Shopping: National past time

Not that you really have the choice:
in a car park in Birmingham, just in case you forgot what you came to town for.


go through the shop to go to the hospital reception.


and in order of importance, the reasons to choose one city or another


What to do whilst you're waiting for your plane in East Midlands airport, at least they're honest.

Utopia

Since our work for Cube Gallery, we've been interested in the names used by developers to brand their buildings.
This one in Glasgow wins the medal.
Now you know where to find utopia, it's 2 blocks from the motorway, on the edge of the railway line.

Cultivated wilderness new pictures

Went by the Gorbals last week and took a couple of pictures of the Cultivated wilderness, it's growing nicely and starting to really take over the fence.

Urban wildlife

Last week in Newcastle we had another look at the seabird colony on the Tyne bridge, it's growing and the piles of the bridge look more and more like a cliff covered in guano.
Apparently, the bridge's kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla) colony is believed to be the most inland one of seabirds anywhere in the world.
The bridge is now considered an important breeding site for these birds, but their nests are threatened by the complaints of nearby residents who dislike the noise and mess they cause.

Give the city a small piece of the love you give to the countryside
Franz Hessel



You can check the BBC website. Kittiwakes are usually found nesting on precipitous sea cliffs, where large numbers crowd together to nest on narrow ledges. However, the granite "cliffs" of the towers of the Tyne Bridge provide a perfect substitute for Tyneside's kittiwakes.
Last year there were about 150 nests on the bridge and Newcastle City Council has installed information boards about the birds on the Quayside.

incident

One of the small incidents we enjoy finding in cities, paving or hatches moved for work and replaced wrongly, usually with double yellow lines or other patterns. This one is even better as it's expensively designed and built to match and disappear. Probably a slightly perverse way of enjoying traces of human actions in an environment increasingly designed and standardised.

David in the Gorbals

A rather unusual setting for a copy of David, at the entrance of this tile company in the middle of an industrial estate in the Gorbals. Last year we took pictures of this almost surréalist collage for a magazine (which ended up not being part of the piece), it is still one of our favorite mix of visual languages.

American for the Arts

Last week we went to the Americans for the Arts annual convention in Philadelphia to raise awareness, with our project manager, of the projects happening in Calgary and start developing a network of people interested in involving artists in thinking about urban infrastructures.
With more than 1400 attendee it certainly was an experience, Mostly geared towards arts administrators, little was really said about the potential and role of artists in shaping and questioning our environment. although a great debate was sparked in an open paneled discussion, Manifest Destiny: A Meeting of the minds on the state of public art (following the Public Art Year In Review Presentation in the "liberty Ballroom"). Presenters included Jack Becker, Public Art Review, Mel Chin, Artist, Patricia Philips, writer curator and Professor in Art History at Cornell University amongst others.
It was certainly useful to meet up with people excited about what they do and seeing the value in involving artists in the way Calgary is trying to through their UEP Public Art plan

Blurry picture of one of the organised lunch time

We also took a day to check out Olafur Elisasson exhibition at MOMA and PS1 in New York - highly recommended if it tours somewhere near you.

The reversed waterfall in PS1

I only see things when they move, in Moma