Legendary Austrian fashion designer turned artist Helmut Lang has destroyed his fashion archive and in return created a series of sartorial sculptures featuring pulped and twisted fabrics and fibers, scorched plastics and metals. Having given away much of his catalogue to design collections around the world, the master of Nineties minimalism decided to shred some 6,000 pieces for the exhibition at The Fireplace Project Gallery in East Hampton, New York. Inspired after a fire in the building of his New York studio almost destroyed his life’s achievements, Lang decided to complete the task himself. Out of the carnage emerge eerily, slender columns that resemble elegant birch trees. They give shape and permanence to the transience of fashion and life itself.

MAKE IT HARD, a solo exhibition by Helmut Lang is at The FIREPLACE PROJECT until August 8, 2011.
fireplaceproject.com

Tags: East Hampton, Helmut Lang, new york, Nineties minimalism, The Fireplace Project

The Helmut Newton Foundation is one of those gems in the West of Berlin that’s well worth the journey from the more hip Bezirke of Kreuzberg or Friedrichshain.  This month, alongside the permanent exhibition offering a glimpse into Helmut Newton the man, a new exhibition opens celebrating his Polaroids.  Using them as an initial point of reference for his fashion shoots, he was able to test lighting and composition.

But more than that, the idea of Polaroids excited Newton: he published Pola Woman, a book exclusively made up of his Polaroids, in 1992.  Shooting down accusations that the images in the book didn’t stand up to his usual standard he said: “but that was exactly what was exciting – the spontaneity, the speed”.  Indeed in some ways this attitude prefigures the speed of photography – particularly street style photography – today.

The romance of a Polaroid picture is most definitely back in vogue again.

See the 300 works on display until 20^th November 2011
Helmut Newton Foundation, Jebensstraße 2, 10623 Berlin

Tags: Berlin, Charlottenburg, Helmut Newton, Helmut Newton Foundation, Polaroids, West Berlin

It might be July but Twin are prepping for Autumn/Winter. The latest women’s line from cult Japanese brand A Bathing Ape, a.k.a BAPE, is full of the staples we want right now. Photographed by Kate Moross, BAPE‘s plaid shirts, varsity jackets and oversized pullovers are modelled by Daisy Lowe. This is clothing for all seasons.

bape.com

Tags: A Bathing Ape, BAPE, daisy lowe, kate moross

Irish photographer and filmmaker Niall O’Brien is fascinated with youths on the edge of society. His Good Rats series, the result of following a group of young South London punks across Europe, was a stand-out story from Twin‘s debut issue. Having shot for McQ and Nike, for his latest video project, Anger, he turned to the subject of youthful rage.

Twin spoke to O’Brien about the project.

Why did you chose to make a film about anger?
It was originally part of a commission that fell through. I was given an emotion and the idea of angry kids appealed to me and fascinated me. Temper tantrums are almost in everyone’s breaking point and I think it can come out easier in youth. I know I was a bit of a shit when younger. Recreating it was almost a salute to the way we once were, or still are as the case may be.

Where and when did you shoot the film?
I shot Anger a year ago. It was shot in an estate below my flat in Tower Hamlets. I’d been looking at it for over a year, so when the project came up it was a perfect location.

How does your film work fit with your photography?
I don’t know really, I try to keep the two separate and use it as an opportunity to collaborate. I’m confident in my photography and in my film there is still room for learning.

I’ve been shooting films for four years now and I’m still looking for my voice, I only found what I felt comfortable sticking with in photography about 12 years after I picked up a camera. I love it and have a great crew but I don’t want to be employed to shoot a film because of my photography. I want to be chosen because of my films. But… it all comes from the same person so it must relate somehow.

When and why did you start taking photographs?

I used to be involved with the skateboard industry in Ireland and started taking pictures of my friends. A few magazines and board companies started commissioning me and buying my photos so I decided to study it. I thought I was going to further sports photography, but I ended up doing fine art.

