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A high water mark: artists moor holiday houseboat on London roof

The Sheet — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:03:40 +0000

Vessel installed on top of Queen Elizabeth Hall on South Bank is open to the public for overnight stays

There are just a few things missing to complete the scene. Savage dogs, rusting engines from white vans plundered for parts, seagulls squabbling over landfill, scuffed barges laden with gravel and a backdrop peppered with indifferent high-rise housing. Add a slight scent of sewage and the 27-tonne Le Roi des Belges (King of the Belgians) might be berthed on some wind scythed stretch of the Thames Estuary far east of Tower Bridge.

The illusion, conjured on a grey and blustery January morning is not so very whimsical. Le Roi des Belges just happens to be moored on top of the brutalist Queen Elizabeth Hall between the Royal Festival Hall and the National Theatre. This, though, is no weather beaten Thames trader; it is, rather, an artwork – houseboat, too, which the public can stay in. It was designed by architect David Kohn and artist Fiona Banner, with Artangel for Living Architecture, an organisation set up by the philosopher Alain de Botton to build innovative holiday homes around the shores of Britain.

The shock, having ridden a slow and brutally utilitarian lift up through a jagged concrete interstice between the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Hayward Gallery, is to find the houseboat anchored to the vast concrete roof of the 1960s concert hall, a terrain as bleak, and as compelling, as any found downriver from Tower Bridge.

Artist and architect say they were inspired by Joseph Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness, set on the Thames and the River Congo, and by Conrad's tales of how he steamed up the Congo in a boat of the same name in 1889. But, where Conrad experienced the all but unspeakable horror of the atrocities committed in the Congo Free State by King Leopold II, what you see spread out before you as you board the artworld Roi des Belges, also known as A Room for London, is the most compelling, and gloriously wide-angled, panorama of central London, framed by the Palace of Westminster on the port side and St Paul's to starboard.

"The idea is that where once ships sailed out from imperial London to the rest of the world, today the world has come willingly to London," explained de Botton. "The boat is here to provoke, stimulate and adjust how people feel about London."

Two people can stay here for a single night during the course of this year. Snuggled into their cabin – complete with neat galley, dining a pair of room, bunks that can be slid together, a shower with a view of the dome of St Paul's and a library. Those stowing their jib aboard this happily unexpected houseboat, are offered shelves stacked with books on London, peerless views and the strangest sense of being marooned alone in the heart, not of darkness, but of a neon, fluorescent and sodium-lit city and with the sound of Thames water lapping the South Bank shore overlain with the noise of night buses and emergency service sirens.

A Room for London is a year-long arts venue. A programme of visiting writers includes Swedish author and cultural historian Sven Lindqvist and novelist Jeanette Winterson. Among the musicians staying on board will be Andrew Bird, the Chicago multi-instrumentalist, German composer Heiner Goebbels and Laurie Anderson. Video and installation artist, Jeremy Deller, and Talking Heads' David Byrne will also be part of the crew. Somewhere between July and December you might want to book yourself on board, too, before, Le Roi des Belges is lifted off the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall and packed off to her next port of cultural call.

Le Roi des Belges is the sixth of the adventurous new rental houses commissioned by Living Architecture. These include the Balancing Barn on the Suffolk coast between Aldeburgh and Walberswick by Dutch architects, MVRDV, the Shingle House on the extreme south-easterly point of England at Dungeness, by the Glaswegian team NORD Architecture, and the Dune House on the fringe of Thorpeness,Suffolk, by Norway's Jarmund/Vigsnaes architects. All are moored by the sea, yet none is as literal in form as the shipshape Roi des Belges.

• This article was amended on 17 January 2012. The original referred to atrocities committed in the Congo Free State by King Alphonso II. This has been corrected.

Jonathan Glancey

Art and design: the ones to watch in 2012

The Sheet — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:06:43 +0000

Cage fighters, Olympic cushions and novel uses for crude oil distinguish our people to watch in the world of art and design

Bedwyr Williams

As 37-year-old Bedwyr Williams flicks through images of his work on his laptop you can see why some people classify him as a stand-up comedian as much as an artist. There's the 26ft-tall skyscraper beehive, a bicycle covered in wool with sheep horns for handlebars and a piece inspired by two cross-dressing cage fighters in Swansea's city centre – all described in a laconic and often hilarious deadpan. "He's marvellously talented and – unusually for contemporary art – very funny," says Laura Cumming, the Observer's art critic. "I caught sight of him in the 2006 Beck's Futures and he has never made anything that didn't fascinate ever since."

Williams is not unduly concerned that his light-hearted approach will mean his work is taken less seriously. "Is it comedy? Is it art?" he muses. "Call it what you like, it's either good or bad in the end. I like that moment when I do a performance in a gallery setting when the audience doesn't know if it's going to be serious or funny. It's a bit like coaxing a constipated well."

If anything, Williams is relieved to make pieces at all. After studying at Central Saint Martins in London, he moved back to his native north Wales in the early 2000s. He was close to giving up art, but then won a Hamlyn Foundation award in 2004: "It was like being refuelled in midair when I was considering making an emergency landing," he says. In May, he will have his largest solo show to date, at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. "My work is darker now and, I think, stronger. I live in the arse-end of nowhere, so I'm always having to trade on the last thing I did, but I've definitely got more of an idea of what I'm up to now."

Chloe Dewe Mathews

The 29-year-old documentary photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews was a few months into an overland trip from China to the UK in 2010 when she stopped in Naftalan, Azerbaijan. She had heard about a sanatorium where locals – since the days of Marco Polo in the 13th century – have sworn by the therapeutic benefits of bathing in sludgy crude oil heated to 37C and she thought it might make a diverting subject for a portfolio of pictures. Dewe Mathews says, "I remember thinking, 'Would this interest anyone at all? Well, I might as well just do it anyway.'"

Validation was not long in coming: in June last year, she was signed to the photo agency Panos Pictures; then, in November, her series Caspian, including images from Naftalan, won the 2011 international photography award run by the British Journal of Photography. More enduringly, she now had a blueprint for a lifetime's work: "I was away for nine months, but I realised it could be a long-term thing, almost a recce for my career."

Dewe Mathews is smart and assured, and her approach is fearlessly single-minded: for example, she crossed Asia and Europe entirely by hitchhiking. "If you're on a bus the whole time, you have that lovely staring-out-of-the-window thing," she says, "but it's not the same as going from one person's car with all sorts of funny things hanging from the mirror and them telling you their stories. It makes for a much more fertile atmosphere."

She returns to Russia this month to continue the Caspian series and will exhibit the new photographs next October at the 1508 Gallery in London. This time, however, she has been forced to make arrangements for the transport. "It will be too cold to stand out on the road," she sighs, genuinely disappointed. "But I'm going to do couch surfing, so hopefully I will hear stories that way."

Pernilla & Asif

They officially launched only last month but already it's clear that Pernilla & Asif is no ordinary design company. Pernilla Ohrstedt, 31, and Asif Khan, 32, met in their first year at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London. After distinguishing themselves individually (Ohrstedt curated the Canadian Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale; Khan designed the award-winning West Beach Cafe in Littlehampton), they decided to work together. Their first collaboration, a Design Museum commission called Harvest – described by Khan as "furniture made from flowers" – set out their ambitions: "We wanted to test the limits of people's imaginations and introduce new ways of seeing things."

The work that followed also made striking use of offbeat materials. The pavilion for a Singapore architecture festival consisted of two cones made of ropes and steel filled with ice and sand. A performance piece called Cloud, for Design Miami/Basel 2011, created a sort of canopy by sending puffs of helium-filled soap clouds into an overhead net. (They used a larger-scale version to launch their practice at York Hall in east London last November.)

