London 15-02-17 am

There were two inconveniences were behind my spontaneous trip to the Tate this morning. Firstly my friend Bradley, who I was supposed to meet in the morning, texted me to inform me he was incredibly hungover and would I mind pushing the meet back to two so he had a bit more time to recover and secondly my train to Victoria was cancelled so I wound up on the Thameslink to Blackfriars. Arriving a short walk from the Tate Modern with 3 hours to kill it seemed the most logical option.

It’s always mad revisiting London now I no longer live there. I used to dread it, my flat in the east became my burrow that I never left for fear of the isolation of being surrounded by thousands of people who did not care about you or your wellbeing. That’s a dark outlook I am aware, but being an 18 year old fresh out of my countryside home I was not ready for the scary feat of the capital. Now I don’t live there I’m back to being incredibly fond of the place.

I had a pretty productive morning, it’s been a while since I’ve explored the permanent collection at the Tate so I thought I’d have an amble through them again, them being free as well was also a bonus. I found some gorgeous sketching material and the book about Surrealism and Dadaism I had been reading on the train also provided some good food for thought as I explored.

Hilariously, I did a sketch of Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ thinking how ironic it was that it was still on display in the Tate however many years later and that such an iconic piece of anti art could be valued and in an institution like the Tate for ‘art education’ purposes. It wasn’t until the next day when I was talking to my Grampa about it that he told me the original had been lost many years ago and the one I had seen was simply a replica from the 60s.