What draws you to documenting the adolescent sub-cultures you’ve photographed?
Reliving my youth I think. Being a kid was a very important time for me. The boy I was then and my friends needed to be documented, but I never had a camera. Some mental stuff went on as a boy, so when I met the punk kids it was the perfect opportunity to recapture it and in many ways relive it. It took me two years to feel like part of the group and when I did, I got a kick out of it. It is a rare opportunity and an almost VIP ticket into the lives of an amazing bunch of lads.

How do you build trust with your subjects?
Getting arrested to protect them helped (for Good Rats), but I think becoming one of them is important. If I approached them with questions and with a mature way I’d be told to fuck right off. It’s easy enough for me as I’m a bit of a kid at heart and don’t mind going there.

Who are your creative influences, photographically and otherwise?
I’m influenced by people who have drive and get stuff done. No matter what they do so long as they put their heart and soul into it and most of all stick to their guns. There is a risk of losing what you have by watching other people too much. Keep the blinkers on, move yourself forward and don’t worry about the other person.

What would you do if you weren’t a photographer?
I’d be a painter decorator.

niallobrien.co.uk

Tags: Anger, Good Rats, McQ, niall o'brien, Nike, Tower Hamlets

Fancy a walk this Saturday? The first in the Artesian Wanders series of walking tours tracing London’s lost underground rivers kicks off in Kentish Town.  Curated by website le cool and Fiji Water, Artesian Wanders invites lovers of the occult to retrace the route of the now submerged Fleet river as it winds from Camden down to Clerkenwell.

With tales of hidden history and curious trivia about London’s streets along the way, the walk is finishing up in The Three Kings pub in Clerkenwell for a well-earned drink and a traditional knees-up.

Join the melee at 2.30pm at Quinn’s on Kentish Town Road.
lecool.com

Tags: Camden, Clerkenwell, Fiji Water, Kentish Town Road, Le Cool, The Three Kings Pub

As with gourmands (edible fragrances), I can now admit that I have been somewhat prejudiced towards celebrity fragrances. This wasn’t without reason;  a lot of them genuinely were cheap, formulaic, derivative, overtly saccharine and obvious. Like gourmands, I reasoned they were often created with a  young, uninformed, unsophisticated demographic in mind. There was very little artistry involved in the creation of these perfumes. But of course the minute you dismiss a genre of fragrance (or well anything in life really) something comes along and narkily disproves you. In this case it was Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely – which is really such a classy fragrance that it could be Chanel – and that’s a compliment indeed.

Anyway that was a few years ago now and hundreds of celebrity offerings have debuted since then. I can now admit there are one or two that I quite like – they are not all execrable. Namely Kate Moss’s Vintage Muse, which came out last winter. If you look at the notes on paper it does not bode well: plum, rhubarb and chocolate. It sounds like another sugary confection aimed at impressionable pre-teens. However when you actually smell it it’s really quite sophisticated – you get the tart, sour facets of rhubarb and plum rather than the juicy plumpness and it’s actually quite recherche.

It actually reminds me of how a stylist friend of mine used to smell – she blended her own oils – in other words not obvious and sweet but something a fashion insider might like. The other perfume that landed on my desk recently and that’s really okay, but maybe not great is Kim Kardashian’s debut. Now I had expected to hate this, not being  afan of Kardashian herself (another fake tanned talentless wannabe famous for no reason) but it’s actually quite nice. What you get is  a huge dose of tuberose – reminiscent of Frederic Malle’s Carnal Flower or Michael Kors’ eponymous offering. I love tuberose as much as the next person – what I’m slightly ambivalent about is the chocolate note used to underscore it which make it a very rich, dense sweet tuberose. I might have preferred a more translucent take on the tuberose, but then that might have been a  bit too derivative or Kors and Malle.

Words by Bethan Cole

Tags: Bethan Cole, Carnal Flower, Chanel, Frederic Malle, kate moss, Kim Kardashian, Lovely, Michael Kors, Sarah Jessica Parker, Vintage Muse

French photographer and filmmaker Babette Pauthier’s video God Save McQueen is a study in dark kaleidoscopic beauty. Having already shot a series of still lives for the Alexander McQueen SS11 scarf collection, this film is a reverie of light and movement.

