Summer freebies - Miss Alice

Question of the week:

" As I've said before, I'm a dance fan as well as a London-lover, so I'm really looking forward to the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival (24 June – 2 July 2011 ) - an amazing collection of free dance and other performances in the east of the city. They bill themselves as 'seriously spectacular street theatre' and based on previous years' events, they're not kidding. Check out their website, or there's a print program of events in the LUP Library, with the newspapers. Most of the events are free and open to all - a handful are free, but need to be pre-booked."- Miss Alice

* Photo by drinksmachine, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

London bus routes - Miss Alice

Question of the week: Do you have a favourite bus route?

"Leaving aside for a moment my gratitude to the 24hr number 25, which has been able to get me to minimum-fare-taxi distance from everywhere I've ever lived in London, how about the 341, from City Hall to Seven Sisters. (The route actually carries on past there, but I've never been on the final leg.)

The #34 delivers a real cross section of London, from the big buildings and classic tourist London views as you cross the river on Waterloo Bridge, past my favourite dance venue, Sadlers Wells, through Islington, and into the areas of North London not troubled by tube connections - Stoke Newington, and the much loved Clissold Park (which is hosting a participatory sculpture installation this Saturday - DOG - which looks fab). From there, you head up past Finsbury Park, though Hackney and Tottenham to the Bernie Grant Arts Centre, another great venue for dance. This end of the route is a slice of 'average' London that most tourists will never visit."- Miss Alice

* Photo by Ines 93, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

London in summer - Miss Alice

"Something fantastic that's specific to this summer is the Elephants' Parade , which arrived yesterday, and was having a formal media launch in Trafalgar Square this morning, with celebrities and small school children.

What's the Elephant's Parade? It's a fund-raising and awareness raising exercise on behalf of the endangered Asian elephant, and a huge public art project, bringing more than 250 brightly coloured, cleverly customised, elephants to London's parks, squares, and street corners.

It's an excellent excuse to grab your camera and go out exploring the city - hunting for elephants! They've even provided a map if you want to target your exploration. (warning - large pdf file.)"

Miss Alice

* Photo by raindog, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

London in summer - Miss Alice

Question of the week: What's one of your favourite things about London in the summer?

"When the weather gets warmer and the evenings start to lengthen, a fabulous richness of free events start to bloom along with the flowers - dance, theatre, food, music - it's not as if London was short on options to start with, but through the summer months there's an additional abundance.

The Scoop hosts all sorts - a month of free theatre, a month of free film, free music - even free fitness classes. Big Dance in July is ten days focussed around participating in dance, whilst the Greenwhich and Docklands festival in June/July focusses on amazing performances. This year there's also the Portavillion Program, bringing still more dance goodies to London parks as well.

In fact, almost every London park has it's own string of festivals and events over the summer - Paradise Gardens in Victoria Park, the Lambeth Country Show, down in Brockwell. It's not even restricted to parks - Trafalgar Square hosts dozens of events (more than they actually list here), and the Brunswick village fete on May 15th brings the fete vibe to the New Brunswick shopping centre in Bloomsbury."
- Miss Alice

* Photo by estherase, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Public art - Kris

Question of the week: London's full of public artworks - do you have a favourite?

"There is lots of public art (mostly statuary) in Hyde Park, but one that you shouldn't miss is the Wellington Monument at Hyde Park Corner.

The Monument is, in total, 36 feet high (including the mound and the granite base), with the highlight being the 18-foot-high statue of Achilles.

It is remarkable in a number of ways: the statue was made from re-melted enemy cannon, and it was so big that they had to knock down a wall to get it into the park. Ironically, as the monument was publicly funded by women, it was the first public male nude in London since antiquity - causing not a little stir in the London of 1822."
- Kris

* Photo by drinksmachine, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Public art - Miss Alice

"Question of the week: London's full of public artworks - do you have a favourite?"

"That's a really hard question, but I must admit to a certain fondness for the City of London dragons - there are many of them around the City, as well as the well known examples guarding the boundaries. There's a fantastic Dragon Safari guide here that makes a good foundation for an exploration of the City. The Embankment pair are old friends, but I think the magnificence of the Fleet dragon might just pip them to the post if I really have to choose a single favourite."
- Miss Alice

* Photo by FredR, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Public art - Kris

Question of the week: London's full of public artworks - do you have a favourite?

"Did you know that there is a statue of Lincoln in Parliament Square? Most people are surprised by this nugget of information, as there aren't any statues to British Prime Ministers erected around the Capitol in Washington DC. (There is one statue of Churchill, but it is at the British Embassy...)

I like the fact that there is, in fact, a special relationship between Britain and the US, and this statue represents that to me, in a small way.

The statue itself is a replica of one in Lincoln Park in Chicago (sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens), and was erected in 1920, with a ceremony involving the American Ambassador and David Lloyd George, who was Prime Minister at the time.

Go and take a look at it - it's really something. And It's always nice to know that there's a little bit of US culture in the heart of London."
- Kris

(see also these posts for more favourite sculptures)

* Photo by US Embassy, London, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Public art - Prof Kucich

Question of the week: London's full of public artworks - do you have a favourite?

