Safari in the City

To commemorate the start of Spring, we went in search of blooming buds and flowers. Much to our dismay, we did not find any (yet) to share but instead came across this giraffe springing out of the bushes in Mount Street Gardens in Mayfair. Grazing upon the greens of the 19th century churchyard garden, sits a small bronze giraffe. Who would have thought that our morning jaunt for flora would take us on an urban safari?

90” Triacontahedron by Anthony James

In London’s Berkeley Square, 90” Triacontahedron by Anthony James beckons the passerby.  A British-American artist, based in Los Angeles, Mr. James uses specialized glass, LED, and steel to draw spectators into his work. Hailed as of one of the world’s leading light artists, he incorporates an array of industrial objects, vitrines of steel, aluminum, and waste and debris, to illuminate and reflect on themes of light and dark, death, destruction, and rebirth in his brilliant pieces. As light and color frolic within the panels of the sculpture, 90” Triacontahedron transports us to another dimension, even on the greyest of London days.

The Fourth Plinth Sculpture: “Antelope” by Samson Kambalu

Trafalgar Square, one of London’s most visited landmarks, is marked by four plinths, upon which rests three permanent sculptures. For years an empty fourth plinth stood until Dame Prue Leith, then chair of the Royal Society of Arts suggested the plinth should host art work. After much debate, the Mayor of London’s Fourth Plinth Programme was born, hosting contemporary sculptures on rotation. Recently, Samson Kambalu, a renowned contemporary artist and author who hails from Malawi and is based in Oxford won the opportunity to exhibit under the Fourth Plinth Programme, resulting in “Antelope.”  

Based on a photograph of Baptist preacher and pan-Africanist, John Chilembwe, and European missionary, John Chorley, taken in 1914 at the opening Chilembwe’s new church in Nyasaland, now Malawi, “Antelope” commemorates the moment by restaging the photograph. Kambalu portrays Chilembwe larger than life upon the plinth as he keeps his hat on, in defiance of the colonial rule forbidding Africans from wearing hats in front of white people. Chorley maintains life-size, thereby elevating Chilembwe’s story and bringing awareness to the “hidden narratives of underrepresented peoples” and calling attention to “distortions in conventional narratives of the British empire.”