To show you I didn’t spend all my recent trip with my head in a book, I’m posting a few photos of Edinburgh including some sculptures in and around the Dean Gallery. I’d been to the Dean and the Gallery of Modern Art before (which explains why The Water’s Edge has some scenes there) and was looking forward to reacquainting myself with its distinctive style and atmosphere, especially the fantastic Vulcan who stands two stories high and is surmounted by an intricate ceiling by the same artist.
A lot of modern art leaves me cold, as does most science fiction, and so it’s a bit of a surprise to like this, but I do.
No photos were allowed in the gallery, but in the grounds I stumbled upon this Master of the Universe, thought to represent Isaac Newton, a version of which is also outside the British Library in London.
The Dean Gallery stands next to a cemetery where I made a point of seeking out the grave of David Octavius Hill. The bust is the work of his wife, Amelia Paton, who is thought to have studied in Rome in the mid 19th Century, and so the classical style is to be expected. To me it conveys not just Hill’s character as described in the inscription but also something of the scuptor’s fortitude in working to create a permanent memorial to her husband.
Ali Bacon / Books and Other Things 