Now they're working on a major commission for the Olympic Park called the Beatbox. Described by Ohrstedt as "a building that people can interact with like it's a musical instrument", it contains 200 cushions which activate sounds of athletes in action, recorded by DJ Mark Ronson. "Mark turned these sounds into an anthem for 2012," says Khan, "and our building deconstructs them again."

Unusually, for a young company with such experimental projects, they have had support from the likes of the British Council and Coca-Cola. Ohrstedt says they want to keep their company "slim and agile" and Khan says their ambition is to do "things we don't expect to be doing. It'd be interesting to do a music video, or a set design, or a bridge or a road. Anything that challenges us."

Killian Fox

Tim Lewis

The arts in 2012: architecture

The Sheet — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:07:25 +0000

Jonathan Glancey picks his highlights of the year ahead

Tate oil tanks

The cavernous old underground oil tanks beneath Tate Modern, the former Bankside power station, are due to reopen as performance and installation spaces in time for the Olympics. Connected to three new galleries, the tanks are the first phase of a £215m extension by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. July. tate.org.uk

Shard London Bridge

Designed by Renzo Piano for property developer Irvine Sellar, the Shard, towering over the capital at 310 metres, is now the tallest building in western Europe. Rising from London Bridge station, this steel and glass-clad spire houses offices, restaurants, hotel, flats and four floors of public viewing galleries: on a clear day you will be able to see for 40 miles. May. the-shard.com

ArcelorMittal Orbit

Britain's tallest and biggest sculpture, the bright red Orbit – designed by Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond, with engineers Arup and architect Katherine Findlay – is made of complex, calligraphic loops and whirls writ in steel. As a public viewing gallery overlooking the 2012 Olympics site, this is London's 21st-century answer to the Eiffel Tower. May. london.gov.uk

Caro goes to Chatsworth

In a move that will no doubt provoke widely differing reactions, 15 steel sculptures by Anthony Caro will be set against the restored south front of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, as well as gathered beside its sensational Emperor Fountain, designed by the great Joseph Paxton (creator of the Crystal Palace). Caro has often been inspired by powerful architecture, and there's no denying William Talman's baroque Chatsworth is a supremely confident building. 28 March to 1 July. chatsworth.org

Room for London

Imagine spending the night in an intriguing and isolated temporary house, designed by artist Fiona Banner and architect David Kohn, sitting atop the brutalist Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank. The tugboat-like building's first six months are already taken; bookings for July to December will be available in January for this project by Artangel and Alain de Botton's Living Architecture. January 2012. Details: living-architecture.co.uk

National 9/11 Museum, New York

A lofty, glazed atrium, sheltering two of the trident columns that once supported one of the twin towers, marks the entrance to the museum at the site of Manhattan's ground zero. Designed by Oslo-based Snohetta with local firm Davis Brody Bond, much of this long-awaited museum is underground. September. 911memorial.org/museum

Jonathan Glancey

Readers’ cultural review of 2011: What, no Katy B?

The Sheet — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:28:13 +0000

Last week our critics picked their highlights of 2011. Did they get it right? Readers respond with their own highs (and lows)

MattB75

One Man, Two Guvnors was the most fun I've had in a theatre for years – easily the best play of 2011, and James Corden best performer. The National theatre largely misfired for me: A Woman Killed with Kindness, Cherry Orchard, 13, The Kitchen, Frankenstein and Greenland were all largely disappointing.

The RSC's Homecoming was the best revival. Rupert Goold's Merchant of Venice was great fun, even if the inconsistency in Portia's characterisation (from ditzy blond Glee fan to brilliant prosecutor, hm) took the edge off it.

Tom Brooke was my favourite actor of the year – in The Kitchen, and I Am the Wind.

oogin

Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid are still two of my least-admired starchitects. However, credit where it's due. I had the pleasure of wandering Toronto's AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario), redesigned by Gehry [a few years ago], and apart from his usual frivolous facade, the interior had been quite brilliantly done. So restrained and sophisticated: words I never never thought I'd use for the old showboater.

daveportivo

Katy B owned pop in 2011, or temporarily leased the lower sections of the charts from Adele at least. Seven singles off one album and a successful B-side, bridging the gap between cool, intriguing dance and charming, relatable 2000s-style British pop-star writing. Loved it.

Kleistphile

The programme of the year has been Mark Cousins' superb history of the cinema, The Story of Film: An Odyssey, on More4. Incredibly wide-ranging, informative and inspiring, with extremely intelligent analysis of how film developed and how the great directors innovated.

drdownunder

Artist Christian Marclay's awesome 24-hour film-montage The Clock, shown as part of the British Art Show in Plymouth. Mesmeric, fascinating, witty editing and marvellous film-buffery content.

SlimJim888

The Inbetweeners Movie. The snobs may scoff but this film says more about Britain and its youth than 20 Ken Loach films ever could.

OldFriar

Two of the greatest musical evenings were the appearances of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer in Mahler's First symphony, and the zany late-night Prom with audience requests including Bartók, Kodály and Stravinsky. A month before that, the magic combination of Andris Nelsons and the CBSO in Richard Strauss and Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky.

At the Royal Opera, the three most memorable performances were Madama Butterfly with Kristine Opolais in the title role and her husband Andris Nelsons in the pit; Werther with Sophie Koch and Rolando Villazón doing his best (still short of what Jonas Kaufmann can do); and the recent revival of Faust, with Vittorio Grigolo, René Pape, Angela Gheorghiu and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

digit

The release by the BFI on DVD and Blu-Ray of Barney Platts-Mills's 1971 film Private Road, starring Bruce Robinson (who later wrote Withnail and I). I first saw this in about 1987 on TV and I've been wanting to see it again ever since. Even better than I thought.

Mark42

Gruff Rhys's Hotel Shampoo was my favourite album of the year; Cashier No 9 was not given the recognition it deserved. Enjoyed Kate Bush, Tinie Tempah, Noel Gallagher and Will Young's offerings, but very disappointed with Coldplay. Adele: lovely voice but too many songs sound the same on her album.

Still, it wasn't all bad: the end of Westlife and hopefully the beginning of the end for X Factor.

dbeecee

Right Here Right Now; Format international photography festival in Derby. Thousands of photographers took part from all over the world, including Joel Meyerowitz and Bruce Gilden. An exciting and eclectic mix showing the best in street photography.

davidabsalom

Best resurrection: Rab C Nesbitt. Comedy of the year for me. Now that the Tories are back in, he seems to have found his mojo again.

zibibbo

Leonardo da Vinci at the National Gallery. I think the major problem with this absurdly hyped show is that, apart from the two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks and the unfinished St Jerome, the other six "Leonardo" paintings on display are either too unattractively gauche, stiff and mannered to be considered good or significant. Or they're too implausibly naturalistic to be an autograph work (La Belle Ferronière is too lifelike to be by Leonardo). Or just too plain weird and damaged to take seriously (step forward, the newly discovered Salvator Mundi).

Thank you, Adrian Searle, for having the integrity to give your honest opinion about this insanely promoted but hugely disappointing show.

andglove

The High Country, an album by Portland band Richmond Fontaine, demands your attention from first song to last. It's one of the only albums that will give you the same sense of satisfaction that finishing a novel does.

LDTBFJ

Bridesmaids was a great and genuinely funny film. Comedies (and female comedians) are too frequently dismissed, especially by the Oscars board.

Snarlygog

British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet in Plymouth. It was good to see [Christian Marclay's] The Clock and Sarah Lucas's work up close and personal. At least there is an emphasis on craft skills in video art: good focus, framing and timing are back in fashion.

alphabetbands

Nicola Roberts, the good one from Girls Aloud. In her album Cinderella's Eyes she lays out her inner demons and anguish on a platter of sumptuous dance pop hooks and beats. The album is so simple that my two-year-old can sing along, and layered enough that we slightly elder statesmen can appreciate it as well.

juliendonkeyboy

In no particular order: Sufjan Stevens live at Southbank: ambitious, experimental, joyous, exciting, sad. Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle: the sixth episode, Democracy, was quite simply awesome. Senna is my film pick: made in 2010, but didn't get released on these shores until 2011. Wonderfully moving.

habsfan0303

Propeller's Comedy of Errors was riotous. I mean, how often does a naked grown man run past you with a sparkler wedged into his buttocks?

glynluke

Archipelago is the worst film I have ever seen in 50-odd years of cinema-going. How Peter Bradshaw and Philip French can find a single redeeming quality in this dreadful two-hour river of bathetic, emotionless, drama-free drivel baffles me.

