street scribbling
October 18th, 2006 § 1 Comment
Budding taggers learn how it is done..
These young whipper snappers were watching keenly as an older kid scrawled his tag on a wall along London’s South Bank. It didn’t take long. Let’s hope the pupils of this nursery school of graffiti move on to a higher level of street art sooner rather than later. Am I getting old? These pesky kids. Grumble grumble… I’ll be complaining about uneven pavements next.
Anyway – while I am on the subject, when a particular piece turned up at the bottom of Bristol’s Park Street a few months ago (on the side of a sexual health clinic, I should add for the benefit of the picture), I heard Bristol City Council were debating whether it was public art and should be left. Funny that they start to see the potential tourism benefits of leaving this stuff after years spent cleaning it up. They certainly wouldn’t have even considered the fact a few years ago. Well – they eventually decided to let it stay and it promptly made the Visit Bristol tourist guide.
a glimpse inside battersea power station
October 8th, 2006 § 2 Comments
The Serpentine Gallery are putting on an exhibition of Chinese art inside Battersea Power Station this month and we went along this afternoon to have a look. I’ll pass giving any judgement on the art for now – we (and, at a guess, the majority of the other few hundred visitors) were there for the chance to see this great building up close. I see the power station daily yet it remains distant and enigmatic, flanked by hordings on three sides and moated on the fourth by the Thames. We were guided through the dark, damp and derelict floors of the old turbine hall, looking beyond the bizarre art installations, and tried to understand the building’s past (and future). It’s an interesting place – with old signs warning of high voltage jostling for attention alongside newer signs warning of falling masonry.
Unfortunately photos inside the building were not allowed; the cynic in me wondered whether the developers were worried that people’s photos could affect the forthcoming coffee table book.
EDIT: A quick peruse through Flickr reveals some excellent covert shots of the sort that might well make it to said glossy coffee table book. And it looks like some discreet snapping was occuring during the art tours.