Even at 64 years old, the godmother of punk Patti Smith still manages to be a creative powerhouse.
Her exhibition Patti Smith: Camera Solo and the accompanying hardcover book show that although singing might have been the first thing to catapult her into the spotlight, the Chicago native’s talent for photography deserves equal recognition.
Smith, who describes retreating to photography like “a room of my own”, shot 70 images with a vintage Land 100 and Land 250 Polaroid camera.
Utilising black and white photography as a reflection of her career and life, she features self-portraits and objects such as the belongings of her father and close friend Robert Mapplethorpe.
Intimate and personal, the exhibit and publication showcase the undiscovered side of a cultural icon.
Juergen Teller’s inimitable and raw style of photography has been helping redefine the genre for over three decades. From crafting a signature look for Marc Jacobs advertisements to his infamous images of Kristen McMenamy, the German photographer’s work is that of a true original.
Now there is an opportunity to get to know his work from a more autobiographical and personal side. An accumulation of his weekly columns for newspaper Die Zeit, consisting of a personally selected image and accompanying explanatory text, Pictures And Words is not only an introduction to the Teller aesthetic, but also an insight into the thought behind it.
For those who are running a bit late on their gift-giving rituals this year, an almost 200-page hardcover book of Juergen Teller’s photographs and musings is a pretty good place to start.
Throughout 2010 Tyrone Lebon photographed friends and family in his own image. The result is Nothing Lasts Forever, an intimate anthology of the friends and family who passed through his Brixton studio during that period. ”It doesn’t reflect much about the way I am feeling now, but back at the start of 2010 I was in a darker mood,” says Lebon. “These photos are about impermanence and change, and this project began as a way of mourning that.
“Photography is especially good at highlighting change, as a moment and all the circumstances that surrounded it are frozen in a picture life moves on. By the end of 2010 I didn’t feel the same and the photos started to feel forced so I stopped, and started working on printing the images and getting the book made.”
Composed of 60 portraits of sombre beauty, Nothing Lasts Forever reflects the passage of time and the ephemeral nature of a feeling.
Nothing Lasts Forever is available at dobedo.co.uk
For her first solo show, Love Before Intimacy, artist Lola Montes Schnabel has created an Arcadian landscape energised by the vibrancy and colour of passion.
Created over the past year, the five canvases on show at The Hole gallery in Manhattan share a unity of pallet and subject. Each painting depicts an episode in a narrative of androgynous youth encountering each other on a remote Greek island. Depicting a time of love before sexuality, nude youths make free in her heated teal and tan landscape.
Blending expressionism with figurative painting, it is Schnabel’s own heated application of paint that sets her scenes of romance and free love on fire.
Love Before Intimacy is at The Hole, 312 Bowery, New York until February 4th, 2012 theholenyc.com
Four decades of society-questioning artwork will be on display as part of the Sanja Iveković: Sweet Violence exhibition at the MoMA.
A self-proclaimed feminist artist, she started out as part of the Nova Umjetnička Praksa (New Art Practice) generation in Croatia. To this day, the Zagreb-born creative continues to produce fascinating and deeply critical work in the form of photographs, sculptures and installations. In her early work, Iveković showed an insight into the psychological effects of mass media through work such as Double Life in 1975, which placed a collection of the artist’s personal photographs alongside women’s magazine advertisements.
Nowadays, her work analyses politics, gender, paradoxes as well as the place and representation of women within society. Figure & Ground, her 2006 compilation of collages depicting blood-covered female models in high-fashion military-style outfits as armed terrorists, as well as Women’s House, for which the artist produced facial plaster casts of abuse victims, are a testament to this ideology.
Innovative and thought-provoking, Sanja Iveković proves that art is best when served with afterthought.
Sanja Iveković: Sweet Violence is exhibiting at the The Museum Of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019 until March 26 moma.org
Launching tonight, The Photocopy Club is a monthly photographic exhibition of Xeroxed photographic work from all over the world. Held alternatively in London and Brighton, The Photocopy Club hankers for the days before email. Photographers are invited to post signed and dated photocopies of their work to the club. Each month a selection of photocopies will be exhibited and then sold. Eliminating digital files and emails, it’s about the tangibility of photography, pushing images off our computers and back into the physical world.
