The amazing Waterhouse Building, the Natural History Museum in London has an ornate terracotta facade typical of high Victorian architecture. The terracotta mouldings represent the past and present diversity of nature.
>> Natural History Museum
Floating Skull by Damien Hirst (2006) and photo of Earthrise over the lunar horizon taken during the Apollo 8 moon mission (1968)
The exhibition No Love Lost: Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst is at The Wallace Collection from Oct. 14, 2009, to Jan. 24, 2010. It features 25 works done between 2006 and 2008 that mark the artist’s return to painting.
We spotted this broccoli look-alike in the Natural History Museum.
On Sunday we went to see the new Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum, London. The building is an eight-storey-high Cocoon and houses 20 million plant and insect specimens. The scale of the Cocoon is such that it cannot be seen in its entirety from any one position. >> Click here to view my photos of the Darwin Centre
Linear House, Highgate, North London and Chehel Sotoun in Isfahan, Iran.
Open House is London's largest architectural showcase. For one weekend in the year, 700 buildings of every conceivable type, shape and size open their doors to Londoners. This year we went to two places: a modern private house and a yurt!
Linear House is a modern house built on a sloping site. The building takes its reference from the classical architecture in its symmetry and proportion.
The sculpture of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell is based on a photograph taken when he addressed the UN in 2003, making the case for war, and is part of Goshka Macuga's exhibition at the newly redeveloped Whitechapel Gallery.
Last Saturday Max and I went to see Kheimeh Shab Bazi (traditional Iranian marionette puppet show). The Aran Puppet Theater Group, headed by Behrooz Gharibpour, brought Mobarak: Kheimeh Shab Bazi to the Great Court of the British Museum.
"Please sir, can I have another slice?"
Oliver the musical is back and this new version has Rowan Atkinson as Fagin.
>> Click here to view the larger image
The Old Persons Home by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu
(13 life size sculptures and 13 dynamo electric wheel chairs, The Saatchi Gallery)
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are two of China's most controversial artists. The Old Persons Home is a satirical models of OAPs looking like old world-leaders, long crippled and impotent, left to battle it out in true geriatric style.
After 26 years, I had a freshly baked sangak yesterday.
Sangak is a rectangular Persian flatbread. 'Sang' in Persian means stone or pebble and 'sangak' means little stone. This bread is traditionally baked on river stones (hence the name), and is topped with sesame seeds.
(Mahdi Restaurant, Finchley, London)
I wish you a prosperous, peaceful and happy new year with a shot of the New Year's Eve spectacular fireworks display on the London Eye and an iris of an eye.
The London Profiler is an interesting website. One of the new data layers of London Profiler displays the relative concentration of ethnic groups in London. It is based on a technique that classifies populations through the origin of their names as a proxy for their probable ethnicity.
We went Street Art hunting in East London today.
>> Click here to see the results
>> There is an interesting video of Shoreditch graffiti on gofindit.net
>> Vandalog is a great blog on Street Art
Mask II, mixed media by Ron Mueck
The huge head (Mueck’s self-portrait) is currently on display at the British Museum.
Ben Wilson paints on a chewing gum in Crouch End
Ben Wilson spends everyday on the streets of North London, painting on the blobs of chewing gum that deface London's pavements. Apparently painting on the pavement is illegal so he paints on chewing gum that is stuck to it.
>> This is a collection of images of Ben Wilson's chewing gum art
A commercial exhibition of contemporary Middle Eastern art is to be held from 7th to 25th October in London.
The exhibition 'Routes' will showcase the work of 15 artists originally from Iran and Middle east.