"One of my favorite forms of public art in London is "Poems on the Underground." The project began over 20 years ago and still thrives with new poems appearing regularly on underground trains. One of Keats's great sonnets (as my students will know), "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer," regularly rattles at high speed underneath London. Keep an eye out next time you're on the tube!"
- Greg Kucich

* Photo by sharkbait, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

London sculpture - Miss Alice

Question of the week: The London Centre is hosting a conference on Eric Gill next week. Aside from Gill's work, do you have a favourite London sculpture or sculptor?

"Another impossible question - one of the things I love about my city is the profusion of incidental sculptures all over the place, and one of my colleagues has already written on Paolozzi. To pick just one though - maybe the Animals in War memorial, in Park Lane, to bookend a week's posts that started with the Cenotaph.

It's a multi-piece work, a huge curved, carved stone wall, and four bronze statues, unveiled in 2004 after a public collection to raise the funds. It's stranded in the middle of all the traffic, and and end of town I very rarely have reason to visit, but whenever I do, it never fails to move me."
- Miss Alice

* Photo by GaijinSeb, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

London sculpture - Ric

Question of the week: The London Centre is hosting a conference on Eric Gill next week. Aside from Gill's work, do you have a favourite London sculpture or sculptor?

"In 1942 the area, which takes its name from Paternoster Row, centre of the London publishing trade, was devastated by aerial bombardment in The Blitz during World War II. It is now the location of the London Stock Exchange which relocated there from Threadneedle Street in 2004,
and of investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Nomura.

At the north end of the square is the bronze Shepherd and Sheep by Dame Elisabeth Frink. The statue was commissioned for the previous Paternoster Square complex in 1975 and was replaced on a new plinth following the redevelopment. The piece refers to both the religious connotations of Pater Noster - associated with neighbouring St. Paul's - and the site's rather more ancient use as a market for sheep and cattle."
- Ric

* Photo by Jonathan_W, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

London sculpture - Cornelius O’Boyle

Question of the week: The London Centre is hosting a conference on Eric Gill next week. Aside from Gill's work, do you have a favourite London sculpture or sculptor?

"One of Britain’s least appreciated yet most influential artists of the 20th century, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005), did more than probably any other contemporary British sculptor to open up Britain to European trends in modernism and post-modernism. Born in Scotland, the son of Italian immigrants, Eduardo first studied art in Edinburgh and London. He then moved to Paris and worked with some of the world’s greatest 20th-century modernist sculptors, including Brancussi and Braque. He returned to London to set up his studio in Chelsea, from where he rapidly became one of London’s main conduits for surrealism, pop art, and German modernism.

What makes Paolozzi so fascinating is the sheer range of styles and materials he chose to work with. London is fortunate to showcase this magnificent facility, although Paolozzi’s works are not always displayed to greatest effect. How many people walking through the drab wind-swept piazza in front of Euston Station properly appreciate Paolozzi’s magnificent modernist “Piscator” sculpture? Or how many millions of passengers passing through Tottenham Court Road tube station stop to admire the amazing intricacy of his mosaic tiling? More popular with the tourists is Paolozzi’s giant post-modernist “Head of Invention” in front of the Design Museum at Butler’s Wharf, on the South Bank of the Thames.

One of his greatest works, however, has to be his instantly recognizable sculpture of Blake’s “Newton Inscribing the World” in the magnificent piazza of the British Library. But how many people really appreciate the irony of this piece? As a romantic, Blake had decried Newton’s attempt to expose nature’s true meaning through mathematics whereas here Paolozzi computerizes the famous image and sets it up in front of one of the world’s great institutions devoted to rationally comprehending man and nature. This is indeed an ironic apotheosis of Newton and the paradigm of (post-)modernity!"
- Cornelius O’Boyle

* Photos by R.P. Marks (Piscator) and Veeliam (both Newton images), used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

London sculpture - Dr Holt

Question of the week: The London Centre is hosting a conference on Eric Gill next week. Gill is well known for several works in public spaces, but is perhaps best known for his Prospero and Ariel on Broadcasting House. His work is currently being featured in the Royal Academy's Wild Thing exhibition and its public sculpture trail. Gill is one of hundreds of artists to have contributed to the richness of public statues around the city, so, aside from Gill's work, do you have a favourite London sculpture or sculptor?

"So many images, so hard to choose a single favourite, so I am choosing two:

The first is King George III, our near neighbour riding his handsome horse as if up Pall Mall East toward St James and the Palace. Students in the Trafalgar Square class know far more than I about this choice and placement of that statue there -- I simply note with affection this particular monarch who was so sensitively portrayed in the film 'The Madness of King George' (a film which I cannot recommend too highly, for a great many reasons).

The second is the Cenotaph in Whitehall -- indeed in the middle of Whitehall, so prominently placed that those who know what it is cannot pass without reflection about the nature and effects of nationhood and war and might and weakness, unto death. The term means 'empty tomb,' and we strangers to this sight may rightly wonder at it. But what can an empty tomb hold but all of death and at the same time, hope. I encourage you to stroll down to the Cenotaph while you are here and ponder it. Now is an excellent time to go, during days following Remembrance Sunday (yesterday) and leading up to Remembrance Day on the 11th, for a great many reasons." - Dr Holt

* Photos by C.K.H. (Gill/Prospero and Ariel),netNicholls (George III) and andwar (cenotaph) used under Creative Commons, with thanks.