Shatillion

I loved Attack the Block. I got mugged the week before it was released and actually found watching it quite cathartic. I was rooting for the little shits by the end. That's good screenwriting.

JimTheFish

A really disappointing year for British TV, which has been on a downward slide. Doctor Who was probably still the best thing domestically. The Crimson Petal and the White and The Hour were underwhelming misfires; The Shadow Line was about the only really promising new kid on the block.

The basic problem is that there's just not enough TV drama being produced. We need more one-offs, more Plays for Today to allow TV to find new voices and take more chances. Everything seems to be market-researched and focus-grouped into mediocrity.

LocalBird

We went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park this summer and were blown away by the incredible Jaume Plensa exhibition; the alabaster heads took my breath away. Beautiful, mesmerising and enchanting.

Carefree

Memorable plays: Flare Path, Frankenstein (Jonny Lee Miller as the Creature was brilliant), and Much Ado at the Globe (Eve Best and Charles Edwards were good enough to almost match my memories of Janet McTeer and Mark Rylance as Beatrice and Benedick).

Damper squibs were Chicken Soup with Barley (far too long). Conor Macpherson's The Veil at the National started brilliantly but didn't deliver the beautiful, haunting, elegiac power of The Weir – a great shame.

Alarming

There were aspects of Grayson Perry's Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman that drove me round the bend. But he wrote well about his theme and chose some absolutely lovely objects from the British Museum's collection.

uptomost

85A collective from Glasgow's brilliant mechanical opera Idimov and the Dancing Girl at the Secret Garden Party. Spooky, funny, ingenious.

AdminGuru

The Tree of Life: a vast expansive film with multiple interpretations, and little in the way of film convention for the casual viewer to latch on to. Viewers fall into two camps I think: those who want simply to be entertained and led, and those who want to explore and participate. Tree of Life is about participation.

Wrighthanes

I just couldn't get The Tree of Life. I tried. I wanted to like it. Admittedly I was on a Singapore Airlines flight, which is not the ideal way to appreciate its cinematic beauty.

DeunanKnute

The Tree of Life is quite possibly the most overrated movie of all time. The sheer brilliance of every single actor isn't in dispute, nor is the superb cinematography. The movie itself is the problem, because it's a real clunker. It's also one of the few films I've seen at the cinema where people were either (vociferously) walking out in disgust or staying behind just to boo.

GorillaPie

The [designs for the] new US Embassy in London. I realise these buildings have to be more fortresses than offices, but really. I'm disappointed that such an important new commission isn't going to be more iconic. Especially since I live opposite the site.

Gundmundsdottir

Possibly the biggest disappointment was the final track on Bon Iver's second album: it never fails to surprise me with just how cheesy and plain bad it is.

CurlyScot

Some of my favourite moments have been in otherwise unremarkable shows. I was slowly won over by Susan Hiller at Tate Modern, and Nancy Spero's works Azur and Hours of the Night II [at the Serpentine] were so incredible I forgot all the meh stuff that surrounded them. The only exhibition I have been unreservedly knocked over by was Mike Nelson's Coral Reef at Tate Britain – an old piece so I'm not sure it counts. Not a superlative year; let's hope 2012 is better and isn't overwhelmed by a spurious Cultural Olympiad.

Dorothy Annan murals listed as former telephone exchange faces demolition

The Sheet — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:05:58 +0000

Murals that celebrate 1960s technology will have to be preserved elsewhere if owner Goldman Sachs redevelops site

A sequence of tile murals celebrating the white heat of British technology – the teleprinters, wiring circuits, spiky aerials and banks of switching gear which constituted 1960s telecommunications – has been listed to preserve it as the grim grey building supporting it faces demolition.

The murals – in smoky blue, brown and green – were the work of Dorothy Annan, who was commissioned in 1960 at the enormous cost of £300 a panel to create them for the Ministry of Works, to decorate a huge new telephone exchange in central London.

Annan collected scores of images of communications kit, and visited General Post Office buildings for inspiration before designing the murals, which include stylised representations of pylons, cables, telegraph poles, cabling, television and radio aerials and generators. She visited the Hathernware pottery in Loughborough and hand-scored her designs onto each wet clay tile Her brush marks can be seen in the fired panels.

When it opened in 1961, the purpose-built Fleet Building on Farringdon Street – designed by Eric Bedford, architect of the Post Office Tower (now known as the BT Tower) – was the largest telephone exchange in the capital.

The IT revolution has made thousands of such buildings redundant across the country, and the Fleet Building has been a derelict eyesore for years. It is now owned by Goldman Sachs, which is believed to be planning to clear and redevelop the site.

Heritage minister John Penrose has not listed the building itself – although grim, it has its admirers – which probably means the tiles will be carefully dismantled for storage and reuse.

Annan, who died in 1983, exhibited with the leftwing Artists International Association, and once featured in a morale-boosting wartime show in an air-raid shelter beside work by Augustus John.

Her paintings are in many national collections, but she was also known for her tile murals, many of which have been destroyed in recent decades. Only three of her major public murals are believed to survive – the largest single example, the Expanding Universe at the Bank of England, was destroyed in 1997.

Maev Kennedy

Tiny Tyneside church beats Canterbury cathedral and Gormley in arts competition

The Sheet — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 08:08:32 +0000

Engraved glass so delicate that frost can change its nature helps scoop top prize for Northumberland. The Northerner's arts monitor Alan Sykes reports

A tiny church high above the Tyne valley has beaten off competition from the likes of Canterbury Cathedral to win this year's Art in a Religious Context award from the charity Art & Christian Enquiry.

The biennial award was made for two commemorative stained glass windows commissioned for St John's church, Healey, in Northumberland, by artists Anne Vibeke Mou and James Hugonin.

Anne Vibeke Mou was born in Denmark and graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2005 before moving to Newcastle. She has shown in Denmark, Prague and London as well as at the National Glass Centre at Sunderland University. Her work for St John's, which lies between Hexham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, is a sheet of glass covered with thousands of tiny impact marks made by hitting the glass with a tungsten point, creating swirling, cloud-like forms which can be seen from the outside of the church as well as from its interior. A hard frost can affect her window, giving it an extra layer of depth.

James Hugonin was born in county Durham and graduated from the Chelsea School of Art in 1975. He has shown at the Baltic and Kettle's Yard in Cambridge as well as in London, Edinburgh and Germany. He is shortlisted for this year's Northern Art Prize www.northernartprize.org.uk which opens at the Leeds City Art Gallery on November 25th. His window is made of small rectangles of glass, some transparent and some translucent, mainly red, blue, yellow and green. Although totally abstract, a double helix form can be made out in the patterns of colour.

The two windows were commissioned as a memorial to his parents Julian & Virginia Warde-Aldam by local landowner, Hotspur magazine editor and churchwarden Jamie Warde-Aldam, a relation of the Quaker Robert Ormston who built the charming neo-Norman church in 1860 (at the third attempt, the nave having collapsed twice during the building process). Jamie says:

Everyone in the parish is delighted with the award. Working with James and Anne Vibeke on the project for a year has been a deeply rewarding, educational experience. They both have the highest standards, are meticulous in their respective methods and showed a sensitivity to each other's work as well as for the character and fabric of the church. Without their generosity, patience and friendship, this commission would not have happened.

