Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts

Wednesday, 31 January 2018

Of Croatian Beasts and London Artistic Feasts

'suspended'
It has been an orgy of art since I arrived back in London just over a week ago. Russian/Communism inspired exhibitions kicked off my visit as I enjoyed Red Star over RussiaCentre for Russian Music: Inside the Collections at the Barbican, and The Currency of Communism. There was no planning, just a desire to reacquaint myself with my favourite artistic haunts and, inevitably, connections started forming. Obviously I am catching the tail-end of exhibitions put on to commemorate the 1917 Russian Revolution, but it's always possible to see beyond the obvious.

Saturday, 9 January 2016

Revelations in glass

Eleanor Morgan
It's been my intention to write and record something about glass for a while now, primarily looking at it from a combined scientific and contemporary art point of view. For instance, Luke Jerram's mysterious shapes of viruses - ebola, MRSA and swine flu - crafted from glass, or the sculpture made from glass laboratory implements recently exhibited in the Wellcome windows. Then recently there was the stunning Glass Delusions at the Grant Museum which was partly inspired by nature's foray into silica based organisms. The inexplicable and unique scientific nature of glass makes it a perfect material of artistic endeavour, able to capture fragility, a human moment of stillness in a medium of movement.

Monday, 7 December 2015

From the archives: Bill Fontana's 'River Sounding'

I was checking through some ancient work and found this about River Sounding, which was a joint venture between The Somerset House Trust and Sound and Music (SAM). The remit of both are very different; the Trust is keen to “open up its spaces to the public by presenting and commissioning work that places the building firmly at the centre of their activity”. SAM’s mission is to “present leading sound based art work to the widest possible audience”. Both were drawn to working with internationally renowned sound artist Bill Fontana, not least because of his previous work in key industrial and nautical locations in London, most notably at Tate Modern and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. 

Monday, 28 September 2015

The River Effra’s Vanishing Act

 
"Yes," said Mr. Fawnhope. "There will be verdure, and that, I think, is what my soul craves. I, with my fair Cecilia, to Merton now will go, Where softly flows the Wandle, and daffodils that blow--What an ugly word is Wandlel How displeasing to the ear!"

Whenever anyone mentions vanished London rivers to me, I can't help thinking of Georgette Heyer's 'Grand Sophie' where I first read about the Wandle. So when there was an opportunity to find out about another of South London's rivers, I decided to make like Mr Fawnhope and jump unbidden into a carriage, in search of verdure, watery pleasure and poetry. Even the musical name 'Effra' conjures images of bucolic enjoyment, and according to Mr Ackroyd, 'is named from the celtic word yfrid, or torrent'.

Tuesday, 1 September 2015

London's Sailortown in the 18th Century

I fulfilled an ambition at the weekend; to run down The Cut to Limehouse Basin, head on to Narrow Street via Ropemaker Fields, and then on round the Isle of Dogs, using as much of the Thames Path as possible. I was glad to have done it on Monday as the Greenwich Tall Ships hooted their welcome on reaching Island Gardens, and I paused to enjoy the atmosphere. As luck would have it, the river theme continues in to September with the Totally Thames festival and its 150 events over the coming month.
 
As the festival launched, I was lucky enough to catch Derek Morris at the Guildhall Library today, and listened avidly as he trounced history academics from the past couple hundred years, and wrote off the library's collection of books about the East End. As an opener, it certainly got my attention. He has just completed his own history, with his book 'London's Sailortown 1600–1800, A Social History of Shadwell and Ratcliff, an Early-Modern London Riverside Suburb' (2014) by Derek Morris and Ken Cozens. 

Tuesday, 17 February 2015

Anticipating research needs; or being there from pitch to party

Old and New Clare Style
Collyer Bristow is home to a long-standing art gallery which presents the best and most interesting contemporary art, whether by up-and-coming or more established artists. Our current show is by Anne Howeson. She works with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prints that are copied on to drawing paper, which she transforms by rubbing away, and making additions with paint. So a bucolic printed view of tile kilns on old Maiden Lane (now York Way) becomes overlaid with a modern glass fronted office block. This uncanny mix reminds us of the fluidity of London’s architecture, past, present and future.

