Day 44. Wellington. High art, giant slaloms.

Sam Taylor-Wood. Saviour of the british art scene or over-hyped media whore?

The easiest way for us to make a judgement would have been to attend the recent retrospective of her work while it was showing at The Baltic. A harder way, would be to miss it, blame each other for not being better organised, then catch the show after it transferred to the other side of the world.

The verdict? While some of her stuff went completely over our tiny little philistine heads, the majority of the work was great. We especially liked the 'Crying men' portraits - 27 candid shots of some of the world's most respected actors bubbling their eyes out. I'm sure there's all sorts of sub-text intended; 'the underlying vulnerability of the stereotypical macho male exterior' or some such twaddle. But we just thought they were nice pictures.

A couple of her moving image things were good too. The angel floating above a string quartet managing to amuse and mesmerise.

So yes, if the thing ever comes back to The Baltic, or somewhere in London for that matter, we'd recommend going.



Went back to Inia's in the evening where we met his cousin Simon. Another quirky character who, among other things is a proficient enough skiier to have represented NZ at a couple of Winter Olympics. He's retired from the sport now though, so it'll be downhill all the way from now on.