JOIN THE LONDON ARTS CAFE

London Arts Cafe no longer exists and the information included here is only for interest.

The London Arts Café is a forum for viewing, expressing and discovering all forms of contemporary urban art. Its aim is to highlight urban artistic developments in the capital, in the United Kingdom and all over the world. Its mission is to encourage a reflection on cities through urban art. (read more about it)
Your membership (£20 individuals, £25 joint, £40 organisations) entitles you to:

•  receive Art and Cities, the London Arts Cafe magazine. Recent issues have included: 'Arts and Regeneration' (over two issues, one dealing with the built environment, the other with people), '11th September' (with contributions from American artists), 'Cities of Hell, Cities of Happiness', and an illustrated catalogue of 'Taking on London', the December 2004 show of our 'Artists' Residencies.'
•  attend London Arts Cafe activities free of charge or at reduced rates.
•  submit work to our programme of exhibitions.
•  your membership will support the London Arts Cafe initiatives such as 'Artists' Residencies'.

Programme 2007 July-Sept

Activities ended in December 2007 and the charitable company was dissolved in Nov/Dec 2008. The promised 2007 July-Sept programme never made it to the web site, though we had some closing activities

Events not to miss include the City People Show (and its opening).

Below you can see what you missed in the first half of 2006

ROOTS TO RECKONING
The photography of Armet Francis, Neil Kenlock and Charlie Phillips
Museum of London, Wednesday 15 Feb - 4.45 pm
Mike Seaborne, the curator of this major exhibition and Curator of Historic Photographs at the Museum of London, will lead a tour of this exhibition which bears witness to the story of London's black communities from the 1960s to today. See images of iconic events from Black Panther demonstrations to Bob Marley's visits to Britain. Admire portraits of international stars, such as Muhammad Ali and Peter Tosh alongside scenes of everyday life in London, from the streets of Brixton to the pubs of Notting Hill.
£3 to members, £5 to non members.

WHY IS LONDON THE WAY IT IS?
The Gallery, 77 Cowcross St, London EC!
Thursday 23 March, 6.00pm
Reception 6.00pm followed by a brief AGM at 6.30
After the AGM, Peter Murray, Chairman of Wordsearch, specialists in architectural communications, Director of the London Architecture Biennale and Exhibitions Director of New London Architecture (NLA) will give an illustrated talk.
His position is that we must understand the past in order to plan and build appropriately for the future. Since the early days of the City of London, planning has been driven by commerce, thus London is a city of accretion rather tha of grand plans. The London Plan will work because it is drawn upon the palimpsest of previous builders. Events like the 'cow drive' at the London Architecture Biennale are organised to reinforce the fact that the streets of Clerkenwell are the way they are because of the drovers who came down from the north for 800 years.
Free to members and their friends, but please book.

WAPPING AND THE WAPPING PROJECT
Wapping Underground Station Saturday 22 April 2.00 pm

The Wapping Project, a former hydraulic power station in E1, has been transformed into a £4 million arts centre by Jules Wright, a leading theatre director, arts practioner and thinker. Our afternoon starts with an exploration of Wapping, passing warehouses, pubs and churches, finishing at the Project, where we will view the current exhibition. Members £3. Non-members £5

VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE WALK
Start from the Portico, St Paul's Church Covent Garden, Saturday 20 May 10.30 am
The distinguished architectural historian John Newman, former Deputy Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, who worked with Pevsner and has recently completed several new volumes of The Buildings of England has very kindly consented to take us on a Victorian Architecture walk around Covent Garden.
The area retains an exceptional array of Victorian buildings in many styles with excellent examples of characteristic building types; clubhouses, and parsonages, schools and stained glass workshops, not to mention Covent Garden Market and Theatre, the jewels in the crown. Today one can still sense the varied and vibrat character which this part of central London must have had in mid-Victorian times, thanks in no small part to the campaign in the early 1970s to preserve it from wholesale redevelopment.
Members £3. Non-members £5

STUDIO VISITS - MICHAEL HEINDORFF & SARAH MEDWAY
The Juggler cafe, 5 Hoxton Market, N1. Saturday 3 June - 12.00 noon.
Michael Heindorff is an artist with a long-standing interest in cities as a subject for drawing. In 2001 the London Arts Cafe helped secure him a residency in the City of London which enabled him to make a series of panoramas from inside the top floors of church steeples and corporate tower blocks. The body of work was exhibited at the Guildhall Art Gallery in 2002. In 2004 a set of his work became the first solo online show on this site.
Sarah Medway is an outstanding colourist who portrays an intimate understanding of paint, using both palette and brush to create a surface of depth and texture. She has exhibited widely throughout the UK, in the USA, Germany, Italy and Hong Kong. Her work features in both private and corporate collections including Linklaters & Alliance.
Members only. £3. Book early as places are limited.

 London Arts Café members with artist Tim Hyman (in blue shirt) on a studio visit ©Peter Marshall, 2002

SATIRICAL LONDON
Museum of London. Tuesday 11 July 11.00 am
Mark Bills, Exhibition Curator and Curator of Paintings, Prints and Drawings at the Museum of London will lead a tour of this exhibition which imaginatively explores over 300 years of the visual humour of London. The development of the satirical print trade in London is examined in the display which in cludes a reconstruction of Mrs Humphrey's famous print shop in St James's.
London provided more than just a backdrop for satire's human comedy; its areas and their associations were as familiar to its audience as the city gent or the chimney sweep. Just as satire mocked the strata of society, it also created a satirical topography of the city. Dangerous streets, fashionable haunts and the marginal areas of entertainment where wealth and poverty collieded were depicted by satirists who provided a comic and moral map of London.
Members £3. Non-members £5

2005 MEMBERS EXHIBITION
Café life

Café Life as seen by members of London Arts Café:

Paul Baldesare • Caroline Bray & Myles Wickham • Janet Brooke • Mark Cazalet
Townly Cooke • Nelly Dimitranova • Martin Fidler • Chris Francis • Fion Gunn
Yiannis Hayiannis • Michael Heindorff • Chris Hill • Mary King • Judith King
Sophie Levi • Peter Marshall • Camilla Newbegin • Jiro Osuga
Imogen Perkin • Virginia Powell • Hilary Rosen • Kay Sexton • Brian Yale

The Exhibition at 'The Juggler', Hoxton Market, N1 from 3-28 October, 2005
went well, and a number of pictures were sold. You can still see work from this
show on-line.
The exhibition was accompanied by a 16 page illustrated catalogue, still available.

Previous exhibitions online:

CITIES OF WALLS, CITIES OF PEOPLE
MICHAEL HEINDORFF

PAST EVENTS
Photographs of a number of past events are on various web sites, including Peter Marshall's 'My London Diary'.
These include pictures from the following 2005 events:
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE ARTIST: Tour of Tom Phillips’s Peckham studios
EXTRAORDINARY GARDENS: Guided London Private Gardens tour
URBAN PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP (LIMEHOUSE): Photographing the urban landscape - Peter Marshall
RELIGIOUS QUARTER: Southall, Middlesex

LONDON NOW
CITY OF HEAVEN CITY OF HELL

More on the show.