Building the picture: study morning

Excellent study morning at the National Gallery exploring the themes of their current exhibition “Building the picture” which looks at architecture in Renaissance painting.

The first half of the morning the two curators of the show Caroline Campbell from the National Gallery and Amanda Lillie from the University of York talked about the themes of the show and discussed why they had picked particular pictures.

Then Martha Fiennes, the film maker, discussed her work “Nativity” which uses SLOimage to  randomly generate a set of backgrounds, architectural features and people to build up an ever changing image. She likened it to a visual iTunes shuffle. There is a short film about the work showing at the exhibition and from 30 June for a week the Gallery with be showing the complete work in the Lecture Hall. I found this work fascinating and will certainly try to go and see it. It was great to get a contemporary artists take on the idea of architecture in pictures.

Finally Caroline Campbell interviewed the architect Amanda Levete who is currently working on the extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum, again a different take on how art and architecture interact. It was fascinating to hear about the design choices she has made for the space, particularly how she wants the new reception area to open seamlessly off the street so that it is welcoming. Again I can’t wait to see it!

This was a really well put together morning not only looking at the works in the exhibition but also exploring contemporary themes.

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