| After The Rain Toby Paterson Barbican Curve Gallery Exploring ideas of urban regeneration after the bombing on three cities in WWII. Toby has painted the whole gallery black with large occasional coloured polygons and then added his pictures and sculptures. It's certainly an interesting space with the objects being quite small in relation to the size of the installation. Worth a visit if you're down that way. I
did hope to check out the library art spaces while i was there, but they close
at 2pm on Fridays so i couldn't. Somethings i'm just not meant to see.
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| Aftermath / Elergy Jim Dales Barbican Library Foyer Quite a fascination with death in this guy - skulls, skeletons and decomposing bodies in oils and plate prints. Beautiful work, but everything being dead is quite monotonous. Though i suppose the idea is that you would only buy one and not fill your house with them - unless you're a Goth, of course. The tryptic title piece "Aftermath/Elergy" is for sale at £15,000, which is the most expensive painting i've seen for sale in the library yet - stunning picture though. Well
worth a visit anyway.
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| Barbican I thought i would write a few words about the Barbican. I am one of those many people who find the external appearance of the Barbican absolutely disgusting - but within lies a hive of enjoyment. What really floats my boat are the Curve Gallery and the Library Foyer and Library Art Space. Some of the most beautiful and unusual art i have seen has been in either The Curve or the Library. The Curve is nearly always free and has some great exhibitions of contemporary art. The Library Foyer & Art Space usually have displays with all the works for sale and which change monthly - so if you're looking for a nice bit of art for your home or office, this is a very good place to check some out. There is also a pay to view gallery and the foyer is full of big comfortable seats to chill out between looking around each gallery or waiting for a concert. So
if you're ever in the City, with an hour or so spare, you could do a lot worse
than popping into the Barbican - even if does look like a concrete disaster/horror. | ||
| Black President Barbican Curve Gallery If
you enjoy Fela's music then this is the exhibition to get to. Not only is there
some great art on display, but also lots of video of Fela talking, playing and
singing. | ||
| Blood Hyphen Woodbridge
Chapel Not sure what to say about this. It's in an old run down chapel that has recently been restored, although "bodged up" is a more apt description. The
chapel has a false ceiling installed which removes the balcony area completely
from the room. The old pulpit allows the agile viewer to reach the false ceiling
and look through a removed section of the ceiling into the balcony area which
has had the windows darkened and been filled with smoke. Across the darkened room
shines a laser onto the top of one of the ceiling panels upon which is placed
a huge photo of cervical cells from a smear test seen through a microscope. Personally
i thought the art was crap, but what really did it for me was that right at the
back of the balcony area is an old pipe organ. When seen through all the smoke
and dim light it looked extremely ghostly and haunting, sad and forgotten in this
tomb where it has been shut away for decades. | ||
| Cubism and its Legacy Tate Modern An absolutely wonderful collection of modern art donated by private collectors, Gustav and Elly Kahnweiler, as a thank you to Britain. It's not a huge collection (3 rooms), so if you're down on the South Bank with nothing to do for an hour, pop in and check it out on the 3rd floor. And
there's a twenty foot tall metal spider in the turbine hall - which i think is
best viewed from the 3rd floor. | ||
| Elmgreen and Dragset Tate Modern Another piss-take to match the sewing machine in hessian. Having been given a fair sized gallery room to put on an exhibition, all they can think of is to put an animated dead sparrow on the window sill twitching in the last throws of its life. Are they mocking us? Or are they really that lacking in imagination? When
one considers all the young contemporary artists within London alone who would
be far more deserving of this space, one has to ask what the curator of Tate Modern
is playing at allowing these idiots to waste valuble space in this way. | ||
| Fibretex 7 Barbican Library A group of 7 textile and mixed media artists who aim to acheive greater recognition for textiles as a distinct art form. There are some absolutely stunning works in this display. The layers of textiles built up into pictures really give the pictures a genuine sense of depth and dimension. And the colours are beautiful! Works
are for sale!
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| Raw Materials Bruce Nauman Tate Modern Turbine Hall What he's done is put pairs of speakers on opposite walls all the way down the turbine hall. Each pair of speakers has a different message or statement playing continuously. As one walks down the centre of the hall you pass from one pair to the next. It's quite amusing to watch how people deal with it. Some people walk down one wall stopping at each speaker and listening to it closely, but only hearing the sounds when they get to the speaker. Others walk down the centre of the hall where the sound from both speakers is balanced and the sounds spread and overlap with the next speakers as you pass from one to the next. Some people keep stopping and listening, others keep walking at whatever speed suits them. Some people are just wandering all over the place. The overall noise in the turbine hall is extremely weird and quite unsettling. It's a very interesting idea he has here, but i think he could have used better sounds.
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| Theresa Pateman Barbican Library A wonderful collection of pictures made with etching, drypoint and mezzotint. Lots
of lovely colours and certainly plenty of things that i wouldn't mind on my walls.
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