The prize is worth £4,000, with £1,500 each going to the artists and £1,000 to the church. Other finalists for the award included sculptor Antony Gormley, who created another of his human figures, this time made up of old iron nails, for Canterbury Cathedral, Jonathon Parson's grid-like Cruciform Vision for Guildford Cathedral, Thomas Denny's Transfiguration stained glass window for Durham Cathedral, and Katy Armes' NoThing for Hellington Church in Norfolk. The judges were chaired by the Dean of Chichester, the Very Rev Nicholas Frayling.

Laura Moffatt, Director of Art & Christian Enquiry, comments:

This year's ACE Awards have once again revealed the depth and diversity of artistic practice among faith communities in the UK. Our short-lists included an Islamic Hall of Remembrance and a major new stained glass window in a cathedral, as well as some very high quality works of art and architecture in small rural parish churches.

Alan Sykes

The constructivists and the Russian revolution in art and achitecture

The Sheet — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 00:06:01 +0000

The 'Russian avant garde' created the 20th-century's most intensive art and architectural movement. Its paintings survive, but its buildings rot

The "Russian avant garde", it's usually called, though the artists themselves didn't use the term; they were known as the futurists, then productivists, and most consistently, constructivists. Even the "Russian" is a misnomer – the individuals in question were frequently Ukrainian, Latvian, Belarussian, Georgian. "Soviet" doesn't quite work either, as they emerged slightly before the October revolution, out of the futurist cafés and cabarets of the mid-1910s.

What they created was probably the most intensive and creative art and architectural movement of the 20th century, a sourcebook so copious that there's scarcely any movement since that wasn't anticipated by something tried and discarded between 1915 and 1935 – from abstraction, pop art, op art, minimalism, abstract expressionism, the graphic style of punk and post-punk, to brutalism, postmodernism, hi-tech and deconstructivism. But the people making this work largely didn't consider themselves to be artists; they even used the term as an insult. They wanted to destroy art altogether, not as a sulky nihilistic gesture, but because they thought they'd created something better to put in its place. They are currently almost ubiquitous, but they nearly disappeared from the historical record – something almost accidentally documented in the Royal Academy show Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture, 1915-35.

The bulk of the artworks in the show come from the collection of George Costakis, a Greek diplomat resident in Moscow from the 1940s until the 1980s. He created what has been called a "futurist ark", buying up drawings, paintings and sketches by artists who were dead, discredited, forgotten, prohibited, or who had moved on to the very different "socialist realism" prescribed from the 1930s onwards. Until Costakis's collection went public, there was only a vague idea that something extraordinary had happened in the former Russian empire – perhaps a couple of mentions of Kasimir Malevich or Alexander Rodchenko, usually in connection with the German artists they had inspired.

Costakis's work was aided from the 1970s on by the archaeological research of the Soviet historian Selim Khan-Magomedov and the late English architectural writer Catherine Cooke; it's no exaggeration to say that without this small group of people, the current prominence of the "Russian avant garde", which has featured in seemingly dozens of exhibitions on the heroic era of modernism over the last decade, would have been impossible. This is at least in part because it was equally useless to both sides in the cold war. For the west, with its CIA-sponsored abstract expressionism, the claim that Bolshevism led inevitably to the suppression of individual creativity was hard to square with this unprecedented visual flowering; while the Soviet bloc still clearly felt there was something dubiously Trotskyite about these internationalist, cosmopolitan art movements.

In Building the Revolution's catalogue, an essay by Jean-Louis Cohen outlines the close connections these artists and architects had with various western trends, from the Bauhaus to Le Corbusier, who was invited to Moscow to design a gargantuan office block for the Union of Co-operatives, which is still standing. No doubt this counted against them when the Soviet Union took a sharp rightwards turn towards nationalism and autarchy in the 1930s. Yet there's often a tendency to act as if the constructivists were themselves "western" in the cold war sense – that they were typical creative types who couldn't be encompassed into the "system". To paraphrase the title of a book on architect Konstantin Melnikov, they were "solo architects in a mass society", alternately either naive aesthetes or individualists who wouldn't bend to serve the new masters, whose suppression by the monolithic state was inevitable. This conception of the heroic subversive artist was one rejected by the constructivists throughout their existence, so it's an enduring irony that it is so often applied to them.

In the early days of the revolution, especially during the civil war of 1918-21, the futurists decorated the public spaces where the new power was promulgated and celebrated – the painter Nathan Altman created a temporary futuristic redesign of the Palace Square in St Petersburg, architect Nikolai Kolli symbolised the struggle with a public sculpture of a red wedge breaking a white block, while in the small provincial town of Vitebsk, the Unovis group maintained a constant barrage of quasi-abstract propaganda. The last is best represented in the exhibition by El Lissitzky's 1919 Rosa Luxemburg, a monument to the murdered communist leader in the form of polygonal forms flying around a central red circle. The futurists' paper Art of the Commune had direct state support, and though the leadership were ambivalent – Lenin was baffled and irritated by the futurists, Trotsky critically sympathetic – there was no suggestion of their being suppressed.

At every step, the artists developed their art specifically according to how useful it might be for socialism. In the early 1920s they staged an exhibition of the "First Working Group of Constructivists". A well-known photograph of this show features a series of seemingly abstract sculptures, often considered a precursor to later "kinetic art". The constructivists themselves considered this work as a precursor to going into the factories and producing useful objects, which some of them soon did, with mixed results. The intention was to move from the utopian to the quotidian (and back) – after designing the famous Monument to the Third International (a model of which sits in the grounds of Burlington House for the duration of the exhibition) sailor and Bolshevik supporter Vladimir Tatlin's next utopian project was designing a more functional stove.

Much of the Costakis collection dates from the early 1920s, when the new state was recovering from a vicious civil war, an international blockade and foreign military intervention, and facing total economic collapse. The proletariat that had participated in the revolution had been effectively wiped out, with the cities emptying and the heavy industry of St Petersburg destroyed; one delegate at a Bolshevik conference sarcastically congratulated the party on being the vanguard of a non-existent class.

Their only solution to rejuvenate the economy was to encourage small-time traders and the peasants who made up 80% of the population; the constructivists had other ideas. The drawings we see in the exhibition express the desire for a totally urban and industrialised landscape – skyscrapers, giant machine halls, mechanised bodies. Even the abstract art, the non-objective "suprematism" pioneered by the young propagandists of Vitebsk, often evokes the rectilinear precision of engineering drawings as much as it does the free play of the imagination. This was at least on some level a collective fantasy of efficiency, a dream of industry, in a country whose already fragile toehold in the 20th century had just been forcibly rescinded. When this work met western eyes, from the 1922 Russische Ausstellung in Berlin onwards, it was interpreted by people who found the industrial landscape familiar and normal. They missed the element of dreaming – but then the Soviets were often in equally furious denial of that themselves.

The manifestos of the new industrial artists, like Alexei Gan's Constructivism or Nikolai Tarabukin's From the Easel to the Machine, were unromantic, utilitarian. The flourishing of creativity happened because each competing faction of the avant garde was utterly committed and fanatical, not because of anything-goes pluralism. The most radical conceived of art as something that must abolish itself in order to become truly useful to the new society they fervently believed was being built. There wouldn't be "artists" in the old sense anymore – the Moscow art school Vkhutemas aimed instead at educating a polymathic engineer-artist-sociologist. The first casualty was painting, and the notion of the exhibition in museum or gallery, where connoisseurs drift around a collection of individual, unreproducible art works. Former painters delved into textile design, photography, book design and, most of all, architecture.

The Costakis collection shows the temporary propaganda kiosks by the Latvian Bolshevik Gustav Klutsis that were the result of this impulse. The second part of the exhibition shows the real buildings that came later, in the second half of the 1920s. The documentation here comes from two sources. One is the Moscow Shchusev Museum of Architecture's collection of historical photographs; the other is English photographer Richard Pare's archive of contemporary captures of these buildings in a usually parlous state, previously collected in his excellent 2008 book The Lost Vanguard. What these two collections have in common is their reminder of the circumstances and context of the period, something too often lost when we gaze longingly at the utopian blueprint.

