The fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square has been empty since 1841 when it was first built. Things started to change in 1999 when the Mayor of London created the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group which was to find temporary art work to put on the plinth. Over recent years artists featured on the plinth have included Mark Wallinger, Mark Quinn and Rachel Whiteread.
The latest artist to be commissioned for the plinth is one of my favourite British artists – Anthony Gormley. His work, which started today at 9am, is called One and Other and will last for 100 days. Every hour for the next 100 days someone new will stand on the plinth and join the other statues in Trafalgar Square. Come rain or shine there will be someone up on the plinth for the next 2,400 hours.
Not surprisingly there was a lot of press and public interest today with the launch, it will be interesting to see how the project develops over the next 100 days. I went to have a look after work and there were quite a few people around the plinth watching this guy. Until it started raining he had been making paper aeroplanes and throwing them into the square. But you’ve got to feel sorry for those that get selected to go up at something like 3am, can’t imagine there will be too many people in the square offering support!
If you’re not in London and want to see what’s happening head over to www.oneandother.co.uk where they have a live webcast of the plinth.
Happy Canada Day to any of my Canadian readers (if I even have any!).
Today was the annual Canada Day celebration in Trafalgar Square and it was pretty impressive, and I only saw it the events at lunch. They had a street hockey tournament in the middle of the square, plenty of Canadian food around the square and the centre piece was the stage where a variety of performers were on show.
While I was there the two acts were Daniel Bernhard and a band called Stereos. I have to say i’ve never heard of either, but they seemed pretty popular with the crowd, especially Bernhard. I visited Canada in 2003 to visit some Canadian family and had a great time, Canada’s a great country and so I always enjoy Canada day.
We’re in the middle of a mini-heatwave in London which means I feel like i’m melting! Don’t get me wrong, I like it warm, I just don’t like it when its too hot, especially when I have to work! Add in commuting on the Tube and it gets even worse. One of the freesheets tonight said TFL bosses were worried it could reach 45 degrees underground.
Today it wasn’t just people that were victims of the heat, Trafalgar Square saw the effects of the heat. The fountains, which have just reopened after a years renovation, turned green because of the heat. Apparently something in the water reacted with the temperature and allowed algae to grow – hence the green!
While I may not particularly enjoy the heat we’re experiencing this week, plenty of other people are. In Trafalgar Square tonight the Royal National Opera were screening a live performance of La Traviata. Loads of people turned up to watch and there people enjoying picnics. These sort of outdoor events take place throughout the summer and are one of the great things about a London summer.
Last week I showed you a video I shot at Speakers Corner. Well I enjoyed it so much I’ve decided to make it an ocassional feature. It won’t normally be weekly, it’s just that its happened this way with the first two parts.
This Sunday was really hot in Hyde Park which usually brings people to the Corner and this week was no exception. It may also have had something to do with the festival in Hyde Park! But there was a pretty good turnout of Speakers so I could film some new people rather than those that turn up every week.
Anyway I hope you guys enjoy it, there’ll be another video coming later this week of Speakers dealing with hecklers which should be worth a watch.
So it took ages to upload but here is my short video from today’s moonwalking flashmob in honour of Michael Jackson.
The quality isn’t brilliant, turns out in the middle out a tightly packed crowd with a lot of journalists elbowing their way through, isn’t that easy. Enjoy.
So with the death of Michael Jackson the news has been flooded with tributes to the King of Pop. In America a number of vigils have sprung up, in London tonight there was a flashmob to celebrate Jackson’s music. Billed as as mass moonwalking event it was organised via Twitter in just a few hours. Given that it was pretty impressive that something like 2,000 people turned up to Liverpool Street Station to take part.
In the end there were probably too many people, as there was no real space for people to actually moonwalk. Instead people were just dancing and jumping up and down. It was a really great atmosphere and you could tell everyone there had a great love for the music.
I also shot some (not brilliant) video, which is currently being uploaded, so I’ll post the video as soon as its done.
Yesterday London had quite a few protests going on, four in fact. There was a protest by the Hilsborough Justice Campaign which attracted around 4,000 people, there was a massive protest by the British Tamil community, the daily protests against the Iranian elections continued in Kensington and in Trafalfar sqaure there was a protest for refugees rights. So I faced a dilemma in choosing which to shoot. In the end I decided to go for the refugees rights protest mainly because I thought it was a story that needed telling (asylum seekers face an extremely difficult situation in the UK and can be left destitute for years).
The protest was called to mark International Refugee Day and was to support the campaign to end destitution of refused asylum seekers. Amnesty International’s London groups teamed up with other organisations including the Refugee Council to hold the rally in Trafalgar Square.
Everyone will have seen in the news the daily protests in Tehran against the election results from last week. What has received less press coverage (or at least none i’ve seen) are the protests that have been taking place in London.
Since the weekend 100’s of people have gathered outside the Iranian Embassy in Kensington to protest against the fraudulent election. Many, if not most, are supporters of the leading opposition figure Mir-Hossain Mousavi. They are calling for either a genuine election recount or the annulment of the current result completely. From all I can tell the protests will continue to take place every evening between 6-9pm.
For more of my pictures from the protest, and to see some excellent and important coverage coming out of Tehran itself, head over to Demotix.com where they have a special feature on the Iran election and its aftermath.
While I was filming at Speakers Corner yesterday I heard a large amount of noise off to my side. I turned to see a large crowd heading in my direction. They were clearly heading towards a protest as most carried placards and there was a little bit of chanting.
As you will see in the video and from some of the placards this was a Sikh protest against the Caste system. It was also an event in memory of a religious leader who was killed a number of years ago. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find much information on this event, but I think its an annual protest as I seem to remember seeing a similar protest last year. If anyone can tell me any info about the protest i’d love to hear it.
If you’ve followed my blog for a while, or my photostream on flickr, chances are you know I used to visit Speakers Corner in Hyde Park quite a lot. I find the place really fascinating, and I love listening to the different speakers, even if most of them are a bit mad! Well last year I would go on a regular basis and I would photograph all the speakers, but it sort of fizzled out.
Because the same speakers tend to turn up week after week, with just the occassional new speaker, I got a bit bored photographing the same people all the time. So as winter came I sort of gave up on the corner, feeling I’d exhausted all photographic possibilty (that sounds a bit pompus!). Anyway with my new camera and its ability to take video I decided that I should give the Corner another chance.
So this Sunday just gone I headed to Hyde Park to see what I could get with video. And I was pretty impressed with what I got. The video above is just a short three minutes or so, but I filmed much more. I finally started to feel like I was getting the hang of video and was very happy with the results. Certainly having a monopod helped things immensley, I could focus on what I was filming rather than on keeping my hands still. I think with Speakers Corner video has the advantage over photographs, because you can really see what it’s about, you can convey a lot of the passion and expression in a photograph, but by itself I think it’s hard to get across the Speakers message.
I can see a lot of possibility for video at Speakers Corner, so don’t be surprised if you see some more later on.
