Making Waves

Yohji Yamamoto

The Wapping Project

How Exciting to discover this unique and amazing place. For 10 years the Wapping Project has been situated in the old Wapping Hydraulic Power Station. The building that was originally built in 1890 has been restored skillfully so all the raw elements of the past is part of the now, of the future. It was created to feature Art and to bring Art forth, which it does in a very inspiring way.

In the cavernous Boiler Room hangs Yohij Yamamoto's celebrated, oversized white silk wedding dress with bamboo crinoline (1998).

"The installation seeks to capture by way of metaphor something of the wit, simplicity and imagination of this extraordinarily influential designer. The dress will fall from the huge metal tanks which make up the roof of the Boiler House, apparently descending into a bottomless tank of water. The black depths of the darkened space will reflect and refract the falling dress, multiplying the image of the pale, voluminous silk garment, while the white hat supported by bamboo sticks will float freely..."

-Wapping

The effect is stunning, I think maybe this is my greatest Art moment this year so far, but it has to be experienced. with the Billy Cowie music playing you will sort of feel a lift into an unknown space. They even offer a boat trip around the piece for a closer look.

The Wapping Project also offers a fabulous restaurant with a tempting menu.

Video installations from Yohji Yamamoto's fashion shows were shown on screens around the restaurant.

In the garden there is a Bookshop. A glasshouse by day, a lighthouse by night. Thursday evenings there are "talk" happenings with writers, designers or artists.

"Dancing the Decade in a Sycamore Tree"

an Installation by Nicola Yeoman

On the roof Poetry by Alfred Lord Tennyson, that I just have to post in full:

Nothing Will Die

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

When will the stream be aweary of flowing

Under my eye?

When will the wind be aweary of blowing

Over the sky?

When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?

When will the heart be aweary of beating?

And nature die?

Never, oh! never, nothing will die;

The stream flows,

The wind blows,

The cloud fleets,

The heart beats,

Nothing will die.

Nothing will die;

All things will change

Thro' eternity.

'Tis the world's winter;

Autumn and summer

Are gone long ago;

Earth is dry to the centre,

But spring, a new comer,

A spring rich and strange,

Shall make the winds blow

Round and round,

Thro' and thro',

Here and there,

Till the air

And the ground

Shall be fill'd with life anew.

The world was never made;

It will change, but it will not fade.

So let the wind range;

For even and morn

Ever will be

Thro' eternity.

Nothing was born;

Nothing will die;

All things will change.

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The Wapping Project, a place where I wish I could take all my friends.

With Love

Kristin