Balloon Museum Art Installation

At the old Billingsgate building there is a Balloon Museum although it’s actually a series of Balloon art installations. Or inflatable art installations if you want to be precise. But don’t let that distract you from the impressive nature of these pieces that range from small to huge as you walk through flashing moving globe and then witness huge inflatable rabbits. From their website - 

“Balloon Museum is a format created by a curatorial team that designs and realizes contemporary art exhibitions with specific works in which ‘air’ is a distinctive element. A journey through out-of-scale installations with unexpected shapes in which the interaction with viewers is placed at the center of the experience. Art one can touch, to live with and share, never static that creates an innovative relationship with the user, giving life to an experiential path of socialization. This unconventional approach to culture is fascinating and intriguing to adults and children, as they are passionate and curious, and are helping to establish Inflatable Art as one of the most acclaimed ‘Pop’ movements in the world.”

Phillip Guston at The Tate Modern

On Monday I was lucky to visit the Guston exhibition at the Tate Modern. Previously I’d not heard of Guston but really enjoyed this selection of his work. Tate Link. 

I also saw two quotes I enjoyed - 

“When you start working, everybody is in your studio - the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas… But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you’re lucky, even you leave” (John Cage)

“The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury, and judge… You cannot settle out of court” (Phillip Guston)

From the Tate Modern website - For over 50 years, artist Philip Guston restlessly made paintings and drawings that captured the anxious and turbulent world he was witnessing.

Born in Canada to a Jewish immigrant family, he grew up in the US and eventually became one of the most celebrated abstract painters of the 1950s and 1960s, alongside Mark Rothko and his childhood friend Jackson Pollock.

His early work included murals and paintings addressing racism in America and wars abroad. During the social and political upheavals of the late 1960s, Guston grew critical of abstraction, and began producing large-scale paintings that feature comic-like figures, some in white hoods representing evil and the everyday perpetrators of racism. These paintings and those that followed established Guston as one of the most influential painters of the late 20th century.

Guston was a complex artist who took inspiration from the nightmarish world around him to create new and surprising imagery. This exhibition explores how his paintings bridged the personal and the political, the abstract and the figurative, the humorous and the tragic.

Philip Guston is the first major retrospective on the artist in the UK in nearly 20 years.

The exhibition is co-organised by Tate Modern, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Visit - 29th January 2024. Thanks to BW for arranging x 

Delight Art Exhibition at Borough Yards

The Delight exhibition is marketed as a fresh and creative interpretation of urban city life - the marketing minimises the Korean aspect which is a shame and it was only when I was inside that the use of Seoul was evident. There are twelve immersive zones - immersive in as much as you walk around and in the art and people were enjoying themselves taking selfies. 

(Above and below) 631 - Spanning 631 years from the Joseon Dynasty to Seoul in 2023 there are 631 individual lights that transition colour as you walk through. 

(Below) Shinro (God’s Road) - a counterpoint to modern living and materialism. A meditative path toward divine communion. 

(Below) Mind : Myth - using inspiration from myth using the twelve zodiac animals. 

(Below) Collage : Gwanghwa- the heartbeat of Seoul through vivid images. 

(Below) Resonance - the vertical flow channels serenity inspired by a bamboo forest. 

(Below) Urban Pulse - an urban narrative and the rhythm of modern commerce. 

(Below) Neon Nostalgia - the vibrant neon signs of the urban landscape. 

(Below) The Moon - homage and regression. Reflected in a pool the tidal ballet is represented. 

(Below) Goblins - the belief that guardian spirits walk among us. 

(Below) Soseuldaemun - The Gate. A symbol of immense authority reimagined as an understated aesthetic. 

Sabrina Moss Memorial Stone

If you’ve skimmed over this blog you’ll have noticed that I like gravestones and memorials. Too much in life is fleeting and only the famous and infamous seem to have their memory preserved. So whilst walking down Kilburn High Road my eyes darted to a paving slab that stood out from the rest. In front of the Woody Grill near the Willesden Lane junction I saw this memorial to Sabrina Moss. 

Sabrina was tragically killed whilst out celebrating her 24th birthday. She was caught in a gang turf war and shot in the heart by two hooded men armed with a shotgun and sub machine gun. Sabrina’s friend Sabrina Gachette was badly injured. The incident left a four year old without a mother. Miss Moss was a school teacher. Three men were jailed for 37 years. 

Let it be forever 

remembered that

Sabrina Moss

walked with beauty

and will always be our

treasured memory. 

Battersea Power Station & Lift 109

Battersea Power Station is a grade 2 listed decommissioned coal fired power station on the south bank of the River Thames. The first part of the station was built in 1930s with the second in the 1950s. It was decommissioned between 1975 and 1983. 

Plans for the building included an idea as a theme park and even as a new stadium for Chelsea F.C. The site now has 254 apartments and a shopping centre. 

Lift 109 is situated in the north-west chimney and visitors ascend to the top of the 109 metre structure to get 360° views of the area. 

Cross Bones Burial Ground

On Redcross Way, Southwark in the shadow of The Shard and London Bridge Station you will find Cross Bones Burial Ground. The site contains up to 15,000 people believed to have been buried up to 1863 with its earliest mention in 1598. It served as a paupers graveyard for a long time within the area known as “The Mint” - one of the capitals poorest and most violent areas. 

It is also the resting place of The Winchester Geese, medieval sex workers licensed by the Bishop of Winchester who worked the brothels of The Liberty of the Clink, which lay outside the law of the City of London.  This site has in depth detail. 

The eastern part was dug up in the 1990s during work for the Jubilee Line extension. The area is now dedicated to ‘the outcast dead’ and serves as a garden of remembrance. At 19:00 on the 23rd of each. I think a serve is performed. 

John Stow mentioned a “Single Woman’s churchyard” in his book A Survey of London (1598) and it was mentioned again in a history of St. Saviours, Southwark (1795). William Taylor also mention per it in 1833. The courtyard closed in 1853 due to being “overcharged with dead”  which caused concerns over public health and public decency. Excavations by the Museum of London Archaeology Service from 1991 to 1998 state that graves were found with bodies piled one on top of another. Tests listed causes of death that included smallpox, tuberculosis, Paget’s disease, osteoarthritis and Vitamin D deficiency. 

A 1992 dig found 148graves dating from 1800 to 1853 with over one third of the bodies being perinatal (between 22 weeks gestation and seven days after birth) and a further 11 percent were under one year old. The adults were mostly women aged 36 and under. 

The site is not always open to the public as it relies on volunteers so check before visiting. You’ll see from the photos that no stones or personalised monuments exist but sculptures, statues, shrines and pieces of art are there to honour the dead. The fence area contains ribbons with names of some of the supposed people buried at the site to honour their memory. 

There is more information at their website.