At the entrance to Paddington Station at the corner of Eastbourne Terrace and Praed Street can be found this lovely bronze sculpture called The Wild Table of Love. It’s the creation of British and Australian artists Gillie and Marc. It’s a very well detailed sculpture intended to provoke thoughts of unity and protection of the ecosystem.
Earlier today I went into Nottingham city centre to take photos of this recently unveiled sculpture in The Green Heart, Nottingham’s newest green space near the Central Library and on the way up from the train station. The statue represents a white lace worker and a black enslaved woman greeting each other. As someone from a long line of men and women who worked in the Nottingham lace trade from working in factories to designing lace patterns the fact that none of their work would have been possible without the cotton supplied by enslaved people has never been lost on me but it’s not something that gets highlighted as much as it should and this sculpture goes some way to rectifying that as well as emphasising the contributions made by women to the economy and society in general.
Last October’s trip to London got off to a rocky start when my hotel cancelled on me less than 12 hours before check in. Although I was offered an alternative it wasn’t in a particularly convenient location for what I had planned so I ended up doing some pretty intensive searching myself that lead me to a hotel offering a last minute deal near Hyde Park and Paddington Train Station. This was quite handy as it allowed me to finally visit the Paddington statue at the station and, as I was to discover, another temporary Paddington statue in the area.
On my most recent visit to London I did a fair bit of walking around neighbourhoods I hadn’t spent much time in before. This lead to me taking photographs of two sculptures that turned out to be by the same sculptor. Allan Sly is an English sculptor and senior lecturer at Wimbledon College of Arts. The first sculpture I came across also happened to be one of his earliest public artworks. Located just outside Edgware Road Tube Station The Window Cleaner was installed in 1990 – he’s staring up at the tall Capital House building which has a lot of windows, and wondering how he’s going to manage them with his small ladder.
Over the years Bath Christmas Market has become a staple of mine and my friend’s annual Christmas outing. The atmosphere is always lovely and the stalls are genuinely full of beautiful unique products from local sellers. The centre of Bath is really taken over by the market but it’s also worth going into the brick and mortar shops as well because Bath is well known for its independent shops. Everywhere seems to get into the spirit with lovely decorations wherever you look.
In early October I headed to London to attend a couple of exhibitions, one of which was this exploration of the life of Ranjit Singh. I’m on the Wallace Collection‘s email list and it sounded like an interesting exhibition on a subject I know nothing about though I’m not sure I knew a great deal more than I did before. I’ve been to a few paid exhibitions at the Wallace Collection now and while they have interesting items on display I never feel they go into a great deal of depth about the subject matter. Still, I did learn more while researching this post so I suppose that’s something!
In mid November Nottingham, like many places in the UK, had its first snow of the season. We’d been expecting it but the amount certainly took people by surprise, myself included. It was perfect snow for going on a walk, compact and not slippery or icy. Since snow always helps get me in the Christmas mood I thought I’d share some photos of the snow, plus some of the Christmas markets/events I’ve attended so far this year.
Cambridge is full of small museums tucked away in university departments. I managed to tick off quite a few on my last visit to Cambridge but there were still some I wanted to visit which included the Museum of Classical Archaeology. Hidden away in the Faculty of Classics and up a short staircase (there is a lift available) the museum is free and contains over 450 plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture.
Like a lot of people I was gripped by the Paris Olympics and Paralympics over the summer – watching sports I’ve never even heard of is always compelling. When I was planning my trip to Cambridge I noted that the Fitzwilliam was putting on an exhibition about the previous Paris Olympics that took place in 1924. The exhibition was free/pay what you wish.
Last week I headed down to London for a couple of days to attend two exhibitions, the first of which was the Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery. Van Gogh is one of my favourite painters so when I saw the announcement I knew that I would be attending. The exhibition is being billed as a once in a century event and it was easy to see why, there are paintings on loan from galleries as far away as the United States and Japan and some that are in private collections and rarely ever seen in public. There were also paintings that are displayed together again for the first time since Van Gogh painted them.
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