What does this exhibition have to do with knowledge management and legal information? Surprisingly, more than you might initially think. One of the speakers at an event held in conjunction with this show was Jeremy Smith, an archivist from London Metropolitan Archives. Obviously Anne is a devotee of London’s archives because of their collections of prints, which provide the underlying inspiration for her work. Jeremy was proud that archives were becoming increasingly popular with artists, but admitted that this show was rare because he was able to see the end product of a user's research.

Friday, 9 January 2015

Lecture: Exotic birds and animals in the 18th Century garden

Buy a fine singing
bird (1688)
If you're an exotic creature, there's no trusting anything outside in January. From tiny tapirs, tottering giraffes to koalas in mittens our zoological world can be both a lifeline and an unnatural world for the creatures within. I'm clearly no expert on animals, the 18th century, or even the Georgian menageries of old London town, however, yesterday's lecture on exotic birds and animals in the 18th century garden still links to many areas in which I'm interested.

As it is the first in the History of Gardens and Landscapes lectures this term, David Marsh explained that exotica was the theme of  the series; exotica seems to dart about, like a lost traveller, zigzagging through the 18th century. He introduced Dr Christopher Plumb of University of Manchester who is currently writing a book on animals and birds of this period. As a great fan of Timothy tortoise, Christopher's interest in natural history was assured at an early age and he was happy to share some of the colourful stories - both tragic and comic - of England's earliest exotic imports.

Thursday, 26 June 2014

'Fabric' Review: No sun without shadow

Malina Busch 'Fluorescent Blush'
This review was going to be a celebration of summer colours; of shutting ones eyes against the June solstice, leaving echoes of bright pink, rich blues, willow green flashing across the vision, leaving red spots in their wake. I wanted to waken a joyous holiday spirit found in new summer clothing; softly draped fabrics dyed in fluttering colours. Instead I've found myself unwillingly drawn to secluded gazebos hiding clandestine encounters, and surreptitiously lifting tablecloths to see who is touching who inappropriately.

Which sounds like every summer party I've ever been to, so what better exhibition to open in June than Fabric? This show was inspired by the current trend for artists, both established and emerging, working with all kinds of cloth. From embroidery, tapestry, found material, string, canvas…as well as combining it with other media. After the experience they had at the Exeter Contemporary Open, the curators followed up some old and new leads which led to this exhibition. 

Thursday, 22 May 2014

Enter the Dragon and the Birds

© The Trustees of the British Museum
Perhaps I’m getting sensitive to the geography of art, or I’ve always fancied exotic places at lunch, but today I went to China. Room 91 at the British Museum affords visitors the opportunity to go on a voyage along the Yangzi River. There is nothing standard sized about the real or depicted landscapes. The scrolled horizontal ones are like a slow journey along the canal; the vertical banners offer a glimpse of a lush garden through an open window.

I want to focus on one image. It shows figures on a mountainous pathway, their voluminous clothing buffeted by the unexpected animation of a dragon to the top right. The artist is witness to the miracle from behind a rocky, wild outcrop which he puts in the foreground. The heavily shaded and emphasised tumbling rocks and foliage emphasise the reality of the locale, where the lightly sketched figures seem ephemeral in comparison. The dragon just is; scaly, snaky and hanging in the sky, surrounded by shading to make it stand out.

Tuesday, 11 March 2014

Great War in Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

Jules Gervais Courtellemont, 1916 
Cultural review shows entertain and repel me in equal measure. Sometimes the cynical, world weariness of these self satisfied know-it-all critics make me laugh. Few, however, provoke a such a negative reaction that I run along, at the nearest opportunity, to the thing being reviewed. The conversation between Rachel Cooke and the host on BBC4's Front Row (Peter Gabriel; Paco Peña; Helen Oyeyemi; Great War in art; Mark Thomas) was uninformed and utterly disgraceful. After a polite twitter exchange with Ms Cooke, I went down to one of the convenient late night openings.

Sunday, 2 March 2014

Vikings at the British Museum

This afternoon I was lucky enough to be a part of the advance rape and pillage expedition to the new Sainsbury wing of the British Museum. The Viking show which opens 6th March is the first major exhibition on these fascinating people at the British Museum for over 30 years. The press release says that 'it features many new archaeological discoveries and objects never seen before in the UK alongside important Viking Age artifacts from the British Museum’s own collection and elsewhere in Britain and Ireland'. They continue, 'new interpretations place warfare and warrior identity at the centre of what it meant to be a Viking; cultural contact was often violent, and the transportation of looted goods and slaves reflects the role of Vikings as both raiders and traders'.

