Tate Britain - Cinema as a weapon

 It’s an experiential installation that responds and reflects on the freeing of countries from colonialism across Africa, Asia and South America. 

Cinema is the weapon for freedom of expression and it was ‘rolled’ out from Algeria across Africa and around the world to liberate those that had been subjected to another’s politics and cultures. 

Zineb Sedira is a British, French,  Algerian artist who has developed a multifaceted artistic practice in photography, performance, video, and installation. Her work draws on personal encounters within the Algerian diaspora of Africa. 

 ‘Taking inspiration from family archives and the history of cinema, she bridges the political and the poetic, thoughtfully exploring themes of memory, migration and trauma’. 

Her installation at Tate Britain ‘invites audiences to consider the emotional and geographical dimensions of displacement, while critically examining dominant historical narratives’. 

Her installation of storytelling is both an act of ‘resistance and a gesture of connection, affirming her place as a significant and influential voice in today’s cultural landscape

Tate Britain - Travelling Turner

Travelling Turner: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) is described as the ‘father of modern art,’ He shocked the art world at the time with his unique brushwork and use of colour. 

He was born in bohemian Covent Garden and became a controversial artist due to turning ‘reality into experience’ and seeking to come to terms with ‘light, space and history’. 

He was recognised at the age of 19 years for his watercolours and dramatic compositions and atmospheric effects.

‘From Claude Monet to Mark Rothko and David Hockney to Tracey Emin many artists have been inspired by Turner, each generation finding something new in his work’.

He travelled extensively through Britain and across Europe after the invent of steam engines. He used sketch books to record his travel experiences and transferred  them  to canvases when at home. 

His work is evocative, expressive of the times and the result of his own life. Tate Britain has the largest Turner collection and celebrates his life and times and influence on future artworlds.

Holt, Wiltshire

Greening and grinning in Holt! What a wonderful time talking, walking and exploring Wiltshire.

 

 

Any Questions - BBC 4 Live

 



Our party of five featured in the opening of Any Questions with one of us being selected to hit the first ball of the evening with a question. 

We were attending the BBC4 live program in the local village of Warminster.  The  questions flowed and received  a diversity of responses from 2 MPs, Labor and Conservative,  a right wing think tank convenor (Farage in disguise) and a journalist, broadcaster, activist who provided the audience with answers and responses that illicited much applause. She was the Village Hall favourite.  She had strong options, well articulated and based in her life experience. The others were shallow by comparison careful to run an ideological  or party line that would keep ther options open. The audience responded to their political complicity with scattered unenthusiastic applause. 

The PopCon man (Popular Conservatism!)  responding to a question on immigration and  posited a formula that all British citizens should be required to earn £17,000 to stay. This would no doubt result in a mass exodus of residents given the minimum wage is £15,000. But we moved on despite protestations from the journalist. Both Labor and Conservative MPs seemed to have much in common with the occasional barb. 

The Labor MP elected in the most recent election had already dumped Starmer no doubt hedging his best as a minister or advisory role. He headed up a Labor MP think tank on economic growth! 

The Conservative had been a conservative in successive governments since Cameron and had supported Remain but had moved on…. and so had the Party so no more positions for him. It was a live controlled discussion that wandered into questions that no one could agree to disagree. 

And the evening concluded with applause and a reflection by the moderator that this was democracy in action. It was but my question that was rejected came back to remind me of the predicament we are all in -  ‘Given we have the answers why are there so many questions’!

Greening and Grinning - Holt Wiltshire

 

Messums Gallery - Tisbury

 

‘Forest Cathedral’ transforms the barn at Messums West, with its tree-like beams, into a living forest of light and sound. 

The work was created by Berlin-based artist Andrew Amondson and is a collaboration between Messums Creative, Forest of Imagination, Bath Spa University and Winchester Cathedral. 

‘Forest Cathedral’ takes the age and material of a 13th Century Barn that has been listening for 700 years and ‘reintroduces elements of its sound and senses’. The installation will tour England’s most significant Gothic cathedrals

Portrait Gallery…history as we are told it!

 

‘Picture This’…at the National Gallery

 

A boy growing up in Birmingham having been born in England with parents from Barbados  is not easy. At home and school OK but on the street with skinheads and an old man that said ‘go back home you bastard’. It was a life of trying to learn about oneself and at the same time the community and country you lived in. 