Twin loves the posters designed for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games so much we thought we’d give you a little pre-peep show. Artists such as Howard Hodgkin, Tracey Emin and Martin Creed were chosen to give forth their thoughts on the Games happening in London, and the ideals that sit behind it. And the result? An amalgamation of colourful, minimalist, quirky art created with words, a pencil, or paint. Perfect.
The posters will be showing as part of the London 2012 festival next July at the Tate Britain, free of charge.
After meeting artist Leslie Kulesh at our recent Twin Speaks salon, we fell in love with her can do attitude. From coloured yarns to acting out Nineties classic flick Clueless with friends, anything goes. Originally from San Francisco but now living in London, we thought we’d share her with the rest of you…
Do you remember the moment when you decide to be an artist?
Vividly! I was in Hawaii with my grandmother and my father, who’s an art conservator. I was about 11 years old and we went to a museum show of Hockney’s opera sets.
The interior of the museum was entirely dark, save for the lights on the sets, as they would have been in use. Recordings of the opera music played loud from room to room, and as is custom over there – the air conditioning was blasting. The whole experience was multi-sensory and emotional to the point of almost being frightening. I knew I wanted to make things like that – environments that transported people that had their own history, but perhaps a future potential as well.
Your work involves both performance and hand crafted structures – how would you define your own work?
My practice is definitely process oriented. It’s important to work with the material and understand what goes into production. In works such as No Fear, I spent about six hours a day for the best part of a month measuring, cutting and tying each piece onto the grid I had designed.
That work becomes very meditative and wouldn’t have the same energy had it been made by another person. Decisions get made throughout the creation and I see what is developing. With performance work, it’s the same in a lot of ways. There is an idea, multiple ways to approach it, script writing, or improv, work-shopping, then re-working – always guiding back toward the original idea. By taking full ownership of the work there is room for it to start mutating.
When performing with others, I have always called upon friends. Unlike actors, I know their qualities, or suspect there is something that will come out once placed in a specific environment. That open-plan style work also allows for excessive collaboration that proves for a much stronger performance.
How important is popular culture in your artistic practice – are there any elements you find yourself consistently retuning to and why?
Pop culture is great – it mutates in that same way as I see my work. Someone puts forth an idea, others riff on that, it gets co-opted, becomes a meme and by then there’s a whole new story happening. I do consistently return to the digital/analogue exchange- both literal and symbolic. I’m sure it’s generational, having to do with growing up in Silicon Valley – learning DOS instead of Dewey Decimal.
Nonetheless, it continues to be relevant. As technology trudges forward, those same senses that were so stunned back in the Hockney exhibit in Hawaii become stunted when I try to take in a 500px X 340px Katharina Grosse image. I know I am not experiencing it – it’s a point of reference; and I often wonder if there will be a movement away from this half baked form of research.
What drives you to create?
Different things, different days. To prove something to myself, to scare myself. You always hear that new age-y talk about internalizing instead of externalizing, living in the moment – divorced from the future and the past. I feel that way when I am making something. That time becomes like a line, one dimensional.
If you weren’t an artist what would you be?
A musician – god knows I travel enough. At the least I should have the reward of a crowd acknowledging me for my travel every couple of days!
What’s up next for you?
I have a video in a group show at French Riviera opening tonight 6-9pm and I’ll be DJing with Twin’s Art Editor Francesa Gavin afterwards!
I’m also speaking at Camden Arts Centre with Kate Cooper (co-director of Auto Italia) on December 7th and I’ll be in performance during Bodies Assembling at Auto Italia on Saturday, December 10th.
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.
It’s been two years since AIR released their sixth album, Love 2, but the French duo still have their minds on matters of the heart. Painted Love bears their unmistakeable breathy electronic pop, but this is more than just one song. Luxury jewellers Cartier posed them the question “How Far Would You Go For Love?”. This is their answer.
The accompanying film, made by New York based directors Waverly, revisits the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea via down town Manhattan. A young artist searches for his muse, first in his canvas and then in the darkness of New York’s clubs, driven by his obsession to attain her. “The idea of the muse is very important to me, it is like a driving force. I know that for every album, we have needed a love story as a motivation. Creating art is like a huge need to be loved,” says AIR.
Cartier are set to pose their question to two more musicians and directors in 2012. But we’re already thinking how far we’d go. Are you?
