The Queen's Gallery, Bangkok

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We stumbled across this gallery the other week. And it is a winner. Five storeys of modern and contemporary Thai artists, all going berserk with colours and all mystical with the charcoal and HB pencils. The exhibits are neatly, calmly laid out in a series of plastic, inter-flowing, post-modern sub galleries, and respectfully they are dedicated to the King's wife; aka Queen.

It is such a wonderful splash of the spectrum, and the monotones are a cool adrenalin dampening treat as well.

As with all galleries, the staff are dead trendy and have whacky hair cuts and turtle neck sweaters and black pants and Doc Marten 9 hole lace-up boots with different coloured laces and things like chopsticks in their hair. Yup, The Queen's Gallery is no different, so even paying 20THB for entry is an enjoyable experience. (The security guards are a bit square though, standard for museum security guards the world over I believe. However, a quick couple of photos inside with an apologetic "oh sorry, sorry, didn't realise, daft me eh? tsch, sorry, won't happen again" and they livened up).

This gallery even has art in the lift (elevators) ! How's about that? Ooooh, and the shop round the side is a great find. This will up your ante when it comes to buying decent bits of Thai art (rather than tack from street stalls), posters, tee shirts, neatly bound retrospectives and collections of various local contemporary artists. When the gallery gets some more scultpure in there I will probably cheer even louder from the balcony tops. However, I now need to go and buy a bigger coffee table, to lob my Queen's gallery art books on. All non-chalant like, and the say, offhand, to me mates... "Oh, Khun Wittiporn? Yes, I saw his recent retro at the Queen's. I know.... the passion in his brushwork is unparalleled, incredible. Unsurpassed since the Wichit Kittiangsiak green era. More tea anyone?"

You want art in Bangkok? Queen's Gallery. It's great.