Hull: City of Culture

I need a kind of segue to transition from Tenerife to Hull and I’ve found it: Tenerife is in the Canary Islands…  so is Lanzarote…. which sounds like Lorenzetti… and his exhibition is now being displayed in Hull City of Culture 2017…  Okay, it’s a terrible link but it amused me.

We’ve done a lot of travelling around the world and most of my images reflect that.  And who would have thought that, having seen the late Gothic / early Renaissance paintings by Cimabue, Giotto and Lorenzetti in Florence, Siena, Rome and London that we would be seeing them here in Hull UK in our own Ferens Art Gallery.  As a lover of Renaissance art and architecture it was wonderful to see these 700 year old masterpieces so close to home.

Hopefully, photographs of Hull will feature more in these posts this year whilst the focus of its City of Culture status continues to remind me that there is plenty to capture with my camera right on my own doorstep. This was a brief visit into Queen Victoria Square but I was inspired to grab some photos whilst there.

Walking out of the Ferens Gallery the evening sun was playing on the buildings in Queen Victoria Square, including the magnificent Yorkshire Penny Bank building completed in 1901 but now, as you can see, a coffee shop.

A little to the left is the Maritime Museum, housing the exhibits of the trading, whaling and fishing heritage of the city. Originally it was the headquarters of the Hull Dock company, built in 1872 and, hard to imagine, but at that time would have been surrounded by now filled-in docks full of sailing ships.

Apart from seeing the Lorenzetti exhibition the other reason to be in the square was to see the controversial Blade. Controversial because the argument is: ‘is it art?’ And that question derives from the fact that this is a manufactured massive 75 metre long single blade from a marine wind turbine. It’s a superfluous argument – it is a valid display, a monument for Hull representing the massive investment of Siemens and the start of a major industry and resulting employment for the people of Hull. In that sense it is cultural – made in Hull, by Hull people – “the world’s largest, handmade fibre glass component cast as a single element” taken from an industrial and eventually functional environment and placed in a monumental setting – yes, it classes as art.

But like it or not, when you first see it in its setting its size is stunning making one realise just how enormous those turbines at sea must be.

Memo to self: get into Hull – with camera!