In the world of the Internet, there are no geographical limits to where inspiration can come from. Over the two years that photographer Laurence Von Thomas has been running his blog If You Leave it has grown into a large-scale collaboration, with contemporary photographers across the world submitting their work. Focusing on single images, it’s an ambiguous archive that moves through desolate landscapes and mysterious settings, celebrating the power of a photograph rather than one specific photographer. Having already released a book of selected images last year, Von Thomas has curated a second book featuring the work of 85 photographers and 20 nationalities that have been exhibited on the site since 2011. An exhibition of the photographs is currently at Radio London.
Twin spoke to curator Von Thomas and challenged him to name his three favourite images…
Do you have any favourite images from If You Leave?
I once had a teacher who taught us the necessity of having to ‘kill your darlings’, but I hoped I had already passed that stage with the selection for the book.
With If You Leave, as a rule of thumb I never analyse an image. Selection is based purely on impression and personal disposition, but I like the question.
So then, which is your first image?
The first image – done alphabetically – would be that of Daniel Castaneda (above). I’ve seen this picture both small – we used it as a flyer and invitation for the book launch – and blown-up.
When you see it small you get drawn in by the little black dot set against the horizontal lines and the amazing, somewhat unearthly colours. When you see it big and stand right in front of it, you become part of it.
Why this image works for me, is it reminds me of the balance between man and the elements.. like Friedrich’s Wanderer. Oh, and if you play Superstar by Sonic Youth while looking at it, it adds an extra dimension – that did happen to me at around four in the morning after a bottle of wine and having had no sleep for over 24 hours, so I’m not quite sure about this statement.
What image have you chosen next?
The second photograph is by Dylan Shaw (above). Again, the colours and composition and lateral light determine the style, but the atmosphere for me is a mixture of voyeurism and nostalgia, caused by the subjective position of the camera peeking in and creating a frame within a frame.
On a more personal level the style and especially the haircut recalls scenes from Goddard’s nouvelle vague classic A Bout de Souffle. It’s quite an iconic image in its own right.
And last but not least?
The third image is by Miet van Hee (above). I could try to explain, but I don’t really want to. It wouldn’t have much of a meaning to any one else.
That said, I think one of the most rewarding things about having done these two books, is that the images have so much soul that there’s always going to be one or two you will relate to more, depending on when you pick up the book.
By the time this gets published, I will probably have three different images that I prefer.
The French artist, photographer and activist known as JR has created Women Are Heroes in a tribute to the bravery of those in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, Phnom Penh, Delhi, and Kenya.
Known for his guerilla style, public photo exhibitions such as Portrait Of A Generation and Face 2 Face, the 2011 TED Prize winner spent three years crafting the documentary, the third part in his 28 Millimètres series. The result is a film which is an emotional tour de force, confronting its viewer with the hard-hitting reality of violence, war, poverty and oppression women around the world face every day. But far from viewing his subjects as victims of their environment, JR portrays a group of individuals who are not only fearless, but also optimists of change.
By mounting large-scale portraits of them on public buildings in France, Brazil, Cambodia, India, and Kenya, he proves that the women living their life in the danger zone are not just heroes. They are a poignant reminder that strength, and happiness, can be found in even the darkest of places.
Last week Jooney Woodward was named as the winner of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize for her portrait of Harriet and Gentleman Jack. The 32-year-old worked in the Vogue Photographic Archive before pursuing a career as a freelance photojournalist. Twin asked Woodward to tell us more about her winning photograph…
Your photographs record moments that are both obscure and everyday – how did you discover the Guinea Pig show? I discovered the show whilst working on a series of landscape pictures for my first solo exhibition Unhidden – Documentary Photographs of Contemporary Wales, at the Museum of Modern Art Wales. One of the places I decided to visit was the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show. It was there that I stumbled across the Fur and Feather Pavilion, which is where the guinea pig judging was taking place and that’s where I spotted Harriet.
How did you approach Harriet and how easy was it to get the shot with her? I approached Harriet and her mother and explained that I was a documentary photographer and that I would love to take her picture. It wasn’t the easiest of shots to do. I had time issues due to the fact that she was busy stewarding and we were standing amongst all the hectic judging tables. I was conscious about not getting in the way. I knew I was only going to have a few seconds to get the shot I wanted and thankfully I got it on the first frame. What you don’t see in the picture is how busy it actually was in the background, with the general public walking around the cages. I had to choose my moment and grab it.
