Flaneur's fancy: Patrick Keiller at the Tate Britain

Robinson, the fictional character who, … starred if that is the right word, in the cult architectural movies London (1994), Robinson In Space (1997), and recently Robinson in Ruins (2010), is at the Tate Britain! Robinson's creator, Patrick Keiller is an acclaimed independent film maker who has been commissioned by the gallery to explore the 'Duveen Galleries' spatial and other possibilities', the aim being to highlight a continuum of ideas in art from historical to the present. This promises to be an interesting commission for architects and others with a spatial passion and a Flaneur's fancy. In his film London, Kieller dissected the capital city of Thatcher's Britain with surgical precision using an essay-film of plain, dead-pan imagery and witty narrative. The film profoundly affected architect's views of the city at the time and galvanized a generation to do something about it. At the time the film was being made I actually lived in one of the areas of the city that Robinson observed. Mundane things, such as the fronts of cheap shops that I had walked past in a blur, suddenly came into sharp focus, and were filled with potential. The exhibition runs until 14^th October 2012 at the Tate Britain.