East End Gallery Hunt (Jan. 15)

I suppose anything having to follow-up the Borough Market would be unimpressive...
So I told myself that if I wanted to consider myself as an artist/designer, I should at least be more aware of contemporary work. Perhaps pick up an idea or two. I realized that I am decent with maps, but several of the galleries were closed or undergoing exhibition changes so we couldn't go inside.
We went to the Nettie Horn as a class and saw 'From Here to Eternity' by Oliver Pietsch. I thought it was funny, maybe dreamlike at first--death and decomposition accompanied by a merry piano tune. Once again I was brought back to Buddhism, specifically Siddhārtha Gautama while he was a prince and not yet known as the Buddha. Before he renounced the world, he observed illness, age, and death; he was initially frightened and saddened by these things, but then realized everyone must experience themas they are part of living in this world. When we entered the screening, we saw montages of death and the natural processes after it; I liked the objective stance these had on the subject. They didn't glorify death nor make it something to fear, and in some movie scenes the placing of the body with animals or natural environments highlighted what I thought as an acceptance death's place in the natural cycle. I would have liked to stay and watch the entire thing, but I wanted to schedule in all the other galleries on the map. On hindsight, I should have stayed.
The next gallery I went to (after a few unsuccessful finds) was the IBID Projects. The exhibition was 'Exaggerate the Classics,' and the work didn't pique my interest. I did think the sloppy construction fit perfectly with the rundown interior however. If I were a child and thus unafraid of appearing disrespectful, I would have loved to play hide-and-seek, interacting with the tight space between sculptures and crumbling walls and posts.
The White Cube exhibited 'Lamentations,' whose works reflected 'forms that expressed trauma of death, loss, and grief.' I didn't get that notion from what I saw. From afar I thought the sculptures were piles of intestines, so I received quite a surprise when I walked up to them. The entwining limbs and genitals only made me uncomfortable, especially since the glazed ceramics made the forms look shiny and wet.