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LondonTown.com: London landscapes celebrated in new exhibition

June 8, 2015 EPR Network Leave a comment

South London parks are the subject of new photographic exhibition at the Horniman Museum.

LONDON, June 08, 2015 — /REAL TIME PRESS RELEASE/ — A new photographic exhibition celebrating London’s lesser-known landscapes open this month at one of London’s friendliest museums. South London Landscapes is now open at the Horniman Museum And Gallery this week and runs throughout the summer, featuring photographs of the Horniman itself as well as other picturesque public spaces in and around south London. The Horniman is one of London’s liveliest small museums, boasting excellent natural history and music galleries, a small aquarium and extensive landscaped grounds. For more information, and to see the latest deals on London hotels, see LondonTown.com.

South London Landscapes features photographs taken by London-based landscape photographer Max A Rush. The photographs, which include pictures of the Horniman Gardens, are taken in unusual and beautiful weather and capture how the passage of the seasons and the forces of the weather transform the appearance and character of the local landscape. Areas featured in South London Landscapes include Brockwell Park, Crystal Palace Park, Dulwich Park, Dulwich Wood, Ruskin Park and the Horniman Gardens.

Max Rush says: ‘These are a few of my favourite locations around south London. I’ve continually returned to them over the years, watching the seasons pass and the elements batter, freeze and occasionally warm their well-worn faces. I’ve witnessed moments of transcendental beauty in familiar places and endeavoured to capture them as truthfully as I can. So many people fight their way out of the city every week for the sake of nature, but perhaps what they’re looking for was here all along.’ For more information on this and other exhibitions and events taking place at the Horniman this summer, see LondonTown.com.

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LondonTown.com is the number one Internet site for London. With over 18 years of experience assisting visitors to the capital, they pride themselves on their customer service and editorial independence – no banner advertising or paid for content is allowed. The LondonTown.com team assist in finding cheap London hotels, sightseeing tours, ticket information and events. Trusted and with a loyal following, LondonTown.com is a very reliable source of recommendations and advice on what to do in London. http://www.LondonTown.com

Art, Entertainment, Travel

LondonTown.com: Groundbreaking London exhibition looks at post-war Black British artists

June 8, 2015 EPR Network Leave a comment

Guildhall Art Gallery explores the work of little-known but pivotal Afro-Caribbean artists

LONDON, June 08, 2015 — /REAL TIME PRESS RELEASE/ — A groundbreaking new exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London will look at the little-known and rarely exhibited history of 20th-century Black British art. No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960-1990 runs from 10 July 2015 to 24 January 2016, and will explore the history of art produced by Britain’s Afro-Caribbean citizens, reflecting their experiences in the country after the major emigrations that occurred following the end of the Empire at the conclusion of the Second World War. For more information on this and other exhibitions in London this summer, see LondonTown.com, where you can also find information on London events and cheap London hotels.

At the heart of the exhibition will be a recreation of the Bogle-L’Ouverture Walter Rodney bookshop, created by renowned artist and curator Dr Michael McMillan (West Indian Front Room) and sound and visual specialists, Dubmorphology. Visitors will be able to immerse themselves in a stunning multi-sensory, multi-visual experience including works of art, sculpture, photographs, paintings, letters and other artefacts from more than 25 prominent Black artists during this period including Eddie Chambers, Sonia Boyce, Denzil Forrester and Chila Kumari Burman.

Influenced by the emergence of newly independent African and Caribbean states, global liberation struggles, the fight against unfair discrimination and an insistence on dignified citizenship within Britain, these artists found expression by way of ‘creation for liberation’. The exhibition will explore these struggles and celebrate their contribution through four themes: ‘Elbow Room’, ‘Broad Shoulders’, ‘Clenched Fists’ and ‘Open Arms’.

Throughout its tenure, No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960-1990 will also play host to a series of scheduled events enriching the visitor experience through a diverse range of educational talks, workshops and gallery tours. For more information on this and other exhibitions in the City of London, see LondonTown.com.

