Edouardo Paolozzi: Whitechapel Gallery

Eduardo Paolozzi is all over London; from the mosaics at Tottenham Court Road tube station to the sculpted head outside The Design Museum, colossal sculptures outside The British Library and on Royal Victoria Dock, and abstract pieces in Kew Gardens and Pimlico amongst others. It seems almost overdue that a London Gallery should dedicate an exhibition to the irreverent artists’ works – and Whitechapel Gallery have filled that void collating over 250 of Paolozzi’s artworks in their current retrospective. The ground floor focusses on his early career in London and Paris and his experimentation with various mediums as industrial bronze sculptures are displayed alongside pop-art inspired collages, screen-prints, tapestries and textiles, and moving film. Despite this diversity constant themes do emerge, evident in his fascination with pattern, layering and texture – and as the ground floor galleries come to an end, an inimitable Paolozzian style full of graphic prints and geometric designs emerges. His evolution as an artist is focussed on in the upper floor galleries which explore later developmental pieces in chrome and a playfulness with reflective surfaces and mirrors. It then goes on to draw out his obsession with the creative process itself, and it is interesting to view similar shapes through both two dimensional sketches and prints and three dimensional sculptures sharing the same space. Hints of the artist as a person – and indeed as a rebel – are also present in ‘Avant Garde?’ where each letter of the term is filled with a colourful cartoon figure, and ‘Jeepers Creepers’ which pokes fun at artistic terminology by featuring a row of plaster clowns each labelled with a different term. Iconic pieces mix with lesser known experiments, and the exhibition closes with the original sketches for the infamous tube mosaics. Get over to east London before 14^th May to catch this exhibition and appreciate Paolozzi’s fun, colourful and incredibly innovative contributions to 20^th century art!

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The Archaeological Museum of Kissamos: Crete, Greece

Approximately 40 kilometres west of Chania old town, you’ll find the town of Kastelli Kissamos. Despite being smaller, it is no less rich historically, and its name alone bears both the ancient Greek (Kastelli) and Venetian (Kissamos) monikers. A narrow road littered with tavernas, traditional fishmongers and cafés leads to a square where The Archaeological Museum is located, in an imposing repurposed Venetian monument known as Diikitirio – ‘the Headquarters’. The museum focusses on the areas’ Minoan, Hellenistic and Roman periods and displays household items, pottery, coins, jewellery, gravestones (stele), relief sculptures, marble free standing sculptures and mosaics. Minoan artefacts from excavations at nearby Nopigia which date back to 9^th – 8^th century BC dominate the opening gallery, and the historical development of western city-states in Crete is explained through the evolution of these objects from primitive Minoan artefacts onto more advanced examples from the Hellenistic era (4^th – 1^st century BC). This development is evident in one of my favourite items on display in the museum; a Hellenistic marble sculpture of a Satyr in which the sculptor has managed to capture the impish nature of the subject to perfection. As you move to the second floor, a small excavation taking place under the stairs of the building itself, highlights how inescapable archaeology is in this area! The second floor is devoted to findings from Kissamos, and houses two stunning floor mosaics from local Greco-Roman urban villas. The first is huge measuring 9.7 metres by 8 metres and features Dionysus surrounded by hunting and drinking scenes associated with Dionysiac worship, and the second depicting Horae and the four seasons is more humble in scale but in perfect condition. Despite only stopping in Kissamos to buy a drink, I’m so pleased I did, and got to experience another archaeology museum putting local history in the limelight with some outstanding finds.

The exterior of the museum

One of the ground floor gallery spaces showing excavated finds

Hellenistic sculpture of a Satyr

The mosaic floors on display on the second floor

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The Archaeological Museum of Chania: Crete, Greece

A sense of history pervades Chania old town; layer upon layer from early Minoan ruins to later Classical Greek and Roman archaeological sites, Byzantine remains, the Venetian lighthouse and shipyard buildings, wonderful examples of Ottoman architecture, as well as evidence of the destruction of World War II all survive. In the centre of all this you’ll find The Archaeological Museum of Chania, aptly situated in a stunning stone building and former Venetian monastery of St. Francis. The museum focusses on the city’s earliest Minoan civilisation through to the Roman period – comprising pottery, glass, coins, jewellery, metal ware, sculpture and mosaics. The vast majority of finds come from excavations in the city itself or nearby, which helps contextualise and humanise the artefacts on display and offers visitors a sense of where and how these items were used by people thousands of years ago. As you explore under each archway numerous standout antiquities can be seen in glass cabinets, notably a clay tablet dating back to 1450 BC inscribed with Linear A script (an early Minoan text academics have still not deciphered), decorative gold disks from a female burial site, as well as an array of seal stones offering lucid images and comprehension of each era. Outside of the display cases you can find numerous painted clay sarcophagi from cemeteries across Western Crete, stone stele (grave stones), a mosaic floor depicting Dionysos and Ariadne from the 3^rd century AD, and a marble bust of the Roman emperor Hadrian. A final treat is provided in the small garden which houses an unusual octagonal ablution fountain from when the building was turned into a mosque during the Ottoman period. Costing just two euros admission, the museum not only provided much needed relief from the Cretan afternoon sun but also offered a fascinating insight into Chania’s rich and unbroken past.

Archways within the museum

Some of the display cases within the museum

The octagonal ablution fountain in the museum garden

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