The London Report (long one!)
Hello friends!
I’m writing to you today from a friend’s dining room table. I’ve been staying at his place for about a week now, and I head off to Taipei tomorrow morning - the final stop on my November world tour.
To be honest with you, as much fun as travel’s been, as much as it’s pushed me to think and learn, I am starting to just be ready to be home. To be in my bed, on my couch, doing my things. Everyone’s been great while traveling, I’d hate to sound ungrateful (because I’m far from it!), but it’s just that time - where one starts to think ‘gosh it’d be nice to unpack’.
Still! There is a LOAD to discuss.
Like Amsterdam, my time in London has been very up to me. There’s no fair, no work commitments, no teaching - London is a place I was able to organise free accommodation and relax, seeing friends and wandering around.
Like Amsterdam, and Paris, this led me to do some really deep reflecting and thinking - which I believe has been really beneficial.
First of all, one of the most important parts of this trip was the time I spent at the London Centre for Book Arts. This is a studio/teaching space/retail space that’s absolutely amazing for folks like me. It is, in fact, the first place I ever learned book binding, way back in 2016. The Centre offers a range of workshops - teaching folks how to make their own books, use a letterpress machine or even how to use a foiler (nerds only will understand that one), it also offers studio passes where, after some learning, anyone can rent time and use the state of the art equipment to make their own books, prints, etc. Finally, it has a small but well stocked shop with books, book making tools and cool printed things. A shop I wanted to buy a lot from!
This was an important space for me to spend time in as, one of my medium-term goals is to transform the workshops I do into a Melbourne Book Centre. Which is not something I think I’ve shared yet. So visiting, taking a workshop as a student, and spending time at LCBA really helped me learn from an estalbished organisation who’s doing it and sketch out a path from where I am now - someone who can teach - to where I’d like to be - someone who owns/operates a studio/retail/workshop space. In some ways this is both my largest ambition AND my most likely to succeed vision.
A big part of upgrading my garage in 2025/finding an appropriate studio is to start this transition where how I teach and what students learn vastly improves with better equipment and for-purposes spaces. Assuming that goes well there’s then an inevitable transition to a larger space and then, hopefully, scope to employ people. But we’re talking 3-5 years away for that last step, I think. I mention these things because visiting and participating gives me dozens of clear ideas for what I’d like to do and how it would work and the different ways it could earn me a living, alongside publishing, of course.
So, the LCBA - absolutely crucial place to visit at this point and one of the main reasons I went to London instead of, say, exploring somewhere new.
I also spent a lot of time thinking and sketching based on the sorts of things I wrote about last week. It’s been a good time, with lots of messages to my business partner and some renewed thinking and clarity. I’m feeling good about where we’re looking for 2025 - a year where we perhaps publish fewer books than I planned, but with more ambition and clearer business cases for success. This is a work in progress and what’s making me feel excited is that the challenges in Singapore and Paris - where my hopeful retail dreams were not quite met - has turned into some productive reflection and renewed energy for a better direction. One with a larger customer base, I think!
Another thing I’ve been thinking a lot about in London is how LUCKY I am to be in Australia, a non-fashionable place. In Paris and London I would occasionally end up in a book store, or gallery, that really prioritises capital-F Fashion. A book store I visited, for example, had old catalogues from run way shows, published books by commercial photographers of their Prada shoots. One shop I visited in Paris had just the most sloppy and obnoxious layout, making it a cool place to hang out but an atrocious book store to find anything, browse anything or purchase anything. I would not want Tall Poppy’s books stocked there. A gallery I visited in London seemed to have a ‘outfits cost 1000 pounds to enter’ energy.
I find people wanting to look good or present themselves in whatever way they want to completely reasonable, occasionally impressive and often very curious. I find the seemingly inherent elitism, snobbishness and obsession with who’s hot right now of fashion immature and exhausting. To see those traits mirrored (in my eyes, at least) in book stores, galleries and communities was a bit of a let down.
But, seeing that, I realise how at home I am in Melbourne where, to be sure, some of that exists, but not nearly as much as say, the cities where the big fashion houses are. I’m still trying to work out why this bugs me, but it does. I feel like a frumpy fellow wandering in with my ergonomic backpack, orthopedic shoes and comfy jeans, and I sort of resent places that create atmospheres that are specifically exclusive. It’s just yucky. Like I said at the start of the paragraph, that feeling is independent of, say, a really nice clothes shop, or someone taking a specific pride in their appearance. Things/people can be cool without being too cool.