His story is no doubt but one in many millions. A black boy in a white society; no role models only acting to keep you safe and ignorant of reality. At least then there was just the National Front he remarked. Today there are Nazis and mums and dads! 

Well all was revealed about the life of David Harewood who in a candid, relaxed and self effacing conversation revealed all. From growing up in Birmingham, to going to RADA, to having a breakdown and spending time in a mental institution to regaining himself and moving into theatre, film and writing. His is a life  of luck, persistence and skill. Today he speaks out for the mentally ill, the black community and the disadvantaged. But importantly why did he chose the painting ‘Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba’ by Claude? 

We were attending a National Gallery series titled ‘Picture This’ hosted by BBC presenter John Wilson. Tonight David Harewood was on a very relaxed couch on stage in the Pigott Theatre. 

Harwood is known for his roles in Homeland, Supergirl and Blood Diamond and his staring role in The Man in the High Castle and in the BBC’s Sherwood and the Night Manager. As a documentary maker hsi works include Black is the New Black, Could Britain ever have a black Prime Minister and Why is COVID Killing People of Colour.

But back to the paining! Why did he chose this painting? Art Historian, Melissa Baksh provided an insight into the painting explaining that Sheba is almost hidden from view and is remarkably white in appearance. 

David reflected on his own life being almost hidden from view and having to deal with those who were only to ready to typecast him only in black roles and until recent times recognising his skill as an actor. He reflected on his breakdown as being directly linked to his lack of knowing who he was in a world that denied his existence. 

Today he had just concluded playing the role of Othello and is President of RADA as well as completing or about to commence new productions. It was a ‘this is your life’ conversation and concluded with an explanation of his surname ‘Harewood’. This was the name of the plantation owner who owned his forebears. 

Recently he met the owner of the Harewood mansion in England who commissioned his portrait  to hang in the mansion revealing  the name of those who had built the mansion though their slavery. It was a telling moment in a momentous evening! 

European Writers Festival at the British Library

 

 It quickly became apparent that this would be an ‘interesting day’ at the British Library for the biennial European Writers Festival. The train to Kings Cross bypassed two stations and on exiting the station we were confronted with all things British;  flags, caps, scarves, badges. Police and their vans filled the plaza 

As we made our way along Euston Road toward the British Library we had to navigate men, women and children with their flags and paraphernalia. They came in largish groups and they milled around the pubs. They were heading into the city for  the extreme right rally. We walked against the rising tide;  the feeling was surreal.

The opening of the festival recognised that we were in a time of wars, political and social conflict, and with climate change underway. We had all felt the troublesome times that confronted us having all been swept along the footpath by the flag waving crowds. 

The aim of the festival was clearly and unambiguously stated; to inspire, connect by writers from across Europe and to reflect the breadth of voices, languages and perspectives shaping Europe today.

The day was filled with writers describing their most recent books and the thinking and life experiences behind them. The themes included personal and collective histories, urban life, migration and belonging, nature and environment, truth and secrecy, coming of age, freedom of expression, democracy and the experience of living in a time of great upheaval

It was a wide array of writers from and the moderators were exceptional in their inquiry with searching questions into the books and authors that took to the stage. 

We heard authors from many European countries with ther own languages, cultural, social and political issues. 

It was truly an inspiring, exhausting and most valuable day of learning.

The Price….

Last night we went to the intimate Marylebone Theatre to be engrossed and moved by Arthur Miller's play ‘The Price’.  This is one of Miller’s less known plays set during the depression and perhaps is best defined by Miller himself who once said - “Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.” The play highlights the price we when we make that mistake!

The play is a drama about two estranged brothers, Victor and Walter Franz, who meet after 16 years to sell their late father's furniture. However it reveals a confronting and long-buried resentment and the true cost of their life choices. 

Victor's sacrifice to care for their father during the Depression is played out against Walter's successful but distant career as a surgeon. It is volatile, loud, intense and moving. 

Overseeing the negotiation is an elderly, wily appraiser, Gregory Solomon, who brings dark humor and wisdom to the emotional battlefield as the brothers' conflicting memories and justifications are revealed. 

His role is taken over in the second half of the play as the brothers express their frustration in the other. 

It is a play that will have an extended season following understandable rave reviews. 

Miller was a playwright of incredible courage and conviction and reflected the personal  and societal tensions that conflict America today. 

I hazard a guess that his plays will be more widely played out on the stage because of its resonance in today’s volatile and valueless world.