Thanks to funding from Renaissance London, visitors to Rotherhithe have a last opportunity to experience one of the wonders of the Victorian age before it closes forever. One of Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s engineering triumphs, contemporaries of the age called it the Eighth Wonder of the World. The Thames Tunnel has been closed to the public for 145 years and will now reopen as the impressive finale of London’s EAST Festival. To mark this incredible occasion and the Brunels’ remarkable feat, the Brunel Museum in Rotherhithe will host a recreation of a Fancy Fair, originally held in the bowels of the tunnel deep beneath the Thames in 1852.
Slideshow: The Ancient, Distant, and Dead →
SEED:
Signal-to-noise ratio is the relationship between meaningful information (a signal) and external factors (background noise). In a broader theoretical sense, it can refer to seeking out meaning from complexity. We do this in our daily lives, constantly and without thought, each time we take mundane actions and, ultimately, whenever we attempt to make sense of the world we live in. The young Scottish artist Katie Paterson toys with this balance. Whether it’s hacking a mobile phone and burying it deep in the Arctic to capture the dying murmurs of a melting iceberg, or working with astronomers to capture the earliest known light of the universe, Paterson’s work—with a nod to scientific research—explores the curiosities within some of our universe’s infinite blips: remote ones, old ones, ones long gone.
This piece caught my eye- it really hits the phenomenon of confusing real and virtual. Since we spend so much time immersed in virtual environments (while our bodies remain in stasis on chairs, couches, beds, etc.) our minds get confused and begin to associate physical feelings and attributes to incorporeal spaces.
via Sight Unseen:
Cardboardmusicboxes by Nic: “My installations are usually made from very simple materials like painted wood, masking tape, or cardboard. I like that when you get close, it looks simple or like something you could do yourself, but when you step back it looks like fiction, like it could be floating in space even if it’s just mounted to the wall. It’s all a bit banal, but at the same time it’s magic.”
A collection of iconic prints, by some of the finest European artists of the past 500 years, will be on show at the National Gallery of Scotland this spring. “The Printmaker’s Art” will highlight the enormous skill of artists such as Rembrandt, Piranesi, Hogarth, Manet and Whistler, and will include some of the most beautiful and accomplished prints ever made. On view 20 February through 23 May, 2010.
Awesome. Drawings by Marco Fusinato. Via But Does it Float.
This spring’s major exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art centres on colour: colour in art, in the world and in the eye. In words, pictures and through interactive programmes the exhibition will present the ways in which artists throughout the twentieth century either made use of colour as a medium of expression or researched it to find new colours and colour systems. On exhibition through 13 June, 2010.
From Art Knowledge News:
Sprüth Magers London announced an exhibition of work by the legendary filmmaker and artist Kenneth Anger, in his first solo show in London in over five years. Making films continuously since the late 1940s and considered a countercultural icon, Kenneth Anger is widely acclaimed as a pioneering and influential force in avant-garde cinema. His groundbreaking body of work has inspired cineastes, filmmakers and artists alike. Many channels of contemporary visual culture, from queer iconography to MTV, similarly owe a debt to his art. On view 19 February though 27 March, 2010.
Right in my neck of the woods at the Nasher:
The Nasher Sculpture Center opened an exhibition of the works of contemporary Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa. Jaume Plensa: Genus and Species represents the Nasher’s first major exhibition of the work of a living artist. The exhibition was installed throughout the Nasher, engaging a variety of spaces: the entrance, the galleries, the terrace, the garden, and, for the first time at the Nasher Sculpture Center, the city street. The artist has carefully considered the selection and placement of each sculpture, determining an inter-related progression that heightens the viewer’s experience of the work. On view through 2 May, 2010.
via Paul Isakson - a cool new take on the flip book.
