Romancing the Stone: The Golden Ages of British Sculpture

This is just a short post to say that I’m very much looking forward to this:

It starts this Wednesday at 9pm on BBC 4, and then on iPlayer.

I really loved Alastair Sooke’s last TV series, Modern Masters, so I’m hoping this is just as good.  The past few months seem to have been all about sculpture – a couple of weeks ago I visited the Modern British Sculpture exhibition at the Royal Academy, and I’ve been gradually writing a blog post ever since.  (If you want to start exploring British sculpture, Romancing the Stone will be a slightly cheaper place to start…)

“Sunflower Seeds” (2010) by Ai Weiwei

 

“Sunflower Seeds” is made up of 100million hand-painted porcelain ‘seeds’

On Tuesday I managed to get along to Tate Modern to see the newest installation in their Unilever series.  The work is called Sunflower Seeds, for obvious reasons.  The huge turbine hall has been filled with 100million porcelain sunflower seeds, moulded and painted to look like the real thing.  And I loved it.

Dan Curtis at FORUM 2010

Last week was FORUM, the annual conference for CU leaders run by uccf:thechristianunions.  This year, Dan Curtis was our artist-in-residence for the week.  As well as generally helping us all to think about the arts from a Christian point of view, Dan was also given the task of producing a piece of work over the course of the week.  I really liked what he came up with, and here are a few photos (although they don’t really do it justice)…

Fourth Plinth Shortlist Announced

I love the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square – I think it’s a great idea putting something contemporary and stimulating in a position where thousands can see it.  I’m a big fan of Yinka Shonibare’s Ship in a Bottle which is there at the moment (go see it!).

And now the Commissioning Group have announced the six proposals they’ve shortlisted to replace Ship in a Bottle when it’s replaced at the end of 2011.  See what you think…