The Rainbow Star
It was a pleasure to sneak into the Astronomy of Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Greenwich Royal Observatory yesterday and see Steve Brown’s wonderful…
Early doors for Hockney
Tate Britain now opens its weekend doors from 8am for members, which markontour is taking as a sign of progress in otherwise dark times. So it…
Artists and Empire
The best bit of the Tate Britain’s compelling ‘Artists and Empire’ exhibition comes right at the end, in the ‘Legacies of Empire’ room. Here, Hew Locke’s clever guerilla art sees him adorn a statue of Bristol’s founding father, Edward Colston, in cheap plastic gold trinkets, a modern equivalent of the tat that imperial traders exchanged for slaves. For, as Locke explains in an accompanying Restoration, Colston and Bristol’s wealth was built on human trafficking.
A bottle of Bass at the Folies-Bergere
There are many reasons to admire Manet, but on a recent trip to the Courtauld Gallery in London markontour found a new one: the painter’s celebration of Burton beer.
Peter Kennard: Unofficial War Artist
For anyone lucky enough to live in London, thanks to the Imperial War Museum you have a full year to be inspired by a fifty-year retrospective of Peter Kennard’s work, under the fitting title of “Unofficial War Artist”. Unlike the political-grafitti of younger artists inspired by Kennard, particularly Banksy, Unofficial War Artist is not an exhibition for laughs, and yet I came out uplifted by the sheer integrity of an artist who for five decades has used his incisive wit and imagination to further the causes of peace and equity.
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It’s E17 Art Trail time again, the annual community-led arts programme where the good people of Walthamstow turn their homes, shops and pubs into temporary art galleries. This weekend we only had time to sample of a few of the highlights in the Village, but the Art Trail runs until 14 June so there’s a bit of time to explore more. Here follows markontour’s highlights written, in keeping with the departure lounge ethos of this blog, on a train to Stoke for a Sunday of boating.
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is beautiful city of green spaces and white, colonial buildings and, while I can only draw on a couple of days worth of evidence, it is clearly a place to have fun. Here follows the initial markontour guide, hopefully to be substantially updated at some point:
Breathtakingly beautiful – the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque
The Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi is, quite simply, the most breathtakingly beautiful modern building I have ever had the pleasure to visit. Best…
Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum is one of those places where I would like to hide behind an exhibit and get locked in overnight. Clocking in at New York’s…
Tangled Yarns
The William Morris Gallery has done it again, with another great guest exhibition. This time Alke Schmidt’s Tangled Yarns has taken over the space at the…
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