Hidden down the cobbled streets of the New Town of Edinburgh is the former Meeting House of the Glasites, a Scottish religious sect of followers of John Glas (1695-1773), who was removed from the Church of Scotland ministry in 1730 for his beliefs. The first Glasite church was founded in Dundee and the Edinburgh church […]
I wonder if Eduardo Paolozzi and Paula Rego ever met. They were born only eleven years apart, Paolozzi in Leith (in 1924), Edinburgh, of Italian parents, and Rego in Lisbon Portugal in1935. Both brought new bold, but different, dynamics into British art, Paolozzi’s work being very masculine and Rego’s focussed on feminist themes. What discussions […]
In the corridor are a number of phrases on the wall in projecting letters. One, ‘The universe lights switched off one by one’ seems uncannily predictive in the current circumstances, whether we think of coronavirus or of climate-change. Scottish artist Katie Paterson (born 1981) takes a long-term view of time and space, both backwards and […]
It seems very strange to reflect that, four weeks ago, we were in a different world of record-breaking rainfall, and, walking along the Water of Leith in Edinburgh, you had to weave round the flooded pathways along the riverbank to make your way up to the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, past Antony Gormley’s ”Six […]
Four weeks ago, we were in a different world, with the political imperative focused on dealing with the devastating flooding in parts of the country, before coronavirus took over our lives. The exhibition ‘Parasites’ at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh reminds us of other devastating diseases which are still rife across the world, […]
Who would ever have thought that the humble toilet roll would in March 2020 become such a valuable commodity that people were buying them by their hundreds, stripping supermarket shops bare. The toilet roll as we know it is a relatively modern invention, having first been manufacture by the Scott Paper Company around 1890 […]
What will artists, novelist, playwrights and film-makers make of the current coronavirus crisis? Will there be a huge new body of work focused either on the deep dark depression of the crisis or on the joy and new world as we come out of it, ready for the next such contagion is around 20 years […]
We live in a strange world. Six weeks ago, the country was under siege from record-breaking rainfalls and flooding destroying the homes and businesses of many communities. Today in London we have had brilliant sunshine and spring shrubs have burst into colour, yet the country – indeed the world – is grappling with one of […]
By a piece of incredibly bad luck, King’s College London opened its latest and possibly its most ambition exhibition in the new cultural spaces of the Arcade in Bush House last Monday (16th March). Alfred Cohen (1920-2001) came to Europe from Chicago after the Second World War, first to Paris, then Heidelberg and London. He […]
Spring in the RHS Gardens at Wisley in Surrey was a good place to get some exercise and allow children to explore Philip Haas’s iconic sculptures of the Four Seasons in a controlled way as we all have to protect ourselves within the space-separation guidelines for the current coronavirus crisis. The natural compositions of Philip […]
"The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul."
(Thomas Moore)
To be an architect means having a wide range of interests - architecture, art and creativity in all its variety of forms, sustainability, science and innovation. The greatest interest is often where these different worlds overlap and collide - that is when something imaginative often occurs that pushes us all forward to another place
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