Dulwich Picture Gallery

Despite living close by for almost four years, I had failed to make it to Dulwich Picture Gallery until last weekend (I am closer to the Horniman Museum, you see). Dulwich Picture Gallery is the oldest public art gallery in England, and it's been open to the public since 1817 (more history here). The building was designed by Sir John Soane. 

  

The gallery has paintings, furniture and... other things (what do you classify vases and clocks as? Homewares sounds like a department in BHS). The building's a lot lighter than you might expect.

(If you look closely at the penultimate picture there it's a view of inside the gallery, and you can see a version of the last picture - some of the details, such as the weird lion, were only discovered in later cleaning, so it doesn't look exactly the same)

Oh, and finally, outside the gallery there's a rather odd phone box...

While on balance I'm still more loyal to the Horniman (they have an aquarium in the basement, which basically trumps pretty much everything), I'm really glad that we went on this walk, and DPG a small gallery that doesn't feel crowded the way the bigger ones up in town can. I'd recommend it if you're in the area, and if it's a nice day you're only over the road from Dulwich Park. 

Website: http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/

Dulwich Photography Walk

Last weekend Crishna and I went on a photography walk in Dulwich organised by Dulwich OnView, an online magazine that celebrates people and culture in South East London.

Luckily, it was a lovely day. A small group of us started off at Dulwich Picture Gallery, and Crishna and I went off through Dulwich Park in the direction of some street art we were interested in (pictures below).

The first bit of art we found was near Dulwich Library by Nunca, and it's a giant bee holding a load of mugs of tea. And she's on a throne, but I only just realised that when I read the description. 

We then went to Goodrich Road to see a piece by someone calling themselves Phlegm. Lovely. 

There's an online map here showing where the rest of the artworks are - I will be doing this as soon as I have a chance. 

We also took some general photos around Dulwich, although we only had an hour for the first walk so it was quite quick. We got back to the photo gallery in time, though, and had some lunch (yay) and photo discussion, followed by a wander around the gallery.

(Picture gallery photos in the next post)