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Gallery: a wartime farewell in Tavira
When we visited Tavira for the day from our weekend base in Faro, I couldn’t help noticing the life-size statue of a soldier outside the station. He holds his kit bag in his right hand while his left is raised in farewell.
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A visit to the Musée Rodin in Paris
Over breakfast on a damp Parisian morning we discussed our plans for the day. Maybe rather than a walk a museum visit would be a better option, given the weather? This museum occupies the Hôtel Biron, where Rodin lived for the last decade of his life.
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The Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification
Like many such states, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea does public art on a big scale. The many statues of the Dear Leaders are well known, but perhaps a little less so is this rather astounding example, the Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification.
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Gallery: the Yorkshire Sculpture Park
A huge pregnant woman, her body half cutaway to reveal her inner anatomy, strides across the grass. The distinctive curves of one of Henry Moore’s Seated Figures reclines near a lake. A delicate glass spire towers above the trees.
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Gallery: encountering elephants in London parks
‘If you go down to the woods today …’ We all know that the ‘big surprise’ in the woods of that childhood ditty is a teddy-bears picnic. But what about a surprise in a park – what could that be? On a recent visit to London’s Green Park, the ‘big surprise’ for me was a herd of seventy elephants!
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Recycled Spirits of Iron (Ex Nihilo)
Dan Klennert is on a one-man crusade against today’s throwaway society, creating beauty out of objects others have rejected as no longer of use: ‘I do not form shapes, I collect shapes to create my forms.’ He works with junk metal and driftwood to create amazing and fantastical sculptures.
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Gallery: the Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden in St Ives
The sculptor Barbara Hepworth and her husband, painter Ben Nicholson, came to live in St Ives when World War Two broke out in 1939, as a haven from London. She stayed here for the rest of her life, living and working in Trewyn studios from 1949 until her death in 1975. It was her wish that her home and studio were set up as a museum of her work.
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The Angel of the North
Angels typically fly or float in the air, but not this one. The Angel of the North is firmly rooted in the ground, in recognition of the miners who once toiled beneath this spot. Whether you arrive in Newcastle or Gateshead by road or by rail, you'll be greeted as you approach the city by this amazing figure of an angel with outstretched arms, who appears to be watching over travellers.
