Day 5 - Bilbao

Today we decided to do a day trip to Bilbao. We caught a bus there early this morning and our first stop was the Guggenheim Museum. When it opened in 1997, the Frank Gehry–designed Guggenheim Museum Bilbao—a spectacular structure made of titanium, glass, and limestone—was hailed as the most important building of its time. Located in the Basque city of Bilbao in northern Spain, the museum features exhibitions organized by the Guggenheim Foundation and by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, as well as selections from the permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museums.

Outside the museum sits a giant dog created by US artist Jeff Koons. I remember seeing a slightly different version at the MCA in Australia, it's a really fascinating piece. 

The first exhibition we saw inside was "The Visitors" by Ragnar Kjartansson. This was definitely one of my favourites, even Chiara who's not a big fan of art really enjoyed it. The concept was brilliant and very unique, basically a bunch of musicians were placed in separate rooms, however they were still all able to communicate with each other. They began to play their individual instruments, whilst singing together completely in sync. It was interesting to move around the room and look at how each individual artist interpreted the song, it was really beautiful, I remember whispering to Alise that it was making me quite emotional haha. I tried to video it, however I'm not sure if it does it much justice, it was quite hard to capture all the different screens! Check out my video here: http://vimeo.com/99873912

I missed seeing Yoko's exhibition at the MCA, so I was so glad to have caught it here. Yoko is such a wonderfully strange and curious person, I was very excited to gain more insight and perspective on the life that she has lead. One of my favourite pieces was a short film, which consisted of people being filmed on the streets who were planning to see Yoko's show at the Museum of Modern Art (to which she humoursly called it, the Museum of Modern (F)Art, in protest), after an advertisement was place in the village voice. Only the show was never going to happen. The ad was only placed to show that few female artists got to show within it's hallowed walls. "In the corresponding film, pedestrians are interviewed in the street and asked whether they have seen Ono’s exhibition at the MoMA, to which most respond with something like “no, but I plan to”. The subversive action continues: Ono describes the alleged opening of a container full of perfumed flies—with the same volume as her own body—in the middle of the MoMA garden." "Air Capsules by Yoko Ono 50€" was another favourite for me, it was one of four participation artworks where if you placed 50€ in the machine you'd receive an air bubble, naturally I was quite intrigued, so I popped 50€ in and got my little air bubble haha! 

For lunch we headed to the "Old City," we grabbed some baguettes with jamón from a bakery and sat in the sun on the stairs, it was all very Gossip Girl haha...