I wander through each chartered street
Jul. 10th, 2007 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaSaturday saw me ambling over to Smithfield to peer at John Squire's most recent batch of artworks. He seems to have left his splattery, Pollocky period behind and entered a blobby, organic, bacteria and jellybean period. Actually, experts tell me that there was at least one other period in between, but I missed it completely. I don't go a bundle on non-representational art as a rule, but one room containing around 25 canvasses is small enough that even I can sustain interest. There was even one which - had I a spare £13,000 and a huge expanse of bare wall - I might have considered living with. And one which so resembled a wallfull of squirming maggots that I found it difficult to look at.
The Louvres and National Galleries of this world should really consider that most people can't keep up with their vast collections. Half an hour with a roomful of works is the sort of handy, bite-sized amount of art appreciation that you can slide neatly into your day without skimping your lunch or missing out on your afternoon tea.
Opposite the Smithfield gallery is a surprising Tudor gatehouse which leads into St Bartholomew's churchyard. The church was closed, but it set us off on a long ramble.
Somewhere not a million miles away from Smithfield is a tiny, pocket-sized parklet called Postman's Park. It has smart benches, kempt flowerbeds, and astonishingly green grass (the last possibly due to excessive rainfall of late). I imagine that a weekday lunchtime will see it stuffed full of City types clutching their Pret bread-free sarnies, but at weekends it is quiet and airy. Most remarkably, it contains a memorial raised in 1900 to the heroism of "ordinary" people - a painter felt that their deeds might be overlooked without record. So a series of handpainted tiles records successive dashes into burning houses, heroic-yet-doomed attempts to save drowning friends, and a variety of transport mishaps.
A century after the tiles were fired, it's slightly difficult not to chuckle over the peculiarly Victorian phrasing. And indeed the Victorian nature of the tragedies - little boys just don't seem to die in their mothers' arms after saving baby brothers these days.
Outside the entrance to the park lurks a strangely slim TARDIS. A notice advises that it is a Police phone box for the free use of the public, and also that it is no longer operational and said public should use the payphone nearby. As far as we could tell, there was nary a telephone box for miles.
In London, even the most grey and unappealing of buildings can sneak a bit of history by you if you're not careful.
I like the contrasts of the architecture, too. On one street corner, a myriad of styles snuggles up together, and St Paul's pops up most unexpectedly.
Along Victoria Embankment, there are constant reminders that when the Victorians did something, they didn't do it by halves. A simple lamppost ? Well, only if we can cover it with wrought iron fish.
The Embankment was mostly closed to traffic as the team coaches, support vehicles and racked bikes rolled in for the Tour de Londres. The police outriders all had their blue lights going, though seemingly more for celebration than anything else. A cavalcade of gendarmerie, tidily two-by-two, road past; they looked very sedate against the gaudy luminous yellow crosshatchings of the British motorbikes.
Heading over the river, London was doing its best to look like a tourist attraction.
And even the non-photogenic direction had its own appeal.
Inside the newly-revamped Royal Festival Hall we found Operation Soapbox, a maze built entirely of soapboxes.
A plentiful supply of pens and paper encouraged people to ask questions and participate in discussions as they travelled round it. I grabbed a pen to add my 2p to the debate. As ever, some people ask mundane questions, others highly philosophical. And there's always one...
The ladies' in the RFH was home to a huge queue - about once every few minutes someone commented that the revamp hadn't fixed some of the things wrong with the RFH. Mind you, the ladies' does have one amazing feature. On the back of the toilet door there's not just a hook for your coat and a hook for your bag...
... there's even a holder for your programme. Now that's what I call planning.
Outside the RFH is my new favourite water feature. Appearing Rooms is an art installation by Jeppe Hein. It's a set of variable water walls which enclose transient spaces, allowing the viewer to explore themes of... er, spashing about. Which is great.
The Louvres and National Galleries of this world should really consider that most people can't keep up with their vast collections. Half an hour with a roomful of works is the sort of handy, bite-sized amount of art appreciation that you can slide neatly into your day without skimping your lunch or missing out on your afternoon tea.
Opposite the Smithfield gallery is a surprising Tudor gatehouse which leads into St Bartholomew's churchyard. The church was closed, but it set us off on a long ramble.
Somewhere not a million miles away from Smithfield is a tiny, pocket-sized parklet called Postman's Park. It has smart benches, kempt flowerbeds, and astonishingly green grass (the last possibly due to excessive rainfall of late). I imagine that a weekday lunchtime will see it stuffed full of City types clutching their Pret bread-free sarnies, but at weekends it is quiet and airy. Most remarkably, it contains a memorial raised in 1900 to the heroism of "ordinary" people - a painter felt that their deeds might be overlooked without record. So a series of handpainted tiles records successive dashes into burning houses, heroic-yet-doomed attempts to save drowning friends, and a variety of transport mishaps.