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Art, Entertainment, Travel

LondonTown.com: Cutting-edge US artist receives first major European show in London this summer

June 8, 2015 EPR Network Leave a comment

Raven Row gallery in Spitalfields hosts a retrospective of ground-breaking US artist Larry Johnson.

LONDON, June 08, 2015 — /REAL TIME PRESS RELEASE/ — One of America’s most interesting contemporary artists is to receive his first major European exhibition at a new gallery that focuses on cutting-edge, avant-garde art. Raven Row is a non-profit contemporary art exhibition centre in Spitalfields that is housed within two eighteenth-century merchants’ houses integrated with new galleries and its next exhibition, Larry Johnson: On Location runs from 11 June to 9 August 2015. It is directed and funded by Alex Sainsbury of the Sainsbury family, whose family have funded many great art projects in London, such as the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery. Raven Row is a very different enterprise, offering thoughtful shows on lesser-known artists and allowing visitors to explore the fascinating quarter of Spitalfields. The area is filled with fashionable boutiques, great shops and cool bars and restaurants. To explore its attractions, see LondonTown.com, where you can also find the latest room rates for hotels in London.

On Location brings together a selection of works by Larry Johnson from the early 1990s to the present. The show’s uncontested star is Los Angeles, the city in which Johnson has lived and worked all his life. For over thirty years, LA’s physical and imaginary appearance has served as the set for the artist’s photo-based investigations of the glamour industry, replete with fading stars and premature deaths. Johnson’s work bears the marks of a generation of artists sampling readymade images and texts to create seductively laconic pictures. Yet the colourful sheen of Johnson’s photo-based works is also a foil for sexual, political and semantic tension. The artist’s pictures are encryptions of a Hollywood demi-monde, referring to the cultures from which his work emerges – queer, political, filmic and theoretical.

The exhibition is curated by Los Angeles-based writer Bruce Hainley, and by Antony Hudek, Curator and Deputy Director of Raven Row. Commie Pinko Guy, a publication edited by Hainley with new essays by Morgan Fisher, Lisa Lapinski, Hainley, Hudek and Wayne Koestenbaum, as well as reprints of classic underground queer writing, will accompany the exhibition. For more information on this and other exhibitions in London’s cutting-edge contemporary art scene, see LondonTown.com.

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Art, Entertainment, Travel

LondonTown.com: Classic London cinema at the Southbank all summer

June 8, 2015 EPR Network Leave a comment

BFI Southbank unveils new season dedicated to films exploring the UK capital.

LONDON, June 08, 2015 — /REAL TIME PRESS RELEASE/ — London On Film is a new major season of films at the BFI Southbank that will explore and celebrate the capital for four months from 1st July to 9th October. This is the first time the BFI has ever celebrated the city in which it is based, and will feature 200 films, a number of which have been unseen since they were first filmed, offering an extraordinary perspective of the city from the past 120 years. The BFI Southbank is the national home of cinema, featuring three state-of-the-art screens in Waterloo on the Southbank.For more on this vital cultural quarter, as well as the latest rates forLondon hotels, seeLondonTown.com.

The London On Film season will include events such as a Soho Weekender (24-26 July) to celebrate the unique culture of Soho captured in films from 1896 – 1985 such as West End Jungle (1961), The Small World of Sammy Lee(1963) and Sunshine in Soho (1956). There will also be a discussion event Vanishing Soho on the state of Soho today in the light of current major changes for those who live and play there. It will include some of the earliest films ever made, such as RW Paul’s Blackfriars Bridge (1896(. Films from major filmmakers include Anthony Asquith’s evocative Underground (1928), the first feature to be shot on the underground and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970), which takes us into the dangerous realms of psychedelic and sexual experimentation. There will also be films by Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Winterbottom and Otto Preminger.