Sunday, 16 February 2014

Martin Creed at the Hayward: What's the point of a penis?


I don't know how long you have to do something for it to qualify as an old tradition in these electronic times. This is my third nod to Valentine's Day, therefore I am conscious of something almost historically long term about this blog. The first post waMending Broken Hearts, the second was Hearts of Florence but this, unlike those two, is a review of a resolutely mainstream show. However to reference the first blog post, I introduced it with a rantette about the commercialism of Valentine's Day, when actually all you'd rather do is spend more time with a lover; 'to simply hold hands in a park, giggle in a gallery, or something far more intimate'.

Having listened to some of the terribly middle class reviews of Martin Creed at the Hayward I happily booked two Saturday tickets for the most gigglesome show in town. The weekend hadn't started well romantically speaking. Despite several cocktails and a fabulously cheesy evening of Love Classics at the Barbican [note to self, like bad sex, Bolero should only last 3 mins], I actually felt really rough with an ill timed migraine attack. Still, by 3pm on the Saturday with a restorative river journey behind us, I was ready for any artistic nonsense that Creed could throw at me.

Sunday, 15 September 2013

The London Mappers: Thames Festival Talk

Stephen Walter 'London Subterranea' (2012)
After spending a virtual week in the troll-inhabited unmannerly wilderness of the internet, Friday took a turn for the civilised and I entered the world of maps and the City of London. As part of the Thames Festival 2013, Renaissance expert Jerry Brotton and map dealer Daniel Crouch told a cartographic story of London and its iconic river, from the first printed map of the city to recent artistic attempts at mapping the capital.

Jerry opened with statements regarding the different directions in which his and Daniel's experience of maps go. From a renaissance studies point of view his focus is the 'idea' or philosophy of maps, with emphasis on depicting the civil v barbaric. He is also interested in how maps define our identity or even imagining how the early moderns used maps. Daniel's interest is the materiality of maps - how they are presented aesthetically or how rare they are. This duality should have made for an illuminating partnership.

Monday, 12 August 2013

Of royal frills and furbelows

Fashion inspiration
I've had a passive interest in historical fashion for a long time and it was very much cultivated by my marvellous step mother, who remains one of the most elegant people I know. Therefore to lure her down to London, I told her I'd booked tickets for the Fashion Rules at Kensington Palace and In Fine Style at the Queen's Gallery. It worked, for the first time in years she came down and on Saturday we did both of the exhibitions.

We started in the modern times with dresses from the wardrobe of the Queen, Princess Margaret and Princess Diana, obviously covering the 1950s-80s. It was a fine selection of frocks which reflected the public role of the figure head/royal representative and the uniform that they have to wear - they have to be seen in a crowd, reflect the interests of the country they are visiting, and yet be utterly bland in a non controversial way.

Wednesday, 7 August 2013

Lowry: Painting the past

River Scene © The estate of L.S. Lowry
I have a vague personal connection with  artist L.S. Lowry. He lived opposite my playgroup in the mid seventies and would regularly walk past my parents as they all went about their business. And finally at his death in 1977, my dad and his partner in crime were dispatched to the artist's house to ensure that nothing went missing. He had a hugely valuable art collection so it seemed best to send two young police constables to guard the place. There is even a photo of them in the Salford Lowry museum which is a fabulous record of a moment in time, where the art world and my dad bizarrely collided.

Wednesday, 17 July 2013

Warm welcome from the RCS Library

How many men have been injured opening bra straps? How many people currently have a cold at the moment? These aren't questions that can be answered by the good librarians at the Royal College of Surgeons. However they assist their 20,000+ members, medical professionals, researchers, patients and students with all sorts of queries from policy guidance, copyright and specific medical questions. I've been in there a few times as part of Hunterian museum exhibitions but this was a talk and guide for librarians, by librarians. Tom Bishop (Head of Library & Surgical Information Services) and his team gave an insight to the college, the library and what they do for their members.

