It’s a bit of a shock! Ahead of you is a metal mesh fence and gate with chain and padlock, leading into a black and murky darkness. Gently, you manage to open the gate, and enter into the blackness, coming out into the dark space in film extracts are showing on tv monitors, flat screens […]
While graffiti is illegal in China, there appears to be a small but growing movement, according to Clarissa Sebag Montefiore of the BBC. It will be interesting to see if and how it develops. If China did have a vibrant street art scene, you could imagine that Li Tianbing would be one of the artists. […]
Spread across three galleries in Zurich, London and Hong Kong, we see new works from Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi. Initially, you might think that London has lost out, because the largest works are in the other galleries, but in fact we have a case of ‘small is beautiful’ and the exhibition of his work in […]
This is a week for Far Eastern collectors in London, Christies’ are holding an auction of Chinese art from the 17th century onwards on display in their two locations at South Kensington and King Street, with a parallel “on-line” auction running through the month, which seems to be a trend for the future to reach collectors […]
As a colour, yellow in Europe and the US implies different things. In spring it is a colour of hope, sunshine and of rebirth; but at other times it has negative meanings – fever, cowardice and treachery. In China, it is a positive colour. The Yellow River, the second largest river in China, is known as […]
Ai Weiwei is a master story-teller, albeit with a political twist. His art installations bring stories, history and meaning into the physical presence and you can see why the Chinese authorities don’t quite know what to make of their most famous contemporary artist. Ahead of his exhibition at the Royal Academy, and before he was […]
An exhibition was held in the autumn of work by North Korean propaganda artists depicting “the beautiful future” in Beijing. A collaboration between two westerners who had lived in China for 20 years – Nick Bonner of Koryo Tours and Dominic Johnson-Hill of Plastered 8 and selected North Korean artists from Pyongyang, the works were […]
The Victoria and Albert Museum’s stunning exhibition “Masterpieces of Chinese Painting 700 – 1900 is exquisite. Well-designed both to protect the sensitive artworks and also to enhance the artistic sensation for the visitor, the paintings positively glow against the dark exhibition setting. The exhibition starts with some early surviving works from the 8th century, fragments […]
The PACE Gallery at Burlington Gardens has a fascinating exhibition “We have Betrayed the Revolution” by the young Chinese artist Li Songsong who takes images that are well know from history, from newspaper reporting or from advertising and, by the way that he deconstructs them and reassembles them using squares and rectangles of heavily-layered paint, […]
"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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