A stands for Art

No, this isn’t a photo. It’s a superb painting by David Eichenberg of his friend: Tim II (2009). He’s one of the three artists shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award 2010, worth £25,000 to the winner. The other two are Michael Gaskell for Harry (2010) and Daphne Todd for Last Portrait of Mother (2009). I suspect the judges may plump for Daphne Todd’s portrait of her mother on her deathbed, due to it’s courage and brutal honesty, but it tells us nothing about the life and personality of the dying lady. I’ve posted my favourite. Click the title link to view all three. The winners will be announced on the evening of Tuesday 22 June. The exhibition of the top 58 paintings will open at the National Portrait Gallery in London on 24 June, admission free.

I became bored with the general election back in January. The BBC’s overexposure of this dishonest event has made me reluctant to watch BBC News. Why waste a quarter of an hour in every news broadcast reporting the claims of twin packs of liars playing Pass The Parcel with Government? This is Democracy? We’re not even allowed to sign our ballot papers. It has to be a cross: the traditional signature of the illiterate. That’s how much politicians respect our intelligence. The most exciting thing which has happened so far is Gordon Brown’s referring to a Labour voter as “bigoted”, and the media played that to death. So why am I showing this bar chart of party performance? And what does it mean? It shows the percentage of MPs from the three main parties who signed an Early Day Motion calling for the British Government to ratify ILO 169, the international law for tribal rights. It was published by Survival International, the movement for tribal peoples. Click the title link to find out more. My tribe is Apathy. There are a lot of us about. The usual suspects don’t win our votes.

This evocative painting (detail shown) by Dan McPharlin was one of the entries in the Life in 2050 competition, organised to coincide with Sci-Fi-London 9 (title link). The Life in 2050 exhibition continues at Proud Central, London, until 4 May (CLICK). Sci-Fi-London 9 continues until 3 May.

The pageant of St George returned to London today after 425 years, thanks to The Worshipful Company of Armourers & Brasiers. Are there any English folk left in London to appreciate our patron saint?

The Hubble space telescope is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The above photo from Hubble shows a mountain of dust and gas rising in the Carina Nebula. NASA has given it the title Mystic Mountain (2010). It surpasses any painting of the Heavens from the fevered imaginations of religious artists. To download a wallpaper of this beautiful image or choose from many others CLICK. For Hubble’s 20th birthday, BBC News has today posted an excellent slideshow of Hubble history by Paul Kerley (CLICK). The voiceover is by Professor Alec Boksenberg from the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, who was part of the European team that helped build Hubble. Click the title link to message Hubble.

That Hirst doodle I posted last Thursday (CLICK), which Moneybags gave to Ilford taxi driver Jon Horsley for his son LJ, fetched an unbelievable £12,000 at Dreweatts & Bloomsbury auction house yesterday. How’s that for a big tip?

New York cops are fed up with Antony Gormley’s body casts of himself on their city rooftops. Since his Event Horizon installation thingy began last month, they’ve had to respond to at least 10 calls from citizens who think Gormley’s casts are real people about to commit suicide by jumping off buildings. It’s the same nonsense he perpetrated on Londoners three years ago (CLICK). “We’re short of cops to begin with and we don’t have enough cops to waste answering calls of statues committing suicide,” commented a disgruntled officer. Why not arrest the alleged artist and remove his tosh?

One of the most intriguing summer exhibitions coming up at The National Gallery in London is Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries, which runs from 30 June until 12 September (title link). This Portrait of Alexander Mornauer (c. 1464-88) was tarted up to look like a Holbein (left). Microscopic paint analysis revealed the NG had been sold a pup. The fraudulent layers of paint were removed to reveal the original painting (right). More than 40 bummers from the NG’s hidden collection will go on display in 5 rooms. But it isn’t all bad news. The 6th room of the exhibition shows works discovered to be genuine by scientific analysis, such as Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks, rediscovered in 1991.

The annual exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours opens tomorrow, Wednesday 21 April, at the Mall Galleries in London and continues until 1 May. Admission is £2.50 for adults, £1.50 for silver surfers, free to under 16s. This exhibit is Purple Patch by Jean Robinson RI. As you can see, Jean shuns wishy-washy landscapes and goes for something garish that looks as though it was painted with Dulux gloss; but all the paints used by RI members are water soluble.

If you were asked to design the perfect pig, would you come up with this woolly porker? Probably not. Pig breeders have been getting it wrong for centuries and have produced fat, bald, lumbering porkers that need shelter in winter and mud baths in summer to avoid sunburn, rather like the modern human. The rare Mangalitza pig, which originally hailed from Austria and Hungary, is tough enough to survive British winters and woolly enough to avoid sunburn. This pig in sheep’s clothing is now being bred at Tropical Wings Zoo in South Woodham Ferrers, Essex. The zoo’s meerkats are breeding too (CLICK).