Is Turner the true Father of Modern Art? Born in Covent Garden, London in 1775, Joseph Mallard Turner is often hailed as Britain’s greatest artist. His face adorns banknotes, streets are named after him and, indeed, the Turner Prize takes his name. With 2025 being the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth, it’s time to resolve […]
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Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? How Gauguin’s visit to London in 1885 helped clear up an existential crisis 140 years ago, French artist Paul Gauguin set off on a get-away-from-it-all visit to London. This visit marked a watershed moment in his life – he had split from […]
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Toyosi Saliu Makes a Solid Gold Statement With Breathtaking 24-Carat Art From the heart of the African continent but firmly rooted in London, rises an exciting new artist whose work bridges African identity and ancestral royalty with modern elegance. Nigerian artist Toyosi Saliu uses real 24-carat gold to craft dazzling portraits that bring a […]
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Director Elena Kovalenko was a double award winner at our own Hot Shorts Film Festival in October last year, triumphing in the editing and cinematography categories with her short film Underwater. We caught up with her to review her success and chat about her plans for 2017, including her new project Elemental Beauty. 1. Hi […]
The latest Star Wars movie Rogue One is still on the festive big screens and here’s some tips from director Gareth Edwards’ rise to film making success. We take a look at how winning a London film festival not commonly regarded as one of the biggest festivals out there (Sci-Fi London) propelled writer director Gareth […]
North London based artist Marcus Sprigen’s work caught many passing glances at the recent Islington Art and Design Fair. The similarity with the Dutch Master Vermeer in his displayed paintings was on further discussion not coincidental. His art is inspired from a wide-range of movements including Surrealism, Fantasy and elements of the dark psyche of […]
Novelist Emily Bronte came from a remarkable Victorian writing and painting clan and even as her classic Wuthering Heights would make its mark on literature other members of her talented family would also find fame. Just as remarkable is the time scale of Emily’s achievement, dying as she did aged just 30 in 1848 – […]
What’s Hot London? readers will warm to a novel that has many a London landmark and postcode featured in its surreal depiction of coma dream states. The author Safeena Chaudhry, currently runs a monthly literary event called Novel London at Waterstones which she offers as a platform for promoting other writers’ work. You’ll notice both […]
With Monday’s Supreme Court meeting to rule whether the government must consult Parliament before implementing Brexit, hopefully this may spark your interest in visiting the UK’s seat of power. European tourists must be chomping at the bit to have first hand experience of the corridors of power which may have a say on their relations […]
All you amateur stargazers out there will no doubt know that today is the birthdate of Edmund Halley, the English astronomer who discovered the Halley’s Comet which is named after him. Born in 1656 in good old Haggerston, East London (Big up Hackney!) this genius of a man was also a geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist and […]
“Swansea’s bohemians in exile were going to ring the bells of London and paint it like a tart”. This quote was attributed to Dylan Thomas after getting his first permanent London flat with a pal. And he remained true to his word. Although born in Swansea, Wales he first visited London in 1933 and would […]
An artist’s 9-5 job can often be the inspiration behind some of his greatest creations away from the daily grind. Mile End-based artist Stanislav Geissler’s journey as a sculptor has taken him from his homeland of the Czech Republic where he worked as a panel beater and he is now resident in London employed as […]
October is a month studded with the birth dates of Britain’s greatest ‘pens’ from Oscar Wilde to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( Oct 21) Although born on this day in Ottley, Devon in 1772, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived in Highgate Village for the last twenty years of his life. Today the picturesque […]
Hillary Clinton Graffiti/Painting Shoreditch By Street Artist Pegasus
