That Ol' Cognitive Estrangement Feeling
I'd only ever been to Somerset House on trips to the Courtauld Collection (free and expedited entry with Art Fund membership - one of several thousand reasons to get a membership), but at some point I'd noticed a photography exhibition there for free. I think I'd spotted a review or something, and then maybe spotted a poster there, but I've now been to several interesting shows. There's a link to fashion, mostly, which is odd as I don't think King's teaches fashion (but what I keep hearing as London Fascist Week* shows in the courtyard), and there's a certain saccharine quality to fashion photography that recalls reading supplements in the bath.
Currently there are three shows -
AOI Illustration Awards 2013 (Until 27 October 2013) with some interesting work, including some adorable cockroach pictures (http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/aoi-illustration-awards-2013) and stuff that might be eligible for BSFA Awards (although I'm wondering if publication was actually 2012).
The Prix Pictet Commissions: Munem Wasif, Ed Kashi, Chris Jordan & Simon Norfolk (Until 31 October 2013) is the product of social corporate responsibility - Swiss private bank Pictet & Cie commission a photographer to take pictures of a country in which a sustainability project is being undertaken. Chris Jordan's pictures of slaughtered elephants are very moving, but the real beauty is in Simon Norfolk's pictures of Afghanistan (there was a Tate show of him and the Victorian photography of the country, yes?), where he takes four photographs from exactly the same spot over a period of time. These are shown on a plasma screen, so the pictures morph together. There is a melancholy beauty to it that is greater than the pictures alone (http://www.prixpictet.com/portfolios/power-shortlist/simon-norfolk/). Lamentables would like, I'm sure.
But the real pleasure was RIBA Forgotten Spaces 2013 (until 10 November 2013), which I'd just assumed was pictures of abandoned spaces in London (and I'm not sure why London), but in fact was architectural proposals for the reuse of such spaces. It takes place in a forgotten space - those deep voids you are warned about around the edge of Somerset House. Descend into the basement and go outside - there are four coal stores with proposals in, lit by vertical neon tubes, and then you follow the kennel around to a space underneath the fountains (it's leaking) that is known as the Deadhouse (a cemetary was relocated here).
There's clearly a utopia impulse at work - take those brown field sites, those disused spaces and put them to work for community use. Part of the old Rams Brewery should become a museum of forgotten beer...
... the cavities under elevated roads could be a poster gallery with repurposed support pillars, canal sides could be parks straight out of the Seurat painting of the Bathers at Asnières...
... so many spaces could be public baths, or performance spaces. And then there was the portable town square. Or the public space for the decommissioned storeys of the GPO/Post Office/BT Tower that once held antenna and apparently have been removed from the listed building for safety reasons.
The shortlist: http://www.architecture.com/RegionsAndInternational/UKNationsAndRegions/England/RIBALondon/EventsAndProjects/ForgottenSpaces/ForgottenSpaces2013/ForgottenSpaces2013shortlist.aspx
Utopia visions of the future - of what might be. Imagine though - Seurat in Bethnal Green.**
One for Abrinsky?
My cognition was estranged.
* "Brown shirts are in this year."
** Actually, post-impressionism and London overlap - the various paintings by Van Gogh of Selhurst and Crystal Palace - also Pissarro's Lordship Lane Station, feeding into the Camden Town school I suspect.
Currently there are three shows -
AOI Illustration Awards 2013 (Until 27 October 2013) with some interesting work, including some adorable cockroach pictures (http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/aoi-illustration-awards-2013) and stuff that might be eligible for BSFA Awards (although I'm wondering if publication was actually 2012).
The Prix Pictet Commissions: Munem Wasif, Ed Kashi, Chris Jordan & Simon Norfolk (Until 31 October 2013) is the product of social corporate responsibility - Swiss private bank Pictet & Cie commission a photographer to take pictures of a country in which a sustainability project is being undertaken. Chris Jordan's pictures of slaughtered elephants are very moving, but the real beauty is in Simon Norfolk's pictures of Afghanistan (there was a Tate show of him and the Victorian photography of the country, yes?), where he takes four photographs from exactly the same spot over a period of time. These are shown on a plasma screen, so the pictures morph together. There is a melancholy beauty to it that is greater than the pictures alone (http://www.prixpictet.com/portfolios/power-shortlist/simon-norfolk/). Lamentables would like, I'm sure.
But the real pleasure was RIBA Forgotten Spaces 2013 (until 10 November 2013), which I'd just assumed was pictures of abandoned spaces in London (and I'm not sure why London), but in fact was architectural proposals for the reuse of such spaces. It takes place in a forgotten space - those deep voids you are warned about around the edge of Somerset House. Descend into the basement and go outside - there are four coal stores with proposals in, lit by vertical neon tubes, and then you follow the kennel around to a space underneath the fountains (it's leaking) that is known as the Deadhouse (a cemetary was relocated here).
There's clearly a utopia impulse at work - take those brown field sites, those disused spaces and put them to work for community use. Part of the old Rams Brewery should become a museum of forgotten beer...
... the cavities under elevated roads could be a poster gallery with repurposed support pillars, canal sides could be parks straight out of the Seurat painting of the Bathers at Asnières...
... so many spaces could be public baths, or performance spaces. And then there was the portable town square. Or the public space for the decommissioned storeys of the GPO/Post Office/BT Tower that once held antenna and apparently have been removed from the listed building for safety reasons.
The shortlist: http://www.architecture.com/RegionsAndInternational/UKNationsAndRegions/England/RIBALondon/EventsAndProjects/ForgottenSpaces/ForgottenSpaces2013/ForgottenSpaces2013shortlist.aspx
Utopia visions of the future - of what might be. Imagine though - Seurat in Bethnal Green.**
One for Abrinsky?
My cognition was estranged.
* "Brown shirts are in this year."
** Actually, post-impressionism and London overlap - the various paintings by Van Gogh of Selhurst and Crystal Palace - also Pissarro's Lordship Lane Station, feeding into the Camden Town school I suspect.