Frieze 2014 – Sculpture Park

It’s the annual Frieze art show in Regents Park, which as always is accompanied by the excellent Sculpture Park in the English Garden. The show is an eye watering £35 to visit so the alfresco, ‘free’ sculptures are a welcome sight.

The Sculpture Park is always worth visiting. You can take the Flann O’Brian attitude to the work, “Your talk is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand”  or approach it from the same perspective as the small children in the park, who when confronted by a video installation featuring the bare backside of artist Martin Creed, just laughed out loud.

It was fascinating to hear one small child ask her parents why Mickey Mouse was so sad. The children had become engaged in the work even if the adults were only interested in taking ‘snaps’ on their i-phones. (I think I have to be included in this category).

Kaws - Small Lie

Jaume Plensa - Storm

Not Vital - Head (Mao)

Reza Aramesh - Action 137

Martin Creed - Work No 732

Yayoi Kusama - Pumpkin(s)

Michal Craig Martin - Scissors (blue)

 

'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red'

This installation is entitled 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' and is created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins. It marks the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. Each hand made poppy has been purchased by a member of the public for £25 with the proceeds being shared equally amongst six service charities.

It seems strange that the Tower of London, a building synonymous with the eccentricities of English history such as beheading former wives, torture and the excess of power should be the location for such a moving tribute. With current atrocities in far of places seeming to replicate such events the asinine practices of our Royal ancestors no longer seem so quaint.

I’m not sure what is more astonishing. The site of so many ceramic poppies in the Tower of London moat or the amount of people who have come to see the site, early on a Sunday morning.

Scrap Metal Merchants

I'm sure it's tough dealing in scrap metal but is an armoured vehicle really necessary. An everyday picture of the back streets of North London.