The Fourth Plinth

The Fourth Plinth is renouned for temporary & contemporary art in the presumed traditional Trafalgar square. The most recent commission is Thomas Schütte's Model for a Hotel 2007 wich was critisised as being a house for pigeons! The sulpture certainly stood out!


The 6 shortlisted artists for the next installation include:

Jeremy Deller
Tracey Emin
Antony Gormley
Anish Kapoor
Yinka Shonibare
Bob & Roberta Smith

Pregnant Alison Lapper on the Fourth Plinth (aug-sept 07):
(picture from http://www.artwords.co.uk/acatalog/art.html)

Swiss Cottage

'the presence and absence of water suggests activity and tranquillity with equal ease. A strongly moulded land form, together with lush planting, provide a striking context for the water element.' The shallow paddling pool in the center is fed by a bore hole system which is also supposed to be used to water vegetation. However, on my visit, as so common with bore hole water harvesting systems, it was not maintained and the pool was dry. The landscape was a disapointment, and the not so dramatic mounds of earth were balding!

Gustafson Porter PR 2006

CLICK 4 Gufstason & Porter website

Adjacent to the Gustafson & Porter landscape lies the contrastingly inspiring
Library/ fitness center/ Multiuse Community center
Designed by Basil Spence in 1960's. It had huge presence, which is reflected in its popularity. The community center, Library & Fitness Center, Cresh & Cafe bring the community togeather in the otherwise drab, car dominated area.

Jean Pouvre @ Tate & Design Museum

Jean Pouvre's Tropical Maison is currently outside the Tate Modern. The tropical maison is a prefabricated house designed in the 1950's, it is made from sheet steel panels and fitted with sliding aluminium wall panels. Prouvre beleived in mass production of building components and funiture and all the components are flat, light and less than 4m wide for economy of manufacture and easy of construction.
Incorporated blue glass port holes protect against UV Rays The Design museum has a partnering exhibtion which shows Jean Prouves other work, he was an engineer primarily, and an architect/ furniture designer as a result. Architects such as Richard Rodgers still draw inspiration from his work. Function comes first and his various works are unfrilly, neccesities, the arches in the picture below are repeated in numerous designs.

White Cube. Anthony Gormley

The white cube off Masons Yard could be the exhibition itself, its fab!

Gormleys Lost horizon is exhibited on the ground floor of the white box. It comprises of the 32 solid Iron body forms which previously animated London's skyline in the 'Event Horizon' exhibition (see previous blogg entry) , they are placed throughout the space standing abruptly, suspended horizontally. Those attatched to the ceiling seem weightless, those grounded don't. One must weave and duck through them for human and inhumane encounters. Each figure has presence when looking at them too long its awkward like you're staring at someone!

'Here the haptic field that acts directly on the body of the viewer' (press release) Our 1.5m comfort zone is broken as you walk through the art work.

The stairs in the White cube are dramatic- next to them the facade is glass to the floor so, decending underground the bright white granite floor outside becomes eye level.
The stair case takes you into the exhibition 'Firmament', a sculpture, alike a celestial constellation . I got lost following the patterns which 30 by 30 mm mild steel tubing made, as it collected into a mass and dwindled in arms to the edge of the room. Firmament is constructed of 1770 steel elements and again impedes on personal space and has a direst relationship with the viewer. 'In this exhibition the viewer is asked to re-adjust continually their relationship with the field as they navigate through it'(press release) 'its form disolves and resolves throuought the gallery. Like a map of space bronging our awareness to the white box's capacity.'(press release)
Gormely's cast Iron figures have visual similarities to Frinks aluminium cast people.

Flying Figures Shaftsbury square:


'Frinks forms defy categorisation and merge human, bird and animal characteristics.'

Frinks sculptures are sureal as they are busy doing things, yet so static- they have less presence and relationship with the viewer than Gormleys people.

Lighting

CPD Lecture at EDCO Design 18th April 2008

More Light does not create better effects

Dominic Meyrick animatedly presented his lighting concepts and projects. He talked about the level of light needed for different situations, measured in lux:
home 50-150, dusk 50-150 street lighting 5-10, moon light 0.5 and starlight is 0.2 we can see in very little light.
Sky glow can be minimised with the right light fitting
White light is a low voltage tungsten colour which gives good colour rendering compared to the yellow street lighting which colours everything the same.