When it came to submitting the portrait – what made it clear to you that Harriet and Gentleman Jack was the one? I submitted this picture because I like that it has so many elements to it and that there is some ambiguity to the image that provokes questions. She’s wearing a white laboratory style coat. Where is she and what’s going on? It’s not clear at first that she’s at an agricultural show. How old is she? The more you look at it, the more you start to notice various details such as her red nail varnish and mascara, the scratch on her hand, the guinea pig’s pen number on his ear and obviously the similar colouring of her hair and the guinea pig.
Colour is really integral to the image – what is it that you look for in a portrait subject? My portraits are all about the small details. Sometimes something will just stand out immediately and that’s when I know I want to capture that moment. My pictures are very colourful and getting the right light is integral to my photographs. I like subjects that are often overlooked or not very well known, but are actually a huge part of some people’s lives. I would like to open up these worlds to a wider audience.
How does winning a prize like the Taylor Wessing change things for you? It’s a huge honour and is amazing to have my work on display in the National Portrait Gallery. I hope that it will give me greater access to the people and places that inspire my personal projects, as these are really important to me. I’m also really pleased that a wider audience is getting to see the broader body of work on my website, which is already generating a lot of interest.
Hedi Slimane has taken his diary to the streets of Los Angeles. The maverick designer turned photographer’s signature black and white images can be seen on 89 digital billboards throughout the city. With his solo exhibition California Song at the MOCA in Los Angeles just opened, for the next three months the digital billboards will evolve and follow his California diary. Having turned London’s Brick Lane street kids into the global epitome of cool, since 2006 Slimane’s online photographic diary has invented new ways of documenting emerging youth culture.
California Song marks the beginning of his “California period” in July 2007 and traces his explorations of cycles of urban youth culture and artistic communities, through installations of photographic essays, exhibitions, and publications. Be sure to follow the story.
Hedi Slimaneʼs California Song, is at MOCA Pacific Design Center until January 22, 2012.
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.
Fancy having your photographs exhibited at galleries from New York to Brazil? Today is the last chance to enter Manhattan based Milk Gallery’s emerging talent competition, Milk Underground. Dedicated to pushing open doors for young and unknown photographers, for the second Milk Underground competition, the judges are looking for innovative and progressive images from industry outsiders. All you need are two strong images and your work could be featured in a show at Milk Gallery opening 17th November, before moving to Milk’s sister gallery in Brazil. Get milking.
Amie Norris takes starkly beautiful and intimate nude portraits. The London based photographer shoots her subjects in their own surroundings to ensure the viewer gets a deeper insight into who this person is, what they represent and more importantly what Amie wants to portray.
Norris says: “I really enjoy seeing and being a part of my models’ personal space. It’s not about invading the space, but adding a comforting and relaxed feeling to the images. It also makes the image more intriguing, giving the image just a little more than a studio image would.”
The 26-year-old is soon due to début her work in an exhibition in New York. “My plan is to exhibit work internationally, and to publish as many books as possible. I do it for the sheer joy it gives me; to be able to make something into a piece of art gives you an inexplicable buzz.”
With Frieze Art Fair having turned London into a kaleidoscope of visionary talents, the timing could not have been more ripe for Seana Gavin’s Alternate Dimensions exhibition at the b Store.
The artist will be showing exactly what makes her space psychedelia work so magnetic. The exhibit will include a three-dimensional collage window installation and otherworldly landscape pieces such as Lost In Space.
Gavin, for whom dreams, science fiction and her upbringing in Woodstock, NY all act as inspirations, has previously exhibited her pieces alongside the likes of Tracey Emin, Mark Titchner, and Jake and Dinos Chapman.
A graduate from the Camberwell College of Art, she explores different states of consciousness in her work, in reaction to the imagery overload and visual noise that constitute our modern-day world.
It is hard to pinpoint exactly what makes Gavin’s work so compelling: is it the full spectral range of colour, the seemingly unconnected elements that are blended into one cohesive image or the fact that her collages transport its viewer into another dimension?
The definite explanation of its attraction may still be up in space, but it’s clear that the only worthy way to experience Seana Gavin’s work is up close and personal.
Alternate Dimensions is at b Store, 24a Savile Row, W1S 3PR until 5 November.
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