Wooden Horses

Chinese New Year is near and with it also its celebration worldwide to welcome the year of the horse. Precisely for that reason the British sculptor James Doran-Webb has created a big sculpture for the ceremonies at Singapore. Each one of this horses weighs 500kg, supporting the weigh of up to four persons, and it took a total of six month to make this puzzles of more than 400 pieces of driftwood, even having an interior skeleton of stainless steel.

Driftwood sculptor is how Doran-Webb defines himself, but his relationship with this material started long before than his artistic career as his parents had an antique restoration workshop and he owned a little weekend stand on Portobello Road's market (London) when he was a teenager. 

In 1989 he travelled to the Philippines, where popular art and culture of the archipelago awakened in him an interest for the work with driftwood. This wood from trees of various species come to the rivers ans beaches banks, washed and processed by the waves and salinity, and making each single peace, whatever its size, a particular and individual form the rest.

The next year, in 1990, Doran-Webb started to import to Europe thanks to a design company: boxes and frames inlaid with shells or marbles, papier-mâché animals and some furniture made from recicled wood from the Philippine houses. However it wasn't until the beginning of the 2000 decade when he thought about designing furniture directly with driftwood.

It was playing with driftwood pieces for that furniture how he end up making his first animal sculpture. Later on the big amount of driftwood he had available allowed him to make works of different sizes, just playing and combining the forms and characteristics of each one of the pieces to give movement and vitality to his creations.

The very first thing we should say about James Doran-Webb work is the double game, thus from far in the distance it seems like what you see is an animal, or at least a uniform bloc of mass, but when you approach the sculpture you can observe how the whole is made from hundreds of little parts, and even the driftwood colors are used to enhance the artistic quality. It is also very interesting this step forward from furniture to animal sculptures, because that way nature is no longer a tool serving the human kind for its pleasure and commodity, it becomes an expression of itself. With nature it is created another representation of nature, in a way that we could also include here atomic theories: this little parts of wood become one thing or another depending on how are they combined between them. Finally, the fact of creating only animals gives vitality to his productions. The main material for his artworks is wood – wood than once was part of a living being but has went to a process of death and transformation – but from this material we only get again representations of living beings. So in some way that death wood get an allegorical second life: a life, in that case, engaged to beauty and art.

Ricard Gispert

@ricardgispert

London Unknown

London is a big city which drags more than 14 million tourists a year, but it is such a big city that with one visit barely can be copsed a little part of the whole. British Museum, National Gallery and Tate (Modern, not “the other one”) are the undeniable Top3 for the visitors around the globe, but today we are proposing you a Top10 beyond the tourist crowds at the more popular places. Here you have our list of 10 hidden gems that you could see on your next visit to The City.

10- SAINT JAMES CHURCH

A small church down town, right next to Piccadilly Circus. Its sober outside serves as placement for a dairy market (food, antiques and collectibles, arts and crafts...) while its interior hosts evening concerts. Free entrance.

9- HAMPSTEAD

This high class north-eastern neighbourhood has always been residence for the intellectual elite. Nowadays commerce and restaurants are the main appeal even if it is also nice to just walk around. And for nature lovers just walk a few more minutes up to Hampstead Heath and enjoy the view or have a fresh bathing in one of the three lakes that serve to that purpose.

8- SIR JOHN SOANE'S MUSEUM

What can be more interesting than visiting a museum? To visit one as how it was in 1830. When he died, the architect Sir John Soane had disposed his home-museum should remain untouched, although the museum concept of that century is far different from the actual British Museum. 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields is a house full of the worldwide discoveries of the architect and his own models of the old roman temples. Free entrance.

7- GREENWICH'S ROYAL OBSERVATORY

You must pay to access the courtyard where you can take a picture of you with a foot on each side of the 0 meridian, but the visit to the Astronomy Centre is free entrance. Also there is a huge park to enjoy in sunny days and, again, great views. The best way to get there is with the DLR, a train without conductor which you can catch at Bank station, and you can take the chance to visit also de National Maritime Museum.

6- WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL

Westminster Cathedral, not to be mistaken with Westminster Abbey, is a Neo-Byzantine building quite near of Victoria Station. It is surprising when you find it as it doesn't seem to fit in its surroundings. Inside, the big coloured marble columns contrast with the vaults of blackened bricks, while the chapels are decorated with mosaics enriched with gold leaf. Free entrance.

5- CHARLES DICKENS MUSEUM

Whether you like literature or not we invite you to step in this Victorian house where Dickens used to live. The various rooms seem intact while you discover not only life facts of the famous writer, whose life was closely related with his works, but you also see how was life in any London house of that period. Entrace: 8 pounds.

4- IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

The most notable part of this war museum is the section about the Holocaust, actually the longest of its exhibitions which includes even a final reflection about what could have done Great Britain to avoid that situation. Now, however, it is close for a renovation that will see the light this summer to celebrate the centenary of First World War.

It is also part of the IWM family the Second World War battleship HMS Belfast and the Churchill War Rooms where the British Prime Minister sheltered during that same conflict; but while the museum is free entrance the other two have an admission charge.

3- BOROUGH MARKET

This is not a market like Camden or Portobello Road, is one of the oldest food markets in London. Under its typical structure of cast-iron architecture you can find wine, sausages, meat and fish, fruits and vegetables, different products like truffle oil or cheese with walnuts and quirky products like grass juice and zebra or crocodile hamburgers. It is a good place where to have lunch, as it is close to the Tate Modern and The Shard, the new tallest building of the city. You can try the traditional English pies or south-Asian deli, and end your feast with sweet pastries, chocolates or the typical British fudge.

2- SOMERSET HOUSE

In this Tudor palace there are always very interesting temporary exhibitions, keeping a balance between free and charged entrance. The permanent collections, which includes artworks from Da Vinci, Manet, Van Gogh and Picasso among others, can be found at the Courtauld Gallery. The entrance to this gallery is 6 pounds, but Mondays is half price.

1- MUSEUM OF LONDON

The museum of history of the city, the best place to learn about London's evolution from the neolithic settlements and the Roman foundation until the present day. Museography is somewhat uneven because in occasion of the Olympic Games it was specially reinforced the dialogue in the segment of Roman history of the city. However must also be mentioned the audiovisuals about the two big Middle Age crisis (Black Death and 1666's Great Fire) and the space recreations: a prison, a Victorian Market or a cinema from the beginning of 1900's among others. Free entrance.

This museum is next to the Barbican Centre, a cultural centre with a very interesting calendar of temporary exhibitions, conferences and dance shows.

Ricard Gispert

@ricardgispert