Daylight is called white light compared to the warmer light inside, however at night this is reversed and indoor light becomes white compared to the darker atmosphere outside.

Lighting design can cover the macro and micro scales macro could be lighting an iconic building, and micro is lighting on a human scale. The human scale rarely deviates from 4-6m high.

A good way of saving money in a scheme is to light the landscape from the buildings adjacent.

Reasons for lighting:

Security
our personal space is 0.5m (this is why handshaking is such a one to one gesture) at night this circle of comfortable distance between you and others can increase to 3m- lighting can reduce the fear of crime if done in the right way.

Safety
Spot lighting creates shadows- safe lighting will allow people to see who's there facial expressions, and age and will allow people to judge distance

Work

Movement- Leon is designed so that the main roads leading in and out of the grid structure city and lit with cool white light, whereas the rest of the grid is lit with warm yellow light. In fact blue light is the best light to see by at night and the yellow light scheme everywhere is a major error!

Leisure

Visual Appeal
Lighting draws people in at night, and can highlight different qualities of the space from the day.
theatrical and dramatic lighting has it's place, but not in the everyday public realm because of safety issues

Art in the Park.

Burgess Park, Elephant and Castle, 6th April 08.

A chance find which brighten up the dreary city skyline of Elephant and Castle:

'Art in the Park' and the local school children made drawings of themselves, plants and birds, either imaginary or realistic which metamorphosed into an environmental dreamscape that complements the parks' green spaces.Inspired by themes of 'camouflage and enchanted forest', drawings have been turned into relief sculptures, transforming the ghostly building's outline into a synergy of architecture and plant life.'

read more here

and here!

Guerrilla Gardeing

April 4th 2008. Old Street.

Guerrilla gardening link

The smell of soil in the heart... of London, lots of busy hands attracted much attention as we cleared a rubbish heap, planted ivy & daisies and sprinkled Eschscholzia seeds. I wonder how the nombs will get on!

Stephen Walters & Magical Maps

Below is walters map of Kingston
Stephen Walters fantastic maps! They depict the london landscape through human meaning and sybolism of the past and present. The following map is a special edition print made for the subteranea V&A exhibition covering the exhibition row in west Kensington.

They are addictive and one gets easily lost in an intricate web of words and symbols!

According to the V & A website:

'map is ever the truly objective description of a place that it purports to be. Every map is shaped and coloured by political, cultural and social conditions, and by the personal experience or imaginative projections of its maker.'

Please click for: Stephen Walter's website

Late Night at the V&A. Friday 28th March.

The V&A is open late every Friday, at the end of each month is hosts a range of talks and exhibitions, March 2008 was themed Subterranea,

I managed to see a lot of the V&A due to its maze of rooms to navigate around! Here's more about the interresting events:

The new V&A tunnel commission is 'Seasons through the Looking Glass' Tunnel by CJ Lim of Studio 8 Architects,


White T-shirts are rolled up to become roses amongst corregated cardbord panels. They will be painted with the seasons, the exhibition is accompanied by a passage from Alice and wonderland connecting the idea of painting roses and being under ground and giving the 'sculpture' narative.

apparantly it is a 'multi-sensory invention exploring the spatial possibilities of a subterranean garden space'
After a talk by CJ Lim the public were invited to play!

'Nighthaunts'National Art Library

'Join a reading by Sukhdev Sandhu, from his recent book 'Nighthaunts', an exploration of nocturnal London and a reflection on the nature of the urban night. Accompanied by music by sonic artist Scanner.'

The eerie and intimate ambience of the Victorian Library lended itself perfectly to this reading, the lights were out and we were able to drift in and out of a story about working in the unnatural underground of Londons sewers. An environemtn people overground try to forget, where engravings in the walls 'street art' are gradually filled in with shit, as if nobody was ever there. mmm!

focus on materials

Sure set talk at EDCO Design.

Sure set resin bound gravel in petri glasses:

The different types, grades and colours of the aggregate/recycled material make it unique. I particuarly like the recycled CD case example, it is stylish and glittering (if possible!).