We were given an overview of the library service, which is an independent, membership funded organisation, where the patient is centre of their concerns. The RCS oversees the surgical profession; from standardising examinations, supervising training, providing professional support, audit and evaluations, to advising government and giving a single voice to surgeons in England.

The role of the library was familiar to all of us; to select, organise and preserve knowledge and promote access to and understanding of the collections. As usual, information staff deal with a wide range of queries, anticipate further information needs and add value where possible as well as providing resources for training. They also work with other people such as Chill, a consortium of independent health libraries. The library is made up of 50,000 books (the earliest from 147), 57 incunabula, around 2000 periodical runs, 30,000 tracts and pamphlets, taking up 4.7km of shelving as well as 200 ejournals and 2800 boxes in archival storage. The focus is strictly surgical and they have the best collection of primary resources for John Hunter in the world. Their importance as a library/archive of note was recognised this year by the Arts Council which most importantly enables them to access funding from other avenues. They saw it as an opportunity to step back and evaluate their services and see things from a different view point. For example the standard they used, PAS197:2009 required them to think about other libraries as competition.

I was interested in hearing about the challenges they faced; similar problems are seen across the library world and we are dealing with them in different ways. As a membership library they are reliant on annual subscription fees for funding; a strong academic/educational function requires access to specialised medical information; highly sub sub specialised members are extremely demanding; geographically dispersed membership presents challenges of access and service provision. When your members are out doing their job, the library can feel physically underused, even if the services you offer are being appreciated. The library is also working within a landscape of upheaval as health care is facing massive challenges. Their members are being confronted with NHS league tables for surgeons, concentrating on new requirements for revalidation, as well as looking at the implications of The Francis Report and so on. There is too much to read, too many sources of info, and too many platforms.

Although we had a very interesting tour of the library areas where we touched on architecture, archives, the rare book room and exhibition space the two areas of work that I want to focus on are current awareness and the systems that they are working with.

Current Awareness

Steffi Sams *is* the library current awareness which was newly set up in April 2011 and has been chronically underfunded. Current awareness is the bread and butter of most special library services so to imagine not doing a round up of journals for colleagues is quite strange. However if I thought that lawyers were difficult, surgeons sound impossible. The reason that it took so long to set up was the large amount of consultation, discussion and tech issues that they faced. Surgeons felt that librarians wouldn't know what they would find interesting/relevant and that without some big names on the bulletin editorial committee, it would lack the necessary gravitas. So they set up pilot bulletins in two areas; cardiothoracic surgery and urology and embraced the learning curve of multiple platforms, specialised content, and sceptical user groups.

I have said many times that you cannot think like a librarian when compiling really useful stuff for lawyers. You have to really get into their heads and see how an article can be applied to problems and clients. So when she reiterated the necessity to think like a surgeon and have to think in a particular context, it struck a chord. She gave the example of a report on the issues around bleeding and anti-coagulants in surgery in over-80s. This would be of general importance to surgeons but a keyword mentality would not help find it.

For ease of use and the excellent statistical analysis, they use Campaign Master. This has RCS branding, however she says it's not really fit for purpose. Combining this with the internal Surgeons Information database, SIMS database of interests, they can send it out to specific people. The monthly bulletins include the editorial panel so readers can see the clinicians behind this. Each article has a citation, in house written summary and link to the full text. They also include links to help pages, cutting edge conference news, Anatomy TV material and adverts for other services such as image provision for talks etc.

They are planning to get more staff and set up bulletins for vascular surgery and plastic & reconstructive surgery. They are already prototyping a patient safety bulletin, all of which will run along the same principles. And like law, surgical specialisms have their own idiosyncrasies so each one will have different issues for the library staff. All signs suggest that the current bulletins have been very well received and the library hold 5 of the top 10 spots for activity for bulletin activity - something that the business development/education people are quite envious of. The successful current awareness service requires the compiler to know their stuff. They are looking at other possibilities - putting articles in context of medical arguments, looking at sponsorship opportunities to recoup some staff costs, spin offs and finally, the platform will need reviewing.

