Thursday, August 2, 2012

Thought provoking shows centered around London

The city of London is presented through the eyes and minds of some of the top names in British and world photography, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bill Brandt, Robert Frank and many more of them. Whilst the eyes of the whole world this summer are on London, Tate Britain explores the city and its various shades of life in a unique show of photography.

During the years spanning between 1930 and 1980, several best-known photographers from across the world visited London to make work about it and its various communities. Culling 180 classic 20th-century photographs, the show, entitled ‘Another London’, goes on to highlight the vibrancy of the capital city as a dynamic place, richly diverse yet full of contrast.

For most of these artists, it was a foreign city. They either visited London briefly or chose to settle in permanently, recording and representing it in their own distinctive ways and unique style. Emblems of Britishness that might have been familiar to visitors like red buses, bowler hats and pearly kings are documented alongside the city’s urban poor surviving life as pavement artists, buskers and beggars.

It challenges your perspective and also gives an opportunity to view striking images from renowned names in photographers including Dora Maar and Irving Penn. Simultaneously, ‘Migrations: Journeys into British Art’, another show at Tate Britain explores British art in the context of the theme of migration starting from 1500 until present.

It reflects the remit of Collection displays of Tate Britain. From the 16th and 17th century Flemish and Dutch landscape as well as still-life painters who arrived in Britain, searching for new patrons, through moments of religious and political unrest, to Britain’s current status within the complex global landscape, the exhibit shows how British art has got fundamentally shaped by constant waves of migration.

Patrick Keiller’s The Robinson Institute has also been unveiled at the gallery – the first in response to its British and international art collection, supported by Sotheby’s. It’s an exhibition, which considers the origins of the prevailing economic crisis.

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