Galleries - January 2010

Art & Science dynamic inventions By marvellous serendipity London has two intriguing shows investigating the interactions of art and tech- nology – The Age of Invention, within the Watercolour + Works on Paper Fair, this year at the Science Museum and from whose collections plus those of the National Railway Museum the exhibition is drawn (3 to 7 February), and On the Move: Visualising Action at the Estorick Collection (to 18 April), curated by Jonathan Miller, exploring the representation and analysis of movement in the visual arts and sciences. The Age of Invention is a treasure house of amazing visual imagery ranging from Charles Deane's Diving Demonstration at Portsmouth c1830 to a 6' long original watercolour of SS Great Eastern by Brunel's coll- aborator/builder John Scott Russell. Others that caught my eye were Charles Babbage's 1840 drawing of his 'Analytical Engine' and pencil designs for Donald Campbell's Bluebird, but the list could go on and on – moons and comets, bridges and lighthouses, planes and trains – not a single dud. The Estorick show is no less absorbing, taking as its starting point the obsession with speed and movement of the Futurist paintings in its collection. From here it moves both backwards and forwards historically, to Muybridge's pioneering photographic studies of human and animal locomotion (and his links to American painter Thomas Eakins) and the lesser known Edward Marey's super-imposed 'chrono- photographic' images of birds from the 1880s, to the development of stroboscopic photography in the 1930s and contemporary research into the perception of movement. And more besides . . . N U The National Fine Art & Antiques Fair , with over 100 exhibitors now the largest antiques fair in the country outside London, is appropriately enough returning this month (20-24th January) to the largest exhibition venue in the country, the NEC in Birmingham. Organised in association with LAPADA (the Association of Art & Antiques Dealers) within whose strict code of professional practice ART GA at the nationa Abbey Abraham Alston RBA, Daydreams’ at Tim Wharton Antiques. Stand B14 Bohemian engraved goblet circa 1835 (detail) at Mark & Sandra Diamond. Stand F10 Charles Deane's Diving Demonstration at Portsmouth c1830 from the Art of Invention at the Science Musuem