Resin bound gravel is twice as expensive as resin bonded gravel, the recycled range costs £78/m² which is supplied and laid on a fully prepared base, however this does not include the foundation and sub base.

I think its best when broken up with natural stone setts

It can be mixed to be porous with a high grade material- making it good for tree grills and complying with SUD's.

There is also a luminous option which is unusual, but sure set can look a tad tacky! It is easy to manipulate into shapes and patterns using flexible aluminium edges, it is wonderful in playful spaces which need to be blasted with colour and pattern.

It can be made to look natural using no edging but in my opinion this looks naff! In public areas it is a permenant alternative to painted road surface signage and can be cleaned with power blasting.

Click here if you want to make your own!

Various visits & Inspirations

Could the comforable bean bag sofas become temporary street furniture?
Architectural website

Tag fine arts website
Although the art work in this online gallery is fantastic, it lacks the sense of place one gets when at a gallery, the feeling of looking at work for a snap shot of time, when people have to get everything they can out of the viewing because thats the only chance to.

It is all verywell to buy work as an investment, take Banksy for an example, however much more exciting is his work when you come accross it by chance of old street, than when it lines the walls of living rooms and art fairs,

Banksy Exhibition (actually an art fair as the peices were privately owned and most were for sale) & Andipa Gallery's, Knightsbridge.
March 25th 08.



I love the magic of the breif encounters, the clever, controversial, 'propaganda' messages which create a reaction in the many viewers.Banksey's work didn't seem at home in the gold plated frames in the luxurious Antipa galleries with heafty price tags looming.



Click here for beautiful pics!

I find construction is facinating, making a whole out of millions of parts. It doesn't get much simpler than this:
container homes

Focus on Sustainable materials

City Scape. Earls Court. 3rd- 5th March.



Whitelaw and Turkington designed a mock public space for the centerpiece. It became an interactive exhibition with a little free booze!

I helped man the SLIC stand which showcased students work from across the Accredited uni's of England. Ours was the only free stand, and the only one that wasn't trying to sell anything.

Cityscape was a great opportunity to have a gander at sustainable NOW building materials methods. There were less wind turbines and green walls than last year and many more stands about green roofs with enthusiastic salesmen explaining them, there was also a lot based on sustainable drainage systems, recycled products of products etc.

Selection of CED's natural stone:
LED's in Resin Bound recycled glass:
Natural Stone Show Excell Center


Stone. much of the exhibition was concentrated on interior design, some stands were for outdoor paving however uninspiringly very little was from Britain. Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Turkish. BusinessMEN, (there were very few women!)

Beautiful marble:Cityscape lulled me into a false sense of security that the building industry was thinking green, well then there's the other side to things at the Natural Stone show it was ALL about money and beauty. Sickening!

Nice




The following picture is of the sienave stand. The material is natural stone Sienito CVL Monchique, originating from Algarve - Portugal.
#Their brochure: 'The use of this natural resource promotes a new orientation toward the use of low embodied energy products.' # Some people just tick the boxes!

But again it was a good opportunity to inspect possible materials in their differently worked finishes: polished, honed, fine picked - granite, basalt, sandstone etc

Glass stairs by Wachenfeld:

The White Cube

http://www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/da_wc_hs/
Moons of the Iapetus Ocean & 'Infinite in- betweens'
18 Jan—23 Feb 2008

Moons of the lapetus ocean is a series of landscape photographs which distort the reverse the patterns of movement, many are based around water, the water looks calm and undisturbed and the surrounding landscape looks as if in rugged motion, the growth of the landscape is speeded up and the movement of the water is stopped.
'a kind of fog of knowing and unknowing, revealing and concealing.' (Brian Dillon in catalogue essay) 'waterfalls and gushing lakes become pools of static steam' (press release at gallery)

'Infinite between's'-The title refers to the Buddhist vision of relativity of all beings and all things, the space between two breaths, we always occupy an in between state that is never ending and infinite.

The exhibition is a series of photographs which are woven layers of traditional prayer flags in Tibet, which were hung in layers over a photograph of mountain ridges, as the layers build up, a 3d effect is created and confronts the viewer with infinite perspectives.

The White Cube