Green Ted
There were two main aims on this visit. Firstly to snap the Emin neon with the Betjeman and then to try the Gormley in the Wellcome again with a low shutter speed to get some person-movement-blur. The first worked: more of the second later.
This was also the first outing for the Fuji X-M1 and the first use of Color Efex filters (which have been sitting on the laptop unused for a long time) in processing the output. The filters do a great job of colour fiddling, based on analogue film types and add lovely borders. I like borders and intend to add them to all the main shots (though indolence may overcome these good intentions).
Diections taken from Londonist's Euston Road Guide.
Large Spindle Piece, Henry Moore, 1974
Large Spindle Piece, Henry Moore, 1974
King's Crustation
1st May 2018, 11:44
Fuji X-M1, 16-50 @ 16mm (24mm)
1/300 sec; f/6.4; ISO 400
Cat 3,260-1
Quote from Wikipedia,
Spindle Piece is a bronze sculpture by Henry Moore. Unusually, the sculpture was made in four sizes: a plaster maquette cast in bronze as Maquette for Spindle Piece (LH 591) in 1968, a larger plaster working model which was also cast in bronze as Spindle Piece (LH 592) in 1968, a larger series of bronze sculptures Large Spindle Piece (LH 593) cast in 1974, and the largest model, known as The Spindle, carved in travertine in 1981…
The working model was … enlarged to create an edition of "6+1" bronzes (including the artist's cast, numbered "0/6"), cast by the Hermann Noack foundry in Berlin in 1974, entitled Large Spindle Piece, which is 3.35 metres (132 in) high. wikipedia
I want my time with you, Tracey Emin, 2018
I want my time with you, Tracey Emin, 2018
St. Pancras Station
1st May 2018, Time
Fuji X-M1, 16-50 @ 25mm (38mm)
1/60 sec; f/6.4
Cat. 3,270
Photographed to include Martin Jennings' Betjeman. Quote from the Independent, 10th April 2018, the beginning of a very long, far from complimentary article by MIchael Glover .
Tracey’s back. This morning she’s posing for a gaggle of snap-happy photographers, all kneeling in obeisance, inside Barlow’s great Victorian train shed at St Pancras International station. She prinks at her piled up auburn hair. She stands up on a little bar to increase her height somewhat. She sets her face in that snarly, wonky, slightly combative look of hers. Two more minutes, she calls. One more minute! Thirty seconds!
We’re here to celebrate – or, at worst, merely look at – a new light work, drawn in her own handwriting, which hangs suspended in the air in front of Dent’s clock. She’s full of self-praise at the press conference in Searcys Champagne Bar a few minutes later, where the coffee and the croissants spill to infinity.
She loves the work she’s made. It was tremendously difficult to bring off. Seven months of hard labour. A lot of health and safety issues – height, weight, etc. No, it’s not neon, that would have been too heavy. LED lights, she mentions. How many cables in all? She shouts out for an answer to a technician who’s gone AWOL.
Most important of all was not to shock the train drivers as they gently nosed in from Paris or Margate. Which meant that it couldn’t be yellow or green or red. Luckily, she only ever wanted the close-clench of pink anyway (yes, it’s pink), so that was a bit of a pink herring of an issue to bring up.
She loves Europe. She loves togetherness. “It’s a great, subliminal message sent out to the rest of Europe,” she shouts, buoyed up on the wings of her own rhetoric. She hates that the rich are so rich and getting even richer. She hates that the poor are so poor and getting even poorer. She’d even give away her own helicopter if it didn’t prove so useful in Provence.
That’s what it’s all about, this work, to make grim-faced travellers smile when they step off the train. independent.co.uk
Brothers and Alien, David Breuer-Weil, 2016 and 2012
Brothers and Alien, David Breuer-Weil
St Pancras New Church
1st May 2018, 12:16
Fuji X-M1, 16-50 @ 46mm (70mm)
1/80 sec; f/6.4; ISO 400
Cat. 3,280-87
Two works by David Breuer-Weil in the grounds of St Pancras New Church,Brothers and Alien. Some of the Caryatids, see below, are just visible in the background. Quotes from Culture Trip,
Appearing as if to be sinking or emerging from the grass, Breuer-Weil’s immense, highly textured works make for unexpected witty juxtapositions to their surroundings. In the grounds of St Pancras New Church he’s placed two works, Alien – which Londoners might recall from a past installation at Grosvenor Gardens – and the six-metre-tall Brothers.
Apart from their dramatic impact on initial encounter, the works also probe deeper questions. As the son of a Viennese refugee, Breuer-Weil draws on personal experience; Alien, for example, alludes to what might be hidden below the surface and the concept of being a foreigner or ‘an enemy alien’.
He explains: “My Alien sculptures deal with the status of the outsider in contemporary society whilst the massive heads Visitor and Brainbox express the great value of every individual.”
theculturetrip.com
St Pancras Caryatids, John Charles Felix Rossi, 1822
St Pancras Caryatids, John Charles Felix Rossi, 1822
St Pancras New Church
1st May 2018, 12:32
Fuji X-M1, 16-50 @ 16mm (24mm)
1/640 sec; f/6.4; ISO 200
Cat. 3,290
There is another set of four figures on the other side of the building. Quote from London Walking Tours,
The church has the feel of ancient Greece about it, which, given the Inwoods based their design on the Erechtheum and the Tower of the Winds, both on the Acropolis in Athens, is, perhaps, unsurprising.
But the church's most notable features, at least from the outside, are the two sets of four caryatids - stone carvings of draped female figures, which are used as pillars to support the entablature above their heads - which stand above the north and south entrances to the Crypt.
These were modeled by John Charles Felix Rossi (1762 - 1839), and are based on similar figures on the Acropolis - although, in the case of the St Pancras caryatids, they differ from the originals in that each one of these holds an empty water ewer and an inverted, extinguished torch, as a symbol of their standing guard over the Crypt of St Pancras church.
The figures, which are of terra-cotta cemented together round pillars of cast iron, are massive, and, on close inspection, you can actually see the marks where the sections of each caryatid were joined. london-walking-tours.co.uk