Why do we so dislike, or are fearful of, spiders – poor creatures that have a bad press? Is it because their webs are used to trap and ensnare their prey, while some can evil venom from their fangs? In some cultures, spiders are considered creative, through their ability to weave and create delicate tapestries […]
Sometimes modern art defeats me. Recently on show at the White Cube Gallery in St James’s were abstract sculptural paintings by the Belgian Artist Bram Bogart (1921-2012), almost an exact contemporary of my mother, but she would have not understood Bogart’s art at all. Seen previously at the Saatchi Gallery in 2017 with a theme […]
British artists Vicken Parsons and Paul Noble, born six years apart (1957 and 1963), presented different views of architectural interiors at Christea Roberts Gallery. in ‘Breath’, Vicken Parsons brought us subtle spring yellow sunshine, along with red and blue, incorporated with a subtle array of shadowy shades of grey, white and black, much needed after […]
In the last decades of the 1890′s, Shoreditch, as now, was an area of change. The railways brought new connections and new opportunities for warehouses, which together displaced great swathes of housing in the area. In 1890, the Lipton family built a storage warehouse and distribution centre adjacent to Shoreditch Station, then part of the […]
The exterior as you approach from King’s Cross Station is a little austere, its horizontal cladding perhaps having a link back to the former Daily Express Building in Fleet Street, which would be appropriate as this is the headquarters of the Guardian and Observer newspapers. The street façade could, however, be considered to be […]
Continuing a theme which we saw at J D Malet Gallery, three artists at BEERS London focused on the essence of human nature is in the 21st century in the fast-changing environment of this area of London around Old Street, where the human spirit all too often seems have been forgotten in the architectural race […]
The neo-classical temple that now houses the Royal Scottish Academy, built by the architect William Henry Playfair in 1822-6 and extended in 1831-6 for the Board of Manufactures and Fisheries, is one of those classical buildings which contributed to the reputation of Edinburgh as the ‘Athens of the North’. Sitting alongside another neoclassical temple – […]
There are two observatories in Edinburgh, the Royal Observatory on Blackford Hill and the City Observatory up on Calton Hill, along with monuments to Nelson, Dugald Stewart and Robert Burns and the unfinished National Monument with a predominant Greek architectural style reinforcing Edinburgh’s title of ‘Athens of the North’. The history of the two observatories […]
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 […]
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 […]
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