The Mayor’s Thames Festival undergoes an exciting transformation this year, staging a 10-day celebration of the river through inspiring events on the water and along its banks and bridges.
For the first time, the festival will extend beyond its usual concentrated weekend of riverside animations to a wider season of accessible public art commissions, performances and river-based activities, as well as initiatives to get people into boats and back onto the waters of London’s greatest natural asset. With the principal focus being between Lambeth Bridge and St Katharine Docks, events will also take place this year from the source of the Thames down to its mouth.
Major artists taking part include Richard Wilson (UK), Zatorski + Zatorski (UK), Layla Curtis (UK),Nikolaj Larsen (Denmark), Hew Locke (UK), and Doug Fishbone (USA).
Art highlights in the festival:
Doug Fishbone’s super Deluxe River Cruise (see bottom photo) will enrich your experience of the psycho-geography of London enabling you to see the city and its best-loved attractions as never before.
Illustrating his narration with hundreds of internet images, Fishbone presents a new form of story-telling that is both hilarious and unsettling, leading one critic to describe him as a “stand-up conceptual artist”. He employs the strategies of advertising, propaganda and stand-up comedy to explore the relativity of perception and understanding in surprising visual and narrative tapestries that recycle the contemporary media landscape in new and unexpected ways.
A riverside screenings of 125 short films by Danish artist, Nikolaj Larsen, celebrating the people who live and work on the river (throughout festival)
A large-scale shimmering sculpture, spelling out the word YES, moved daily to a new site along the river to support green space provision beside the Thames (throughout festival)
Giant riverside artworks by young people from London and across the globe celebrate the Rivers of the World. A Thames Festival Trust Commission (throughout festival)
Festival runs from 6 to 15 September 2013 London UK
Find Out More About Thames Festival Here
