Photography Blog
Billed as The biggest Bauhaus exhibition in the UK in over 40 years, the Barbican Art gallery’s Bauhaus exhibition features a wide range of artefacts from UK, Berlin, New York, San Francisco and Paris. Not only are there works of the Masters (ie teachers) of the Bauhaus school and the students, there are also posters, photographs and printed materials illustrating life in the Bauhaus school.
At last a decent Bauhaus exhibition here in London but it’s a very British selection with few translations for non-German speakers and no “Continental” perspective. I am surprised that London and Britain have ignored Weimar culture and its apogee, the Bauhaus school of art and design, over the past few decades. Their pre-WWII art and design was far in advance of British attempts: Arts and Crafts was a pale and diffuse light compared to the strong clear light of Bauhaus Weimar and Bauhaus Dessau, whose influence has proved enduring.
Not a live concert alas, though Pink Floyd played “Dark Side of the Moon” at Brighton Dome nearly thirty years ago before the release of the album. The story is that the sound system failed on one of those nights and the concert had to be abandoned; another show was filmed.
This is an exhibition of photographic prints by Jill Furmanovsky, Storm Thorgerson, Colin Prime and Tony Collins from the time of “Dark Side of the Moon” and “Wish You Were Here”, informal shots from the studio recording sessions at Abbey Road and from open air festival concerts and the 1981 shows of “The Wall” at Earls Court. (I'm happy to admit to having enjoyed the latter back in 1981, of course including buying the t-shirt).
Concrete Circus was guerrilla television at its best. Director Mike Christie’s feature-length documentary was shown as part of Channel 4’s Street Summer. The film challenged four outstanding urban athletes and their producer/directors to make new films in the UK to follow their viral video successes.
We visited “The Cartoon Museum” in London's Bloomsbury, it’s a private museum on a far far smaller scale than the fabulous British Museum nearby. It concentrates on UK graphic art and comics and they have a good representative collection of British cartoon art from Hogarth onwards to Doctor Who and recent political cartoons.
An exhibition of some works of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. These artists were part of the group known as the Bloomsbury Group who had served as conscientious objectors on Sussex farms during World War One; they stayed on in Sussex to set up the delightful Charleston Farmhouse whilst contributing designs to the Omega workshops in London as well as creating their individual pieces.
Read more: Radical Bloomsbury at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery
