Showing posts with label David Fleming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Fleming. Show all posts

Wednesday 9 July 2014

Liverpool's Affordable Art Fair-Costs Seven Quid To Get In.

Even Ken Dodd thinks its funny. Saturday saw the beginning of Liverpool Biennial. Which generally means the place is littered with immature and foolish excuses for works of art that have cost a fortune, that generally look like a kid has done them, and have no meaning whatsoever. http://www.biennial.com/
Take the Dazzle ship, please someone take the dazzle ship. 
What a waste of money. The city is closing nursing homes all over the place and they have let some ageing hippy called Carlos Cruz-Diez: turn the historic ship owned by Liverpool Museums, The Edmund Gardner, into a work of art (sic)......and he got paid for it.  http://www.biennial.com/collaborations/carlos-cruzdiez-dazzle-ship 
Dazzle painting was a system for camouflaging ships that was introduced in early 1917, at a time when German submarines were threatening to cut off Britain’s trade and supplies. The idea was not to “hide” the ships, but to paint them in such a way that their appearance was optically distorted, so that it was difficult for a submarine to calculate the course the ship was travelling on, and so know from what angle to attack. The “dazzle” was achieved by painting the ship in contrasting stripes and curves that broke up its shape. Characterised by garish colours and a sharp patchwork design of interlocking shapes, the spectacular ‘dazzle’ style was heavily indebted to Cubism.
But would they have used a Rasta design? That stands out like a sore thumb. Maybe not.
Liverpool museums staged what they called an affordable art fair saturday last It seemed well attended and once you got past the thousands of kids screaming in the foyer it was a pleasant enough experience.
 Though I am glad I had a free ticket or I would have felt aggrieved at the seven quid required to get in to a free museum.
Lets hope the takings go to re instating some of the damage that the current director Dr David "Fuzzy Felt" Fleming has recently done to our history.

Maybe they could use the room that housed the so called affordable art fair to promote some of Liverpool's past glory. 




Tuesday 4 March 2014

Sudley House-Why Have Liverpool Museums Ruined This Historic Gem?

I went along, as I do every now and the to Sudley art Gallery in Mossley Hill.
I first stumbled across it 25 years ago......a hidden gem.
That was before they ruined it.
 Now it is a shadow of itself, and in my opinion ruined. 
Where has all the art work gone. I wanted to see one of my favourite pictures, the small Bonnington that has hung there for decades.
I searched but I couldn’t find it. I was disappointed, but as I walked around it was evidence that this once hidden gem has been found by David “Fuzzy felt” Fleming the butcher of Liverpool Museums.

It seemed to have it all, at one time, it was bequeathed to the city and the merchant who left it to us must be turning in his grave at the uninviting mass that has now the remnants of the collection.
It was crammed with art, it was a hidden gem, that just needed a little polish every now and then, and now it isn’t. 
Why have they changed the character of this once grand institution. I know our museums need disabled access but the lift that has been fitted has taken up two exhibit rooms and is such a monstrous carbuncle that you have to question if the curators of this museum understand any thing about aesthetics.
 A modern contraption that must have cost a hundred grand. Has anyone used it?
It looks like someone has built a greenhouse in the middle of a room. Then two rooms are taken up further with no exhibits at all.
Upstairs is bland to say the least. Where has the Herbert MacNair furniture gone?
This was an amazing display. Not many people know the links with Liverpool and the Glasgow Four.
And what has happened to the Robert Anning Bell pieces? He designed for Della Robbia. http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-della-robbia-pottery-by-peter-hyland.html

That were local. The Bates plaque that was on the wall.
 Where has that gone along with other works of art that sat beautifully in an elegant poise for all to see.
And why has a whole host of rooms now been devoted to rooms for kids to draw things that have nothing to do with the art contained, or, was contained, as they have been shipped out to make room for the new idea of creating a crèche.
Dump the kids on serious scholars so they cant learn anything seems to be the fashion.
I know we have to get our kids into museums I spent enough time bunking off school in the Walker Art Gallery, but why ruin it for the rest of us by aiming the collections for snotty nosed kids.

I saw one of them ready to strike the Godwin gong before little Johnnie Bratsville's mother took it off him.
Now little Johnnies mother didn’t look like she was taking a blind bit of notice of the exhibits.
Just killing time, getting the kids out of the house so the husband can watch the match or something like that. 
The Liverpool museums also put most of the Liverpool Herculaneum collection into permanent storage to hide our own history from us. Why?
80 million pounds they have spent in the last decade, well we spent it, its our money, our taxes. and they ruin the whole feel of this once wonderful museum.


