No, there’s not a new Browser option on the market! This week we’re talking about real opera, you know,  singing and acting. There’s been quite a lot of interest recently about opera  with television programs about Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera House. With the beautiful weather we’ve been experiencing, you can now combine experiencing both of them with the wonderful BP Summer Screens season.

All over the country large screens have been put up to show a live feed from the Royal Opera House’s performances – the latest being Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. You might not have heard of the opera, but you will certainly have heard of the person sining the lead role: Plácido Domingo

The idea is to promote opera to a larger audience. The screens are set up all around the country and you can just turn up, find a space and watch (and listen!) for free. There are lots of other things to do if you get there early.

Check out the Royal Opera House website for details on when and where the performances will take place, the London event is on the 13th July and the screens are at Canary Wharf and Trafalgar Square.

Click here for the Royal Opera House Website

It’s hard to think about visiting exhibitions in this sweltering heat that we’re experiencing at the moment, but remember, this is the UK, it’ll be raining next week! And if it is, we can think of no better exhibition to see than the Henry Moore at Tate Britain.

Moore was a prolific and prolifically talented sculptor who was born in 1898 in West Yorkshire. He pioneered the ‘truth to materials’ approach whereby sculptors carved directly into stone or wood and allowed themselves to be directed by the material rather than by traditional representation.

His work abstract work was always clearly figurative and he was inspired by people and their movements. During the war he was an official war artist and his sketches of people huddled in tube stations (that were used as air raid shelters) show his prodigious ability as a draftsman and enamored him to the general public.

As he got older so his work became larger and bolder – his bronzes became monumental and many can be seen in public collections today.

The Tate show has over 150 of his works along with some of those amazing war time sketches.

Henry Moore: Giant of 20th Century Sculpture can be seen at Tate Britain until August 08.

Click here for more information.

The news yesterday of the death of the sculptor Louise Bourgeois was saddening to all lovers of contemporary modern art. Probably one of the last great artists, she spent the majority of her life relatively unknown. Only in her later years did she get the attention that her phenomenal creative power deserved.

Born in Paris in 1911 – her early upbringing inspired her whole life’s work, in particular the philandering of her father and her mother’s glossing over of it. She married, in 1938, an American art historian and emigrated in the same year. It was in New York in the 40’s that she turned to sculpture and her first retrospective was aptly at MoMa in New York.

How work was always deeply personal and emotional, sometimes explicit, other times insular and deeply loving. She became most famous for her work Maman an enormous steel and marble sculpture of a spider which represented her mother in that it alluded to the protective nature of spiders to their offspring.

This work was shown as part of the Unilever Series at the Tate Modern and it was there that she also had an incredible retrospective.

If you want to find out more about this remarkable artist then there’s a wonderful interview with her that the Guardian conducted which you can read here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/oct/14/art4

Most people know Billy Bragg ( or the Bard of Barking as he’s known) for his no-nonsense socialist   beliefs, but of course there’s the softer side to him – the man who penned many a heart string tugging love song. Pressure Drop – at the Wellcome Collection sees a collaboration between him, maverick theatre makers On Theatre and playwright Mick Gordon.

The play is performed in the ‘Promenade’ the audience stands in a space with four sections – an east end pub, a front room, a funeral parlour and a stage. The actors walk through the audience between pieces of the set. All this is accompanied by Billy Bragg and his band.

The play explores what it is to be English and is powerful stuff with each character struggling to define themselves in an ever changing society.

It’s based on the ideas raised in Billy Bragg’s book the Progressive Patriot and Billy has written several new songs just for this play.

It’s a thought provoking and exciting production – and performed incredibly well.

The show is on at the Wellcome Trust until May 12th for more information visit:

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/the-identity-project/play-pressure-drop.aspx

In the hiatus between the wonderful Anish Kapoor exhibition and the hugely anticipated Van Gogh exhibition, there’s still some magic to be seen at the Royal Academy. The Wild Thing exhibition, in the Sackler Wing Gallery, is a wonderfully packed show concentrating on three of the most important modern sculptors working in Britain in the early 20th century. Their join influence upon the future of British sculpture was massive. Common themes run through the work, namely those of  sex, fertility, the human condition, the machine age and the impact of war.

In particular interest, for us here anyway, was to see the reconstruction of Epstein’s Rockdrill. It’s a stunning (and huge) piece of work which, even today, has an incredible impact – it’s hard to imagine how it was received in it’s day.

If you’re not that impresses with sculpture there is another curiosity with one of the sculptors – namely Eric Gill. We all love the font Gil Sans …. well he designed it!

The exhibition runs until 24th October.

www.royalacademy.org.uk

We’re very excited about the news of the Royal Academy’s upcoming exhibition of Van Gogh. Although probably the most well known of artists, Van Gogh still manages to charm both ‘tea-towel’ art lovers to serious academics. His short life of austerity and misery left us with not only an amazing collection of paintings, but also lesser know, an incredibly rich history of his art through his letters, mostly to his brother.

This exhibition has over 35 of his original letters and 65 paintings. It’s the first large exhibition of the aritst’s work for over 40 years and we’re renewing our Friends membership cards to make sure we don’t have to suffer the Inevitably enormous queues!

Find out more here:
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/vangogh/

It’s that time of the year again when the notorious Turner Prize exhibition starts. Famous for it’s ability to split the public this year we have Enrico David,  Roger Hiorns, Lucy Skaer and Richard Wright.

It seems a little too close to call this year, but Lucy Skaer’s work has proved a favourite with us. She makes films and scultpures that use found material and take these things on a journey to the ultimate end as pieces of art.

The exhibition runs from 6th october until 3 Januray with the prize being awarded 7th December – let’s hope they keep Madonna away again this year…..

More about the turner prize here:

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/