In the Shchusev collection's image of the 1926 headquarters for the Soviet newspaper Izvestia, you can see the old Russia that the Bolsheviks feared would overwhelm them crowding round the building, hostile – the clean lines abutted by squat Tsarist pallazos, crenellations and Orthodox domes. Look at Pare's photographs of the same landscapes and you find that old Russia won that battle. Buildings that purport to be steel turn out to be straw; precise little machines for living in are dwarfed by Stalin's gothic skyscrapers and their ultra-kitsch post-Soviet imitations; advertising is ruthless and ubiquitous, covering every available surface. The depth of their defeat is measured here. In art, the avant garde survives; in everyday life, across the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States, its works rot.

Given the political defeat of all that its members believed in, they would perhaps have preferred their utopian buildings not to survive. What is unavoidable in any close examination of the constructivists was just how passionately and sincerely they believed in the communist project. They often faced a similar fate to other true believers in the 1930s – Alexei Gan and Gustav Klutsis were among the "purged". Perhaps the fascination that the 1920s still retains, however dimly we perceive it in such different circumstances, is the promise of another communism, unlike the one that committed suicide in 1989 – a communism of colour, democracy and optimism rather than a monochrome despotism; an analogue to the recent return of interest in the aesthetics of social democracy, whether council housing or the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. That's as maybe. What is certain is that the constructivists would not have thanked us for our wistful, apolitical interest.

Owen Hatherley

Alan Haydon obituary

The Sheet — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:22:56 +0000

Arts administrator who transformed and reopened the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, as a centre for contemporary work

Alan Haydon, who has died aged 61 from cancer, was the director of the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, East Sussex, which he transformed into a major centre for contemporary arts. He had a vision for this modernist architectural gem to be a place where the strands of contemporary culture come together, exploring the spaces where art, film, sound and music converge. As he said: "Our task is to allow artists to work within those spaces and to build bridges for audiences to cross." The De La Warr Pavilion is now renowned for an innovative programme and as a special destination for artists, where one-off performances and collaborations crystallise.

Alan arrived at Bexhill in 1999, just as a lottery bid to support the much-needed refurbishment of the Grade I-listed building had been declined and the likes of the Wetherspoon pub chain were expressing interest in the building. At this time I was a freelancer for the De La Warr, co-ordinating a modest and underfunded visual art and education programme. Alan's single-mindedness, staying power and ability to influence secured not only the building itself, but also set the tenor of the future artistic programme. An Arts Council England award of £4.1m was gained, as well as £1.9m towards restoration and repair from the Heritage Lottery Fund and a further £2m raised from private and public sources. He safeguarded the pavilion's future prospects by overseeing the negotiations for matching revenue funding of more than £1m annually from Rother district council and Arts Council England – a previously unprecedented arrangement at this high level of funding.

The building reopened on 15 October 2005 and attracted more than 500,000 visitors in its first year. Alan orchestrated a bold and distinctive programme including Ian Breakwell, Bill Furlong, Jeremy Deller, Andy Warhol, Nathan Coley, Grayson Perry, Joseph Beuys, Michael Nyman, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson and the Fall.

Alan was born in Lewisham, south-east London. He attended Eltham Green school and studied at Camberwell School of Art (1972-75), under the tutorage of David Troostwyk, a staunch conceptualist. A flirtation with the commercial art market followed, and Alan did a short stint at Sotheby's, but his motivation was more rooted in the democratic potential of art. He moved into the public arts sector, where he remained for the rest of his career, bringing his entrepreneurial spirit to the role of arts centre manager in the London borough of Hammersmith (1977-80), where he kick-started a new arts community space in Shepherd's Bush that included a ceramics studio, recording studio, cinema and theatre.

This led to roles as visual arts officer first in Hammersmith and then for Greater London Arts, where Alan drew up new policies for gallery development, public art and support for artists. He became strategy and regional development officer there between 1989 and 1991, and concentrated on the role of the arts in urban regeneration. Between 1991 and 1993 he was senior visual arts officer at Arts Council England, charged with promoting new policies to support the professional and economic status of the artist.

In 1993 he took up the post of head of visual arts at Northern Arts. Described by a former colleague as a "master facilitator", Alan carefully empowered colleagues without being overly directive – a very delicate balancing act. Lottery funds were becoming available for the first time with Arts Council England as a distributor, and he helped develop lottery-related projects in the north-east.

Alan set the new policy framework for the visual arts and crafts in preparation for the UK Year of the Artist in 1996. This was a sort of mini Cultural Olympiad, with cities and regions able to bid to celebrate the visual arts. The north-east of England became the host for this national celebration and the resulting programme was inspiring: the region now benefits from Baltic and the Sage in Gateshead and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. Audacious large-scale commissions were supported by Alan and his team at the Arts Council; these included the Angel of the North by Antony Gormley and Bill Viola's The Messenger, a potent work made in response to the powerful spiritual context of Durham Cathedral.

Alan was an early supporter and board member of Matt's Gallery, in east London, and Locus+, the Newcastle-based artists' commissioning agency. In 1997 he moved south again, to become director of craft development at the Crafts Council, establishing innovative relationships with the Department of Trade and Industry, and the Creative Industries Task Force. Within two years, he had arrived at De La Warr Pavilion.

More a maverick and less a bureaucrat, his success lay as much in his character as his skill and knowledge. He had great presence, was the very best of company, with a wonderful appreciation of food, wine and lively debate, and had a penchant for beautifully tailored and brilliantly coloured corduroy suits.

Alan is survived by his wife Cat and their son Harvey; and by his son Simon, by his first wife, Eliane.

• Alan George Haydon, arts administrator, born 31 October 1949; died 9 October 2011

• This article was amended on 2 November. The caption to the first picture referred to the De La Warr Pavilion as being in the art-deco style. This has been corrected.

Young arts critics competition 2011: the winning entries

The Sheet — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:12:51 +0000

Read our top-rated entries to the Guardian's annual competition to find the best young talent in arts writing

OVERALL WINNER

Visual art, under 14

Freddie Holker, 12 – Homage to Lucian Freud, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Disgusting. That's what I'm thinking; that's my gut instinct. It's reminiscent of the swimming-pool changing rooms back at school, where I'm scared to look at anything in case it offends someone. This is the Homage to Lucian Freud, one of Britain's best modern artists, who died on 20 July 2011. Seventeen paintings by Freud are displayed. I'm standing in an eerily plain room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art 3,000 miles away from where I'm comfortable.

The only painting I can easily look at is, funnily enough, Naked Man, Back View. The only one that doesn't contain full-frontal nudity offers full dorsal nudity. It shows a fat man plonked on a footstool. His sitting position pushing out roll after roll of grey white fat, meshed together, leading down to his small feet which are holding up all this blubber. When you look at his head, you can see very little of his face, his one dark eye patrolling the floor. His joined hands give me the impression he is contemplating. He has nothing to hold, nothing to cherish, he doesn't even have any hair. He is simply being.

I realise that there's more to these paintings than nudity; these pictures are giving off emotions. Despair, joy, isolation, shame and most of all secrecy. The one that catches my eye is And the Bridegroom. It is the same fat man as before, but he has a partner, a tiny little creature, half the size of the man: she's pale against his reddish tanned skin. Beauty and the beast. They look like a pair of puppies sleeping in odd positions, one stretching and one curled up. This time it is nude but I'm not surprised or disturbed, because I finally understand what Freud's thinking, what his "vibe" is. He creates paintings of love and despair, a rainbow of feelings, but he tries to explain that the greatest gift of life is living, and that you need nothing to decorate yourself. There should be no shame in being bare, because when you think about it, everyone is equal.