Black experience is highlighted in a series of key films including Earl Cameron’s pioneering role as a black sailor in the crime drama Pool of London (1951) with fine use of locations around Tower Bridge, Poplar, Southwark and the City; Cameron also stars in the little seen The Heart Within (1957) another crime thriller set in London’s Docklands. Sapphire (Basil Dearden, 1959) is a film-maker’s response to the Notting Hill race riots wrapped up in a murder mystery while Babylon (Franco Rosso, 1981) shows the demoralisation of black youth, and offers an eerily prescient portrait of the situation in Deptford which would give rise to the Brixton Riots of the same year. For more information, see LondonTown.com.

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Art, Entertainment, Travel

LondonTown.com: British Museum gets its medals out for the great French Sun King

June 8, 2015 EPR Network Leave a comment

Free exhibition at the museum showcases remarkable 17th-century emblems of Louis XIV’s reign

LONDON, June 08, 2015 — /REAL TIME PRESS RELEASE/ — The British Museum is holding a new exhibition that looks at the medals drawn from the reign of the great French Sun King, Louis XIV. Triumph and disaster: medals of the Sun King runs from 4 June to 15 November and marks the tercentenary year of the death of Louis XIV. It is one of several free exhibitions that are held at the British Museum every year to draw attention to the many easily overlooked marvels within its collection and to present them in new ways to mark anniversaries or to reinterpret the material. For more information on the full programme of exhibitions at the British Museum, see LondonTown.com, where you can also find the latest information on cheap hotels in London.

The Louis XIV medals are preserved as they were in Louis XIV’s own day and includes contributions from the British Library which has a unique manuscript scrapbook of drawings and notes on the creation of the history, and the V&A. The medals were a way for the king to portray his reign and the greatest writers (including Jean Racine), historians, artists and medalists of the day were brought together by the king to ensure that posterity would see his rule as Louis wished it to be seen: the reign of an ideal and ever victorious monarch.

The early medals portray a dazzling image of a ‘Sun King,’ who is represented as hard-working, accessible, generous and just; a king that worked for the benefit of the people, glorifying as much in their happiness as in victory over his enemies. The picture changed as war succeeded war and defeat succeeded victory. The later medals, though careful to represent only French successes, are so numerous that they give the impression not of victory but of endless and draining warfare.

Elsewhere in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands, medals were produced that mocked and satirized the official French medals. These rival medals showed the French sun eclipsed by the zodiacal signs of his enemies, and Louis as an old man being roundly beaten by Queen Anne. Collectively, these medals and attendant literature present a fascinating and unique self-portrait of a regime which dominated Europe for nearly sixty years, and which established the primacy of French taste and French culture for over a century.

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Art, Entertainment, Travel

LondonTown.com: Art film screenings at London’s best gallery this summer

June 8, 2015 EPR Network Leave a comment

Tate Modern screens new and classic avant-garde and artists’ films this summer.

LONDON, June 08, 2015 — /REAL TIME PRESS RELEASE/ — The Tate Modern has announced its summer season of cinema screening and film premieres, which will take place in the gallery between May and July 2015. The Tate Modern is one of the world’s leading contemporary art galleries, and its extensive programme of events includes a summer film season that introduces new art film as well as rarely-seen work by inspiring and maverick filmmakers. The screenings cost £5. The gallery is located on the South Bank close to Blackfriars, London Bridge and Waterloo rail stations. For more information on things to do in the area, and to see the latest rates for cheap hotels in London, see LondonTown.com.

Films programmed this summer at the Tate include Agnes Martin’s Gabriel on 5 June, which takes place in conjunction with Tate Modern’s retrospective of Agnes Martin. This evening presents the artist’s only completed and rarely screened film. It follows the wanderings of a ten year old boy in rural New Mexico, where Martin lived and worked, in a contemplative study of landscape and nature. On 12 June, Sharon Lockhart will present her newest body of films and photographs in a unique opportunity to see this ambitious work in progress, followed by a conversation with Tate’s senior curators Catherine Wood and Andrea Lissoni. Created in collaboration with a group of 15 young women in Poland, the project empowers the authority of the girls’ voices and their perspectives on the world. Over the weekend from 19-21 June, Parviz Kimiavi will feature. Spanning four screenings over three days, this will be the UK’s first major survey of maverick filmmaker Parviz Kimiavi, a pioneer of alternative cinema in 1970’s Iran. Kimiavi created surreal and hallucinatory films, using non-professional actors and harsh desert landscapes.

