Summerhall Gallery

Its that time of year where no matter how hard you try, things dont quite work out to plan. Yesterday was the third attempt at getting out to the Summerhall Gallery to see their joint exhibitions: Invisible Spaces and Visible Girls: revisited. This gallery has been on my radar for a while now owing to the fact its dog friendly and I was simply waiting for an exhibition to catch my eye before heading over. With hubby working retail, our previous two attempts were cancelled as he was called in at short notice and I had warned him that Missy and I would be going ourselves if he was drafted in again.

Thankfully it didn't come to that! With our last "date" day in sight until after Christmas, we quickly filled it with glorious plans - a long walk in the morning, lunch out at the gallery and then the Christmas markets in the evening after a walk through the meadows. Firstly, owing to late finishes at work, the early start never happened. Then the yellow snow warning kicked in and, despite multiple layers, we were all frozen to the bone simply walking to the gallery and had to stop in at a shop and buy a jumper for the hubby. We could see that people were being made to queue to simply get into the markets and made a note that perhaps that wasn't going to happen. 

We did get to the gallery and the exhibitions really surprised me - I had expected to enjoy the Invisible Spaces one more, but the Visible Girls by Anita Corben was absolutely brilliant. Both the hubby and I lost ourselves to the wonderful portraits and were delighted to see that these punks and mods from the 80s had been, where possible, traced again and their portraits redone. I loved seeing past and present side by side, especially getting to see where such fiery and determined young women ended up. If it tours out your way, I highly recommend, its not a big exhibition, but you will find yourself reminiscing on times when everything was just a little bit rougher about the edges.

There was a workshop about archiving going on, and about how we should tackle that in a modern age. Getting to look though old negatives and slides was quite fun, but I didn't really feel like the statement being made was really that much of an argument. We discussed with the curator about whether smart phones have made us worse photographers despite better pictures, and what would happen with archiving a digital generation and then found ourselves drawn back to those portraits from the 80s and forlornly missing the days when you had your spool and the suspense of whether the photos would turn out or not.

Missy looking at the old negatives

We enjoyed some tea and cake in the gallery cafe and then shivered our way across the meadows. Even in her little fleece lined coat Missy looked miserable at being outside and we decided to call it quits whilst we were ahead of the game. Walking to the bus, we could see that the queue into the markets had only gotten worse and that the market itself was crammed with people. Getting home, cuddling up on the sofa with tea and hot chocolate seemed a much better idea, so thats exactly what we did.

I've been doing odds and ends of sewing today, cant really post too much about it (spoilers!) so I'll share some more of the Christmas crafts I've been doing, namely a new and updated wreath as the old one was getting far too shabby:

I've also started my Christmas baking (thank goodness for chest freezers) so there are cupcakes for my niece to help decorate when she visits, and some festive tiffin made. Next its White Christmas (an Aussie delicacy) and some short bread, and perhaps I may find the time to bake some real bread too. We'll just have to wait and see!