CATEGORY WINNERS

Visual art, 14-18

Angelica Gottlieb, 14 – Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alexander McQueen's Savage Beauty exhibition fills New York's Metropolitan Museum with the rapture and allure of his art, muted by the grief and tragedy of his death. A buzz of anticipation reverberates through the queue that seems to stretch round the block. However, fashion that was once famed for its exclusivity is now fully accessible, and it's an experience no one would want to miss.

The curator, Andrew Bolton, has clearly embraced the gothic romanticism of McQueen's fashion by incorporating dark and bright lighting with futuristic music that reprises the music played at many of his fashion shows.

Each room becomes more and more intriguing despite becoming increasingly congested. For instance, the Cabinet of Curiosities is the concrete manifestation of McQueen's notable description of himself as a "romantic schizophrenic". The curiosities include a marvelous skeleton-like back brace and antelope ears crafted from gleaming twigs, reminiscent of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Contrasts are everywhere – the exhibition is so public yet the proliferation of gilded mirrors throughout reflects the intimacy of the dressing room. The clothes seem vibrant and vigorous, yet hauntingly, the mannequins themselves are faceless and appear to be wearing death masks.

The precision and perfection of the designs on display contrasts starkly with the uncertainty of McQueen's personal life. The clothes are spine-tingling, as McQueen evokes a cocktail of emotions, visible on people's faces. You may ask: "How could such an icon, a man feted for his brilliance, become so tormented?" Aristotle explains: "No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness." On that basis, McQueen's intensely creative designs seem like vivid scars covering his emotional wounds.

New York is undoubtedly a city "fit for McQueen", yet his Britishness shines through. A room full of tartan dresses pays homage to his Scottish roots and he invites the viewer to revel in his uniquely British eccentricity. Quite rightly, there is an online petition to bring Savage Beauty to the UK. I fervently hope it succeeds so that McQueen's legion of British admirers can share in the awe-inspiring experience of his very grand finale.

Pop, 14-18

Julia Smith, 18 – Bon Iver, Bon Iver

Whether it's a lengthy examination of Justin Vernon himself or a brief review of their eponymously named new album, it seems the oft-uttered phrase (now revered indie legend) "lonely cabin in Wisconsin" is impossible to disentangle from the myth surrounding Bon Iver.

New album Bon Iver, Bon Iver – so good they named it twice? – is a marginal departure from the sound that made this modest band, then merely a solo music project, beloved by the media and the masses. Though For Emma, Forever Ago was by no means a flawless record, will the meaty auto-tune of this release ever replace the softly strummed guitars and breathy silences of the album produced in the little cabin in the woods?

Like For Emma, the lyrics this time around aren't particularly descriptive, but I feel that's where this band really shines. Rather than crafting four minutes of disco pop around a questionable refrain about not answering a telephone call in a club because you're "k-kinda busy", Vernon et al manage to pick lyrics out of the guitar reverb and spin them into allusive poetry. Something about the arrangement of chords and the swirling rawness of Vernon's voice has made For Emma stand out in the minds of millions, I'm sure, as an album that hits you right there. You know, there, that space between your head and your heart where the child of logic and emotion rests only to create total loneliness and insecurity. There.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver may not be as isolated as the last record was, but I can safely say that I see myself enjoying this album, synthesizers and all, in the months to come. Tracks like Holocene are a slight throwback to the echoing Bon Iver of old, but there's something in the masterful composition of the likes of Perth that comforts the insecurity that has waited, bated, in the three years since Vernon left that cabin in the woods. Even without an alternative indie fairytale story behind it, Bon Iver, Bon Iver is sure to be a magical chapter in the evolution of this band.

Pop, under 14

Holly MacHenry, 13 – Gogol Bordello, Womad festival

It was only my second Womad festival, the most amazing place I've been in my life – all the different smells, rhythms, cultures and stalls selling exotic treasures. We'd had a pretty mellow weekend, but all that was about to change …

On Sunday night we went early to get a good spot at the open-air stage where Gogol Bordello were the closing act of the festival. For those of you who don't know, Gogol Bordello are a gypsy punk band from New York, consisting of nine members from all over the globe. The charismatic Ukrainian lead singer, Eugene Hutz, fronts an eccentric bunch of skilful musicians, with a reputation for starting parties wherever they set foot.

They started with Pala Tute from the latest album. At first I wasn't sure what to do, so just clapped in time to the song and raised my arms now and then for good measure. About halfway through the second song I decided being cool wasn't important and I started jumping about as the band worked the crowd, beckoning them with their hands as if to say "Come on, is that all you've got?".

Suddenly, everyone was airborne. I started getting bashed about like a pinball and before I knew it I was in the midst of my first – and quite possibly Womad's first – mosh pit! I was boiling and could feel the heat of all the people around me, but every time I jumped I could feel the cool night air before disappearing back into the crowd. By the time the band played Immigrandia (We Comin' Rougher) most people seemed to have lost their inhibitions.

For Gogol Bordello, it's not the fame or money that matters, it's the music, the crowd and their message of unity between people. They're not content until everyone's up on their feet having a good time. The blend of the frantic fiddle-playing and the manic energy of the band is infectious and before you know it you're part of the act.

Film, 14-18

Kiera McIntosh-Michaelis, 16 – Life in a Day

Over 4,500 hours of footage. 493 countries. More than 80,000 entries. All of this edited into a poignant 90-minute film about what it means to be human. The incredible medium of YouTube and director Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void) called to the world to submit a short film of their daily lives on 24 August 2010. The result? Mass montages of the sun rising, getting up, washing serve to show that all across the world the same things happen and that folk aren't so different. Immediately this connects the watcher to the film – relating their life to those of thousands. Each scene is linked together by a similar theme, perhaps of time or through the soundtrack of one leaking into the next, giving the film an unstilted flow and maintaining audience interest. Although at times some of the editing feels slightly manipulative, it is outweighed by the genuine honesty and emotion of the subjects. There is no hiding from the pain of life – a young mother's tale of living with cancer or the graphic slaughter of a cow demonstrating this. However, the tone of the film is overwhelmingly joyful and hopeful. The moment when an older couple renew their vows in a rather saucy manner, a wife laughing at a husband's failed attempt to look strong, women singing as they go about their work – all gave me joy, laughter and hope. Life in a Day is a masterpiece; its creation shows the beauty and mundanity of life as a human being.

Film, under 14

Francesco Dernie, 13 – Project Nim

I recently went to see Project Nim, a film-documentary recounting the experiences of a unique chimpanzee that was selected for an experiment and went by the name of Nim.

It progressed chronologically through key events in Nim's life, starting with the time when he was placed with a foster family where he grew close to his human foster mother. Unusually, the film focused on the emotional consequences of science – a plot that centred on teaching Nim to communicate through sign language. Why would anyone do this, you might ask? "It was the hippy mentality," remarks the woman's daughter.

During the experimental phase, live interviews with key players in the experiment proved fascinating – their own characters came through as they recounted their personal experiences with the chimp. The combination of footage and still photographs from that era helped the audience take their own view of this diverse group of people, as well as understand the tensions within it and those surrounding animal experimentation in general.

As the story continues, the tempo slows as it charts the fall of the experiment and Nim's subsequent experiences in terrible laboratories and cruel institutions. How could they do this to such an adorable animal?

The final part details the time when his human foster mother visits him in Texas, where he has grown unhappy and solitary. Taking it for granted that his feelings towards her are unchanged from when he was living with her, she enters his cage without heeding the warnings of his aggressive behaviour. He attacks her (but does not kill her) as if genuinely angry that she let him be taken away from her to be put through terrifying laboratory experiences.

Perhaps the experiment to teach him language could never have worked, because for him it would have been just a communication device (like say an email is for us today), not like language that's part of human culture. But I do think he did achieve some humanity – more perhaps, than the experiment could hope to give him and more perhaps than the scientist could understand.

