London in words...

Seoul Museum of Art

I have been wanting to go to Seoul Museum of Art for a while, so today I decided just to get on subway and head over. It was a good decision. Seoul Museum of Art is housed in the old Supreme Court building near City Hall subway station. Its currently showing 'City_net Asia 2009', The Seoul Arts exhibition and permanent exhibition of the AMAZING Korean artist 'Chun Kyung Ja' who I am now in love with. It also cost 700 won to get in which is about 30p. Ridiculous.

City_net Asia 2009 is an annual exhibition compromising contemporary art from galleries based in Seoul, Istanbul, Tokyo and Beijing. It was great viewing and the best thing is that it closes in the next month and then the 2010 exhibition opens! Annoyingly you weren't allowed to take photos inside, however I did buy the accompanying book so will be able to show you all at some point.

The 'Chun Kyung Ja' exhibition was beautiful, a retrospective of whole vein for her work, that she herself has donated. Unfortunately there was no english text accompanying the exhibition, so to learn about her I relied on google when I got home. Obviously everyone else loves her too, as the book and postcards from the exhibition had all sold out in the shop... grrr. Her work is very figurative and very colourful, almost Kahlo-esque. She also has alot of pieces inspired by literature which I loved the most. I am definitely going back.

The Seoul Arts exhibition sector, was my least favourite - mainly because I prefer paintings to creaft based art, and this season it was themed on crafts... alot of ceramics etc etc. Pretty and I could appreciate it but it just wasn't really my cup of tea.

Korea Now.

'Sun Mu' is an escaped North Korean Artist whose solo exhibition 'Korea Now' is currently being held at Art Space in Hongdae. Its intriguing viewing... as close as contemporary North Korean Propaganda Art as I will probably get...

Insa-dong

After the Korean museum of Buddhist art, we headed into Insa-dong. Insa-dong was a short walk from the Palace and the museum and is key area for Art in Seoul - not that we actually made it to any Galleries! We had been quite cultured out by this point, and due to the amount of Art and Artists Insa-dong is a fairly bohemian area and they had some amazing shops and I managed to pick up som great pieces of jewelrey, before we did the stereotypical thing of going to McDonald's for some food! I went for the McChicken Sandwich meal which was ten times better than the ones you get in the UK! (They flavour the chicken so it has somewhat of a kick to it!) As well as jewelrey i managed to pick up some more incense (its very Korean to constantly burn incense in ones home - well it's very Korean with westerners anyhow!)

Korean Museum of Buddhist Art

So after hitting up Changdeokgung Palace we saw a sign informing us that a mere 250 yards up a side street was 'The Korean museum of Buddhist Art', not wanting to miss an opportunity and with no immediate, definite plans we went in search of the Museum. The first thing we learnt is that the distances on Korean signposts are not very accurate, about 15 minutes of walking down the street nearing the point of giving up and guessing the signpost was old we finally found the museum. As expected it was a small building, but modern and it looked impressive. We paid 10,000 won (about a fiver) and purchased a month museum pass that allowed us into five other museums, we decided it was worth it as single entrance was 5000 won. The museum was in two parts, two floors of a permanent exhibition and then 2 floors of a temporary exhibition, the lovely lady at the door gave us a great little English guide, a glass of water and a free postcard as we left. It was a great little museum, that gave a good initial insight into Buddhist art, something I am not particularly familiar with. Some of it fit with the imagined sterotype of what it would be like and some was way of the mark, I managed to get a few photos of some rather funky pieces so take a look yourself.......