There will be works available by:
Hamra Abbas (Kuwaiti, b.1976)
Maliheh Afnan (Iranian, b. 1935)
Afsoon (Iranian, b.1961)
Fereydoun Ave (Iranian, b. 1945)
Lalla Essaydi (Moroccan, b. 1956)
Nja Mahdaoui (Tunisian, b. 1937)
Farhad Moshiri (Iranian, b. 1963)
Laila Muraywid (Syrian, b. 1956)
Shirin Neshat (Iranian, b 1957)
Naveed Nour (Iranian, b. 1963)
Fereydoon Omidi (Iranian, 1967)
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (Iranian, b. 1924)
Laila Shawa (Palestinian, b. 1940)
Parviz Tanavoli (Iranian, b. 1937)
Wijdan (Jordanian, b. 1939)
Charles Zenderoudi (Iranian, b. 1937)
Full biographies of the artists taking part in Routes can be accessed at www.artroutes.com
Waterhouse & Dodd, 26 Cork Street, London W1S 3ND
On 20th & 21st of September an incredible 700 buildings opening their doors to the public. Londoners are given direct access to the creative teams that design, construct, conserve and regenerate their environment.
>> The online search for Open House 2008 is here
Update: >> Here is my set of photos
An email I have received from Rocketeer this morning:
Loved your catch of look-alikes. I found it by googling london eye and bicycle wheel.
On my first and (so far) only trip to london a couple of years ago, the shape of the city hall nearly drove me crazy, because I knew I'd seen it somewhere before. Thank god I finally figured it out:
♫ It's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming, ping pong's coming home ♫
Yesterday Boris Johnson gave his London Olympics handover speech and told the watching world that: "ping pong is coming home". He said ping pong was invented on the dining tables of England and it was called whiff whaff before it became a Chinese national obsession.
"There you have, I think, the essential difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations such as the French looked at the dining table and saw the opportunity to have dinner. We looked at the dining table and saw an opportunity to play whiff whaff.”
>> watch the hilarious speech on YouTube
Justin Timberlake and Max
For the second time, Max did a small TV presenting job for the German channel ZDF. This time it was at the famous London tourist attraction Madame Tussauds.
Blue plastic bottles - Wembley Sunday Market
Wembley Market is the largest Sunday Market in England and is held in front of the new Wembley Stadium.
I took this photo of the interior of the parish Church of St Jude-on-the-Hill with my mobile phone camera. The interior reminds me a bit of Jan Vermeer's or Pieter de Hooch's paintings. In their works the light often enters from a window.
St Jude-on-the-Hill is in the middle of Hampstead Garden Suburb, a model residential community planned by Henrietta Barnett for housing of all social groups, although the atmosphere there today is definitely middle class.
A meerkat family is one of the six shortlisted proposals that could occupy one of London's most popular tourist spots, Trafalgar Square.
The six shortlisted proposals for the next commission for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square were unveiled at the National Gallery. The exhibiting artists are Jeremy Deller, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Yinka Shonibare and Bob & Roberta Smith. Each artist has produced a maquette of their proposed artwork for the empty plinth. The models are on public display in the National Gallery until 30 March 2008.
>> View the proposed artworks here
The 311 spiral steps of The Monument.
We went up to the top of The Monument. An observation deck at the top has a great view over London. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren to mark the Great Fire of London in 1666. It is the tallest freestanding stone column in the world.
London Eye & wheel of a stolen bicycle
The front wheel is locked with a U-lock but the rest of the bicycle has been stolen. Locking the front wheel is obviously not a sufficient security measure in London.
Within hours of the London bombings, London Mayor Ken Livingstone delivered a memorable speech.
"I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever."
"That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. "
>> Read full text of his statement.
>> Watch the video of the Mayor's statement. (Windows Media)
Bomb blasts plunge London into chaos. There are no news yet of the number of casualties, although BBC says that there are a number of deaths in several locations in the city.
>> Guardian news update
>> A Wikipedia entry on today's blasts has been started.
>> BBC's in Depth Report
Aref-Adibs are all fine.
Uncle Fred, the friendly Cockney translator can translate anything into Cockney rhyming slang. Can you recognise this?
Lawd above! To be, awer not ter be- what is da quesshun:
Whether 'tis nobler in da Chinese Blind ter suffer
da slings an' arrows ov outrageous fortune
awer ter take emerdale farms against a Housemaid's Knee ov troubles
an' by opposin' end 'em. Ter die- ter Bo Peep-
No mawer; an' by a Bo Peep ter say we end, innit?
To be, or not to be- that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
William Shakespeare's Hamlet
