bums they have all over the place to symbolise athletes and gladiators etc. It’s hilarious and truly 80s. The poor bastards didn’t realise it was there until they started building the gallery and had to stop for about 20 years until it was properly excavated– must have been TRES annoying for them! The permanent collection is fab fab fab as they have some really wonderful Victoriana in there including My First Sermon and My Second Sermon by Millais and the CRAZY Woodman’s Daughter by the same artist:
They also have the amazing Israel in Egypt by Poynter which my old tutor Caroline Arscott wrote a very cool essay on all about muscular Christianity if I remember rightly: (check out the hot bods in this):
She also did a very strange class once which discussed the below Moore painting called Pomegranates in-terms of swirling vortexes of times (???):
They also have this rather fabulous early Holman Hunt, who is one of my favourite’s, and some really beautiful Alma-Tadema’s to name but a few:
Last and by no means least is the very weird statue they have of Margaret Thatcher shoved into a corner upstairs, scary:
So, that’s the rather fabulous permanent collection, now onto the exhibition. I have been to see a couple of really rather fabulous shows at the Guildhall in the past, most notably the Watts (more on him later) last year. I have to admit, however, that whilst very enjoyable the exhibition now on is somewhat… well, odd, frankly. Empire Mail: George V and the GPO, according to the website, looks at the passions of King George V, the 'philatelist king', alongside an extraordinary period of design and innovation in the General Post Office during his reign. Basically the point of the exhib was showing how the social and political history of this period is demonstrated through stamps and the development of the post service. So yeah pretty fucking random I think you’ll agree. Cool though, in an ‘I can’t quite believe I’m here but enjoying this anyway’ type of way.So, George V came into power on the anniversary of the penny black – i.e. the first stamp. He was an avid stamp collector collecting stamps specifically from Britain and the Commonwealth and his collection is now seen as one of the very best in the world containing several unique examples, or whatever. It belongs to the queen still who leant it to the Guildhall for this exhibition, how nice. For a stamp exhibition thankfully there seemed to be much fewer stamps on show than you would expect – which is definitely something of a relief. They had some of the rarer examples up including penny blacks, rejected designs for penny blacks, and things like the first stamp from elsewhere in the British Empire i.e. Mauritius. They also had designs for the first commemorative stamps which were for the British Empire Exhibition in 1924 (image at the top of this blog). Embarrassingly I had basically never heard of this one – The Great Exhibition yes and the Festival of Britain yes but nothing in between oops! The British Pavilion was turned into Wembley stadium though so there you go. Apparently the post office had it’s own pavilion along with a special mail service within the arena it was all considered to be so so important.
The rest of the exhibition was rather more interesting than all these stamps with lots of rather amazing blown up photographs of various things. One room was all about the postal service during the First World War and how important it was for the troops etc. They also had info about the Post Office Rifles which was a battalion made up entirely of postman and people who worked for the post office. Employees were actively encouraged to sign up and get their brains blown out – it was so popular in the 1st world war that they had to create a new division, or whatever military word you would use for this. They also had a section about the Suffragettes who had a big old relationship with the post office I knew nothing about, apparently seeing it as “both a means of mass communication and a symbol of the oppressive male Government; as friend and simultaneously foe”. They often vandalised post offices and poured tar, treacle or acid into post boxes as well as attempting to mail themselves to 10 Downing Street at one point as human parcels for the attention of the PM.
Appropriately, given the theme of the exhibition, George V was responsible for the worlds first scheduled air mail flight as part of the celebrations for his Coronation in 1911. A flight was arranged between Windsor and Hendon and postcards which could be sent on this new revolutionary post service were distributed in the local Windsor paper. This, alas, only happened once and it wasn’t until 1919 (ish) that it properly started. I guess air travel was still unbelievably expensive at this point, even for the mail. They also had an example of old school post boxes specifically for airmail which were a regular site in every town in the country until they changed the way it was collected, or something.
The exhibition then moved onto slightly more aesthetically pleasing ground and we had lots of lovely examples of 1930s poster art. This was due to the appointment in 1933 of Sir Stephen Tallents as the first Public Relations Officer for the Post Office. He set about a pretty impressive advertising and PR campaign and also started a competition to design a logo, apparently an early example of branding. He commissioned some of the best artists of the day to create beautiful posters such as the below:
Kenneth Clark of the National Gallery, amongst other luminaries, was part of the selection committee for these, he was also on the committee that judged the entries in the competition to design the official stamp for the British Exhibition in 1924. Artists who were invited to contribute to that competition included Edward Dulac, one of my all time favourite illustrators!
Below is a poster by Vanessa Bell designed to encourage people not to leave their posting until the end of the day to save crowding, unfortunately it was felt to give the wrong type of message and was rejected!
Tallents was also responsible for setting up the GPO film unit who produced numerous films advertising the postal service, some of which were specifically for educational purposes in schools and churches but they also produced news reels and perhaps most importantly the film Night Train which had a general cinema release.
This hugely popular film celebrated the overnight postal trains which were used to both transport the post and sort it on the go. This film is thought to be responsible for putting British documentary making on the map and was hugely successful. W H Audin’s famous poem Night Train was based on the film and below is a link to the poem in case you would like to read it again!:http://www.tynelives.org.uk/stephenson/poem.htm
For all those who enjoy poems about trains here is another FABULOUS one which was a favourite of mine as a kid – read it it’s really good!!:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/from-a-railway-carriage/
They also had a very beautifully illustrated/printed version of Audin’s poem on show which alas I can’t find online. A hugely popular poster was also produced around this time to advertise the night train service. Bastard Guildhall refused to make this into a postcard and instead I had to buy it as a greetings card which cost me more than the entrance fee to the exhib annoyingly:
There was some other groovy stuff on show such as the first postal vans from the 30s and the first delivery motorcycles which were both very shiny, sort of thing men who collect stamps would very much enjoy. There was also some cool info about the London underground mail railway which I have always found very mysterious, romantic and exciting: 
So, it was a very enjoyable if very random experience but in general go to the Guildhall as it’s great and always empty!After we had left Sam took me to see a very strange monument that I can’t believe I had not known about before. If any of you have seen the beyond awful film Closer you will recognise it as being in the park Jude Law and Natalie Portman meet in at the beginning and if I remember rightly the end of the movie. For some, highly coincidental reason it’s called Postman’s Park and it contains the weirdest thing I have seen in a while. Conceived by the fabulous Victorian artist Watts it’s intended as a monument to people who sacrificed themselves to save others in every day life. This is intended to inspire us all to be more heroic and get killed trying to save other people. It’s a series of painted tiles, probably about 30 or so, along this random bit of wall and each is dedicated to one of these ‘everyday heroes’. Most of them seem to have drowned saving unfortunate people, or people more fortunate than them it turns out, some of them burnt to death, a few fell into wells or in front of trains. Seriously morbid stuff – high, HIGH Victorianarama. Love it! My favourite has to be to the man who died of exhaustion having saved people from the ice on Highgate Ponds, one of my favourite spots in London, the one below is also pretty good:
That’s all folks!
