Newsletter London for fun

Welcome to the London For Fun regular newsletter keeping you up to date with what's new in London`s events.

LONDON FOR FUN Newsletter: 11 March 2008 Issue No.143

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http://www.londonforfun.com
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1.) Top 10 London events
2.) Other Events, Theatre listings, Museums and Galleries
3.) How to unsubscribe

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1. Top 10 London events
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1 - Jean Prouvé - The radical, functional and inspiring work of the French designer and engineer Jean Prouvé (1901 –1984) will be shown in this first comprehensive overview of his work in the UK. With examples of his unique furniture design, architecture, drawings, film and photographs, the exhibition will present the enormous influence of Prouvé within the history of 20th Century design. Until 25 March.
www.designmuseum.org

2 - Doris Salcedo - Shibboleth - Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth is the first work to intervene directly in the fabric of the Turbine Hall. Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur. Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built. Until April 6.
www.tate.org.uk/modern

3 - Great English Composers - Programme includes Vaughan Williams: The Wasps Overture, Elgar: Sea Pictures and Tippett: A Child of Our Time. 6 April. Elgar’s Sea Pictures songs, composed around the same time as the Enigma Variations, set texts by poets that include Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the composer’s wife Alice. First performed in 1899 by the legendary Clara Butt (wearing a costume that suggested a mermaid!) the songs are an essentially English response to the changing moods and colours of the sea. Tippetts modelled his extraordinary A Child of Our Time on the Passions of Bach, ingeniously replacing the customary Lutheran chorales with his own arrangements of Negro spirituals.
www.royalalberthall.com

4 - The Landscape Oil Sketch - Most landscape oil sketches from the 18th and early 19th centuries were never intended for exhibition - sketching out of doors was used primarily as a training for the hand and the eye. Often sketches remained overlooked, staying in artists’ families rather than being offered for sale. Only a few collectors recognised the quality of pieces in this tradition. It is these collections which are celebrated in this exhibition. Degas owned studies by Corot and Théodore Rousseau - the National Gallery purchased these pictures at the sale of his collection in 1918. They now form the core of a small but distinguished group of works, which was augmented in 1999 by the long-term loan of the Gere Collection. Until 6 April.
www.nationalgallery.org.uk

5 - The First Emperor of China - This major loan exhibition will present a reassessment of one of the best known discoveries in world archaeology, the Terracotta Army of the First Emperor of China. Some of these famous figures have travelled abroad since the surprise discovery of the site in 1974, but no loan exhibition has ever assembled so many important objects, including newly discovered pieces which have never left China before. The exhibition will provide an insight into China's First Emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, and his legacy. He rejected Confucianism, burning its books and was thought to have put 460 scholars to death, possibly by burying them alive. But he also presided over the unification of the coinage system, the standardisation of weights and measures and script. In introducing the idea of a unified state and effectively creating China in 221 BC, the First Emperor of Qin created what is today the oldest surviving political entity in the world. How that state has survived, developed and is viewed today will be explored through events, lectures and debates around the exhibition. Until 7 April.
www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk

6 - Laughing in a Foreign Language - Laughing in a Foreign Language explores the role of laughter and humour in contemporary art. In a time of increasing globalization, this international exhibition questions if humour can only be appreciated by people with similar cultural, political or historical backgrounds and memories, or whether laughter can act as a catalyst for understanding what you are not familiar with. Laughing in a Foreign Language investigates the whole spectrum of humour, from jokes, gags and slapstick to irony, wit and satire. The exhibition brings together more than 70 videos, photographs and interactive installation works by more than 30 artists from all around the world. Until 13 April.
www.hayward.org.uk

7 - Weapons of Mass Communication: War Posters - Featuring hundreds of the most eye-catching and iconic posters from the Museum’s international collection, this major exhibition explores the influence of advertising and publicity on government propaganda and policy, from the First World War onwards. It also charts the poster’s evolution as a tool of protest and counter-culture, incorporating powerful anti-Vietnam designs of the 1960s and 1970s and more recent material from the Iraq War demonstrations. The exhibition examines the nature of propaganda and outdoor advertising, exploring how posters communicate visually and persuade and influence in conflict. Until 20 April.
http://london.iwm.org.uk

8 - Alexander Rodchenko - Revolution in Photography - Featuring approximately 120 original prints and photomontages, this exhibition traces the development of Rodchenko's photography over a period of two decades when he created many classic works of Russian and world photography. Pioneering a new vocabulary of bold and unusual camera positions, severe foreshortenings of perspective, and close-up views of surprising details, Rodchenko's photography balanced formal concerns with an interest in the social and political life of the Soviet Union. Until 27 April.
www.hayward.org.uk

9 - The House of Viktor & Rolf - This summer Barbican Art Gallery will showcase the work of radical Dutch fashion designers Viktor & Rolf. This will be the first time in the United Kingdom that an exhibition has been devoted to this highly influential duo. Over the past 15 years Viktor & Rolf have taken the fashion world by storm with their particular blend of cool irony and surreal beauty. The exhibition will chart their career to date within the context of a specially commissioned installation that will dominate the entire Gallery. Highlights will include pieces from Atomic Bomb, 1998–99, featuring dramatic mushroom cloud-like cushioned necklines and Russian Doll, 1999–2000, in which a single model was painstakingly dressed by the designers themselves in front of a catwalk audience in 10 independent layers, in an experience reminiscent of performance art. From 18 June until 14 September.
www.barbican.org.uk

10 - Dali Universe - (Permanent) Presented in a surreal, labyrinth sequence of galleries, this tourist attraction place viewers in the heart of a Dalinean fantasy land. Some 500 works of art set in 30,000 square feet help to unravel the great Spanish mind. Located at County Hall, Riverside Building, SE1. Telephone 0207 620 2420 for more information.

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2. Other Events, Theatre listings, Museums and Galleries

Events listing:
http://www.londonforfun.com/events-in-London.htm

Theatre listings:
http://www.londonforfun.com/London-theatres.htm

Museum listing:
http://www.londonforfun.com/London-museums.htm

Galleries listings:
http://www.londonforfun.com/galleries-in-London.htm

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