• So, I was on the plane to Greece… I had the learn greek podcast on the headphones while I skimmed through the phrasebook. I’d better try and learn the numbers, I thought.

    Deka is ten… Of course it is. And twelve is dodeka – mI remembered making models of Dodecahedrons at school. It all makes sense. and Eight is okto – as in octopus!

    I didn’t eat any, but they did follow me around.

    octopus fishing from the shore
    octopus fishing from the shore
    I saw our wonderful landlord, Vasilis, hurling a lure out to sea. It was a double hooked thing with a bright red rubber crab attached to it.

    The reel was open on one side so that by swing the hook around a few times and letting go, you could get the lure out a good 40 to 50 metres. leave it for a while and then drag it back in. Vasilis didn’t have any luck. He was just having a bit of Sunday morning fun with his mates. But the image of him on the shore stuck and I had to draw this little picture of him. He reckons the octopus don’t really come until September. I think he was encouraging me too book another holiday! He was, if not a sucessfull octopus fisherman, a good businessman.
    greece-flowerI then began to notice a low-growing wild flower. It seemed to be happiest growing in cracks in the concrete. The flowers reminded me of octopus legs. They uncurled in a fern-like way with two rows of flowers on the top of the stem. They reminded me of suckers and the way octopus tentacles curl up in the same way. I’ve tride to find out what they are called, but no luck so far.

    octopotWe visited the site of Ancient Mycenae, which is truly spectacular. The museum was filled with pots that were painted in my favourite style of Ancient Greek decoration. The octopus featured on quite a few pots but this one was the most impressive. About 60 cm high, it is covered with this beautifully intricate and perfectly designed and proportioned octopus pattern.

    Many of the patterns remind me of a style that comes naturally to designers using Adobe Illustrator. Has Ancient Greece inspired the modern designers or is it the digital tool that makes them work in a similar way?

    I didn’t get to eat any. I did in Japan and wasn’t very impressed. I think you have to be brought up to it, and the Greeks certainly certainly seem to have been brought up to enjoy their octopi.

  • Having tried so hard to make a blog entry everyday, It proved too much to do on holiday. But now I’m back home and will probably mention it once or twice in the coming weeks.

    Meantime, there’s an awful lot to sort out!

  • I’ve been to few exhibitions where Rachael Whiteread’s work was on show, and I’ve always felt she stands out from the run of the mill YBAs. She expresses an intellectual rigour that is missing from the showmen of the group.

    Her work seems not to be about the object, but about the spaces inbetween.

    Coming up from the beach this morning, I noticed the plant in the picture. The sun was so bright, I didn’t notice the plant itself at first, but the structure and the shapes inbetween. It looks quite like a scientist’s model of a carbon based nano structure.

    I felt that all the spaces between the spines would happily accept a pingpong ball.

    It’s a kind if convergence with science and art – the mega and the nano exploring the same thing. And so it should be. Art and science should work together. All the greatest scientific insights have come from artistic moments.