Do as the Doukhobors Do ...

If you wanted to take off all your clothes, paint yourself tourquoise and strut around Queen's Gardens in the name of 'culture' then you should have gotten your applications in by yesterday. Mr Tunick may be an "internationally renowned New York based artist" (many dispute this) but his repetitious displays of flesh are tedious in the extreme. (Oh look there's another pile of boobs and bottoms neatly arranged on the sidewalk, bridge, city hall, park, mountainside, glacier ... you name it, he's done it) Thankfully I'm not in charge of the Ferens Trust and I don't have to justify spending (no doubt large) sums of money on commissioning this kind of non-Art sensationalist event that is otherwise known as boring crap.

Heaping Pelion upon Ossa

“Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam”.
                                                          Virgil

The Greek myths tell of  giants waging a war on the gods and in an effort to destroy the home of the gods they pile one mountain on another. These days, of course, there are no giants and no gods either. Just the midgets and minnows of the Council who are seemingly waging an undeclared war, not on heaven but on Hull itself. The opening front of this stadtkrieg involves ripping all the pedestrianised areas up in order to lay new paving stones with fountains (they will no doubt squirt you for the sake of civic virtue). The supposed enemy, reeling from this blitz, are then faced with a flanking manoeuvre; the closure for refurbishment of Carr Lane. Ah yes the timing of this assault is exquisite, that is to say, exquisitely awful..
So there'll be four months (better make that five you know how things go round these parts) of upheaval, 32 buses per hour rerouted, pedestrians rerouted, shops made inaccessible in the usual Hull way of cacking things up. I'm looking forward to the inevitable epic gridlocks that will happen; it's bad enough at the best of times. My bus doesn't go down there but, things being the way they are, one little niggle in a road and the whole godforsaken place grinds to a halt. Oh it's going to be so much fun ... but when it's all done there'll be silver paving stones, the road will glisten with gold and people will dance gaily in the brave new world while minstrels will sing songs of praise to the glorious Council.
But as Virgil says three times they tried to pile Pelion on Ossa  ... ah yes the works already carried out in Jameson Street are having to be ripped up and reinstalled because there were "defective".

And while I'm here, and on a roll, I may as well mention the Ferens art gallery, on the left,  is also being done up to make it able to meet the demands of modern day art exhibitions (the Turner Prize for example), the bill for this just recently went up by a cool half mil to £2.8 million. Kerching!

"Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat" as no-body ever said.

Turner Prize

I suppose I must mention that the Turner prize will be hosted by the Ferens in 2017. The announcement yesterday came with full reporting from the BBC arts and farts correspondent as well as national press coverage. As the head honcho of the upcoming Culture fest says; if you want to see it you must come to Hull. That's if ...

Meanwhile a story in the local rag the other day said that the Council intend to put a glass atrium over the entrance to this building. All part of the many million pounds of sprucing up that is going on. (Where is this money coming from?) It's incomprehensible vandalism; there's absolutely no need for an atrium of any sort on this building. It is symptomatic of the crass inanity of Hull City Council. I'll have more on this stupid organisation's activities in the near future.

Poppyclock

Well I don't know, the ceasefire was well known to be coming along , indeed by 5am that morning it had been signed, so just to keep the numbers rolling the soft shitted generals sent their boys to go die for stuff they could walk into after 11am. So much poppycock. Anyhow t'was but a pause, a brief hiatus, in the continuing European war.

Round Square

Long, long ago Margot's parents came to Hull for her graduation ceremony in the City Hall. They stopped off for a meal in a Chinese restaurant, after their meal they asked the way to the City Hall and were told to go along the road until they came to the "round square". From that day forth Queen Victoria square has been known in these circles as the round square. Back then it had traffic circulating the regal urinals and did not look like a paved desert. We are told this space will feature prominently in the 2017 C of C thing; well that'll be fun then won't it....


CDP's Square theme is here.

Punch Hotel

The Punch was originally built in the 1840's ( see old photo here ) but was demolished and rebuilt in grand style in 1896. The exterior is covered in ceramic tiling to give a highly decorative effect. It sits on the corner of Queen Victoria Square between the Ferens art gallery and Carr Lane's 20th century excrescences. 

They're really spoiling us ...

Record crowds are flocking to the Ferens art gallery this year. First Warhol now Leonardo da Vinci, from the ridiculous to the sublime you might say. Before getting too carried away what we have here are 10 small (as in sometimes very small) drawings, extremely well executed as you might expect but somewhat dull and unexciting. The exhibition blurb tells us that the items "reflect the artist's use of different media and his extraordinary range of interests from painting and sculpture to engineering, botany, mapmaking, hydraulics, and anatomy". Two that stood out for me were a Heath-Robinson contraption for attaching  lances to a horse and a profile of an old man which I'm told is one of his last drawings. The drawings are part of the Royal Collection (thank you, your maj, Gor bless 'er!) and Hull rarely gets to see these things so go by all means. Oh and it's free!

Warhol at the Ferens

There's been an Andy Warhol exhibition at the Ferens art gallery most of this Summer. I went earlier in the year and was underwhelmed. I suppose it was worth seeing just because of the hype that surrounds him but it was a totally unmemorable experience. I wouldn't call him a great artist more a great self-publicising conman. Just as well that it was free to enter.

Graduation Day

The young woman in the fancy gown was in a bit of a hurry; the graduation ceremony for Hull University was about to begin. Various notables got honorary degrees including Omar (Dr Zhivargo) Sharif, who claimed to have a strange attraction to Hull.  The building in the background is the Ferens Art Gallery .

The Graduation ceremony was held in the City Hall, below, that's the Lord Mayor's limo parked outside the front door.

Good luck to the Class of 2010, with 70 graduates for every job they're going to need it.