Gormley at White Cube

Doing my civic duty I picked up a newspaper from the pavement.  It was the  Evening Standard, full of interesting stuff including Antony Gormley's new show, Model, at White Cube.  My local White Cube in Bermondsey, which would fit in well with my plan to explore Bermondsey Street.

Carrying Southwark Council booklet The Story of Bermondsey, I walked down Jamaica Road, pioneering a new route to Bermondsey Street.  Down Tanner Street, in the bit the bus can't penetrate,  I found a massive warehouse full of antique furniture, very nice.  On to Tower Bridge Road and the squat little church of St. Mary Magdalen with its astonishingly low steeple, hardly a steeple at all.  But the church is the oldest building in Bermondsey, built in 1291 right next to Bermondsey Abbey.  The Abbey stood roughly between Grange Walk, where there are still remains of the Gatehouse, and Bermondsey Square where the Friday antiquyes market is held.  The small building by the church was the parish watch house, where any local malefactors were detained by the night watchmen.

 
 


Bermondsey Street runs across Tower Bridge Road here.  It is probably the oldest street in Bermondsey, narrow with warehouses on either side and cobbled alleys leading into old yards. It is the place I fell in love with on my very first visit to Bermondsey, walking across Tower Bridge to Zandra Rhodes Museum of Fashion and Textile.



The gleaming modernity of White Cube stands back behind a courtyard.  In the Model Room Antony Gormley was talking about his maquets, fascinating essays in translating the human form into cubes and playing around with extending them.  Perspex and wire models and drawings show the internal working structures.  In the white rooms the nearly black metal models are austere and beautiful; standing, lying, crouching.  Finally, stretching the length of one room, lies an interactive cubed form, an exploration of inner and outer space.  Enter the tunnel at the toe, adjusting to the dark, and feeling cautiously, a hand out and up to feel the wall and ceiling.  Explore the marks on the surface.  Crawl through the dark, dark tunnel towards faint light.  See the square of light ceiling where the roof opens up, fortuitously incorporating the square light fittings of the gallery.  Sitting on a shelf and looking around I saw shades of grey squares superimposed one on another, with one triangle of light.  Then there was a very, very dark space, pitch velvet black but with a faint reflective gleam from some far wall.  Walking slowly forward, hand outstretched and raised, I suddenly hit a barrier, the reflection was deceptive.  This is the head.  Then back to where I found a shelf and a space darker than the dark around and crawled to the back.  I observed invisibly and sat and listened to the boom, boom of people's feet on the metal, drummed with my hand and someone drummed back. 
I wondered when I saw the perspex maquets why Gormley made the final model opaque but now I understood.  Transparent would be another story.

whitecube.com/

 

Eel Pie and Mash

The first time I tried eel was down The Cut, by the Young Vic.  I had gone to see Trevor Nunn's  
Timon of Athens, so that is a long time ago.  I had, I think, jellied eels, in a white-tiled eel pie shop.  I went to look for it last week but it is not there now.

 
My next eel was at Lou Farrow's Snack Bar and Take Away; Traditional Pie and Mash,  down the Blue, off Blue Anchor Lane, just past the railway bridge, in Bermondsey.  It is a cafe.  I went in and asked for eel pie and mash and the man at the counter said something I didn't understand.  He said it again, I still didn't understand.  He asked again so I said 'yes'.  He gave me a pie, some mashed potato a bowl of green liquid with chunks of something interesting in it, and another bowl of more green liquid.  The eels were in the first bowl.  They were, well, interesting.  The green liquid was like a thick green soup.  It turned out he was asking me if I wanted extra 'liquor'; the green soup.   Till last week I thought it was pea soup but it isn't.

 Last week I went to Manze's Noted Eel & Pie House which is on Tower Bridge Road.  I got beef pie, very nice, stewed eels, soft and succulent, on the same plate, with mashed potato, and, separately, more of the mysterious green soup stuff.  This time as I understood what the woman serving was saying, I asked her what was in it, and it turned out to be parsley.    It was pretty good.  There is another Manze Eel Pie House in Peckham which I will try next time I am up that way.  The shop was full of locals, eating at long wooden tables, with a few Japanese tourists, probably looking for authentic London grub, like me.
The original shop was established in 1902, there is an internet site, and they say they will deliver throughout the UK, to other pie shops.

 

After that I walked back to the market at The Blue and found the fishmonger, who was selling jellied eels.  They were in salt jelly, which was nice, but the eels were a bit rubbery.  I need to experiment further with these.  The fishmonger told me that these days the eels don't come from the Thames but all the way from Ireland; Mick's Eels.  The lion sculpture in the market was paid for by local shop keepers and may, or may not, be the Milwall Lion.

According to Wikipedia there still about 80 eel pie and mash shops around the east end of London so I still have more investigating to do.  One, Goddards, was previously on Deptford High Street and  is now behind Greenwich market.  Eel Pie Island, far away up the river near Hampton Court, is called that because Londoners from the East End went there on days out and wanted their traditional  food.

Lion sculpture in The blue