sketch

here's a lil' sumthin' I have been working on:

Insadong and a few random pics

Well today a few of us went to Insadong. Its a bit touristy which felt a bit weird as I'm not that used to seeing "foreigners" hahaha. Its good for shopping for gifts though and it got us out and about. It contains a little shopping arcade which you will see in the photos and in part of the arcade there is a sort of unused lift shaft that contains fake orchids (..... I think, mum I'm sure you will tell me what they really are if I'm wrong! haha) attached to the wall and floor. Further on down the street we came across a group of musicians, that included various percussion, bass player, guitar player, a cool soulful singer and a guy tap dancing on a small wooden platform that was mic'd up adding more percussion. They did a little question and answering session with the singer, percussionist etc going against the tap dancer which was cool (although it made me miss my ol' turntable soooooo much!!). After this (and after a bit of a trek) we went for one of our favourites - Chi-maek (chicken and beer). I've also attached some pics of the footy stadium that is situated right in the middle of campus, which is sort of our hang out.

I wish Hudds had one.

COMBO a collaborative animation by Blu and David Ellis (2 times loop)

I know this has nothing to do with my time here, but my friend Gary sent me this link and I was a big fan of Blu's last animation so I thought I would share this. Enjoy....

PLATFORM 2009

http://www.platformseoul.org/

Yesterday I was lucky enough to visit an art exhibition that runs every year in Seoul called Platform. It was hosted at a place called Kimusa, which is an old Military site. It has not been used for many years and is huge and pretty dilapidated. It still includes all the old halls, doctors rooms and a pretty eery basement, all filled with various art installations. I was taken by some of my Korean friends and between them, they could explain what each installation was about and then translate this into English for me, for which I was very grateful! I was also told that this place had been used for torturing of soldiers many years ago and one of my friends felt a bad presence in a few of the rooms. We also went for a bit of food, we all had noodle soup with spring onions and due to my slow eating, the noodles just kept expanding, much to the amusement of my Korean friends (imo - means auntie and sam - means number 3, my nicknames for them, don't ask!). I bought the brochure for this exhibition, so if anybody wants a look when I get back, let me know. I feel like I'm rambling a bit bit so I'm gonna stop, been a pretty weird day as I wish I was back in the Uk, as today (the 23rd) is Donna's birthday and I wish I could be there to spend it with her.

Happy birthday baby!!!!

KIAF/09

Well today, thanks to our friend Mr. Cho or Ben as we have now called him, we visited the Korea International Art Fair. There are too may artists to mention and photography was not permitted so I will just provide the link to the website instead. It took a fair few hours to walk around and I still probably missed things.

It was amazing though.

KIAF/09

Seoul Tower

Yesterday my two room mates Odong and Yong-Kil took us toSeoul Tower. It has amazing views of Seoul and includes a revolving restaurant. There is an art cube exhibition by the artist Lee Hyuh Jin and also a teddy bear museum. Afterwards we had to rush back as my friend Yong-Kil had an interview and after that football practice and we had been invited to a Korean Play.

As you would expect, the play was all in Korean, but it was still very enjoyable.

After I got back from the play, my other room mate Moo-young explained that Yong-kil had had an accident whilst playing football and he had broken his leg. Then Odong came back and explained that he had just been with Yong-Kil at the hospital (as he had gone with him in the ambulance) and that he had broken his Fib and Tib. I am so very gutted for Yong-kil, although I have only known him a week, I would consider him to be a very good friend and I wish him a very speedy recovery.

Here are the pictures from our day out.