It was here in Sudley House that I first saw the most beautiful work by Bonnington.
Had it been exhibited next to a Turner on purpose because of the quality and freshness of the work.
 I then went on to study some of his work and find out just how important the work was.
If he had lived he may have rivalled Turner. He was a traveller and went to take the light in France and was ahead of the impressionists, but had a realism that they could never achieve.
I marvelled at the simple brush strokes that created a sail or a buoy. 
How this man understood light and tone and colour, and in age without the things we take for granted.
He died so young but not before he had befriended some of the most important artists in France and exhibited there himself.

The art savagery that has taken place here at Sudley house is alarming.
It is ruined by the very people who are supposed to be protecting our heritage. Our museums.
And where is my Bonnington?
Now all I have, is a 6 by 4 postcard to remind me of the most wonderful little painting I have had the pleasure to sight.

Its probably in store they will say...well get it back and the rest of the stuff that have been taken out. Its vandalism on a institutional scale.




http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/herculaneum-pottery-held-by-liverpool.html



Tuesday 30 June 2009

Herculaneum Pottery held by Liverpool Museums to be put in Permenant Storage


Monday, 29 June 2009

David Fleming Srikes Again, will someone put him out of our misery.
MARITIME DISASTER.
This is no storm in a teacup. It is another peice of our culture at stake.
3000 members of The Northern Ceramics Society are up in arms at the proposals to put the collection of Liverpool Pottery, currently, in the Maritime Museum at the Albert Dock in permanent storage.
Yes ....permanent storage we all know what that means. Worse still it is to make way for…. a café, yes a café, this is another misguided attempt to rob us Liverpudlian's of our heritage and blame us for the slave trade by the Fuzzy Felt knob at NML Dr David Fleming.
http://www.northernceramicsociety.org/few people have said that I have been a bit hard on David "Fuzzy Felt" Fleming to which I am of the opinion that I have not been hard enough, he is a walking disaster a nightmare a public relations car crash. I forgot more about Liverepools Culture last week than he will ever know.
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/search/label/David%20Fleming This man is single-handedly destroying my culture and turning Liverpool museums into something that resembles the "Wacky Warehouse" where kids run around all over the place with ice cream, screaming and shouting. The sort of place you don’t want to go to anymore. Sudley used to be great he ruined that. It is now called Sadly Art Gallery locally.I attended an excellent study day a decade ago about Liverpool pottery and this was linked in to the permanent exhibition in the Walker, which was the history of Liverpool Pottery.This was then moved out of the Walker and watered down to all those pots with ships on, and was sent to the Maritime Museum, that was bad enough but now to ditch this, is a absolute outrageous act of uneducated nonsense by someone who it has been said should not be running my museums because he is a dimwit. Yes a dimwit without education in the finer things in life, this little tin pot dictator understands is bums on seats.Cant someone put him out of our misery he is a carpet-bagging networker, a disaster wanting to make us all pay for the slave trade when it was nothing to do with me.The NCS were instrumental in bringing to the fore our heritage. Volunteers who have a passion for what they do, educated collectors, whose advise has been sought in building up the collections.Painstaking attention to detail, out on digs in all weathers, in their own time finding the original sites where kilns were, showing us our own heritage, our Georgian heritage, working with the museums under the previous director. And now the tin-pot Fleming does them in with a stroke of his pen, just like he did with the Friends of Liverpool Museums. How can you do this how can a stupid act of getting rid of something as important as our local pottery be replaced by chairs for a café. He hasn’t got a clue.The public bequeathed this whole collection and the public servants need to understand that they work for us not for themselves.“We can’t trust this guy” one elderly gentleman said talking about Fleming.A client of mine, a avid Liverpool collector said to me “He is a b*st*rd” such is the depth of ill feeling towards him.
Someone need to carry the coffe can for this, there is already five times the amount of Liverpool Pottery in storage as is on display at present.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum_Pottery Huge collections are on display in some of the top American museums and we wont have any.Along with Herculaneum whose factory was at Herculaneum Dock there was Gilbody, Pennington, Richard Chaffers and Co, Philip Christian and more. I want to know about this stuff it’s my history…. this nutter running my museums has to go he is a disaster.