Archive for August 2009
‘What the hell was Colin doing with a Limehouse minicab driver in Belfast? ‘
A really nice bit of flaneury at Homo Ludens, which identifies exactly what makes the former docks at Wapping in London such a profoundly dispiriting, disorientating experience. Read the rest of this entry »
Architecture and Ai Wei Wei
Transcription of an interview with Ai Wei Wei. He’s doing the answers. Pictures are by me.
What is the method of construction of your latest exhibition?
This is Chinese household furniture that folks have been using for thousands of years. They are the most ordinary objects in southern China. The material is bamboo. If you look closely, the poles and the chairs are one thing.
How does the piece reflect your relationship with Herzog and de Meuron?
We have been doing several projects together and we have a mutual understanding about art and architecture. We often share concepts and ideas. The relationship is part of architecture but its also more important than architecture.
Born To Work
More images from Born to Work by Nick Hedges. What is so astonishing about these pictures is the way they are so vivid even if the world they inhabit is gone for ever. Nick manages to simultaneously capture the human dignity even as they work amidst a dehumanising process. There is sympathy, but no moralising.
I’ve picked out some of the images from the book which feature women. The images together with Huw Beynon’s text highlights a few things that we tend to forget. Women were not greatly served by heavy industry. Beynon points that in 1911 24 per cent of employed women worked in skilled jobs but by 1982 that had halved. In 1911, a higher proportion of women could be found in management than in 1982. Beynon says that the expansion of opportunity for women in the 1970s was highly selective. In a report from 1978, the Equal Opportunities Commission concluded that little progress would be made in sex equality. More information about Nick’s work can be found at Working Life.
16 year old trainee, Lockworks,Willenhall 1976
A True Commonwealth
Jordan Baseman’s excellent art piece which was displayed at the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh earlier this year tiptoes cleverly around some of the aesthetic and political issues that surround Britain’s civic modernist heritage.
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