Norns weaving destiny - Arthur Rackham (1912)

Another one of those “hooray for living in London! oh blast there’s all these other people that live here too” evenings. Turns out that fantastic free cultural events tend to be really popular.

Anyway, on Friday 30 October I ambled along to a hallowe’en-themed addition to the London museums LATES programme at the lovely Victoria & Albert Museum, but didn’t amble fast enough to sign up for anything. I also ambled into the middle of some performance art, which was a bit unfortunate, although I don’t think anyone noticed.

So I missed a few interesting things, including a talk on witchcraft by the curator of the wonderful Witchcraft Museum in Boscastle. It got utterly swept away in the flood a few years ago, so I’m very glad to see it’s back on its feet. There was a talk about Noh masks and Japanese demons that I caught snatches of through the gallery noise and the large crowd, but gave up after a while and went to a room upstairs to look at an exhibition of witch and fairy illustrations which was beautiful.

Highlights for me were some original sketches by Arthur Rackham, watercolours by Edmund Dulac, Brothers Grimm etchings by David Hockney, and Paula Rego’s black and white witch pictures. You can see Rego’s images online on the Tate website. They were  illustrations for Blake Morrison’s book of poems about Lancashire’s famous Pendle Witches.

It was worth going just for this little exhibition, and the chance to look around the gallery in the evening (no kids!) but the party atmosphere, high goth count and foyerDJ playing Joy Division, Tears for Fears and the Ghostbusters theme tune made it a lot of fun. The next V&A Friday Late is 27 November, called ‘Making A Scene’ – about gender identity, subversion and performativity, I’m told, although there’s no information up yet. Sounds right up my street.