England Art And Culture

The full-colour silent era footage that caused so much excitement online recently is almost like science-fictionReading this on mobile? Click here to view the videoLondon looks itself and other in this footage. For a 21st-century viewer it is like watching a science-fiction film in which almost everything is the same until you notice little differences that betray a completely alien quality. The past is another country, but in Claude Friese-Greene's film of the capital's streets and sights it is a place disguised as our own.This is because this 1926 footage, which is currently a Twitter talking point, was shot in colour. Friese-Greene and his father William pioneered their own method of shooting in colour, back during the silent era: it is a byway of cinema history, an experiment that never caught on. In fact, it is part of a lost history of rival technologies in which Britain was an early leader – the Friese-Greenes fought a legal battle in the House of Lords with the rival Kinemacolor method before both were eclipsed by the American success story of Technicolor.Reading this on mobile? Click here to view the videoSo there's this haunting little film, in which Claude Friese-Greene demonstrates his colour method by revealing the green embankment, the brown Thames, the dark stones of the Tower, the blue of a policeman's uniform as he directs traffic.It's easy to see why this clip from Friese-Greene's documentary The Open Road has become an online hit. It mirrors our nostalgia perfectly, in this age of revitalised royalism and Ukip-ish invocations of England's lost green and pleasant land. Here is an uncanny full-colour glimpse of a time when even London looked innocent.The policeman directing traffic is a case in point. There is plenty of traffic on the roads – carts and drays as well as motor vehicles – but it all stops timidly when a London Bobby raises his hand. People cross the road under his protective eye, then he lets the traffic move forward.Reading this on mobile? Click here to view the videoOn the pavements, people walk by in small quiet groups. Even crowds filmed at Petticoat Lane market are properly dressed, in brown suits and hats, and mill with what can only be called gentleness.Another friendly policeman appears patrolling the Embankment in a scene that is captioned as a "romantic" view of London. Beyond him the Houses of Parliament glow in sunlight, in a vision of an orderly, humble, relaxed Britain.Of course it is an illusion. The film was made to show in European cinemas and gives a tourist view of the great city. In reality, there were tanks on the streets of the capital during the 1926 General Strike.But we are all tourists in our past, a place that gets sweeter with distance. Eerily silent as it may be, this placid vision of London tickles fantasies of a kinder, more secure age. It is a national idyll in living colour.Silent filmLondonJonathan Jonesguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

We always look forward to seeing the catalogue for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize land on our desks here at 1000 Words and this year is no different. Featuring a selection of meaty essays by David Evans, Christopher Bucklow, Gerry Badger and Ian Jeffrey it is a veritable banquet for the brain - one that provides a perfect accompaniment to an exhibition that arguably offers the most expanded view of what photographic practice is, or can be, since the prize’s inception. Below is a series of video interviews with the four finalists: Mishka Henner, Cristina de Middel, Chris Killip and Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin that are worth sitting down to watch. The winner will be announced at the award evening on 10 June 2013. To read our review of the shortlisted artists and their work click here. Who gets your vote?

Remember last year when bloggers and friends of The Culture Vulture were invited to Leeds Met School of Art, Architecture and Design for a behind the scenes tour of the Final Year Show? Well they've only gone and asked us to do it again. Tuesday, June 4th, in The Rusty Building.

We asked @LeedsCitizen and daughter if they'd like to see the legendary musical, Blood Brothers, at The Grand on Monday night. Here's what they made of it - class, curses, crying and culty things.

The new episode of #A.I.L - artists in laboratories, the weekly radio programme about art and science i present on ResonanceFM, is aired this afternoon at 4pm (London time.) Helen Pynor, Head Ache (detail), from red sea blue water series, 2008 Today i'm talking with Helen Pynor. You might have seen one of Helen's most striking photos in bookshops and on the tube last year, it showed a brain in all its organic glory and was on the book cover and on the posters advertising the exhibition Brains: The mind as matter, which opened last Spring at the Wellcome Collection in London. Helen Pynor has a background in science but later studied visual art. Three years ago she also became a doctor of philosophy. Her practice combines biological science and visual expression to explore the inside of our bodies, and to investigate the relationship between the physicality of the human body and its culturally constructed status. During the show we will be talking about how she managed to get her hands on a fresh human brain but Helen will also discuss some of her broader projects such as The Body Is A Big Place, a large-scale installation that explores organ transplantation and the thresholds between life and death. Peta Clancy and Helen Pynor (sound by Gail Priest), The Body is a Big Place The show will be aired today Wednesday 22nd of May at 16:00. The repeat is next Tuesday at 6.30 am (yes, a.m!) If you don't live in London, you can catch the online stream or wait till we upload the episodes on soundcloud.