Theatre, 14-18

Thomas Marshall, 16 – Richard III, Young Vic

At about 11pm, a hunchbacked man with a leg brace is hung upside-down, dead, in a darkened room somewhere in London to the applause of hundreds. Then he gets down again and takes a well-deserved bow. The man is Kevin Spacey and he has just completed another dazzling lead performance in Richard III.

One of the most fascinating things about Sam Mendes's production is the ease with which it is transposed into the modern era without jettisoning the grandeur of the original. Beside the visual Mussolini reference, Richard's military gear has a whiff of the 1930s dictator about it; and much of the production employs film, photography and word projection, whilst Act 2, Scene 3 – traditionally involving citizens on a London street – takes place on the Tube. Updating the play in this manner has a weighty resonance, too – Shakespeare's kingly tyrants are hauntingly mirrored by modern-day presidents.

This is a play with a large cast, most of whom are impressive. Of particular note are the female characters Lady Anne, Lady Margaret, and Queen Elizabeth, who all exude helpless grief and anguish. Chuk Iwuji's Buckingham is also memorably slick; when he grins you can almost picture him welcoming the audience to a quiz show.

Good though these characters are, they fail to carry the momentum unless Spacey is on the stage. Equally at home bouncing off others' suffering or withdrawing into his own brooding, this is a truly acting Richard, a man utterly convincing in his friendly air. There is a moment when the crowd is urging him to be the next king and the expression on his face is that of mild-mannered perplexity, yet with great engines churning behind his brow. He plumbs Richard's humorous lines for all their worth throughout, and conveys his pre-battle crisis particularly effectively. If there is a criticism which can be levelled against him, it is that he is never a completely terrifying villain.

But this is a small niggle with an otherwise excellent production, and I would urge anyone to do whatever it takes to obtain tickets for the international tour.

Theatre, under 14

Laura Stevens, 9 – A Midsummer Night's Dream, Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford

My review is on William Shakespeare's classic, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Set in ancient Greece, this funny love story is brought to reality by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford upon Avon.

At the entrance of the auditorium, you expect to see a great forest background with dark tangled trees and twisted paths. Instead, a variety of chairs suspended on a string from the ceiling are lowered and raised throughout the performance. Although this makes the stage look bare, the lighting is so imaginative and effective, it makes a dreamlike atmosphere.

The mischievous fairies really helped to create the atmosphere with their many leaps and swivels and the way they seem to creep into the background then suddenly leap back out again like chameleons that keep changing their mind about where to hide.

Bottom, played by Marc Wootton – who also played Mr Poppy in the film Nativity – did a great job of being the brash fool always full of misplaced confidence leading him to play the main part of Pyramus and Thisbe, the tragedy performed at the end of the performance. His part was played hilariously and was one of the highlights from the show.

The most enjoyable part of the show for me was, as mentioned before, Pyramus and Thisbe being played by Bottom and a group of ordinary villagers to perform for Hypolita and Theseus, rulers of Athens, on their wedding night.

Helena, played by Lucy Briggs-Owen, was very funny as she embarked on her very own quest, to gain Demetrius's love. Many times she fell to the floor almost crying about Demetrius and his love for another.

With the combination of the modern, the old and the fantasy all in one production, it brought a great performance to the stage. I would recommend this to anyone with a sense of humour who is prepared for surprises. Just remember, the course of true love never did run smooth …

Television

Hannah Quinn, 17 – The Bachelor

The end is nigh! A mad scientist has succeeded in creating a robot and an army of clones! Oh no, hang on, this is The Bachelor, that robot is rugby "star" Gavin Henson, and those clones are battling to win his heart/a career in TV rather than to take over the world. Phew. The end is slightly less nigh than previously imagined.

We are reliably informed that 25 girls are about to embark on the "adventure of a lifetime" in the south of France, which in this episode (SPOILER ALERT!) involves a lot of awkward stilted chit-chat from Robot Gavin. I love an adventure. Highlights: one girl tries to get him to carry her upstairs! Twins! Tia's half-pagan, half-Wicca and that makes her ker-azy! Someone called Carianne has an annoying voice!

Meanwhile, Gavin calls a reality TV contestant "innocent and genuine" without laughing, which is more than I could do, so fair play to him. Although it might just mean some circuits are faulty. Quick, call a technician! One girl writes him a love letter, which causes someone to start hissing about how they're going to have to act really sweet and nice now, as if before that her plan was to turn up, smack him in the face, and scream "Love me!". It would have worked too, because Gavin would have just crumbled. Gavin, I'm starting to learn, is a bit of a wuss. He falls for that creepy love letter, too, and gives the girl responsible the you're-through-to-the-next-round rose, because this show is romantic, honest; look, we have roses, don't be so cynical, this is a beautiful insight into Gavin finding true love after having his heart broken by someone called Charlotte Church, who totally isn't more famous and talented than he is, no she's not. And breathe.

At the end, Gavin gives out a whole pile of roses to the 15 girls he's deemed worthy, while looking as blank as ever. Ker-azy Tia doesn't make the grade, but Squeaky Carianne does – obviously RoboGav's hearing circuits are faulty as well. Poor luckless RoboGav. He just wants to be loved.

Architecture, 14-18

Mollie Davidson, 14 – Coventry railway station

I want to explore Coventry railway station because it is different. It is not the most noticeable of buildings; however I feel there is some significance to it. WR Headley designed it in 1962. It was built as part of the modernisation of the railways and as part of the rebuilding of Coventry after the blitz.

It is not beautiful. The building is very angular and is coloured in different shades of grey. The building is a collection of rectangles joined at right angles to each other. You enter the station to a large booking hall which is imposing. The hall is brightened by the huge windows letting the light through. Moving through the station is easy. You are on a direct path to wherever you need to be, the platforms or the coffee shop.

Hidden away by the waiting room is a small rectangular goldfish pond, giving passengers something to focus their minds on while waiting for their trains. There are also a couple of gnomes enjoying fishing. All of the doors and the ceilings are made of vanished hardwood. There are small tiles in blocks covering the walls. The floor in the booking hall is made of polished granite, dark with blotches of white.

The balcony overlooking the booking hall is a good place to look at people and a good place to be seen. It is a place to look for those who are arriving and a place to wave to those who are departing. The station is obliged to have advertising everywhere, which means you focus your attention on this, not on the building. Overall it is sincere and it does what it is meant to. It is not very ambitious but it works for the people of Coventry.

Architecture, under 14

Michael Sackur, 13 – Jewish Museum, Berlin

Berlin's Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind, is housed in a building that makes an unforgettable impression. Its location, set among uniform apartments in a residential area of Berlin, makes it seem all the more striking. The structure has many unmistakable features: its twisted zigzag, Star of David-inspired shape, and its scar-resembling slashes for windows, which immediately reminded me of the wound that has been left on history by the Nazi holocaust. The colours used in the building – stark, dark grey – and the various bolts visible on the exterior give it a raw, industrial feel, which even spills out into the museum's garden.

In the Garden of Exile, olive trees sit atop 49 grey concrete pillars, just out of reach. This theme is appropriate for a museum which focuses partly on the industrialised killing of 6 million innocent people. Playing on our apprehension of the unknown, visitors take a flight of steps underground in order to enter the main building, and emerge in a tangle of tunnels. Emptiness is another recurring theme; a huge void 20 metres tall slices through the building, and in the museum tunnels, exhibits are lodged into the walls, making the spaces feel strangely bare. I interpreted this as an attempt by the architect to convey the void that emerged in the Jewish community following the genocide of 6 million of its members, as well as the hole left in German society after the extermination of its Jewish component.

