Relativity Room at the M.C. Escher exhibition

Relativity Room at the M.C. Escher exhibition

at Somerset House.

The Relativity Room is a tiny fraction of the M.C. Escher exhibition. I do intend to post on the exhibition itself, but I am not sure when I will do so, as I am very behind with my blogging.

But, this was fun, so, because it's a short post, I thought I would do it now.

A small room, and you could either enter it with another person so that you could pose and see the contrast, or look through the window. We looked, marvelled and took photographs.

And, then, they changed places. Amazing.

We were not told how this is achieved, so I had to look it up. 

A relativity room is inded inspired by Escher's impossible architecture, and it achieves its mind-bending illusion by using forced perspective. 

The physics and architecture of the trick rely on a few specific design elements; the room is built with a steep gradient, so that the floor is skewd, it slopes upward; the ceiling is skewed too, sloping downwards so that when you walk from the 'low' side to the 'high' side of the room, you are actually walking closer to the ceiling. Furthermore, there is the checkerboard trick: the floor tiles are painted in a distorted grid: the grid gets smaller toward the far corner to reinforce the false sense of distance and make you believe you are further away.

Wonderful.

Art and Festival

Now that summer is here, there's so much going on in our area and it's hard fitting it all in. This was certainly the case last weekend. The three-week long Open Studios art exhibition in artists'  homes started last Saturday. We normally try to see as much as we can, but we are off to Greece tomorrow, so our only chance was last weekend. But, there was also a festival in Victoria Park, as well as Potfest in Compton Verney and the Thai Festival in Warwick. 

How to fit it all in?

This post is about what we did on the Saturday. 

We did not manage to see much of the work of local artists. I was also very disappointed that Rhoda Bertz did not exhibit this year, as she is my favourite local artist. This is the link to her 2022 exhibition but you can see more by using the search button on the right of this page.

This is what we did manage to see:

Sue Bent:

Her paintings are exhibited in her garden studio. Vibrant colours, domestic scenes with a focus on still life.

Arts, Eats and Treats Festival:

We then walked to Victoria Park for the Arts, Eats and Treats Festival. A new one for Leamington, so we were keen to see what it was like. It was fun, but we were a bit underwhelmed given that we had been to the Peace Festival the previous weekend.

cakes,

lots of vans serving hot food

drinks

I had not come across these before - they are water lily seeds which have been fried with different flavours. I tried some, they are not bad.

We wandered around for a while, then walked through the Pump Room Gardens and the Jephson Gardens, and got to:

St Nicholas House:

where various artists were exhibiting. I looked at the paintings of Janette George and the ceramics of Katherine Taylor.

We spent Sunday at Compton Verney looking at the work of the ceramic artists that were exhibiting at Potfest. 

We never made it to the Thai Festival. Next year maybe...

Peace Festival 2026

It's back! For the first time since the pandemic, the Leamington Peace Festival is back. And it was very good. Just like the old days. We were so happy to have it back so we went both days.

There were lots of stalls, some commercial, some political

Plants,

bread,  cakes and lots more from Core, the vegan shop

'organic, gluten free, vegan and raw' - what more could one possibly want?

Buddhas, bowls,  clothes and lots more on this stall

There you go... 

We went quite early on Saturday, and yet, lots of people were there already

honey

The United National Association

Helping Hands is a local charity with its own charity shop

we were very lucky with the weather

The Quakers

The Woodland Trust

the local group campaigning for the NHS

Justice for Palestinians Leamington Spa

a stall that was very busy throughout both days

Amnesty International

Warwickshire Climate Alliance

A stall where we could send postcards of support to the Filton 25

A discussion about the genocide committed by Israel in Gaza

items from Palestine for sale

jewellery, scarves, badges

ceramics

lots of vans and stalls selling food

I took these photographs in the mornig - by lunchtime the queues for food were long

Tai Chi, inside a tent on Saturday

and out in the open on Sunday.

face painting

a cocktail bar

A quiet zone - I can't say that was used much, there was too much fun all around

On Saturday we managed to find a free bench by the band stand and the four of us sat here listening to the band while we had some food we'd got from a nearby stall

we also did some people watching.

Then it was time for the main music stage

We had such a good time, so the next day we went back.