Study visits - Dulwich Art trail and London Nights

We went to see the Edward Bawden exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery  but found that it doesn't open till May 23rd so we walked some of the Dulwich Art Trail (The video in the link is worth watching). I knew about it because I once got a bit lost in Southeast London and saw this.

Subsequently I heard an interview on the radio with Ingrid Beazley who was a curator at the Picture Gallery and set up the project to bring art to the streets of Dulwich and engage with people who wouldn't consider going to an art gallery. Its a fantastic inspiring project with a variety of different pictures and styles. The paintings are based on baroque paintings from the gallery's collection. The street artists interpretations bring out the meaning behind the original paintings. For example Stik reinterpreted Gainsborough's Couple in a Landscape I should have taken a photo but you can see it here you can see the diffidence in the couple and he has cleverly used the cabling and drainpipe from the wall to divide the couple.

A week later we found ourselves at the Museum of London where there was an exhibition of photographs of London taken at night (unsurprisingly called London Nights). I didn't think that I was very good with modern artistic photography, my only real experience was gritty images in Sunday magazines which managed to make everything seem tawdry and dull. The exhibition had a variety of work dating back to the late 19th century. The constraints of night photography force the artist to be aware of tone and layout, a lot of the work is in black and white, but there are beautiful coloured photographs by Nick Turpin of commuters taken through the steamed up windows of night buses which I was aware of but had never seen in real life. These are absolutely fantastic. I also enjoyed some of the moving images, there was a deceptively simple film of the night light on water (I think that it was the Thames) the textures and colours were beautiful. Of course there were some photos that I wasn't as taken with, some had been printed on aluminium which was difficult to view in the lights of the gallery. Some of the older photo's had been blown up a bit large for their resolution and worked better if you stood back to view them. We also felt that some of the older black and white photos were dominated by their white mounts and black frames but none of these things stopped me from really enjoying the exhibition. The artists were professionals and amateurs, it was interesting to me how many of them had set their own projects and themes which they pursued.

On our way there I saw this on one of the Golden Jubilee Bridges which flank Hungerford Bridge. It spans the width of the bridge but my phone refused to do a panorama. I see it as a chain of people but my son thought that they were fighting. I love these unexpected pieces that you stumble upon.