On 26 June, A Night at the Pictures: An evening for Larry Johnson will honour the legacy of artist Larry Johnson. Curator Bruce Hainley and writer Wayne Koestenbaum will discuss his work, followed by a specially selected cult film. On 8 July, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc’s new film will be screened. This addresses political issues alongside scientific and anthropological histories. Drawing on a personal photographic archive, the film presents a young fictional researcher who leads a group between the IFAN Museum in Dakar and the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. The screening will be introduced by a live concert by the electronic music act PAL. Finally, over three days from 10-12 June, The Film Will Always Be You: South African Artists on Screen will explore the film work of key artists in South Africa. It begins with a rare showing of William Kentridge and Angus Gibson’s Freedom Square and Back of the Moon 1986 (part of the Johannesburg Free Filmmakers’ Co-Operative) and ends with the UK premiere of Robin Rhode’s Recycled Matter 2015. For more information on this summer of screenings, see LondonTown.com.

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Art, Entertainment, Society, Travel

LondonTown.com offer five pairs of tickets to Taste of London

June 4, 2015 EPR Network Leave a comment

Win tickets and sample food from 40 of London’s hottest restaurants

LONDON, June 04, 2015 — /REAL TIME PRESS RELEASE/ — LondonTown has teamed up with top food festival, Taste of London, to offer five lucky winners a pair of tickets to the al fresco gastronomic showcase at Regent’s Park, and for those who want to stay in the city overnight there are many London hotels, from five star to affordable but trendy hotels, to choose from.

Always a foodie highlight of the summer, Taste of London offers a tantalising selection of world-class chefs and 40 of London’s hottest restaurants all gathered together in one place at London’s Regent’s Park from 17th – 21st June 2015.

New London restaurants taking part in the 2015 festival include contemporary Chinese restaurant Chai Wu, South East London’s latest haunt Artusi, Jose Pizarro’s authentic Spanish Pizarro, The Clove Club which serves cutting edge cuisine in Shoreditch Town Hall, The Palomar with its modern fare from Jerusalem and contemporary Japanese cooking from Aqua Kyoto.

Further new London restaurants partaking in Taste of London are Peruvian hotspot LIMA Floral, Anna Hansen’s newest venture, Modern Pantry mark II, and Marcus Wareing’s Tredwell’s.

Returning again are Taste of London favourites The House of Ho, L’Anima, Club Gascon, Spice Market, Ember Yard, Duck & Waffle, SushiSamba and Roka.

Top chefs Marcus Wareing, La Gavroche’s superstar sous chef Monica Galetti and the man responsible for revolutionising the way we eat Indian food, Atul Kochhar, are all appearing at Taste of London in 2015. Added to the mix are Mexican street food chef and entrepreneur Thomasina Miers, and Michelin starred Portuguese chef Nuno Mendes, head chef at celebrity favourite Chiltern Firehouse.

To enter the LondonTown Taste of London competition, go to LondonTown, answer the simple question and email your answer before 12noon on Monday 8th June 2015. The website also has a large number of London hotels to suit all budgets is given as well as information on restaurants, attractions and all the current London events.

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Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Society, Travel

LondonTown.com offer five pairs of tickets to Taste of London

June 4, 2015 EPR Network Leave a comment

Win tickets and sample food from 40 of London’s hottest restaurants

Further new London restaurants partaking in Taste of London are Peruvian hotspot LIMA Floral, Anna Hansen’s newest venture, Modern Pantry mark II, and Marcus Wareing’s Tredwell’s.

Returning again are Taste of London favourites The House of Ho, L’Anima, Club Gascon, Spice Market, Ember Yard, Duck & Waffle, SushiSamba and Roka.

