At the National Gallery again


It’s Deepavali in Singapore this weekend, and that means a day off. With my previous employers, we’d always get the following Monday off, but now we get the preceding Friday off instead. That meant I could push La Serpiente Aquatica Negra to school in the running stroller, and then run her back in the afternoon. I didn’t realise that the hot weather and my tired legs would conspire to brutalise me on this journey, even though I seemed to get to the school in record time. I recovered by eating cupcakes, then ran home without the stroller, showered and got changed into proper clothes and went to get Destroyer to her music class.

Unlike La Serpiente, who ran around berserk in every lesson, Destroyer is much calmer and just sits there. She’s actually better at drumming than her sister; La Serpiente runs around like a mentalist, but then when given the opportunity for a drum solo, panics and forgets what to do. Destroyer, on the other hand, sits quietly and patiently and then bangs the drum when it’s presented. Which is nice.

After that, I went home and slept for a few hours, then went to the National Gallery. There’s a new exhibition collaborating with the Tate to show colonial art (and responses from artists in the colonised places). I was a little disappointed; there were some really interesting pieces with political comment to them (like a set of statues of British soldiers, if the Zulus had invaded London) but predominantly it was a lot of paintings of colonial generals and such and it didn’t feel that there was much dialogue. Just "here are some paintings".

I did learn two things though: the statue of Raffles in Boat Quay is a replica (although it’s a mystery to me where the original is) and if you take a photo of a painting of the British surrendering to the Japanese, you’re breaching copyright and a man will follow you around the gallery until you delete it from your phone. The same painting is in the exhibition catalogue, so I’m wondering if you’d also get into trouble for photographing the photograph of the painting. Wheels within wheels.

I didn’t run home with La Serpiente after that as my legs were too tired; instead, I wheeled her slowly home while she ate Halloween-provided Oreos. Not a bad day, all in all.


One response to “At the National Gallery again”

  1. Yep, the fall of Singapore was the biggest military embarrassment in UK history. We had no air cover, no tanks, soldiers panicked and fled. Masscares ensued, and many POWs didn’t last long. It’s so different to modern Japan, where grown men hang cartoon characters on their mobile phones, and their little policemen wear white gloves. I still think the Spielberg depiction in Empire of Sun isn’t a bad attempt. We’ve got Nolan’s Dunkirk coming in Jan – can’t wait for that.

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