LondonLife – Waiting for the Tube, Baker Street…
August 14, 2018
LondonLife – Tower Bridge opening…
July 31, 2018
PICTURE: Sandy Kemsley (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
LondonLife – Taking flight…
July 24, 2018
LondonLife – Sculpture in the City (Vol 8)…
July 17, 2018
Sculpture in the City is back in the Square Mile, this year featuring 18 artworks ranging from Jean-Luc Moulène’s Body, an aerodynamic tribute to the automobile as sculpture (located in Undershaft – pictured above), to Thomas J Price’s Numen (Shifting Votive) One & Two, an exploration of the ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian traditions of monumental sculpture (located under The Leadenhall Building – pictured below). Other sculptural works included in this, the 8th edition of the annual event, include Juliana Cerceira Leite’s Climb, a three metre tall obelisk made from the inside out (located in Mitre Square – pictured second below), Sarah Lucas’ Perceval, a life-size horse and cart evocative of the traditional china ornaments that once took pride of place on British mantlepieces (located in Cullum Street – pictured third below), and Karen Tang’s Synapsid, a vivid globular sculpture which brings to mind sci-fi invasion scenarios (outside Fenchurch Street station – pictured fourth below). And, for the first time, the event also includes two sound projects: Marina Abramovic’s Tree, which those passing near a tree at 99 Bishopsgate with insistent, repetitive and distorted birdsong, and Miroslaw Balka’s The Great Escape which, located in Hartsthorn Alley, features the film of the same name’s theme song being whistled repeatedly in a series of slightly different renditions. The display can be seen until April next year – for a map of all the locations, head to www.sculptureinthecity.org.uk. ALL PICTURES: Nick Turpin.
LondonLife – More new benches for City of London…
June 26, 2018
As we reported last Thursday, a series of specially designed new benches have been rolled out across the City of London as part of this month’s London Festival of Architecture. We loved the designs so much, we thought we’d show you some of the others. Above is Nicholas Kirk Architects’ Money Box which, located outside London Bridge Station, is formed of 45,000 stacked pennies while immediately below is McCloy + Muchemwa’s A Bench for Everyone. Located Inside One New Change, its folded shape is designed to evoke the “memory and much-loved comforts of home furniture”. The festival runs until the end of the month. PICTURES: All images © Agnese Sanvito
Above – Mariya Lapteva’s City Ghosts which, located in front of the Royal Exchange, is inspired by the history of the area including East India House and the little shopfronts along Leadenhall Street.
Above – Maria Gasparian’s Ceramic City Bench in Bow Church Yard featuring colours inspired by the “multi-layered context of the City of London that has for centuries been a place for trade, exchange and religious diversity”.
Above – Mills Turner’s Double Bench in Fen Court has been designed to be easy to assemble and adjustable and features an “organic silhouette” which follows the natural curve of the human body.
Today – 5th June – is World Environment Day and to mark that, we thought it a good moment to mention ZSL London Zoo’s 16 foot high installation highlighting the issue of plastic pollution. The work of London-based artist and architect Nick Wood, Space of Waste is made of 15,000 plastic bottles – the number of single use bottles sold every minute in the UK – retrieved from across London, including out of the Thames. The installation houses information about the problem of plastic pollution and the small steps we can all take to tackle it. The installation follows a move by ZSL to stop using disposable plastic bottles at London Zoo in 2016 as part of the #OneLess campaign. For more, see www.zsl.org/zsl-london-zoo. For more on the #OneLess campaign, see www.onelessbottle.org. Top – ZSL’s Fiona Llewellyn ZSL’s places last bottle on Space of Waste; Below – The finished installation. PICTURES: David Parry/PAWire
LondonLife – The RHS Chelsea Flower Show…
May 29, 2018
Last week was the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea since 1913. Here’s some highlights…
Above, RHS letters, designed by Lucy Hunter.
The Weston Garden, designed by Tom Stuart-Smith.
Visitor Amande Allen views sculptures on display with allium and box at the A Place in the Garden exhibition during members day. PICTURE: RHS/Luke MacGregor
Crowds walk through concessions during members day. PICTURE: RHS/Luke MacGregor
Hillier: A Royal Celebration, designed by Sarah Eberle.
