Showing posts with label airport. Show all posts
Showing posts with label airport. Show all posts

Tuesday, 16 June 2015

Ten unusual places to find art

Art in unusual places

1.  An Asian restaurant
Wallpaper by Debbie Plaskett (from near Bury St Edmunds)
Spotted at the (now defunct) Dojo Noodle Bar (Cambridge).




2.  A café.
Mural spotted at the Box Café on Norfolk Street (Cambridge).




3.  A bookstore shop window.
Justin Rowe's book sculptures, seen every advent time (and beyond) in the Cambridge University Bookshop.  Read my blog post.




4.  An airforce museum.
Seen at Duxford Air Museum (near Cambridge).  Read my blog post.




5.  A natural history museum
Discovered at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences (Cambridge).  Read my blog post.




6.  A hotel
Spotted at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel, on the river Cam.  Read my blog post.




7.  A swimming pool
The Diver, by Esther Melamed.
Found at Parkside Pool (Cambridge).





8. An airport
Secret Forest Trails, by Nelda Karklina
Stumbled upon a few years ago at Luton Airport.  Read my blog post.




9. A hospital
Jim Anderson's mosaic at Addenbrooke's Hospital (Cambridge). Read my blog post.




10. A round-about
Newmarket Road! (Cambridge)  Read my blog post.





Not so unusual:

Finally, you might think that libraries were unusual places for art.  Books? Yes.  Art?  Not so much.


But I learned, during my blog quest to find art in Arbury, that this is not so.  Libraries are, in fact, excellent places to find art, and it's not at all unusual to happen upon a sculpture or a wall relief in a library.  Still, though, I wanted to append these pictures at the end of my 'unusual places' list.

Some art I've come across in Cambridge libraries:

Book art at the Central Public Library in the Grand Arcade.  Read my blog post.




From Audubon's book of birds.  Seen at the Cambridge University Library and blogged about here.




Owl sculpture in Arbury Public Library.  Read about it here.



Varallo, by Samuel Butler.  Seen at an exhibition at St John's College Library in 2013.




Have you come across some art in an unusual place?

And if so, where??  Let me know in comments.

Friday, 27 September 2013

Airplane art at Duxford

Mission Black Barol? Avro something 1957? detail
Avro Vulcan.  Mission Black Buck.  1957.  (detail)

Hi everyone!  I've been so busy with life that this blog has been sadly un-updated for a while.  :-(   And I'd been looking forward to my 'blogiversary' post!

Because yes, Art in Cambridge is one year old!  I started this blog on 13 September 2012. I can't believe I made it this far. I'm still immensely fond of my very first blog post on the Chapman Brothers' dinosaurs (a sculpture which, sadly, is no longer at Jesus College -- I hope you got to see it while it was still here).\

Well, that date came and went.  I'll write a little after-blogiversary post anon.  :-)


Super Striker - BAC TSR2 (tactical strike reconnaissance aircraft) passg thru sound barrier during flight trials at Boscombe Down 1964
Super Striker - BAC TSR2 (tactical strike reconnaissance aircraft) passg thru sound barrier during flight trials at Boscombe Down 1964

Anyway, what I have for you today is just a little offering from Duxford Air Museum.  Or, as it's officially called, the Imperial War Museum Duxford Cambridgeshire.

I went to Duxford for a work event last week.  And what was the first thing that greeted me upon entering the Duxford Conference Centre?  Yes, you've guessed it:  not airplanes but ART!

Art of airplanes, in fact!

Lots and lots and lots of it. All up and down the stairs and in the conference break-out rooms:  paintings upon paintings of airplanes.


Mosquito Attack - De Havilland Mosquitoes in low-level sortie over Dutch canals in 1944
Mosquito Attack - De Havilland Mosquitoes in low-level sortie over Dutch canals in 1944



Mosquito Attack detail





Coastal Patrol - Avro Arison? over the Needles
Coastal Patrol - Avro Anson over the Needles
They're oddly vertigo-inducing, these birds' eyeview airplane picture.  It's not a viewpoint much found in painting.

Coastal Patrol detail plane


Coastal Patrol detail lighthouse



Who's the artist?  One Mark Bromley, a graphic artist with British Aerospace.  You can see more pictures painted by him here.

There's a curious thing about airplane art.  Each painting is signed but in Duxford the plaques do not tell you the artist's name.  Instead, they tell you in great detail about the type of aircraft shown.  It's all about the PLANES!

This one intrigued me most.  But it's not by Mark Bromley.  It's signed French but you try googling 'French artist airplanes'...  So I wasn't able to find out anything about 'French'.

BAE Systems Taranis Unmanned Air Vehicle Demonstrator May 2007
BAE Systems Taranis Unmanned Air Vehicle Demonstrator May 2007


Airplane painting from the sky was invented by the Italian Futurists in the 1920s; they called it aeropittura.  Here's my favourite:

Tullio Crali, Nose Dive on the City, 1939

Happy flying through the weekend!


Permalink:  http://artincambridge.blogspot.com/2013/09/airplane-art-at-duxford.html

Tuesday, 5 February 2013

Werewolf art at Luton airport

Untitled

We were waiting in the airport lounge at Luton Airport when, to my surprise, I saw some black & white & red prints on the wall.  How unexpected!

A beast, half-man, half-stag, strides howling through a wood.


Untitled

A creature, half-boar, half-human, crouches in the undergrowth and looks at us with bloodshot eyes.



Untitled


And a frowning wolf-man walks in profile among thin tree trunks.


Brothers Grimm?  Ovid's Metamorphoses?  The roaring stag?  Before I could make up my mind, a mechanical voice announced our flight and we had to hurry through the security gates.

Later, I found out that this wall is called the Gateway Gallery, and that the prints were part of an exhibition called (rather appropriately for an airport), Transition.

A plaque informed me:
Transition / Pãreja.  An exhibition of Latvian printmakers.  The prints in this exhibition are by students and alumni from the University of Bedfordshire's Art and Design department.  ...  These prints contain mistakes, smudges and traces of the artist ...


Who:  Nelda Karklina.
What:  Secret Forest Trails.  A series of drypoint etchings.
Where:  Luton Airport, Level 1.  Ended in January.

More:
Read the artist's tumblr blog.

Read more about the Latvian artists at Luton.

Related post:
Imps galore!  Rebecca O'Hanlon's photograph




(Psst:  This is not, strictly speaking, art in Cambridge but Luton Airport is close.  Well, quite close...)

Permalink:  http://artincambridge.blogspot.com/2013/02/werewolf-art-at-luton-airport.html

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