Library Systems

This part of librarianship is rather mysterious to me. I look after my LMS, College of Law Portal, my legal databases and they tend to look after themselves to be honest. However when your users are accessing the services remotely, suddenly library systems take on a massive importance. The various systems the RCS use are:

1. Opac - Sirsi/Dynex/Symphony Grew out of Unicorn. Based off site
2. SIMS Database. Feeds user system over night into the library database.
3. Adlib. The front end is SurgiCat. They are in process of upgrading to joint library and archive system... 
4. Plarr's lives of the fellows online. They are planning to take it off Orm(?!) and move to Adlib.
5. Access to Ovid/medline/pubmed must be maintained on the site 
6. Anatomy tv. For teaching, good copyright terms so that they can use images/stills from it
7. She lost me on the Athens stuff but there were good ways of administering passwords etc, and bad ways. Basically they have set it up so the user can do it all themselves as long as they are on the SIMS database which is good for non office hour requests.

They are looking at ebooks but there isn't that much content yet. Regarding online material, many publishers are not always happy to deal with the RCS library because speciality journal publishers want individuals to buy their titles. They also make it difficult for overseas member to access services.

Of course this reliance on online material has its downside and risks. They - and other departments at the college - heavily rely upon SIMS. If that was to fall over, that would be very bad. And if the website went down then there round be a problem as Athens directs users to the RCS site, there is no alternative. So they stress the importance of maintenance and communication.

All in all this was a very good learning experience. So when you are at the Hunterian, please feel free to drop by the Library next door.

Oh and finally, if you need to know what classification system they use, it's the Barnard classification system, originally designed for veterinary libraries and evolved into human use...





Monday, 25 March 2013

Fishwives and Cornish Art

***intermission***

As a bit of light artistic relief I have blogged on Cornish art over at Contrary Towers


Monday, 11 March 2013

Body, mind, water

Embodiment is the hot topic right now it seems. Whether it's the retirement of the page 3 girl, the apparent increase in nudity in London's theatres and performance spaces, or 20,000 year old statuettes, bodies and art are everywhere.

The more I read about embodiment and art, whether from a clinical, philosophical or sociological point of view, it is clear that even if you're looking at a landscape or still life, the body is still present. From the gesture of the artist to the gaze of the viewer, all art is embodied. Once this is understood it would seem that there is little left to say. Which is rather an issue given that I've got 5000 words to find. Perhaps the key is to forget the theory per se and concentrate on the art?

The exhibition 'House of many windows' consists of work by contemporary figurative artists* and looks at how they present the body. Whether it is their own, others or imagined historical portraits. I was interested in  the way the artists depicted their subjects communicating with the viewer.

Wednesday, 6 February 2013

'Bang Bang You're Dead': Jay Gun at WW Gallery

After a normal day of Formula 1 photos, a university seminar on disturbing medical images and a podcast about Galileo and psychopaths, I returned home and wondered what to relax with on the iPlayer. A timely text from a friend recommended the Charlie Brooker Weekly Wipe - 'do it now - it's 30 minutes of life well spent'. This collection of acerbic observations from the news was amusing but the section on US gun culture needed no commentary from Brooker to be shocking; just to watch snippets of adverts, the Piers Morgan shouty interview with Alex Jones and the small child showing off her pink REAL guns was astounding. And worrying. Which is why when I saw Jay Gun: The Most Dangerous Man on the Planet, I didn't know whether to immediately laugh or cry.

Thursday, 25 October 2012

Art/Photography/Space/Death

On my course so far we’ve covered labels, art/space/geography and this week we are looking at the art of photography. So when I saw the title of the first incredibly timely and apposite lecture at the Inside Out festival ‘Death and Space’ my attendance was assured. ‘Death and the Contemporary’ according to the website, is a series of ‘site-specific events providing an opportunity for interdisciplinary discussions to consider issues surrounding the representation of death in contemporary culture’.

Paul Benney 'Pissing Death' (2012)
And where better to talk art, photography, space, contemporary cultural practices and death than in the Deadhouse under Fountain Court at Somerset House? This space resonated with all these connections; from links with the 17th century dead who were in attendance, to contemporary portrayals of powerful spirituality with the art of Paul Benney. As a brief aside, his exhibition works in perfect synchronicity with the light wells and moody, enclosed spaces of the Deadhouse. His mysterious shadowy figures beckon you, forests threaten to maroon you, saints watch over you, whilst Death in time honoured tradition simply pisses all over you.