skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Shirana Shahbazi @ The Barbican & The Window Gallery.
On an evening last week whilst walking back from Oxford Street along Charing Cross Road I came across an art gallery called The Window Gallery. Sited opposite a bus stop, the window is screened off with performing artists behind it, only showing the shadows and silhouettes of their movement. Passers by are intrigued to watch the event to see what will happen next and how the two performers interact with each other, as they both try to seduce one another. It is part of a series of events being held at The Window Gallery titled “Seduced” created by graduates at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. It is running in conjunction with The Barbican’s exhibition “Seduced Art and Sex From Antiquity to Now” that looks at the representation of sex in art through the ages with works spanning some 2000 years including works by Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso. However, I did not go to that exhibition in The Barbican, as it was too pricey. Instead I went to see Shirana Shahbazi at The Curve Gallery within the same building.
The last time I visited The Curve Gallery there was a London cab with a large hole drilled all the way through it and a rotating caravan so I wondered what would be happening there now. Inside the curvy space there are a series of large-scale paintings on the subjects of fruit & flowers, portraits of a young woman and a landscape. The paintings are produced in collaboration with billboard painters and artists from her native Iran. Each painting is painted from a photo, which she has previously taken. After painting the image she then tries to replicate it again, but by trying to copy an existing image the scale ends up changing and the over all image differs from the previous.
Museum of London.
The museum of London seems to be going through a bit of a refurbishment as the bottom gallery for world war London and post-war London was not open, but the rest of the exhibitions were still open :) The museum of London takes your through the entire history of the city, from early settlers, to Roman Londinium, to the great fire of London. There are lots of exhibitions and displays showing how Londinium was organised in the Roman times and the size of London and how it has expanded through the ages. With Londinium being where the heart of the city is and then in the Saxon times another settlement was set up further down stream where Charing Cross is now. Westminster and the Houses of Parliament was constructed on what previously once was a marshy island and the majority of current day settlements would have once been completely under water, as the River Thames was constantly changing it’s path through the ages. Another exhibition currently on display is about the Great Fire of London in 1666 showing some of the original artifacts that survived the fire and how Londoner’s fled to the banks of the Thames to escape the flames taking only their most valuable, but not always their most useful or important of belongings.
Triton Square & Regent’s Place.
Located opposite Warren Street Tube Station is Regent’s Place, a mixed use area of glass retail units and office buildings. Designed by EDCO and Sheppard Robson Architects for British Land PLC with ARUP as the engineers it was the winner of the 2004 Civic Trust Award. The square at the centre of this development is a mixture of sculpture, lighting and architecture all blending together to give a dramatic effect. There are two main features to the square and they are the illuminated fan and a planting area that is suspended above the paving on a series of metal poles and clad with a 19th century work by Edward Hodges Baily. The landscape is linked with the surrounding built environment with strands of illuminated fibre optic lighting set into the paving. To me it is a place, which is probably best viewed at night when the art works of the space are lit up and showed at their best. In a wet environment the users of the space tend to not used the seating given and therefore the space becomes under used. In dry conditions there are lots of areas for people to sit and eat with benches that reflect the undulating turf and a spiral stone seating area as well.
Spitalfields Market.
For lunch we went to one of my favourite places in London, Spitalfields Market. Currently it is under going further refurbishment in order to complete the re development of the area, with new retail units housed within the existing market that has different markets every day. Within Spitalfields market Spencer and myself decided to eat at this new place called Leon, which is described by The Times to be “the new place in fast food”. Expecting it to not be too good I was very surprised. At lunch you get a range of veggie of meat dishes to choose from and all dishes are served in biodegradable boxes, which looks quite different. All their meat is from farms in Devon and dishes are made using seasonal ingredients. The lemon, mint and ginger quencher is yummy. I shall stop there, as I’m not a food critic, but it was all very nice and good value too! :)
Surrounding Spitalfields Market a number of shops have kept their original facades from the Victorian times. However, within them are more modern businesses or businesses trying to recapture the time when there was a greater choice and not everything was all packaged in plastic. These shops provide a great contrast to Liverpool Street itself where modern glass office blocks have been constructed and Starbucks and other chains line the road.
Focus on being Human:
Wellcome Collection & British Library:
Wandering along the Euston Road from St. Pancras International with Mr Darg we came across the gardens for the British Library, which were rather red and very 1980s, early 90s in design. Continuing along past Euston Station we went to a building opposite called the Wellcome Collection, which i had never heard of before. It is free to enter and contains a bookshop, cafe, library and three exhibitions mixing medicine, life and art all in one building. On the ground floor is a special exhibition called "Sleeping & Dreaming", which investigates the science and need for sleep and dreams. Inside the exhibition there are videos and films showing people and their sleeping patterns and how this can be shown through diagrams and artwork. There are three photos that show the mapping of light across a city through different times of the night and how this relates to people's sleeping patterns. The exhibition blends a mixture of scientific experiments, with food's, sculpture and art through the ages that all have a connection with how sleep and dreams are perceived and can be controlled or understood.
Upstairs are a further two exhibitions Medicine Man and Medicine Now. Medicine Now looks at current day medical issues including Malaria, obesity and genomes. Reflecting on the experiences and interests of scientists, doctors and patients. Exhibits include a cut through of a donor's body showing how the muscles, veins and bones are laid out with in the body and the colours of each, which is fascinating. There is a film recording a year period of a womans life from her 23rd to her 24th birthday and every meal she has eaten with in that time frame. This is part of the obesity and Malaria section, which compares an illness associated with developed nations and a disease associated with developing nations.
There is also a wall for the public where they can write or illustrate their thoughts on science and medicine and then display it with other's thoughts.
ZSL London Zoo:London Zoo on the edge of Regent's Park is one of the world's leading places in animal research and is the oldest scientific zoo in the world, being found in 1828. Covering a total area of 36 acres the site houses numerous species of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians and invertebrates. London zoo also houses many historically listed buildings including the clock tower, giraffe house and penguin pool. However, due to the amount of listed buildings with in the zoo it has considerably restricted the zoo's options for growth and modernization.
London Zoo's newest attraction is Gorilla Kingdom, which cost £5.3 million. It houses three Western Lowland Gorillas, two female and one male. When the gorillas are fed each day they go through 2-3 sack loads of fruit and vegetables, which also includes popcorn!
Other popular creatures at the zoo include the Black footed and Rock Hopper Penguins from South Africa and sub-antarctic islands.
Another relatively new enclosure is Butterfly Paradise. Housed within a giant caterpillar is very humid environment that supports 100s of species of butterflies and moths and a pupae breeding room.
