Every day is a good day

On Saturday my mother came to visit. We had lunch, shopped and then sipped pur takeaway coffees as we made our way across Jesus Green in the pink sunset for the last fading minutes of the John Cage exhibition at Kettles Yard. I have been meaning to get this exhibition all term and finally arrived, with my mother in tow. I made it a day before it finished, to realise that it was brilliant and that the 20 minutes we got before closing were never going to be enough to listen to all the recordings, watch all the footage of Operas in performance and enjoy the highlight of the exhibition and place a plant.



I enjoyed the plants a lot. As you enter the exhibition the curious network of potted plants pave the exhibition floor and they are what strike you and endow the space with a homely feel. You can pick up a plant and place it anywhere you like in the exhibition. Audience participation and exhibition interaction always excite me, I am easily pleased. However as some visitors have pointed out, you can't put your plant anywhere, you are in fact restricted to the floor. The neat position of some of the pots on the fringes of the rooms might also suggest the restrictions on plant-placing freedom. John Cage's prints are beautiful; ethereal, full of movement and subtle qualities, but they almost become peripheral to the plants. Some are accompanied by explanatory notes, 'This plant is definitely not happy here, it would like to be on the ceiling.'. The suggestion is that the plants direct and not visitors, that we might think we are contributing, but ultimately the artist is directing us.
My mother was unimpressed by the plants, she says she is too old for that kind of thing, she has seen it too often!

A plant cheekily nestled in a pair of head phones!