Tag Archives: Barbican

Jan 30 2026
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Barbican

Wednesday 28th January 2026, 11.15am (day 5,270)

Barbican estate, 28/1/26

I like the Barbican estate in the City of London, particularly on a sunny and pleasant day. If someone were to offer me the chance to live anywhere in London (it’ll never happen) I would choose here, it just seems like a fairly peaceful and attractive spot despite, or perhaps because of, all the brutalism. It’s interesting to look at a map of modern London and trace the outline of the old medieval, walled city: many of the place names make it clear what used to be there — Moorgate, Smithfield, Barbican.

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Oct 29 2024
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Art and architecture, Daily Post, Interior

Deep in the Barbican

Monday 28th October 2024, 1.30pm (day 4,813)

Deep in the Barbican, 28/10/24

In the brilliant 1980s TV series Edge of Darkness (which I really must watch again some time), there is a scene in which the hero evades his pursuers by deliberately running into the Barbican Centre. It’s an in-joke, but it works: forty years on this is still a rather difficult building complex to find one’s way around. Even as I took this shot there were two young American tourist types stood to my right, debating just which of the concrete ramps and overpasses and underpasses they needed to try next. But what the hell — I still like the place, both to visit and to photograph, and it does give good statuary.

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Jun 24 2018
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Daily Post, Interior

Barbican Gallery

Friday 22nd June 2018, 3.50pm (day 2,493)

Barbican gallery, 22/6/18

My week’s work is done — time for the weekend, which started when Clare arrived to join me in London in the afternoon and I took her to see this exhibition in the Barbican. I saw one of the world’s most famous photos today — Migrant Mother — you’ll know it when you see it. But we weren’t allowed to take photos of that nor the other photos from Dorothea Lange who documented the Great Depression in the USA and the internment of Japanese-Americans in WW2, many photos from these collections were shown today and very interesting it was too.

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Jun 20 2018
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Not my art

Tuesday 19th June 2018, 10.30am (day 2,490)

Barbican Banksy, 19/6/18

I’m sure, however, that Banksy would approve of someone else reusing his artwork in a project of their own: just as here he has used someone else’s in his. Or so it appears. I like Banksy — but then again, who wouldn’t.

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Jul 02 2017
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Daily Post, Interior

Into the Unknown

Saturday 1st July 2017, 1.20pm (day 2,137)

Into the Unknown, 1/7/17

The Saturday afternoon of this weekend in London was spent at the Barbican centre, where at the moment, among other things, there is a superb exhibition of sci-fi paraphernalia, films, art and so on. If you are a geek and are anywhere near London, you really do have to go and see this — John Hurt’s space suit from Alien, Leonard Nimoy’s from Star Trek The Motion Picture (Spock’s space suit!!), the original screenplay from 2001, storyboards from many movies including Dune and Star Wars… and those were just my personal highlights. Go! I don’t know what movie these two were enjoying but I like the image, the face, the shadows.

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Mar 23 2016
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Resident of the Barbican estate

Wednesday 23rd March 2016, 11.40am (day 1,672)

The Barbican estate is home to about 4,000 people and is a huge complex in the City of London. When it was finished in the 1970s it was often decried as a brutalist architectural monstrosity. Actually I kind of liked it, I bet it’s a pretty decent place to live, with a lake and garden within its walls and generally a rather peaceful feel. Something tells me the guy seen here has been there for a lot of the last forty years.

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