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Art, Entertainment, Music, Society, Travel

LondonTown.com: Best events in London in May 2015

April 27, 2015 EPR Network Leave a comment

Star Wars comes to Madame Tussauds

LONDON, April 27, 2015 — /REAL TIME PRESS RELEASE/ — Stormtroopers descend on the capital on 16th May 2015 when Star Wars – also the theme for Secret Cinema’s summer extravaganza in London – opens at Madame Tussauds, one of the best London events to look forward to in May 2015.

May 2015 begins with a Bank Holiday weekend from Friday 1st until Monday 4th May and the extra day off makes this a great time to visit London with the London Sketchfest, Breakin’ Convention, the free Canalway Cavalcade in Little Venice, and Grand Designs Live showing the great variety of events on offer in the city.

The London Coffee Festival, Pick Me Up graphic design festival continue throughout the May Bank Holiday weekend when the Wellcome Collection offers illumination in free festival ‘On Light’, the Southbank is transformed into the Streets of Spain, Vaisakhi Festival offers free entertainment in Trafalgar Square, and Land of Kings brings music, theatre and movies to Dalston on Sunday 3rd May.

Take inspiration from Richard Curtis’ movie and visit the Notting Hill May Fair on Saturday 9th May, part of the month-long Notting Hill MayFest. On Sunday 10th May the Dulwich Festival Fair, just one of the many Dulwich Festival events, comes to Goose Green, and the Covent Garden May Fayre & Puppet Festival celebrates its 40th anniversary. Later in the month Alchemy brings ten days of Indian culture to the Southbank Centre, and there’s more festival fun to feast on when the Foodies Festival comes to Syon Park.

London theatre highlights for new productions beginning in May include Simon Russell Beale starring in Steve Waters’ new play ‘Temple’ at the Donmar Warehouse, and Oscar nominated actor Bradley Cooper who reprises his acclaimed Broadway role as Joseph Merrick in ‘The Elephant Man’.

James Phillips’s new play ‘McQueen’ starring award-winning actor Stephen Wight, named Outstanding Newcomer at the Evening Standard Awards, premieres at St James’s Theatre on Tuesday 12th May. Gurinder Chadha brings her hit film Bend It Like Beckham to the London stage on 15th May 2015 when this season’s Regents Park Open Air Theatre programme launches with Peter Pan.

Major photography fair Photo London brings commissioned exhibitions and live events to Somerset House, Art15 attracts collectors looking for something new and different to Olympia, Clerkenwell Design Week includes Exmouth Market and its surrounds for the first time, and the new city-wide London Craft Week showcases work by top designer-makers in a specially created pop-up pavilion.

May’s live music highlights include Essex X Factor success story Olly Murs and throwback bands S Club 7 and Fleetwood Mac who welcome back former member Christine McVie after a sixteen-year hiatus. Texas, Belle and Sebastian, Maroon 5, and The Maccabees offer more memorable musical moments while Nick Cave and Eric Clapton both appear at the Royal Albert Hall. For a free classical music concert, catch the London Symphony Orchestra performing an open air concert in Trafalgar Square on Sunday 17th May.

London’s pop-up cinemas are back! The Rooftop Film Club returns to the Bussey Building, Hot Tub Cinema comes to a disused railway station in Shoreditch, and Pop Up Screens invites us to look at the science behind films like Alien at Chelsea Old Town Hall. From science to nature, the Chelsea Flower Show showcases stunning floral displays, and there are four days of fashion as Graduate Fashion Week sashays into the Old Truman Brewery from 30th May 2015.

Hundreds of museums, galleries and historic spaces across the UK and London open their doors late for Museums at Night. The Museum of Childhood marks the 150th anniversary of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with The Alice Look.

In dance, Wayne McGregor presents his first full length ballet for The Royal Ballet Woolf Works, and the full ranks of Tredegar Town Band accompany Rambert’s dancers in the world premiere of Dark Arteries at Sadler’s Wells.

Meet crocodile Joe and Supervet Noel Fitzpatrick when the London Pet Show comes to London’s ExCeL centre on 9th & 10th May.

