Greenwich landmark to be turned into living landscape painting for international art festival

A giant picture frame will be set up in the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College turning the Greenwich landmark into a living landscape painting.

The work, complete with real cows, is part of this year’s Greenwich + Docklands International Festival.

Artistic Director Bradley Hemmings worked with the Belgian artists behind it in 2013 when they created a life sized model of a sperm whale on the banks of the Thames.

He said: “They play around with making people look and see things they know quite well differently so we made people believe for a while that there was a beached sperm whale in Greenwich.

“This one is very different, they are based in Antwerp the home of all those 17th century still lives and they are creating an supersized gilt frame which stands about shoulder height which provides the enclosure for this idyllic bucolic scene.

“It will be framed as well by the Wren buildings at the Old Royal Naval College and then you look across the river and see Canary Wharf so it’s sort of like a playful intervention and thinks about the way we look at art, thinks about the way we look at nature, you can sit on the frame and muse.”

The festival, which runs from June 21 to July 6 on both sides of the river, includes more than 130 performances.

It will open and close with separate performances of Cristal Palace by French performers Transe Express who will transform parts of Woolwich and the Royal Albert Dock into an outdoor ballroom lit up by a giant 3.5 tons chandelier made up of 1,500 light bulbs.

Mr Hemmings said the festival, which was set up in 1996, was “preoccupied with bringing people together in a public space”.

He said: “The thing that unites all of it is public space and thinking about public space”.