“It’s a metaphor for a constant rebirth through butterflies hatching out their chrysalis,” says Pauthier. “I was also inspired by Parmenides of Elea and his poem On Nature and on A rebours (Against Nature) by Joris-Karl Huysmans. It’s also a sort of homage to the designer himself.”

With its choral music and flickering insect imagery, God Save McQueen is a transcendent ode to the designer whose iconic skull scarf is part of his enduring legacy.

babettepauthier.co.uk

Tags: Alexander Mcqueen, Babette Pauthier, Huysmans, Parmenides

Garages, junk fields, abandoned quarter-pipes and dirty mattresses are the photographic heartland of Germany-based photographer Sergej Vutuc’s work. Since the mid-Nineties he has made the skateboard and punk community his home – and with it, its DIY landscape. His black and white shots are less about urban edge than an amorphous playground.

Vutuc’s latest show, Something In-between at Gallerie Michael Janssen in Berlin features a series of monochrome photographs hand printed on Baryt paper. Like the dilapidated buildings and rough terrain of his mis-en-scene, Vutuc scratches and scrapes at his image, engaging with his work in the same way as a skateboarder does with his environment.

“I don’t give any description to my images,” he says. “I leave them to speak for themselves. It’s not about where I shoot them or subject,  it’s more like a collection of fragments – moments and building stories… The mouth can never say, what eyes can see…“ Vutuc’s camera is a view from inside the subculture.

SERGEJ VUTUC: Something in between is at Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin until July 30.
galeriemichaeljanssen.de

Tags: Berlin, Gallerie Michael Janssen, Sergej Vutuc

Something’s happening in Hackney Wick.  Between the East and Westbound traffic of the A12 next to the Lea Navigation canal a temporary theatre has popped up.  Except it’s not just a theatre.  Folly for a Flyover is hosting six weeks of waterside cinema, performances, workshops and boat trips as part of the East London CREATE 11 programme.

By day expect Disco Loco family parties, puppet-making and optical trickery workshops and a café serving up a hearty British blend of Forman’s smoked salmon, homemade cakes and Mr Whippy ice cream.  You can also enjoy guided row-boat tours of the waterways in conjunction casino spiele with Floating House Productions – take Marek’s canoe-catamaran for a trip through Hackney Wick, Fish Island and down to Old Ford Lock & the Olympic Stadium.

For summer nights grab a blanket and some snacks and watch films like Tron and The Wild One.  Accompanying the screenings are live scores, light shows and performances such as a ‘night of burlesque delight’ with a backdrop of jazz music.

The entire space has been hand-built with local, reclaimed and donated materials which, at the end of the summer, will be disassembled and the materials donated to other local projects.  Conscious culture. We like.

Under the A12 Flyover,
 Hackney Wick,
London, E9 5HW runs until July 31.
follyforaflyover.co.uk

Tags: CREATE11, Floating House Productions, Folly for a Flyover, Hackney Wick, Lea Navigation Canal, Mr Bagel

Love tennis? Tomorrow Twin teams up with Nike to take over their relaunched 1948 Shoreditch space.  To mark the Wimbledon Women’s Final, we’re celebrating female creativity with a series of one-on-one collaborative events. Watch the women’s tennis alongside exclusive performance from poet and musician Kate Tempest in a sound clash with the Bruccheri Strings, enjoy collaborative creative clashes between cake maker Lily Vanilli and illustrator Kate Merry as well as a live fashion shoot with photographer Letty Schmiterlow and stylist Alice Goddard.

Spaces are limited, but to come along to this very special 1 x 1 event which takes place from 1 – 6pm at 1948 email: party@twinfactory.co.uk

“The future of art is light,” said Henri Matisse. These words are the starting point for Illuminations the inaugural exhibition of Coldharbour London. Here curator Aretha Campell explores the phenomenon of artificial light.