See a star studded comedy cast at Channel 4’s Comedy Gala including Michael McIntyre, Alan Carr, Jack Dee, Jason Byrne and Jonathan Ross, and book in for the splendid London Wonderground Spiegeltent which launches on 7th May with headline show Scotch & Soda, bringing Coney Island-style attractions and cabaret performed in the shadow of the Southbank Centre.

For more information on these and other great London events in May 2015, go to LondonTown.com where a wide choice of London hotels to suit all budgets is given as well as information on restaurants, attractions and all the latest London happenings.

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Entertainment, Music, Society, Travel

LondonTown.com: All change at two of London’s top theatres

April 27, 2015 EPR Network Leave a comment

Rufus Norris takes over at the National Theatre and Matthew Warchus is at London’s Old Vic

LONDON, April 27, 2015 — /REAL TIME PRESS RELEASE/ — Two of London’s best theatres are currently undergoing a change at the top with Rufus Norris taking over the artistic directorship of the National Theatre in April 2015 and Matthew Warchus succeeding Kevin Spacey as Artistic Director of The Old Vic in autumn 2015.

Rufus Norris opens his debut season at the National with ‘Everyman’ starring Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years A Slave) running from 22nd April 2015 in the Olivier Theatre, anticipated as one of the best London events for spring.

Highlights of his inaugural season at the National Theatre include ‘Three Days in the Country’ by ‘Closer’ playwright Patrick Marber who directs his new adaptation in the Lyttelton Theatre from July. ‘Our Country’s Good’ by Timberlake Wertenbaker directed by Nadia Fall which opens in the Olivier Theatre in August. And ‘People, Places and Things’, a new play by Duncan Macmillan presented in a co-production with Headlong, directed by Jeremy Herrin, opening in the Dorfman Theatre in August.

Sally Cookson’s five star production of Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece Jane Eyre, originally played at the Bristol Old Vic, comes to the National’s Lyttelton Theatre in September 2015, Anne-Marie Duff leads the cast in ‘Husbands and Sons’ beginning in October, and Polly Findlay directs Shakespeare’s comedy ‘As You Like It’ in the play’s first main stage production at the NT since 1980 in the Olivier Theatre in November. In the same month Rufus Norris directs ‘wonder.land’, a new musical by Damon Albarn and Moira Buffini inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

Other highlights at the National Theatre include Indhu Rubasingham, Artistic Director of the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, directing the UK premiere of Broadway hit ‘The Motherf**ker With the Hat’ from 10th June 2015 with a cast which includes Ricardo Chavira – Carlos Solis in US comedy-drama series, Desperate Housewives.

The National’s Temporary Theatre (previously The Shed) will host a tenth anniversary revival of Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree from 23rd June which will see Crouch playing opposite a different actor each night, who has not seen a word of the play beforehand.

Ralph Fiennes, Timothy Spall and Rob Brydon will all take to the stage of The Old Vic for Matthew Warchus’ first season as Artistic Director of the famous London venue. The programme includes Ibsen’s ‘The Master Builder’ in a new adaptation by David Hare starring Ralph Fiennes due in 2016, and the world premiere of a new musical, ‘Groundhog Day’ reuniting the creative team of ‘Matilda the Musical’ with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin.

The Old Vic new season will open on 1st September 2015 with ‘Future Conditional’, a new play by Tamsin Oglesby starring Rob Brydon and featuring a young cast of 23, directed by Matthew Warchus. There will be new commissions including a new dance thriller, ‘Jekyl and Hyde’, and the Christmas production will be a new stage adaptation of Dr Seuss’s The Lorax.

More good news for theatre lovers, Kenneth Branagh recently announced a new West End season of five plays, starring Dame Judi Dench, Lily James and himself in a year-long residency which begins on 17th October 2015 at the Garrick Theatre, with associates Rob Ashford and Olivier Award-winner Christopher Oram.

For more information on these and other great London theatre events, go to LondonTown.com where a wide choice of London hotels to suit all budgets is given as well as information on restaurants, attractions and all the latest London happenings.

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