Union Jacks daub Regent Street in the West End in honour of the wedding in Windsor last weekend of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, now the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. PICTURE: Pete (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0/image cropped)
LondonLife – Night shopping…
May 8, 2018
PICTURE: Pete Owen/Unsplash
LondonLife – Millicent Fawcett unveiled…
May 1, 2018
Prime Minister Theresa May (below) and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, recently attended the unveiling of the first statue commemorating a female in Parliament Square – that of Suffragist leader Dame Millicent Fawcett. The work of Turner Prize-winning artist Gillian Wearing, the statue is not only the first of a woman to grace the square outside the Houses of Parliament but also the first in the square created by a woman. Its arrival marks 100 years since women were given the right to vote in the Representation of the People Act 1918. Mrs May paid tribute to Fawcett for her role in the “long and arduous” struggle to achieve votes for women while Mr Khan pointed out that the statue would stand near that of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela – “two other heroic leaders who campaigned for change and equality”. “There couldn’t be a better place to mark the achievements of Millicent Fawcett, in the heart of UK democracy in Parliament Square,” he said. The statue, which was funded through the Government’s £5 million Centenary Fund, was unveiled by three generations of women including Jennifer Loehnis, a descendant of Millicent Fawcett, and activist Caroline Criado Perez who led the campaign lobbying for the statue to be placed there.
PICTURES – Top – Garry Knight/Flickr (public domain); Below Number 10/Flicker (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
LondonLife – New art on the Fourth Plinth…
April 24, 2018
A life-sized copy of Lamassu, a winged deity that stood at Nineveh’s Nergal Gate from 700 BC until the so-called Islamic State destroyed it in 2015, Michael Rakowitz’s work The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist is the 12th to adorn the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. The American artist’s work is made from 10,500 empty Iraqi date syrup cans, representative of a once-renowned industry which has been devastated by war in the Middle Eastern nation, while the use of recycled food packaging can be seen as a reference to the recycling of cannons once carried on the HMS Royal George to create the reliefs at the base of Nelson’s Column. Unveiled at the end of March by Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, the work will remain on the plinth until early 2020.
PICTURE: Loz Pycock/licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)
LondonLife – Still waters at Hampstead Heath…
April 17, 2018
PICTURE: Amadeusz Misiak/Unsplash.
LondonLife – Trafalgar Square…
April 10, 2018
PICTURE: Kevin Grieve/Unsplash
LondonLife – Cold days…
March 20, 2018
PICTURE: Jack Finnigan/Unsplash
LondonLife – Inner Temple…
March 13, 2018
Hare Court, part of Inner Temple – one of the four Inns of Court in London. The inns of Court are professional associations for barristers – the Inner Temple, like the Middle Temple, has provided accommodation for lawyers since at least the 14th century.
LondonLife – Cannons in snow…
March 6, 2018
Cannons in snow at the Tower of London.
LondonLife – Enjoying the cold?
February 27, 2018
Humans might be struggling to stay warm as the ‘Beast from the East’ hits the city but at ZSL London Zoo, the penguins are feeling very much at home. PICTURE: © ZSL London Zoo
LondonLife – Sunrise over the City…
February 20, 2018
PICTURE: David Holt (licensed under CC BY 2.0)
LondonLife – Taking stock at the ZSL London Zoo…
February 13, 2018
Last week was the ZSL London Zoo’s annual stocktake in which they make a count of all the creatures, great and small, that are residents of the zoo. Some 750 species live at the zoo totalling more than 19,000 animals, meaning it’s quite a mammoth effort which takes almost a week to complete. The information gained is then shared with other zoos around the world via the Species360 database to aid in managing worldwide conservation breeding programmes for endangered animals. While some animals, like the Asiatic lions are easy to count, others are less so due to their tiny size (although ant colonies are simply counted as one). Among first-timers this year were two gibbons – Jimmy and Yoda – as well as 11 Humboldt penguin chicks, eight new Galapagos tortoises and a Hanuman langur baby (a species of leaf-eating monkey). For more on the zoo, see www.zsl.org. PICTURES: Top – Humboldt penguins; Below – Squirrel monkeys, llamas and an Asiatic lion.
LondonLife – Curved facades…
February 6, 2018
PICTURE: Ed Robertson/Unsplash