It’s a dazzling line-up. Lighting-cameraman turned installation artist Adam Barker Mill turns the gallery into a space devoid of light for one of his famous light experimentations.  Kirstie Macleod, whose work deals with issues of identity and the passage of time, showcases her large-scale textile work.  Sculptor Molly Smyth, whose art can be both minute and monstrous, references both urban landscapes and the human form.  While Luke Montgomery straddles the line between abstraction and realism.

Elsewhere, artist, architect and musician Lawrence Lek unveils Twins, a collaboration with industrial designer Onur Ozkaya which explores the boundaries between sculpture and architecture.  The result in Lek’s words is, “an enclosed world composed of both structure and light.” Matisse would no doubt approve.

Until 3rd July at Coldharbour London 30-34 Southwell Road, SE5 9PG
Coldharbourlondon.com

Tags: Adam Barker Mill, Aretha Campbell, Coldharbour London, Henri Matisse, Illuminations, Kirstie Macleod, Lawrence Lek, Luke Montgomery, Molly Smyth, twins

When Polaroid collapsed in 2008 it was the death of a Twentieth Century icon. The instant film, beloved of artists and image-makers for decades, allowed photographers to not only record the party, but be part of it too.

A casualty of the bankruptcy was The Polaroid Collection, a 4,400 strong collection taken by 800 artists from around the world; started in the Sixties after Polaroid’s founder and inventor Edwin Herbert Land decided to provide artists and photographers such as Ansel Adams and William Wegman with free cameras and film to experiment with.

In the liquidation carve-up a chunk of the collection was auctioned off by Sotheby’s. Luckily the WestLicht Museum in Vienna managed to acquire the European part of the collection. Now the WestLicht has put together POLAROID (IM)POSSIBLE, featuring over 350 photographs from their stash, with shots ranging from a self-portrait by Andy Warhol to a Helmut Newton nude.

Running alongside the exhibition is a pop-up shop by The Impossible Project. The collective, made up of former Polaroid employees, managed to save the last Polaroid production plant from closure. Since then they’ve continued to produce Polaroid products so that the world can still get its quick photographic kicks. The exhibition even includes new photographs by contemporary artists shooting on Impossible film. It’s an analogue revolution.

POLAROID [IM]POSSIBLE is at The WestLicht Museum, Vienna until August 21.
westlicht.com

Tags: Ansel Adams, Chuck Close, Edwin Herbert Land, Polaroid, Sotheby's, The Impossible Project, The Polaroid Collection, Vienna

As part of the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project, the French fashion house has launched REcreative, an online community for the young, lean and art hungry. Careers advice for the digital age, it’s a gold mine of advice and an opportunity for creative minds to gain an insight into the lives of leading artists, curators and designers.

Interviews online already include Tracey Emin discussing her Hayward Gallery show, Love is What You Want and Dazed and Confused founder Jefferson Hack on how to establish your own magazine and voice.  REcreative users can also upload their own work and have it seen by those at the top of their creative tree. Developed by Louis Vuitton in collaboration with London’s leading art institutions: the Hayward Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts, the South London Gallery, Tate Britain and the Whitechapel Gallery, REcreative is set to put the wheels of a whole new generation on the right creative track. Spread the word.

recreativeuk.com

Tags: Dazed and COnfused, Hayward Gallery, Jefferson Hack, Louis Vuitton, Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project, Love is what you want, REcreative, Royal Academy of Arts, South London Gallery, Tate Britain, tracey emin, Whitechapel Gallery

Photographer Nan Goldin’s work is inextricably bound up in her own life. Her most famous book The Ballad of Sexual Dependancy documented her surrogate family of misfits and the Manhattan scene they belonged to, before the immolation of the Eighties. Over the years she has remained faithful to her idea of taking photographs in order, “to retain memory and make a record against revisionism”, by using natural light to capture an image that, if not quite figurative, is pure in the essence of the moment.

