Echoing the London elephants, Kingston is currently full of toads.

I found this one outside the Hull Truck Theatre.

Anyway, we found him yesterday, in the grounds of Chelsea Royal Hospital.

He wasn’t alone…

America has many joys, along with a few bummers as well, but I’ll save them for another time.

Anyway, visiting the San Frncisco Museum of Modern Art (known as SFMOMA), David asked me if I’d spotted Wally.  Now I didn’t expect to find Wally the children’s stripy jumpered bobble hatted specky geek in such a highbrow museum and it turned out that we were both right: Wally was on a nearby rooftop readily viewable from the corridor leading to SFMOMA’s new roof garden which had only opened a few days before.

Anyway, there are no doubt many children dragged along to the rather stuffy art gallery delighted to spot Wally (or in most cases, Waldo) for themselves.

(Actually, the museum isn’t stuffy at all, but much of the installations aren’t particularly child-centric. David was bemused by the Caravan and the child surrounded by hundreds of poodles though).

(Click for bigger pics)

David expressed an interest in revisiting the Baltic by the Tyne and there was a lot to see.

The headline event was the A-Z Project by Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara who had constructed a sort of seaside shantytown in the biggest gallery space on level 4. Several ramshackle looking structures linked by walkways housed variations on his trademark cute small girl with big eyes. There was also a mini-castle doghouse with a dog inside and a dog on top. Beyond the exhibition was a huge head known as Puff Marshie. From the gallery, you got a different perspective of the roof lines and could see that the tallest building (based on the Newcastle Keep) was “To Let”.

On level three,an exhibition called Double Agent interacted with the visitors in a mildly uncomfortable way. A large projection screen had a series of real-time scrolling sentences generally commenting on what was actually happening in the gallery, aided and abetted by a woman at the back with a Mac. She commentedsomething on the lines of:

The boy is handsome.

The one with the stripy green top.

Someone has  a long thin package.

Perhaps a musical instrument.

Or maybe a monopod.

The stairlift is empty again.

There is a new watcher in the gallery.

Someone has come for a look.

(You get the idea).

There was an interactive exhibit here, a stairlift that went up the wall about six feet, being projected onto. You rode it up (after having put on your seat belt) then lifted a cloth on a box at eye level and looked inside. When I did it I found a video playing of two old wrinkled women of unspecified national dress (dark smocks and bonnets) sucking each other’s finger and laughing a lot. Yes, it was slightly disturbing.

David and Karen declined to give it a go on the basis that I looked like a right Div when I did it. The sacrifices I make for my art…