The most extraordinary structure in the museum, however, is the Holocaust Tower, a great slab of concrete that is neither heated nor cooled, lit only by a tiny shaft of light at the top. It is simple, but its darkness and its surreal, unearthly echo make it a highly appropriate commemoration of the victims of Nazi tyranny and a disturbing experience for all who enter. The architecture plays an important part in a museum shouldering such an appalling burden of history, but Libeskind has designed a radical building, which meets the challenge.

Dance, 14-18

Rachel Balmer, 16 – Riverdance, Dublin Gaiety theatre

Having never encountered Riverdance before, I was totally clueless as to what to expect. What followed next was possibly the oddest genre of theatrical art I have – and probably ever will – see.

For those who have never seen Riverdance and would like to know what it involves, I am still none the wiser. And I've been to see it. A quick peruse of Google has just told me that it's the "Irish dancing phenomenon". It's certainly phenomenal. In a kind of whoa-there-how-on-Earth-is-he-moving-his-legs-so-fast way. And there's lots of Irish dancing. So I suppose it is as accurate a three-word summary as you could ask for, apart from the fact it doesn't mention that it's not just limited to Irish dancing. There was singing, a bout of flamenco, a candlelit vigil after a booming voice announced that "your leader is DEAD!" (did I mention there was a plot?), some Irish-style disco dancing complete with cartwheels and even a pan-pipe solo. All with some Irish dancing thrown in, sometimes in medieval costume. I told you it was odd.

Regardless, the dancers were amazing. Talented and ridiculously energetic; I wanted to bottle their exuberance. The leads were fantastic, and at one point our budding Michael Flatley almost propelled himself off the stage, his legs were moving so fast. Before long I started wondering whether it would be a viable business if I were somehow able to harness the heat being produced by their feet for electricity generation. To a casual onlooker, it was as if their legs were in a state of perpetual spasm.

It did, however, have an undoubted sense of "Irishness" to it. More than once I had the urge to stand up and shout "Bejaysus!". The dancers played upon the audience's enthusiasm – the majority being tourists, as I'm sure no single Irish person will openly admit to seeing Riverdance – and the show received a standing ovation. A feast for the senses, a little definitely goes a long way. Even if Irish dancing isn't really your thing, it'll certainly have you attempting to do some leg-kicking on the way home.

Dance, under 14

Thomas Holmes, 13 – Romeo and Juliet at the 02

The atmosphere at the 02 on 19 June 2011 was intense. The Royal Ballet was performing Romeo and Juliet, choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan, with the score of Sergei Prokofiev.

The three-act ballet starts in the marketplace of Verona, with the company on the huge set, designed by Nicholas Georgiadis. MacMillan's choreography told the compelling story of Shakespeare's great work.

The technique was impeccable, from the gorgeous pas de deux (performed by the exquisite Tamara Rojo in the role of Juliet and the inspiring Carlos Acosta as Romeo) to the jaw-dropping fight scenes. The controlled and elegant movement from the Royal Ballet really inspired me and everyone else in the audience, too.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra played Prokofiev's challenging score. The conductor, Barry Wordsworth, lead the orchestra in harmony with the dancers, providing an exciting soundtrack.

The big screens, which showed fine detail and occasional video in the musical interludes, provided a close-up view of the facial expressions and, in particular, to Tamara Rojo's technical "potion scene". It added an extra approach for ballet, and in a new generation – it worked!

The original production, which was premiered in 1965 at the Royal Opera House, starred Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. Sir Frederick Ashton was director at the time, and participated in the production direction.

The elevation and flexibility of the company really inspired me to go further in my dance training. As a ballet dancer myself, I understood the stamina of the dance, and the pure effort needed for the male roles in particular.

Carlos Acosta is a world-renowned Cuban dancer who is famous for his technique and elevation, and Rojo an elegant and awarded Spanish dancer who provides a story for the audience. The famous balcony scene at the end of Act I was breathtaking. The pas de deux was sensitively portrayed.

Overall, this production of Romeo and Juliet was to an excellent standard by the Royal Ballet, showing the company at its best along with its incredible dancers. It inspired me and thoroughly enjoyed it as my first ballet experience!

Classical music

Rosie Busiakiewicz, 18 – Quatuor Byron: Shostakovich Eighth and Ninth String Quartets

Every time a new recording of Shostakovich's Eighth string quartet is released, the classical world sits up – the emotional and technical demands of the work are notoriously difficult, and Quatuor Byron unfortunately falls prey to them.

Some movements are significantly faster than Shostakovich indicated. Each melodic line is saturated with so much non-functional harmony that you should savour each dissonance; the terrors of the Holocaust are represented in the modal shadings of C minor. Shostakovich is famous for these heart-wrenching harmonies, yet here they are lost. This fast tempo also causes much vibrato to evaporate, giving the quartet a shallow tone which is incongruous against the work's emotional, programmatic context. It serves as a haunting musical autobiography to the composer, quoting his 10th, first and fifth symphonies alongside his passacaglia from Lady Macbeth as well as his DSCH monogram (his musical "signature", in which four repeated notes represent his first four initials). Poignantly, the quartet is seen as Shostakovich's suicide note due to his referencing of Wagner's Götterdämmerung, yet this tragic nature is tragically lost in the childlike non-vibrato of the strings.

The players' hesitance is evident elsewhere in the recording. Whilst the frantic eruptions at the opening of the fourth movement should allude to bombs, or to the Gestapo knocking at the door, Quatuor Byron's interpretation only brings to mind a rabbit thumping its hind leg. Similarly, whilst the allegro molto opening of the second movement is a tremendous contrast to the first, none of the pictures of Jewish outrage are capitalised upon, despite the perpetual rhythmic movement and violent chords that should make the music powerful and intense. The third movement's satiric "grotesque waltz" is, however, captured well – the lighter mood cleverly mitigates the previous movement, and Quatuor Byron's playing is effervescent. Yet it may be telling that the only movement in which this recording excels is in the third's playful irony. It reflects a quartet that is comfortable with the absolutist works of Haydn and Beethoven, but are perhaps out of their depth with the emotional sophistication of Shostakovich.

Our churches are filled with hidden beauty | Jonathan Jones

The Sheet — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:36:55 +0000

Despite the ravages of the Reformation, Britain's churches are still full of glorious medieval art. What are the best examples in your area?

I missed some fine misericords last weekend, by all accounts. I was in Beverley in the East Riding to give a talk, and was struck by the beauty of the medieval market town's church and minster. I was told they have excellent carvings inside them, but to be honest, I was tired from talking about Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo and I staggered to the train station instead.

My loss. Britain's churches are full of glorious art. It is well known that our medieval heritage of religious art was badly damaged, in many cases obliterated, by the Reformation. Perhaps it is too well known, because it is a half-truth. Before Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, their cloisters were richly decorated, and even parish churches had murals, painted rood screens, sculpted portraits and exquisite wood carvings. Even the violent attacks and systematic destruction inflicted on these buildings in the 16th and 17th centuries could not utterly efface such abundance. Relics of medieval art survive in parish churches as well as cathedrals all over Britain.

This art has been rediscovered by historians in recent decades. The large section of photographs in Eamon Duffy's influential book The Stripping of the Altars is a treasure trove of forgotten British art. Diarmaid MacCulloch's book Reformation begins with a discussion of a 14th-century figure carved into the stonework of Preston Bissett church in Buckinghamshire.

Visual evidence has now become integral to historical research, and these broken figures are windows on to how people in Britain thought and felt about the world 600 years ago and earlier. But they are also magical works of art. How wonderful is it to see a face grinning and gurning in a carving chiselled by a nameless artisan who lived at the time of Chaucer?

The parish church where my grandparents prayed has a lovely stained glass window. Local lore told of it being carefully buried to save it from 17th-century iconoclasts. What about churches in your area? Do they have ancient stained glass (rare) or traces of wall paintings? This is a kind of Time Team investigation we can all do, without a spade. Nude peasants, brave knights and the devil himself are all to be found in the churches of Britain.

Jonathan Jones