News

This year's Forum took place at the Indigo2 (aka The Dome) - a move away from it's original venue at the spacy and impressive Dockland's Excel Centre. The squeeze into a new environment was almost reflective of the financial squeeze of the 'world banking crisis' has brought up us. Not that anyone would admit as much. In acclimatizing to the reduced size and attendance at the show the forum took on a more intimate and human ethos than the "flash corporate land grabbing money grubbing" approach seen in previous years.

Ken Livingstone, when Mayor of London, not only looked at Trafalgar Square and transformed it into a unique pedestrianised (pigeon-free) area he took the opportunity to engineer into it an invaluable role for the vacant plinth. It became the location for specially commissioned, though temporary, artworks, where each year artists are specially invited to submit proposals for works to be located on the plinth. There is something very refreshing about maintaining a space for change. It's very 'emptiness' has significance - in itself it could be an art work expressing potentiality...

The international design team, O’Donnell + Tuomey, has been selected to design and build the new home for London’s “Photographers’ Gallery”. Sheila O’Donnell, a graduate of the RCA School of Architecture (1978 – 1980) and her partner John Tuomey have built up an international reputation for cultural and educational projects and produce spectacular buildings that enhance visitors’ experiences while expanding the language of modernism. The Gallery will be located at 16 – 18 Ramillies Street - just off Oxford Street, in the heart of London’s Soho district.

Excel 22 - 23 November 2006

The recent annual Thames Gateway Forum held at east London’s Excel Centre in November attracted record numbers of people, organisations and businesses involved in ‘regeneration’. They all came together for two days to discuss how far the massive re-development of land alongside the easterly section of the River Thames had progressed. Amongst them was a group of RCA Society members who also wanted to see what had happened since last year's event.

If you haven't heard already, John Latham flatlined on Sunday (January 1). Not only a friend and comrade, John was important to me as he was to many artists and other cultural combatants who came in contact with him and his work.