Thursday, June 18, 2009


After a kipper at the Caledonian Club with my brilliant accountant I had a look at the memorial in Westminster Abbey which we have been altering slightly. It looks much better now. I gazed at it with no dismay and liked the ghostly frame as if of whispered words (which potent beings at the Abbey would have preferred dark and more assertive). Then along Victoria Street past Artillery Mansions where sixty years ago I visited my father in his then poky office, to Westminster Cathedral for a glimpse of the Cardinal Newman mosaic and the marble Gerontius panel as well as the black hole for which I should have already provided a design for St David. I work at it but as yet am not satisfied which is artistspeak for being stuck.


P.S. I still can't reconcile myself to the idea of paying to visit a church. Westminster Cathedral is free but the Abbey charges a lot. If you want to see the memorial piece without paying for an Abbey visit go through the arch at the west side of the building into Dean's Yard where another arch leads into the cloister itself. A man in a red gown will admit you if you say you are visiting the Conflict Memorial specifically. The memorial is on the right hand side about twenty yards along.

4 comments:

Richard said...

Hi.

I like this.

- I once found a book of your art etc and I was interested and I wrote this poem after studying it it (I think that your Humument is like some of the work in it - I just looked now and they seem closest):

Looking At Tom Phillips

Suspended in mid strange, the words bend around like a funny old
wire-wheeled auto in a photograph, and thus he say:

“This undercoat of sound supports my art:
The hidden traces of my radio days,
A life time’s cricket and a thousand plays.”

Skulls and men and hats and things not right,
and houses flimsy as the brown.

These circular squares. What began
has changed, does wind.

There is a hiddenness that leads us to x —
or some great event,

like a pencil.


Richard Taylor

Anonymous said...

Sad reflection of the times when you have to pay to go into a religious building. Have many fond memories of going to the Abbey with my school, Greycoat Hospital. Always filled me with awe. Just love the atmosphere in old cathedrals and churches

Anonymous said...

I Just love the atmosphere in old cathedrals and churches.



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Andrew
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Richard said...

I do too but I haven't been inside a church for years. But I love the idea of huge cathedrals and those beautiful ones I have seen pictures of in Europe - I am in NZ.

Magestic.