Sky drawing

Friday morning over north east London, 13th May.

Wedding fever and window dressing

The location of Mike Leigh's film Happy-Go-Lucky on the corner of our road opposite the street art gallery is now a delightful tea and vintage clothes shop. Their tribute to the occasion was nostalgic.

After saluting the newly-weds and other Royals on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, the Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster from the Royal Air Force Battle of Britain Memorial Flight unexpectedly flew over Finsbury Park and my own balcony (well, roof terrace) as I sat sunning myself with a celebratory glass of Prosecco. I rushed to the other side of the house, grabbed my camera and just managed to get this shot as they disappeared over the rooftops. My father flew in Lancaster bombers during World War 2 when he was stationed in North Africa and the Middle East with the RAF and we occasionally see one exercising over Salisbury Plain when driving down the M4 to Wales, but there must be very few still in operation.

In Brecon on Easter Sunday, wedding fever was evident despite numerous Plaid Cymru placards for the forthcoming Welsh Assembly elections, with a knitted Royal family on display in a Llandovery craft shop window. The corgis and bespectacled, tousle-haired Archbishop of Cantebury were particularly noteworthy, though Camilla and the Queen were undistinguishable and The Dress had no train. Knit your very own corgi to celebrate:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/20/royal-wedding-knitting-pattern-corgi

  

And what about this? My thoughts exactly...

Closing soon

The story of my year has been missing the shows I wanted to see by leaving visits to the final week, then getting caught up in something that prevented me from being in London. So this month I'm catching up on some of the exhibitions that are still on. Yesterday I made it to the RA Summer exhibition in its final week.

I hate not being able to take pictures in galleries - unless visitors are setting up tripod and state of the art kit, what's the harm? - but the Barry Flanagan bronze hares in the courtyard, the Roman sculptures outside the John Singer Sargent show and Tracey Emin's prints in the Friend's Room were all legitimately up for grabs. There was even a copy of my Emin owl print to admire over a large slice of chocolate torte with pecans (other women in the tea queue gasped audibly over my self-indulgence). Unfortunately, I discovered that the artist's proof status I thought guaranteed the exclusivity of my purchase is as common as chips - they only had artist's proofs of the print left on sale at the RA (and considerably cheaper than what I paid at auction - I hope Cass Fine Art students appreciated my donation!).
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/hugh-casson-room-for-friends/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/sep/01/barry-flanagan-obituary
http://splitbyscene.blogspot.com/2010/05/ought-to-be-bought-3.html

This is mine ...

  

Nelson's Ship in a Bottle - Yinka Shonibare

As a child, did you have one too, a ship in a bottle? I'd forgotten mine until now and how I used to marvel at its impossible form. How did it get to sail on its painted sea? Yinka Shonibare has tapped into all that childhood wonderment with his sculpture for Trafalgar Square, which charms rather than challenges. It's possibly the most apposite and playful site specific work to have yet occupied the plinth. The sails, set as for the battle of Trafalgar, are printed in Shonibare's trademark African fabrics, a decorative reminder of our colonial past and multicultural present.  Read Adrian Searle's excellent review for The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/may/24/fourth-plinth-yinka-shonibare-trafalgar-square

See also:
http://splitbyscene.blogspot.com/2009/07/one-and-other-day-11.html

Art teachers all over the country will be preparing return-to-school bottling projects - and not in the food technology rooms. Do it yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWBdQIHcZr0
http://www.instructables.com/id/Recycle-Old-Light-Bulb-1/
http://www.videojug.com/webvideo/how-to-get-a-ship-in-a-bottle

Fiona Banner - Harrier and Jaguar

Fiona Banner's decommissioned fighter planes fit surprisingly well into the two Duveen galleries at Tate Britain: their scale is human, not awe inspiring, though shock and awe are in one's thoughts when viewing them. Harrier jets on practice runs would roar low over the roof of our Shropshire hideaway when the children were young in the eighties. They inspired awe - and fear. Their piercing screech evoked danger and death, the threat of war, killing machines. These gallery planes are silent, slaughtered predators, hanging from a meathook or upended on a butcher's slab. Their forms are perfectly sculptural and perfectly at home in these cultural spaces, the minimalism of their aesthetic appeal only marred by the over-litteral feathering on the unpolished metal wings of the Harrier.
http://www.fionabanner.com/

The Harrier

The Jaguar

Reprieve for Linda Carty

Reprieve is a group of lawyers who fight for the human rights of prisoners all over the world. At present they have installed at the side of St Martins-in-the-Fields church, Trafalgar Square, a full-scale replica of the death-row cell in Texas of the only British woman under a death sentence in the US, Linda Carty. Sentenced back in 2002 after what is described as a flawed trial, Carty is due to be executed by fatal injection in the next few weeks. I sat on the bunk in the cell writing  her a letter of support as a video of her singing Amazing Grace played. A most beautiful voice, deeply moving. Whether guilty or innocent, the babarity of any execution by the state, and in a developed world particularly, is abhorrent, inconceivable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/27/linda-carty-death-row-texas

http://www.reprieve.org.uk/lindacarty

From Millbank to Trafalgar Square in the rain

Street drama in Whitechapel

Far from expressing concern for the injured cyclist he had knocked off his bike, the sports car driver raged abuse at the crowd providing a temporary barrier against the lunchtime traffic, while his victim lay there bleeding in the road (5th July). Fortunately, not another ghost bike, but another statistic to add to the annual total of over 3,000 cyclists killed or seriously injured on London streets.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/davehillblog/2010/jun/22/transport-for-london-road-safety-statistics-crap-cycling-waltham-forst-blog

More street art in Finsbury Park

I took this on the day it went up and before it was protected by a sheet of perspex (street art in frames - what's that about?), but I haven't made any posts for some time so it's not exactly fresh, though it's still there on the corner. PEN 1 is rumoured to be the latest rival to Banksy, but this misses on the satire and political comment and graphic simplicity - a different genre altogether that takes celebrity as a focus. It's big (12' by 8') and technically proficient. It's the 'Rap Pact' - rappers Diddy, Suge, Biggy and Tupac playing pool. Another recent work sited in Shoreditch is of Kate Moss:
http://www.ukstreetart.co.uk/2010/05/17/pen-1-hit-shoreditch-this-weekend/

This camper van is crying out for some stencilled refurbishment