A century after the tiles were fired, it's slightly difficult not to chuckle over the peculiarly Victorian phrasing. And indeed the Victorian nature of the tragedies - little boys just don't seem to die in their mothers' arms after saving baby brothers these days.
 |  |
Outside the entrance to the park lurks a strangely slim TARDIS. A notice advises that it is a Police phone box for the free use of the public, and also that it is no longer operational and said public should use the payphone nearby. As far as we could tell, there was nary a telephone box for miles.
In London, even the most grey and unappealing of buildings can sneak a bit of history by you if you're not careful.
I like the contrasts of the architecture, too. On one street corner, a myriad of styles snuggles up together, and St Paul's pops up most unexpectedly.
 |  |
Along Victoria Embankment, there are constant reminders that when the Victorians did something, they didn't do it by halves. A simple lamppost ? Well, only if we can cover it with wrought iron fish.
The Embankment was mostly closed to traffic as the team coaches, support vehicles and racked bikes rolled in for the Tour de Londres. The police outriders all had their blue lights going, though seemingly more for celebration than anything else. A cavalcade of gendarmerie, tidily two-by-two, road past; they looked very sedate against the gaudy luminous yellow crosshatchings of the British motorbikes.
Heading over the river, London was doing its best to look like a tourist attraction.
And even the non-photogenic direction had its own appeal.
Inside the newly-revamped Royal Festival Hall we found Operation Soapbox, a maze built entirely of soapboxes.
A plentiful supply of pens and paper encouraged people to ask questions and participate in discussions as they travelled round it. I grabbed a pen to add my 2p to the debate. As ever, some people ask mundane questions, others highly philosophical. And there's always one...
The ladies' in the RFH was home to a huge queue - about once every few minutes someone commented that the revamp hadn't fixed some of the things wrong with the RFH. Mind you, the ladies' does have one amazing feature. On the back of the toilet door there's not just a hook for your coat and a hook for your bag...
... there's even a holder for your programme. Now that's what I call planning.
Outside the RFH is my new favourite water feature. Appearing Rooms is an art installation by Jeppe Hein. It's a set of variable water walls which enclose transient spaces, allowing the viewer to explore themes of... er, spashing about. Which is great.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 08:01 am (UTC)The Louvres and National Galleries of this world should really consider that most people can't keep up with their vast collections.
I hope they never lock them away and move to having only small displays. I absolutely love the feeling of vast, vast buildings full of awesome art. Indeed, I always feel faintly sad in museums and galleries if I get to the point where I've seen everything that's on display.
As a kid I went to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge on numerous occasions and would sometimes daydream about finding lost exhibits in little rooms hidden away that nobody else had seen for hundreds of years.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 08:11 am (UTC)I think the trouble with places like the Louvre is that they're often tourist holiday destinations, which makes you feel obliged to try and see everything in one day. It's just not possible, and you wear yourself out trying and don't enjoy as much the bits that you do see.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 10:35 am (UTC)I have a long-standing plan to go on holiday to the Louvre for two or three days. And maybe visit Paris briefly while I'm there.
Trouble is, there doesn't seem to be much of an "off-season", so it has not yet amounted to anything. And I'm lazy.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 10:32 am (UTC)Indeed, it would be possible to design such things without the co-operation of the museum/gallery, provided you kept an eye out for them moving stuff.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 08:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 08:47 am (UTC)And The Verve can have half a mark for the opening lines of History.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 09:31 am (UTC)Apparently Sparklehorse did an adaptation of the poem, though.
Only released on US single and a Melody Maker cover tape. Bugger.
Update: Apparently he was covering The Fugs.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 09:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 09:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 09:46 am (UTC)I'm thinking of Sparklehorse. You're telling me that's a bloke's voice ?
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 09:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 09:30 am (UTC)That's one of the things I love most about the Victorians. They didn't just go for industrial utility and the brute forces of iron, steam and hydraulics at their disposal... they wrapped it all in industrial art. Here's a view of the inside a water pumping station!
I think it was about pride. The Victorians felt they were the pinnacle of humanity, and the pinnacle of humanity doesn't go about doing things by halves. Utility alone simply wasn't good enough; big, ugly tools just aren't acceptable when you can have a healthy sprinkling of wrought iron curlicues, fancies and frippery. A pumping station, or lamp-post, had to please the eye as well as pump the water or light the embankment.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 11:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 11:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-12 08:38 am (UTC)Those descriptions remind me somewhat of Gloom.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-12 12:11 pm (UTC)Under their little wooden canopy, the tiles are arranaged into two long rows. There's obviously space left for further rows above and below, but I guess after the initial push nobody made any more. If I'm ever trying to get rid of money, maybe I'll endow a fund to provide tiles for future heroes.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-15 05:45 pm (UTC)