Hajj exhibition at the British Museum

After the Hockney I wandered across to the BM to see what was on.  As I have a member's card I was able to get into the special exhibitions for free and without queuing, which was a relief after the crowds at the RA.

I did rather like the exhibition about the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, its history, its rituals, its artefacts and manuscripts.  BM website info is here.

This was a wonderful piece, by Ahmed Mater, another British Muslim artist.  It is made very simply of a small black cube, rather like the Ka'ba, the sacred centre of the pilgrimage, which people walk around seven times anticlockwise at the most important part of the 5-day Hajj festival.    When crowds of people are walking round and round,  there is constant movement at the centre of the enormous space, and on some films this has been speeded up so that it looks a little like a spinning wheel.  The action of iron filings around a magnet mimics this image very closely.   It is a clever piece, because it relates the action of the pilgrims and the magnetic attraction/commitment of the faithful.

This was among several modern pieces of art, commissioned by the BM to accompany the exhibition, including a couple of works by Idris Khan, whose writing/not-writing and repeated images I had admired when working on my last project at QR.

This installation by Khan was in the main entrance in the Great Court.  It is a series of black boxes, each about 18" square, with islamic script written round three sides, it looks like several layers of writing one on top of another.  There are maybe 100 blocks.  It is impressive in scale.  it reminded me rather of the Holocaust memorial installation in Berlin, which of course is on a  much, much larger scale.

This piece is written onto the wall of the gallery, near the end of the exhibition.  It comprises a series of statements made by people who have made the Hajj about the impact it had on them.  Idris Khan has taken some of these comments and made print blocks from them, and then used the print blocks to make radiating series of lines, which remind you of the journeys made by Hajj pilgrims from across the world.  

This piece was not in the BM exhibition, but is about to go on show in Manchester, also related to the Hajj and the experience of Islamic pilgrimage.  I like the idea of the words disappearing into a kind of vortex, a black hole, which is dark but is also about light and discovery.

I liked the BM Hajj exhibition because it was very informative but also presented some really lovely artefacts and images.  There were a lot of personal stories, too, and a good balance between the historical and religious and the modern experiential.  I knew very little about the Hajj until now, and I am glad I have seen the show.  There were a lot of Muslim families there when I went  (late on a Friday afternoon) and they and their children seemed as interested in the exhibits as those of us, like me, who probably had very little prior knowledge.

I also looked in at the exhibition curated by Grayson Perry, (the BM website link is here)

but I fear I didn't find much to like there, possibly because by then I was very tired and not very receptive.  I know others have been very enthusiastic about this show, both his new work and the association with items in the museums' collections.  But not, on this occasion, the thing for me.