This month Covent Garden’s Aram Gallery brings together a pick and mix cross section of the design world’s fascination with 3D printing. The umbrella term for Rapid Prototyping or Additive Manufacturing, 3D printing allows designers to use strands of, typically, polyamide or nylon in place of ink to create 3D objects based on a computer drawn image.
The nascent print form was adopted for producing prototypes but is now being explored as a means to an end. The Send to Print / Print to Send exhibition unites designers and studios both emerging and established to showcase not only the enduring significance of this stage in the design process, but also the potential of this technology.
Highlights include Chau Har Lee’s exquisite heels – a departure from more conventional footwear, but nonetheless visually arresting – modern tapestries by Chloe McCormich and Nicholas O’Donnell-Hoare and Assa Ashuach’s textual homeware. These designers are not only experts in their fields, but dare to dabble with 3D printing to take their designs to the next level.
Chau Har Lee comments: “My knowledge of traditional shoemaking helps me know how and where I can break boundaries. Importantly, although my most conceptual designs are showpieces, they are still built to adorn the foot.”
Perhaps Chloë McCormick sums it up best, though, when she says, “the intention of Warped Tapestry was not to work against new technologies but to find a balance where they would work with each other.”
Send to Print / Print to Send is at The Aram Gallery, 110 Drury Lane, London WC2B 5SG until 25th February. thearamgallery.org
Assa Ashuach, Twist Loop Light
Chloë McCormick Warped Tapestry, 2010
Chloë McCormick and Nicholas O’Donnell-Hoare, Tapestry Spectacle, 2011
(Top) Chau Har Lee, Rapid Form Shoe, 2009
Images courtesy of The Aram Gallery and Shira Klasmer.
Herbivores, look away. Slabs of meat have never been more de rigueur and leading the pack is feted burger joint MEATliquor.
Chef Yianni Papoutsis, head of the operation, has made a name for himself as a street food pioneer thanks to Meatwagon, a burger van responsible for guerilla “Meatings” in London car parks, industrial estates and, more recently, festivals and the subsequent #Meateasy pop-up in a derelict Italian restaurant above an abandoned pub in New Cross.
Together with Scott Collins, the liquor in MEATliquor, Papoutsis has arguably revolutionised the West End identikit dining scene with cool design, jam jar cocktails and greasy Dead Hippie burgers and onion rings.
As Collins says, “The MEATWAGON has come a long way since its small beginnings in a vandalised van in a South London car park…We have taken #Meateasy to the next level, bringing meat dining to London’s West End at New Cross prices.”
Brixton, and Market Row in particular, is quite the foodie destination thanks to the likes of Franca Manca and Rosie’s. But there’s a new kid on the block that’s luring the after-hours crowd. Seven at Brixton is an eclectic venue offering art, board games, pintxos and cocktails.
Paying homage to its former life as a luggage shop, suitcases take the place of shelves in the bar and the cocktail menus are printed on brown luggage tags. At £5 a pop cocktails are purse-friendly and the in-house creations are inventive; try the Electric Avenue – marmalade, apple vodka and pomegranate juice, served in a sherbet-dipped martini glass. Failing that, the classics are just as delicious – an Old Fashioned is an ideal winter warmer. The food, seemingly typical tapas fare, is a similar mix to that of the cocktails. Expect the classics done well alongside inventive, moreish little dishes like sherry-soaked figs on bruschetta.
Past a church pew and up a storey via the crooked staircase artists have been invited to produce temporary installations in each of the rooms, which will be changed every three months. Sam Cook and Joe Crowdy’s mounted paper sculpture is accompanied by A3 sheets of ‘cut-around’ instructions; these lie waiting on the makeshift road sign table for eager fans to recreate their triangular work.
In another room Adam Hemuss’ scribblings creep up the walls and onto the ceiling. Sitting up here is like taking part in a live installation; don’t be put off if half-way through your conversation an art enthusiast pops up next to you to observe the works.
Seven at Brixton is open to catch the breakfast crowd from 8am but it closes relatively early for a cocktail bar (6pm Mon-Wed, 10pm Thurs-Sat and 5pm on Sundays). The address itself surely insinuates the best time to visit. Meet you there at 7pm.
Seven at Brixton is at 7 Market Row, Brixton SW9 8LB
Forget trawling the internet for Christmas presents, shopping around a market is far more de rigueur. Circus, the brainchild of the House of Hackney founders, promises lashings of festive spirit and unique gifts.
For five days, cherry-picked labels and creatives are setting up concept stalls selling their wares. Expect to find such brands as Les Chiffoniers, Lost Property of London, Olivia von Halle (top image), Paper London, Fred Butler and, of course, House of Hackney. Alongside fashion and homeware stands, as well as some more unconventional offerings from Polly Morgan, there will be a Christmas fair selling trees, roasted chestnuts and gift wrapping.
East London gem Lily Vanilli will be on hand selling Christmas hampers as festive foodie presents and her bakery and cider stand will serve up warming snacks for weary shoppers. Taking place in a disused power station in Shoreditch, the vibe is sure to unite the best of hip Shoreditch creativity and traditional Christmas fare.
Fred Butler
House of Hackney
Circus 11 takes place from 14th until 18th December (10am-8pm daily) at The Tramshed, Shoreditch circus11.com houseofhackney.com
If you’ve found yourself on the corner of Bethnal Green Road and Shoreditch High Street recently you will have undoubtedly noticed that a space which has been uninhabited for the past four decades has new residents. A cluster of shipment containers have been erected to form the world’s first ‘pop-up mall’.
