We were keen to see this exhibition over the holiday period, so decided to take advantage of a bright, albeit cold day.
There weren’t many people around, which suited us down to the ground, but probably did little for the fortunes of Kew.
Janie and I have always really liked the Henry Moore stuff.
I remember going to see an exhibition in Battersea Park when I was little and crawling through some of the holes in the sculptures.
Indeed I have subsequently (March 2021) discovered some photos from my hole-crawling day and written up that 1966 exhibition (more thoroughly than this 2007 one) – click here or below:
It is one of my earliest memories. All I remember is having so much fun, climbing in, out, around, and through sculptures.
Playing hide and seek by dint of the artworks.
In my memory it was a Henry Moore exhibition, but on discovering a little pile of long-forgotten photographs (fiendishly mixed up with some of my parents’ late 1980s prints), followed by a little on-line research, I learn that it was a much wider exhibition, organised by the Greater London Council (GLC), that Battersea Park affair in 1966.
My guess is that we, the Harris family, ventured to the exhibition the following weekend, the late May Bank Holiday, although it’s possible that it was later that summer, perhaps the August Bank Holiday.
The reason I suspect it was the earlier holiday is because the photos look to me as though dad wanted those pictures from that exhibition to use as examples for his photographic studio classes that spring and summer.
Dad’s shop and studio was in St John’s Hill, Battersea.
Such a photogenic exhibition up the other end of Battersea would have been too good an opportunity to miss in those days, when (as I understand it) the studio was still a key part of dad’s business.
Anyway, that was dad’s job. My job was having fun.
The “pictures for the studio” theory would also explain why I hadn’t seen the pictures before now. Dad probably rescued those prints from the shop when he closed down the shop in the mid 1980s and the packet got mixed up then with mum and dads holiday snaps from the late 1980s. The negatives, sadly, seem lost.
Still, it was quite extraordinary seeing these pictures when I discovered them in March 2021, nearly 55 years after the event.
I have such a strong memory of having a wonderful time that day in Battersea Park and the pictures bear that out.
I have a feeling that mum didn’t really approve of this “let the children play” style exhibition. I can imagine there was a view in a fairly large section of the public that such sculptural works are to be revered rather than toyed with by children.
Mum doesn’t look 100% sure. I look sure.
But I think such exhibitions are a superb idea.
Personally, I have always been drawn to sculpture. Perhaps my fondness for sculpture would have happened anyway. But something tells me that my love of sculpture was forged that day in Battersea Park, which I so clearly remember as being just the most amazing fun.
