63 Building

The 63 building is one of the most recognizable features of the Seoul skyline, officially known as the Korea Life Insurance building it sits on Yeouido Island in the middle of the Han river. Its nickname 'The 63 building' comes from the fact that the building is 63 floors high... however this is kind of a lie as three of the floors are below ground so it is actually only 60 floors above ground. It is essentially like a mall... and contains a bunch of shops, an Aquarium, Wax museum, Imax cinema and Skyart Art gallery apparently the highest gallery in the world which contains some of the highlights of Pop art from the likes of Warhol et al. The Skyart gallery is on the 60th floor and the view of Seoul, despite it being a rather wintery foggy day was amazing... on a clear summers day it would be even better...

View from the top...

in the art gallery..... my favourite piece - apart from Warhol's Diamond dust shoes... in Korea you can only take photos of art if there is a person in the picture... hence the shadow of Shauna Teacher in hiding!!

Message wall on the top floor... people write things about the people they love... or things like 'The Irish were here!'... jokes...

Werid gnome garden....

Aquarium.... these sharks were fake

These penguins were are real! I LOVE PENGUINS! I was very over excited!

This penguin was soooooo cool and so close!!

This dude was touchable... however the sign said he might bite... wish i had just grabbed him and hidden him in bag

These fish were so cute! Love there lips....

Well it wouldn't be a proper aquarium if you couldn't find NEMO!!!!!

The wax museum of the 63 building is just weird.... they had Jesus and the entire 'cast' of The Last Supper.....

David Beckham...........

And ummm........ Gandhi!

Last but not least we went to see some freaky 3D film, this is me in my specs!!!

Random Korea...

You can watch television on your phones. Most koreans do. This dude was watching the news on the bus...

What not to do on the subway

emergency breathing apparatus on the subway... did the Koreans not see Titanic? Did not learn the valuable lesson about the lifeboats? I really hope I am not involved in a scenario on the subway that would involve the use o this apparatus. There are clearly not enough masks to go around

TOTO

Toto is a rather bizarre toy museum/shop in Insa-dong, full of forgotten and battered dolls and all of the other childhood toys that you forgot about... or didn't. I was very happy to see a cabbage patch doll make an appearance - even it did look rather sad and abused...

Saturday in Insa-dong

A few weeks back we headed into Insa dong to do some wandering, see some art and generally immerse ourselves in Seoul culture...

I stopped myself from going totally crazy and spending all my cash on random pieces of pretty junk however I will be going back and next time I am highly likely to come back with a birdcage...

Kimchi

Kimchi is 'the' food of Korea, it is served with EVERYTHING a kind of cabbagey, spicey thing that is apparently very good for you. Kimchi season is now and a few weeks back our school cooks and various othe random ajumma's spent the day making the vast amounts of Kimchi the school were require for the following year.

Minjae Lee

I found the artist Minjae Lee on the internet rather randomly, it was a complete fluke that he happened to be South Korean. I love his style, especially this picture. According to research he's a fairly young guy with no formal training. I found a website but annoyingly its all in Korean! Grrr....

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...