Finally, I wanted to pick up on a thread from last week: colonial looting and museums. Today I visited the British Museum which was just such a waste of time. It was PACKED - every room I stuck my head into was claustrophobic. I wanted to see an exhibition of Afghan rugs, but to get there I had to get through the Egyptian section which was just wall-to-wall with primary school kids. I actually couldn’t hack it, even with a map, ear plugs to reduce ambient noise, and a plan it was just futile trying to move through the museum.
At this museum I started thinking a lot about one question: who is this place for? As it stands, it’s impossible to take it all in, or even SEE most of the displays, and yet to some extent the volume is the appeal of the museum. Many people must visit simply because one can see SO MUCH. Ironically, though, I think that means you see very little.
The British Museum is as close as I’ve been to a museum of everything and, to me, it ended up being a miserable experience. I wondered, what if it was split up? What if there was a textile museum for people like me who wanted to see the rugs and another museum for coins and clocks, and another for British history and another for religious artifacts. I think I’d personally get more out of dividing my time between different spaces - I end up spending more time and enjoying what I saw way more.
But maybe it’s not for the curious nerds like myself. Maybe it’s a good place to learn? But then I thought about students, coming in large groups, navigating the tourists and visitors in a packed, crowded and stifling space - surely they’d see very little, or at least be impressed by little. For learning’s sake, surely it would be better for kids studying, say, Rome to see one mosaic, one bust, a few bits of armour, some ceramics, and have time for those to be explored and discussed - rather than room of endless rooms of each.
Some historians can tell so much from a single coin - and that scholarship has in it the capacity to totally blow students’ minds. Yet that same coin, displayed in a row of 100 coins suddenly is indecipherable, impenetrable, pointless.
At a point the volume certainly MUST detract from the learning.
Maybe the Museum is really for tourists. Visitors from all around the world who get to see a bit of Rome, a bit of Egypt, a bit of medieval Europe, a bit of everything. Yet it’s hard to imagine an experience less conducive to appreciation than something as full as this museum. And to be clear, it’s not JUST the crowds, it’s also how MUCH there is. As I said above - some of the stories a single coin can tell are remarkable - but when there are a thousand objects there’s no way to hear any of those stories - so you learn nothing, appreciate little that’s new to you. While there are some photogenic moments, I think most of them are what people already know: sarcophagi, gladiators and religious icons. Still, I question the value created by monopolising ancient artifacts with the payoff being a selfie, I think we’re getting a raw deal there.
I found myself remembering that Arts and culture often seems to have momentum towards the top dogs. In Melbourne we see the NGV increasingly growing - taking over small events like the Melbourne Art Book Fair while also attracting 100 million dollars to build a THIRD giant gallery. Why does the most visited museum in Australia deserve $100m on top of its funding, patrons, visitors, cafe earnings, store and donations? In the ownership and presentation of ancient artifacts I assume the British Museum is the biggest player, or one of them, does it really need to have SO MUCH - especially when that seems detrimental. Does the Louvre, with the Mona Lisa attracting everyone, need as many wings as it has? Would some smaller museums not provide a better experience for those of us who want to see something less popular?
Even in my little world of publishing we had a run in with the Victoria & Albert Museum who wanted us to donate our work to them, assuming we’d be flattered to even be asked! An institution with an endowment in the millions of pounds couldn’t buy 5 books, playing off their reputation to get further donations and monopolise further.
My point here is that the top end of town often puzzles me: who is this for? It’s not good for artists (or at least very, very few artists), it’s not good for morals/justice (how many countries have successfully received ANY of their looted good from the Quai Branly, the British Museum, the Smithsonian?), it can’t be that friendly to people hoping to learn (eg, students, kids, schools) and for viewers the volume and monopoly create this awful viewing experience that robs us of any pleasure, excitement or joy.
I think that who these spaces are really for is the powers that be. Institutions seem to perpetuate themselves, whether that’s specific galleries/museums, or out-dated ownership structures that hoard and hoard and hoard.
Ultimately, it’s very interesting visiting huge places as the person I am. For better or worse, as a white Australian my life is defined by the fact Australia was taken from Indigenous peoples - that’s something that, whether I want to think about it or not, is simply true. And, it’s hard to ignore, at least because it’s talked about plenty (and fairly, IMO). But, in London, as I stand around looking at Cypriot mosaics, I wondered do the British really contend with their colonial legacy? Or in being so far removed, geographically, from the people stolen from, has it becomes far too easy to just ignore it? In a place as austere, gigantic, overwhelming and regal as it is perhaps that’s just the impression visitors are left with?
At the end of the day, I can’t really say - after all, I’m not British and I’m far from a nuanced thinker about these hugely sensitive subjects. But I can’t help but think, wedged in between a thousand people, trying to look at ‘salvaged’ parts of Egyptian architecture - who is this space for, and do I think that is right?