Theatre Secret's in generic mode again this week talking about other people in other places and lookatmeism. Within she talks about a "Young Actor Pal" who could be anyone, attending a meal that has a very famous person hold forth who could also be anyone. Without names or faces, I'm not sure what we're meant to draw from it other than that human beings walk around, breath, are sometimes arrogant and often have dinner, all at the same time. It could just as well be that "Young Actor Pal" is Secret herself in which case she's using an anonymous fictional friend within an anonymous column for the purposes of an anecdote which makes her look clueless, but the philosophical implications of that would be enough for a whole series of Adam Curtis films. So here's a parody of an Adam Curtis film about Adam Curtis's films: Also today, The Guardian published this interview with casting directors which says more about the profession than the first six of Secret's columns. Here's Doctor Who's casting director Andy Pryor on receiving presents: "The worst," he says, "is when you get a card with a teabag in it, and the card is filled with glitter – so that when you open it, it goes all over you. They say, 'We just wanted to get your attention.' It's like, 'Yes you did. Now we've got to clean this shit up.'" Pryor then goes on to admit that they have cast roles on the strength of unsolicited approaches. I wonder who.

Rory McEwan The Colours of Reality cover of the exhibition catalogue Today I found out why people rave about the botanical art of Rory McEwan.  I went to the The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Art To Macclesfield. Those of you who’ve been following my travels around the public art collections in North-West England will have detected a fairly large gap since my last visit, Townley Hall in Burnley which I wrote up in January 2011 but actually happened a few months before. I hadn’t actually realised it had been this long, but life intervened, various Liverpool Biennials and the fact that most of the remaining venues are pretty difficult to approach without public transport. But along with all of the other projects I’ve had on the go, I’m going to try and complete this by the end of the year, weather, life and health permitting. To Macclesfield and to West Park Museum, which in the end was more accessible than I expected, with a train from Liverpool changing at Manchester Picadilly and a short walk from the city centre to West Park where it’s inevitably situated. Macclesfield also boasts various exhibition centres and a Silk Museum which seems to be the key recommendation for most visitors to the town. But because of time and my ongoing adventures with this lingering cold, after a quick wander around the town centre I pretty much mostly concentrated on the museum. Which is fine. Given the distances I’ll be travelling to elsewhere, there won’t be much time to do much else there either. I did manage to see two of the local sights: In St. Michael's Church, the tomb of Sir John Savage the Fifth (d. 1492) who commanded the left wing of Henry Tudor's victorious army at the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485) and at the siege of Boulogne (says the accompanying information card). Sarah Storey's gold post box for her fourth gold medal win in the Paralympic Road Women’s C5 Road Race, athough I've just had to look that up. There are no plaques on site. No words of explanation. Edward Morris dedicates just two longish paragraphs to West Park Museum in his book each highlighting the institution’s main features. As he explains, this is another example of philanthropic curatorship, having been donated by the Brocklehursts, one of the wealthiest families in Macclesfield, who made their fortune from silk and banking. The endeavour was mainly spearheaded by Marianne Brocklehurst, who had amassed a relatively notable Egyptian collection after three expeditions there and she wanted somewhere for this to be displayed as well as parts of their art collection and various natural history curios collected by her husband. A museum leaflet, researched by Luanne Collins to celebrate the centenary of the museum in 1998 suggests that the whole thing was quite scandal. Having selected an architect Purdon Clarge, the then deputy director of the South Kensington Museum in London, and approved of his design, for some reason the local town councillors took objection to it, and according to a letter to the local press, it was variously described in a meeting as looking like a “dog kennel”, “an abortion”, “a tool-house” and “a mortuary” though as Collins ponders, perhaps the plan they saw had been misinterpreted by the copyist. In the midst of these objections, Mrs Brocklehurst withdrew her offer. Then four years later she quietly proposed the whole thing again, with the same plans, actually modelled on the interior of the South Gallery of the Whitworth in Manchester, and it was built and opened in October 1898. Mrs Brocklehurst sadly died just a few weeks after the opening and didn’t live to see the museum completed. Luanne Collins notes that arrangement of the museum was in the style of the time, every exhibit for itself, “Egyptian relics and the paintings would have been packed closely beside tropical beetles, models of Canadian settlements, ostrich eggs and a stuffed tiger.” The floor plan is still somewhat within the spirit of this original structure. The fine art collection is predominantly overwhelmed by a particular artist, which I’ll return to, but amid that are still related natural history items and a