Alcohol-Free Wines

During this pregnancy, I've tested about 20 different 0% alcohol wines.  If you're a beer or gin drinker, there are excellent no-alcohol or low-alcohol substitutes, but I've found 0% wines to be rather hit-and-miss, so I thought I'd share my favourites for any fellow wine lovers who are pregnant, doing Sober October, teetotal, the designated driver, or just trying to cut back.

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

The Royal Academy's annual celebration of art and creativity is finally back!  For the first time in its 250+ year history, the Summer Exhibition ran in Autumn/ Winter in 2020, and does the same in 2021.  Held every year since 1769, the largest open submission exhibition in the world champions contemporary art and architecture, displaying works across mediums and genres by emerging and established artists alike.

Andrew Graves - Heat (oil on gesso panel)

Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern

 Last month I visited Tate Modern for the first time since the Olafur Eliasson exhibition in 2019 to experience two of Yayoi Kusama’s immersive, highly Instagrammable Infinity Mirror Rooms.

The Japanese artist was born in Matsumoto in 1929, during a time of economic crisis and growing nationalism, when Japanese traditions and social conservatism were on the rise.  Despite being discouraged by her family, Kusama studied painting in Kyoto before moving to the United States in 1957 in pursuit of freedom and a wider world.  She immersed herself in the booming New York art scene, before returning to Japan in 1973.  After experiencing health problems and hallucinations, she admitted herself to a Tokyo hospital in 1977 where she still lives, near her studio where she creates internationally acclaimed paintings, sculptures, performances and installations.

Tate Modern presents a rare opportunity to step into Kusama's unique world with two entrancing, large-scale works.  Chandelier of Grief features an eternal reflection of mirrored walls in a darkened room, with a flickering crystal chandelier rotating from the ceiling.

In Filled with the Brilliance of Life - one of Kusama’s largest installations, made for her 2012 Tate Modern retrospective - visitors move through a reflective walkway over a shallow pool.  Tiny suspended lightbulbs are repeated in never-ending mirrors and water, flashing through a rainbow of colours, blending where you end and the room begins, and immersing visitors in this vibrant, hypnotic, must-see artwork.

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms runs until 12 June 2022

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