The newly opened Sprovieri Gallery are kicking off with Goldin’s seventh slide-show exhibition. Fire Leap features images of her friends and family’s children from 1972 to present, as well as a series of landscape photographs taken during her travels since the late Seventies. While the former feeds from Goldin’s fascination with childish innocence and freedom, the latter are more than simply expansive visions of beauty. They are a meditation on her own emotional experience.

As Goldin says, the images: “have been my secret metaphors for loneliness… I was trying to break the glass between the outside world and me. I had lived in a dark space for 15 years so the landscape was unfamiliar to me, a fascination with an unknown world outside.”

While dancing children and moonlit trees might seem a world away from the gay bars and whorehouses with which Goldin made her name, they are, with their raw intimacy and muted entropy, unmistakably her visions.

Nan Goldin, Fire Leap, 24 June – 8 August at the Sprovieri Gallery, W1B 4BQ.
sprovieri.com

Tags: Fire Leap, nan goldin, Sprovieri Gallery, The Ballad of Sexual Dependancy

Richard Avedon was as luminous as the stars he photographed. A titan of Twentieth Century art, he gave the world lasting images of its icons. Starting with his first sitter, the Russian pianist-composer Sergey Rachmaninov, who then lived in the same New York apartment building as his grandparents, he went on to create the definitive portraits of a whole constellation of celebrities, including Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn.

It’s no surprise that his legacy includes photographs of many literary greatest too, and a new exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Paris spotlights his portraits of Truman Capote, Jorge Luis Borges, Henry Miller, Jean Genet, Ezra Pound and the poet Marianne Moore. But while their words were each uniquely their own, their image was all Avedon’s.

Avedon: Writers is at the Gagosian Gallery, Project Space, Paris until July 28.
richardavedon.com
gagosian.com

Photograph courtesy of The Richard Avedon Foundation.

Tags: Audrey Hepburn, Avedon:Writers, Gagosian Gallery, Henry Miller, Jean Genet, Jorge Luis Borges, Marianne Moore, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Avedon, Truman Capote

Twin contributor Mari Sarai shoots the

world’s coolest celebrities and models. So what happened when the Japanese photographer asked some of them to pose for a book of nudes? Playful, slick and downright hot, Naked is a girl’s own take on Helmut Newton’s glamazons.

Twin asked Sarai to tell us a bit about the project:

How did the book come about?
One very famous Japanese editor, Masa Sugatsuke approached me to make an all-nude book in June 2009. That’s how the project started.

A lot of the women in the book are models – how did shooting Naked feel different to a normal fashion shoot?
Shooting subjects naked is very different from a normal fashion shoot. There’s no clothes anyway. I shoot with a very minimal team when I shoot for Naked. I focused on our privacy and intimacy for this project.

How did being a female photographer affect the kind of nude images you ended up with?
Just adding one more spice for my style and name, that’s all.

A lot of the photos are in black and white and project a strong and tough take on femininity, was that on purpose?
It is on purpose and it’s my style.

How did you go about approaching people like Alice Dellal and Twin’s own Celestine Cooney?
I have shot with Alice Dellal before and we knew each other. Same with Celestine Cooney. We are friends and so it’s a very comfortable situation.

What’s been most people’s reaction to the book?
People just love it. And so many people want to take off their clothes for me now. It’s brilliant!

Is there going to be a follow-up to Naked?
Yes, I have already started shooting for Naked II. I have photographed 10 people including Janice Dickinson.

Mari Sarai’s Naked goes on show at the Blackall Studios, EC2A 4QS from September 14 – 20 and at Doors Showcase, EC2A 3DU September 21 – October 13.

marisarai.com
blackallstudios.com
doorsshowcase.com

Tags: Alice Dellal, Blackall Studios, celestine cooney, Doorse Showcase, Helmut Newton, Janice Dickinson, Japan, Mari Sarai, Masa Sugatsuke, Naked

Laurie Simmons has been playing with dolls for longer than most women. Over the past 30 years they’ve been a reoccurring obsession for the photographer. From ventriloquist dummies to household objects on legs, dolls have been her way of reflecting the narrow identities available to women. Homemaker or femme fatale, which are you?