Founded by Boxfresh’s Roger Wade, whose ethos is all about the ‘brand experience’ rather than sales, the 60 containers house retail outlets with a streetwear slant. Up-and-coming designers like OnePiece and Playful Promises vie for attention amongst established brands Evisu, CalvinKlein, Nike and Phaidon.
Diesel has launched its Fifty Five DSL line here and, alongside such nosh outlets as Foxcroft & Ginger, Frae frozen yoghurt and Hop-Nano, charities Amnesty International and Art Against Knives have spaces on the first floor selling artworks and collaborative designs by such East London-based designers as Lucy Jay and Tracey Emin. Welcome to the anti-high street.
Boxpark opens on Saturday 3rd December boxpark.co.uk
Where can you see Margot Bowman, Andy Warhol, Sarah Mower, Cecil Beaton and Gary Card jostling alongside illustrators such as David Downton,René Gruau and François Berthoud? The answer is Rupert Sanderson’s Upstairs studio.
On Saturday 17th December the studio has invited the Fashion Illustration Galleryto put on a one-day-only Christmas art fair. Prints, original illustrations, books, magazines, t-shirts and badges by some of illustration’s greats are sure to make as much a stunning makeshift exhibition as spectacular Christmas presents for loved ones with a discerning eye.
When Kathryn Bigelow won a bevy of awards including two Oscars for her 2008 film Hurt Locker she made history as the first woman to ever be named best director. That said, three years on the fact remains that women are still marginalised, not to mention underrepresented and oversexualised in cinema.
UnderWire plans to change that. As the UK’s only short film festival dedicated to showcasing women’s work it already has the support of such seminal female creatives as Laura Mulvey, author of Visual and Other Pleasures, Fetishism and Curioisity, journalist Samira Ahmed and Nira Park, producer of Scott Pilgrim v the World and Attack the Block. Established by Gabriella Apicella and Gemma Mitchell in 2010, co-directors of UnderWire 2011 Mitchell and Helen Jack hope to recognise women’s talents through awards, open up the dialogue about women in film and, ultimately, readdress the gender balance within the UK industry.
Comes But Once a Year, dir Justine Barker
(Top) Prohyb, dir Katarina Complova
UnderWire 2011 is at Shortwave cinema and Bermondsey Square Hotel from 23rd – 26th November 2011. See the full programme here
Since its introduction in 1955 the Marlboro flip-top cigarette box has been appropriated by logos and advertising. Similarly CDs, books and magazines have provided us with a whole host of iconic imagery with which we have forged our cultural identities. But in an increasingly digitalised age, where kindles and iPads have overtaken the broad industry that is print media, how will the individual define him or herself?
The new show at Shoreditch’s PayneShurvell gallery, entitled Your Garden is Looking a Mess Could You Please Tidy it Up, begs some rather pertinent questions.
Taking the Marlboro flip-top cigarette box as a springboard, a number of big name artists and recent graduates explore the questions surrounding print versus digital, mass communication and its visual media. Curated by artist Andrew Curtis, the artists exhibiting include: Peter Blake (the proceeds of whose work will be donated to the charity Kids Company), Sian Pile, Rupert Ackroyd, Dick Jewell, Gerard Hemsworth, Sarah Hardacre, Dermot O’Brien and Bruce McLean.
Until 17th December 2011 at PayneShurvell, 16 Hewett Street, London EC2A 3NN
Showing works from 1955-1962 this month the Mayor Gallery takes a look at two of the 20th century’s most fascinating female artists. On the surface their works seem to have little to do with one another, bar their temporal origin, but both are clearly marked by a preoccupation with form.
The Bell Jar‘s author Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) is lesser known, although none the less celebrated, as an artist. Her 44 pen and ink drawings and Brasilia poem on display, lent to the gallery by Plath’s daughter Frieda Hughes, showcase her observations from her time spent in Europe. Her carefully considered lines betray a tender and inquisitive concern with design.
Meanwhile Italian-born Dadamaino, real name Eduarda Maino (1935-2004), found fame as one of the proponents of the pan-European Zero Group, of which Yves Klein was a member. Albeit less renowned than Plath, her formulaic monochrome works present the viewer with a pleasure in graphic form and line. Cutting large shapes in canvases, the wall upon which each work is hung becomes just as much a part of the artwork as the slither of canvas she leaves untouched.
Until 17th December 2011 at Mayor Gallery, 22A Cork Street, London W1S 3NA
Drawings by Sylvia Plath, copyright Frieda Hughes. All images courtesy of the Mayor Gallery.
Terry Richardson’s images are conventionally imbued with a heavy dollop of sex and fun so it is refreshing to see him turn his lens to a more sober topic: that of his parents’ divorce. “My parents split up when I was four. It feels good for me to have them back together again, even if it’s in a gallery and only for a little while. It’s something I’m doing for me and in a way, for them.” -Terry Richardson, 2011
Having launched his two-volume publication MOM DAD at cult Paris store Colette, this month sees the accompanying exhibition head to New York’s Half Gallery.
His father Bob Richardson was a renowned fashion photographer while his mother Annie, currently living in Ojai, California, is a former Copacabana dancer and stylist. Their early divorce is irrelevant in Richardson’s NYC exhibition: hung side by side their portraits, as well as written works relating to his parents, see them reunited. Moving yet funny, in bringing his mom and dad back together Richardson attempts to reconcile not only his parents’ marriage, but his own origins and understanding of self.
Identifying a comfortable and trendy dog cloth is turning out to be difficult, as more and more cute dog clothes are venturing in the global market on regular basis.
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