This Tea House, intended as a place of contemplation, is part of the Festival of Xtreme Building in Birmingham. I've been meaning to visit it for a couple of months now but came across it by chance while attending Artfest. The festival is sited on waste ground in the city centre and looks at sustainable architecture. The installations are great, including one of those Micro Compact Homes which seem like a gimmick but actually looked to work really well.
Labels: birmingham, moblog, public art
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Went to see this spectacular public art performance behind Birmingham's disused Curzon Street Station on Saturday night. The free show was superb, up there with Tate Liverpool's Chinese exhibition fireworks as the best show of the year so far. We arrived to find a row of twenty or so burning furnaces, each one heating a barrel of water, providing steam.
We were kept behind barriers thirty foot back. Behind the furnaces runs one of the main train lines out of Birmingham New Street, Virgin's high-speed Pendolinos and an assortment of crappier trains running past regularly.
Black and white projections of steam trains lit up the full wall of the listed Curzon Street Station building, showers of fireworks occasionally raining down from it. A massive hot pipe organ shook the ground with its impersonation of a steam train gathering momentum. Completely overwhelming. Whistles rang out from the barrels over the furnaces. The pipe organ fired horizontal fireworks at the station building; the station building fired them back. Hundreds of helium balloons carrying hundreds of lights were released into the sky creating an man-made starlit sky. A huge blast of flames brought the show to the end.
Fantastic public art, combining spectacle with a real history - the station, the Lunar Society and Birmingham's pivotal role in the industrial revolution.
Labels: birmingham, flickr, moblog, public art
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I posted this photo on Flickr at 11.37 this morning. 2 hours later I was wondering what used to be on the site and I remembered reading a blog last year that covered wastelands all over Liverpool (great blog if you can find it). So, I searched for 'wasteland lodge lane' and the first result on Google was my Flickr photo! I've noticed Google indexing blogs quickly recently but I've never noticed this for Flickr before.
Labels: flickr, google, moblog, search
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An exhibition celebrating real ale culture. You could pull your own pint, eat cheese and pickle, pork pies and look at some photographs of a brewery. I don't like real ale so the exhibition was a bit lost on me but I thought the building, Made, was a great exhibition space.
Labels: art, birmingham, exhibitions, flickr, moblog
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Labels: flickr, liverpool, moblog, photography
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I noticed that this much-loved sign had been covered over a few months ago. According to today's Liverpool Echo the sign was removed and new adverts put in its place as part of the cleanup for 2008.
The 'Look Of The City' project targeted 10 sites to make the city more 'presentable'. Also included in the project is the removal of the Las Vegas sign from the property by Lime Street.
Update (6 July 2007): Las Vegas improvement - the £1 larger bar
Labels: flickr, liverpool, moblog
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Pilgrim Street, Liverpool
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You really have given up any attempt at pretending to care about your brand when you do this to the main entrance of your bar.
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'Our House' is a temporary exhibition installed in derelict housing on Great George Street, Liverpool. It's a part of 'Four Corners' - a 'celebration of partnerships across the city'. It involves and is funded by a host of arts and communities organisations including Bluecoats Arts Centre, Arts in Regeneration, ICDC and Everyman Playhouse.
The exhibition is great. The exterior of the building is clad in doors from derelict buildings, all painted red. Inside, the rooms of two ground floor flats have been converted by artists and organisations producing work on a broad theme of community and regeneration.
The strongest installation was the room below, showcasing work collected as part of the iamhere project.
It's a real shame that the exhibition is only on for three days, apparently for budgetary reasons. A small exhibition, it's overstaffed with security and more front of house staff than visitors. When was the last time you saw a portaloo cabin for an exhibition this size? It's easy to see where money could have been saved.
Labels: exhibitions, liverpool, moblog
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Which would you rather live in?
East Village, Liverpool:
Private Estate
No access for vehicles
No cyling
No skateboarding
These premises are under CCTV surveillance
Children must be accompanied by an adult
No dogs
No ball games
East Village, NY (from Wikipedia):
Over the last 100 years, the East Village/Lower East Side neighborhood has been considered one of the strongest contributors to American arts and culture in New York. During the great wave of immigration (Germans, Ukrainians, Polish) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, countless families found their new homes in this area. The East Village has also been the home of cultural icons and movements from the American gangster to the Warhol Superstars, folk music to punk rock, anti-folk to hip-hop, advanced education to organized activism, experimental theater to the Beat Generation. Club 57, on St. Mark's Place, was an important incubator for performance and visual art in the late 1970s and early 1980s, followed by 8BC as, during the 1980s, the East Village art gallery scene helped to galvanize modern art in America, with such artists as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jeff Koons exhibiting.
I used Dopiaza's tools to create this automatically updated set of my least interesting' photos on Flickr. Not sure what it says about my own judgement, but the set includes a lot of my favourite photos...
Labels: flickr, moblog, photography
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If you're going to create a walk of fame you need a plan for how to maintain it.
Labels: flickr, liverpool, moblog
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Name in Lights is an installation by artist Joshua Sofaer for the Fierce Festival in Birmingham. The public were invited to nominate someone to have their name prominently displayed in Chamberlain Square, mimicking the Hollywood sign.
CJ White nominated her mother, Una White:
'My beautiful mother displayed strength and determination depicted in her journey through the 1960’s from Jamaica to England. She represented, cultivated and encapsulated the spirit of life in her heart and this conveyed to other people of all ages and races. She was very altruistic in her nature and for over 30 years worked as a devoted nurse caring for the sick and the severely mentally disabled.
It would therefore be very apt that 10 years after her death that her name should have the opportunity to light the skylines of Birmingham and would be the epitome of hope, faith, overcoming adversity, effervescent and cultural unity.
My mother was a role model to her daughters and her grandchildren too. Her sprit and faith lives on within us and the memories of her beautiful smile continue to shine everlasting in our personal journeys and her lasting footprint continues to guide us.'
- Photo of the name lit at night.
- Judge Mark Borkowski on Jodie Marsh vs. Una White.
- Video of switch-on.
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Labels: flickr, liverpool, moblog, photography
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Last photo taken with mobile phone in 2006.
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Labels: birmingham, moblog
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Central atrium of Fort Dunlop. Taken from the 6th floor, dj playing on the ground floor.
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Test post to blogger beta service from Flickr.
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Ryanstock at the Symphony
2pm - 2am
This sunday, 15 October 2006
Edgar Jones
The Rain Dogs
Mojave Collective
Labels: flickr, liverpool, moblog, music
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Test post from Flickr account, sunset, Catharine Street
Labels: flickr, liverpool, moblog, test
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A google map showing location of images taken with mobile phone since 28 December 2005. Title of each marker links to enlarged image on Flickr.
new folder moblog googlemapped
Labels: flickr, googlemaps, maps, moblog, test
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