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Best of Contemporary Britain?
There are many things that contribute to making Britain great in the 21st Century, and it is often hard to see them from the inside.
Listed below are links to some of the things that Brit Camp members consider the best we have to offer.
At the moment it is rather English and London-centric but I'm sure this will change once the other camp members from outside London have their contribution. At present the choices only reflect my (Alan's) opinions.
Visual Art
The Arts Council of England, Scottish Arts Council, Arts Council of Wales were formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies. They are the leading national organisations for the funding, development and promotion of the arts in Britain. Most of the Councils' funding comes from the Executive but they also distribute National Lottery funds. This investment has helped to transform the building stock of arts organisations and to create lots of additional high quality arts activity.
The Tate Gallery in the United Kingdom is a network of four galleries: Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool , Tate St Ives and Tate Modern, with a complementary website, Tate Online. The Tate also organises The Turner Prize, an annual prize given to a British visual artist under 50. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised and often, most controversial art award.
The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art, opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985 in order to show his sizeable (and changing) collection to the public. The gallery has been a major influence on art in Britain since its opening. It has also had a history of media controversy, which it has courted, and has had extremes of critical reaction. Many artists shown at the gallery are unknown not only to the general public but also to the commercial art world. Showing at the gallery has provided a springboard to launch the careers of many, especially the Young British Artists or YBAs, during the 1990's.
The Royal Academy was formed in 1768. It does not receive financial support from the state or crown. One of its principal sources of revenue is hosting temporary public art exhibitions. The Academy also hosts an annual Royal Academy summer exhibition of new art.
Banksy is a prolific graffiti artist, whose artwork has appeared throughout London and other locations around the world.
Sir Peter Blake is a pop artist, best known for his design of the sleeve for The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Beryl Cook OBE is an artist producing flamboyant depictions of large, often scantily-dressed women with a lust for life. She records human frailties and the absurdities of human behaviour with her own unique vision.
Chis Drury is a landscape artist who walks and works in the wild landscapes of the world. He has developed an impressive and personal repertoire of sculptural responses to the natural environment.
Lucian Freud, OM, CH is a painter and printmaker. Born in Berlin, grandson of Sigmund and brother to Clement. His paintings are often associated with surrealism and depict people and plants in unusual juxtapositions.
Andy Goldsworthy is an artist and photographer, producing land art situated in natural settings, using natural and found objects to create temporary pieces of work.
Richard Hamilton is a painter and collage artist, and considered by some to be the originator of Pop Art and was associated with the 1960s Pop Music scene.
David Hockney, CH is an English artist, based in California. An important contributor to the British Pop Art of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.
Anish Kapoor is a sculptor. Born in Bombay, he moved to the Uk in 1972. His pieces are frequently simple, curved forms, usually monochromatic and brightly coloured. Most often, the intention is to engage the viewer, evoking mystery through the works' dark cavities, awe through their size and simple beauty, tactility through their inviting surfaces and fascination through their reflective facades
Abigail Lane is an artist whose work is based on late Victorian displays such as séances, circus imagery and magic shows. In October 2003, with Bob Pain and Brigitte Stepputtis, she launched a design company called Showroom Dummies.
Richard Long is a sculptor, photographer and painter, producing works based around walks that he has made, which often consist of photographs or maps of the landscape he has walked over.
Bridget Riley CH CBE is a painter, one of the foremost proponents of op art, art exploiting the fallibility of the human eye.
Literature
British Arts Council searchable database containing up-to-date profiles of some of the UK and Commonwealth's most important living writers.
Iain Banks is a Scottish writer who tends to alternate between writing science fiction and literary fiction novels, with a strong awareness of left-wing history showing in his writing.
John le Carré is an English writer of espionage novels. Nearly all of his novels fall in the spy-thriller genre, with a particular emphasis on the Cold War.
Nick Hornby is an English novelist and essayist who, in his work, frequently touches upon sports, music, and the aimless and obsessive personalities of his main characters.
Will Self is an English novelist, reviewer and columnist, known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes.
Michael Marshall Smith is a British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer, who writes in a dark-humour street cyberpunk style, all his books being futuristic action-adventures. His dark view over the future is spiced with personal insights and does not copy the mainstream of known cyberpunk styles.
Theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre in London, or sometimes more specifically for shows staged in the large theatres of London's "Theatreland". Some of these theatres have a long history.
Believe it or not there is good theatre to be seen outside of London, often termed Regional Theatre.
There is, of course, also Fringe Theatre found in Edinburgh, London and Brighton.
A Guardian special report about the current movers and shakers in British Theatre.
Museums
The British Museum is one of the world's largest and most important museums of human history and culture. It has outstanding collections that cover world cultures from Prehistory to the present day.
The Natural History Museum is home to life and earth science collections comprising some 70 million items. The museum is renowned for its exhibition of dinosaur skeletons, particularly the large Diplodocus cast which dominates the entrance.
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) specialises in applied and decorative arts. The museum has a huge range of collections of European, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Islamic decorative arts.
Architecture
The two most prominent contributors to modern British architecture are Lord Richard Rogers and Lord Norman Foster. Rogers' iconic London buildings are probably the Lloyd's Building and the Millennium Dome, while Foster created the Swiss Re Building (nicknamed The Gherkin) and the Greater London Authority H.Q.
London is home to many of the world's most famous buildings and landmarks, and is a city of architectural contrasts. Enduring classics sit alongside contemporary icons. London boasts outstanding buildings and monuments from most major architectural movements of the last 1,000 years. Modern additions of note are the London Eye, Canada Square, Minster Court, and Wembley Stadium. There are also impressive plans for the 2012 London Olympics.
Design
Good collection of British web designers and developers, Culture Lab-UK, Design Nation, Design Skills Advisory Panel
Television and Film
Coming Soon
Music
Coming Soon