PLACES OF INTEREST 
With over 300 listed buildings, the consensus is that Lavenham is Britain’s best-preserved medieval town, and nothing simpler than a walk through the streets verifies this indubitable claim. The eye is dazzled and overcome with a visually unceasing fever-dream parade of leaded windows and half-timbered properties, some in serious postures of crookedness. For those with a particular architectural bent, salivation is summarily induced. The market square, once the hub of commerce and social activity, anchored on one end by the imposing and stately Guildhall, is now unfortunately violated-in purely aesthetic terms-by an allowance of cars.
A prosperous wool town, Lavenham fell on hard times when the Dutch introduced cheaper, lighter and more fashionable cloths, compromising its status as a trading titan. Today, fortunes turn on the tourist dime, and a visitor is spoiled for choice with a plethora of tea rooms both modern and period (Munnings, installed in the picturesque Crooked House, is a quaintly clustered riot of craft, trinket and wooden beams). The sprawling complex of the Lavenham Hotel and Spa, seemingly occupying an entire city block, establishes its pedigree in the village hierarchy (across the road is the tranquil Number 10 Wine Bar and Kitchen).
Every street, main and side, is an unfurling of historic houses and businesses (many of the houses are now available as holiday lets). A very charming day may be spent in Lavenham’s comforting embrace (and may be twinned with a quick journey to its much smaller scaled cousin Kersey, a medieval hamlet consisting solely of church and high street, with a hive of properties and single town pub; in place of local shop, pavement-side stalls offer jams, fruit, herbs and various sundries on an honour basis system). As in Lavenham, there is many a stunning option for (low key) holiday rental. For the ambitious rambler, there is the possibility of a 7km walk from Lavenham into neighbouring Long Melford along the route of an erstwhile railway line.
From Manningtree station (with trains to and from Liverpool Street), one may ramble along the Constable Country trail, so called as the master of the landscape painting took so much of his inspiration from the surrounding environs (his birthplace is nearby East Bergholt). The walk leads straight into the town of Flatford, the mill and grounds of which are indelibly etched in the famous work The Hay Wain (if you position yourself at just the right perspective, it’s possible to believe no time at all has elapsed).
A bit further on through iconic English countryside- verdant meadows, pastures, fields-and along the gently flowing River Stour, you arrive at the elegant high street of Dedham with its run of period buildings (a mix of medieval, Georgian and Victorian), multi-levelled crafts centre and the notable Essex Rose Tea Room (with the fluffiest, airiness scones I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting, providing an effervescent punt to the palate).
Just a few hours by car from London, a tour of Suffolk’s chocolate-box villages are the perfect tonic in these pandemic-fraught times when you may refrain from air travel. With the expansive Dedham Vale region designated as an area of outstanding beauty, you can devote days of exploration to this most scenic of places.
Like antique furnishings left in estate, once thought inviolably secure, now consigned to the eventuality of the rubbish bin, these are virile beasts bequeathed a sudden fragility. The horse, vibrant in movement and form, persists against the encumbrance. Stone also offers a series of canvasses which suggest the elaborately drawn folds of stage curtains and the enthralling possibilities of great dramas hidden and throbbing just beyond the pull or push. In felicitous tension with these shuttered figures are Lorena Garcia Mateu’s vigorously colourful paintings of hands and arms reaching out from lush leafy vegetation in bold gestures of graceful embrace-beckoning, imploring, intimating. Each gesticulation is a careful rendering from noted classical works, transplanted to fresh surreal worlds of expression.
Both artists engage with properties of concealment and suppression, and activate (and respect) the mystery behind the visible, the core forces that thrum, vibrate, inform-and animate-what is seen. The interplay between the artists, the outward thrust and the cover up, work in poetic covenant, enlivened further in the environment of one of London’s most beguiling gallery spaces. A Splendour Among Shadows closed on 19 September
similarly, the male couple in L’Uomo, at times almost visually joining as one, fight against self-prejudice and fears of intimacy, concluding on an unfortunate image of impasse; it’s left to the extravagant and flamboyant embellishment of the wardrobes in Dandyism, a celebration of the style and spirit of the Sapeurs of Brazzaville and Kinshasa, to carry the day as conceptually the show falters on uncertain narrative-perhaps a public plaza was not the ideal venue for a nuanced study of this particular culture (a call-and-response sequence fell flat upon a baffled audience-I felt overall the piece could be best appreciated by an individual already schooled in the manners and motifs of this lifestyle);
The 2020 edition of GDIF recognises the need more than ever for community and reflection, the programme this year commemorating togetherness. Dancing City was held on 5 September; GDIF continues through 12 September; highlights of the festival are accessible through their YouTube channel
tom///out 