For her latest exhibition at the Wilkinson Gallery, early photographs from Simmons’ career are being shown alongside her most recent work. Starring a new, life-sized playmate who’s as fake as they come, The Love Doll: Days 1 to 30, is a photographic study in the real and unreal.

While working in Japan Simmons picked up a silicone sex doll. A perfectly formed vision of femininity clothed in a transparent slip and accompanied by a separate box containing an engagement ring and her female genitalia. A plastic play object, but one not intended for little girls. By photographing her sex doll in a series of everyday scenes, Simmons has created a fantasy life that is far-removed from its seedier original purpose. From her box fresh arrival, she’s slowly transformed into a wholesome young girl, who reads books, hangs out with friends and enjoys her own fairy-tale wedding day. But despite her blow-job lips and vacant expression, she looks almost as misplaced in the role of compliant sex-slave as any real flesh and blood woman.

Laurie Simmons The Love Doll: Days 1-30 and Early Black and White Interiors is at the Wilkinson Gallery from June 9 to July 10.
wilkinsongallery.com

Images copyright the artist, courtesy Wilkinson Gallery, London.

Tags: Laurie Simmons, The Love Doll, Wilkinson Gallery

Photographer Lina Scheynius delves into her past for her third book, 03, to a time when her photographs were intended for her eyes only.

While Scheynius is increasingly in demand as a fashion photographer, her personal photographs are, in contrast, a hypnotic hymn to sex, love and uninhibited freedom. Although the photographer’s previous books have been visual diaries detailing her recent life between London, Paris and Sweden, this time around she’s compiled a book of images taken between 1991, when she was just ten-years-old, and early 2007, just before her first magazine commission.

It’s an embryonic collection of pictures, revealing the same ethereal beauty, light and intimacy for which she has become known.  Another chapter in her book of life.

Lina Scheynius’ 03 is available here
linascheynius.com

Tags: Lina Scheynius, london, Paris, Sweden

Few fashion designers are as uncompromising as Yohji Yamamoto. Guided by strict aesthetic principles, the Japanese radical has spent 30 years perfecting his dark, androgynous style. As he says in a new 30 minute documentary to be released this autumn,  “I’m not interested in fashion…I’m just interested in how to cut the clothing.”

Staunchly private, for a few short months in 2009, Yamamoto let the cameras observe his Y-3 Spring/Summer 2010 collection taking shape, from initial design through to show styling and PR.  With measured gravitas, Yohji Yamamoto: This is My Dream is a portrait of a grand master, whose musings on fashion, creativity and life have fuelled a global empire. Watch and learn.

Yohji Yamamoto: This is My Dream will be released on DVD in September AW11 and is available from Y-3 stores.
thisismydreamthefilm.com

Tags: This is my dream, Y-3, Yohji Yamamoto

Multi-disciplinary design duo Kai and Sunny have worked with everyone from Alexander McQueen to Apple.  A year after their Return to the Wild exhibition at StolenSpace Gallery, they’re back at the Brick Lane space.

Taking the 2010 exhibition to the next level, this year’s The Flower Show sees the pair zoning in on all manner of blossoms to produce intense, monotone abstractions.  Reminiscent of Bridget Riley’s severe graphic palette, these large-scale, glittering silver silkscreen prints celebrate the intricacy of naturally-occurring patterns and formations.

Alongside the show an A3 limited edition box set containing five letter-pressed images is available to buy.  Included in the set is a new short story The Gardener by award-winning author David Mitchell, written exclusively to accompany the works.  Gardening has never been so multidisciplinary – or quite so cool.

The Flower Show by Kai and Sunny is at StolenSpace Gallery, The Old Truman Brewery, 91 Brick Lane, London E1 6QL until June 26.

Tags: Kai and Sunny, StolenSpace Gallery, The Flower Show, The Old Truman Brewery