Latest news with #Niso
Spectator
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
London's best contemporary art show is in Penge
If you've been reading the more excitable pages of the arts press lately, you might be aware that the London gallery scene is having one of its periodic 'moments'. A fair few spaces, mostly concentrated around Fitzrovia, have sprouted up since the pandemic, notable for their bacchanalian openings and tantalisingly gnomic Instagram posts. Their online presence is at best spectral: the most hyped of the bunch, a Smithfield gallery called Ginny on Frederick, has a holding page in place of a website. Still, I like a scene, and London Gallery Weekend, an annual June event, presented a good opportunity to investigate. Niso gallery, on New Cavendish Street, has put on a seductive showing of the Argentinian conceptualist Martina Quesada (open until 28 June). A highly referential exhibition, it is equal parts James Turrell and Lucio Fontana, the latter riffed on with a work that sees his emblematic canvas-slash gesture stretched out and knotted into the shape of a bellybutton. The aforementioned Ginny on Frederick's current number, a display of bizarre paintings by Okiki Akinfe (open until 26 July), manifests like a comic strip as imagined by some defective early AI platform and thence splurged on to canvases. The Essex-born artist paints animals, signage and body parts mutating into one another, at a disorienting remove suggestive of the viewer's perspective of a video game. If that description doesn't sell it to you, the deeply Estuary titles ('She's an Absolute Cow!', for instance) might do the trick. Otherwise, Gallery Weekend promised countless, no doubt fascinating opportunities to see middling artists in conversation with art critics. But I didn't go to any of these. Instead, I went to Penge. Penge is a suburb best known for being 1) the childhood home of Bill Wyman and 2) a punchline beloved of 1970s BBC 'comedians'. It is also fielding the best contemporary art exhibition going in the capital, courtesy of Tension Gallery (open until 29 June). Its subject is Mark Wallinger, and the reason for his appearance in SE20, I understand, is that after an unpleasant stint with Swiss mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth, he wanted to give as big a 'fuck you' to Mayfair as possible. As well he might: Wallinger (b.1959) is about as interesting an artist as you'll encounter today, and it's the blue-chip art world's loss. Since the 1980s, he has been addressing big subjects – class, religion, memory and politics – with a lightness of touch that in the hands of a lesser intellect might seem trite. Or worse: like something by Martin Parr. Wallinger has, for instance: recreated the anti-war activist Brian Haw's Parliament Square protest encampment slap bang in the middle of Tate Britain; bought a racehorse and rebaptised it 'A Real Work of Art'; and stalked a gallery opening dressed, for some reason, as a bear. Oh, and proposed a sadly unrealised southern analogue to Antony Gormley's 'Angel of the North' – a massive sculpture of a white horse that would have towered over the Ebbsfleet Eurostar tracks. His latest is somehow his most Wallinger-y yet. A split-screen TV broadcasts the first two bits of footage ever recorded in space, one by a Yankee astronaut, the other from a Soviet cosmo, who, we learn from the press bumpf, created the first work of art made in space, a sketch of a sunrise. The two are played simultaneously, to the strains of an aria from Rameau's Castor et Pollux – the early American space programme was called 'Gemini' – and while there's not much inference to be made that you won't pick out yourself, the work is mesmerisingly beautiful. 'She's an Absolute Cow!', 2025, by Okiki Akinfe. Image: Ginny on Frederick I used to go on international press trips on a weekly basis, but the gig ain't what it used to be and the furthest I got this month was Darlington – where, in 1825, a Quaker cousin of mine, Edward Pease, met George Stephenson and raised the capital to build the world's first proper railway. I didn't know this until I went up to see the efforts commemorating the line's bicentennial. I thus have skin in the game, but: on a limited budget, the local councils and English Heritage have between them made a decent fist of this. The original line, disused since 1876, will become a walking path interspersed by works of art. I saw two, one of which, at Heighington, the world's first passenger station, was really good. Kate Jackson's mural stretches over the fence of the unmanned station, bearing the unmistakeable silhouette of an Intercity 125 and filled with painterly references: the driver's window has a very Mondrian corner, while a numeral on one of the portholes pays homage to Charles Demuth's 'I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold'. It's a restless interplay of circles and straight lines evoking the decorative art of the Festival of Britain: nostalgic, sure, but falling just the right side of twee. The anniversary falls in September, and you should visit; I will.
BBC News
06-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
Adcote pupils call for bridge and path to Baschurch to be restored
School pupils have called for a bridge in north Shropshire to be rebuilt more than a decade after it collapsed, saying it would improve safety in the Adcote Bridge was damaged in storms in 2014, teenage boarders at Adcote School for Girls have had to walk along roads without paths to access the nearby village of Baschurch, where they go to the shop and catch a Council said it had previously attempted to rebuild the bridge, but said it had faced local residents in the area told the BBC they wanted the public footpath and bridleway to be removed to protect their privacy and security. However, 15-year-old Adcote pupil Niso has started a petition in an attempt to reinstate the bridge and has written to Little Ness and Great Ness Parish said using the path "would be a really good opportunity to gain our independence". Staff at the independent school said in the past, the footpath over the bridge was used by older boarders to get to Baschurch, two miles pupils are chaperoned there along the road by three members of staff wearing hi-vis clothing, according to head teacher Nicola Tribe."Cars travel quickly along the lanes where there is a national speed limit, and there are tractors too. Our major concern is that the girls are safe," she said. Rights of way People living near the collapsed sandstone bridge told the BBC they did not want the path to be they opposed the design of the steel replacement bridge and wanted it to be replaced "like for like".However, because it has taken so long, they now want the right of way to be removed altogether as it would impact their "privacy, security and safety".Minutes from a strategy board meeting in 2018 reveal councillors were told the project had been "held up by changes at Shropshire Council" but that plans had since been approved and funding was in place.A subsequent letter from the local authority to the parish council assured the work would be completed in July 2020. However, the local authority has since said work was stopped due to opposition from a local to secure an injunction against them in 2021 subsequently failed, but the local authority has told the BBC it intends to apply once BBC has attempted to contact the landowner involved, but has been unable to do landowner in the area, Dave Mumford, simply said the footpath should be removed as, "it hasn't been a right of way for 12 years now". Shropshire Council confirmed it had "received an application seeking to extinguish (remove) several public rights of way near Adcote Mill". "This includes the two bridleways that pass across the River Perry, one via a ford and the other via the bridge. This application is currently being processed," it said. "The public will be given an opportunity to make representations should the application progress to a public consultation."Shropshire councillor Robert Jones, who covers Ruyton and Baschurch, said it was a right of way, established in law, and should be restored. Ed Potter, the councillor for Loton, on the Adcote side of the river, said residents who were opposed to the scheme were hoping new government guidance on rights of way would mean they had a case for removing the route. He said it could also cost the council "tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds" to replace the bridge, which the cash-strapped authority "can't afford". Follow BBC Shropshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
