Arts

Purling London specialises in designing luxury Chess sets and other games. TheLondonEconomic.com was invited to take a look out their critically acclaimed, contemporary Chess boards.  The boards are hand-manufactured against vivid colour, abstract art and theatrical illumination and really wouldn't look out of place in an art gallery. One thing is for sure, the boards are art and would make a wonderful gift for chess enthusiasts and art collectors alike.  Perhaps the type of present for the person who has everything....

The West End is full of timeless shows, but very few can claim to get more relevant. George Orwell’s 1984 stands alone in that regard, foretelling geo-political events and socio-economic attitudes towards them with increasing accuracy as the years pass. The last time I saw the show it was Edward Snowden’s surveillance disclosures and the obvious Big Brother implications of NSA and GCHQ data leaks, but this time my mind just unravelled with current connotational events. The aftermath of the...

Stunning photos of the sun aligning with the east-west streets of Manhattan have emerged in a rare summer solstice event in New York. The so-called 'Manhattanhenge', named after Stonehenge in Salisbury, where thousands gather to watch the sunrise each year on the summer solstice, happens at opposite ends of the summer solstice and brings traffic to a standstill as people capture rare shots of the alignment. Social media also came to light following the event, with thousands of incredible snaps emerging from the streets....

Renowned micro-sculptor Willard Wigan was left with a headache and a sore throat after he inhaled part of his new masterpiece. Alice, of Lewis Carroll’s seminal children’s tale ‘Alice In Wonderland’, found herself tumbling down a different sort of rabbit hole as the miniature figure was inhaled by her creator. Willard had been working on the scene, a representation of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party placed in the eye of a needle, when an intake of breath sent the guest...

Far be it from me to associate a political vacuum and conniving self-promotion with current members of The Conservative party, but there's something very ‘Brexit’ about Shakespeare’s Richard III. The infamous Gloucester returns to stage at the Almeida Theatre portrayed by Ralph Fiennes who encapsulates every dirty trick, selfish move and each wry smile of the scheming Duke with panache as he rapes, murders and manoeuvres his way to the throne. The old King wouldn’t look at all out of...

A time lapse of the new Tate Modern building has been released as it opens its doors to the public today. The 'Switch House' is a new 10-story building attached to the Gilbert Scott Bankside power station and has been built to accomodate an influx of visitors and showcase contemporary art. Designed by the Basel-based duo of Herzog and de Meuron, the £230 million building has added 60 per cent more space, shows 800 works by 300 artists from 50 countries. Watch a time...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor World famous guerrilla artists Banksy had struck again, this time he left a piece of art work on the wall of primary school in Bristol. It appears he placed his new work there as a "present" after the school names a house after the elusive artist. Teachers and pupils arrived back from half-term with the surprise and a letter saying "it's always easier to get forgiveness than permission". Head teacher Geoff Mason intends to preserve the...

Duncan James, an art director at a London based advertising agency, is spending a year capturing the lives of Mods and Mod culture.

There is a term in banking circles called the “magic roundabout”, which is when a taxi drives you home from work at 7am, waits for you while you shower and change and then takes you back to the office. It’s every intern’s nightmare. In a job where 100 hour weeks are the norm, working shifts back-to-back is a punishing undertaking. But it is also deemed necessary. As star pupils from top universities vie for full-time positions at the city’s investment...