Converse have been creating a worldwide stir, popping up across Europe, the Middle East and Africa with their latest project #SNEAKERSCLASH. Designed to disrupt and clash against the dull greys of the world, the series started in Amsterdam and last night made its way to London. The whole initative is brought to life through two different interactive activations – Wall of Clash and Photo Clash. Clash Wall brings together street artists with clashing styles and techniques at unexpected locations, asking them to create their most visceral work against lifeless walls and spaces. And so that’s what happened at The Old Vinyl Factory, the former record-pressing plant of EMI in Hayes, London. The abandoned 107-year-old building has been brought back to life through the colourful work of artists Remi Rough and System from the Agents of Change collective. They painted the exterior in designs inspired by Converse’s newest collection, the new All Star Chuck ‘70 and the mural itself is set to be London’s biggest to date.
#SNEAKERSCLASH
PopUp Painting
Have you been yearning to release that inner artist? Or are you scared to death at the thought of simply picking up a paintbrush? PopUp Painting is the answer to all of the above. Established in January 2013, the latest art mania introduces a practice, that many of us consider nothing short of a nightmare, into a social environment: “We want to make painting accessible to everyone, and highlight the fact that it is fun. Most of our guests haven’t painted since their school days and just want to try something different (normally with a drink in their hand).” Popping up across venues such as Le Pain Quoitidien, PopUp Painting invites us to overcome our fear of the canvas, whilst mingling with likeminded guests at some of London’s most social and beloved hangout spots.
Originating in the States, PopUp Painting hit a home run and within months dispersed internationally, from Canada to Australia, and over to the UK where Phylissia Shelton, the UK’s Founder and Director, was quick to take note of the creative craze. Shelton set the ball rolling and joined forces with a select number of artists and supporting staff to launch in the UK’s capital at the Soho Hotel last April. It spread like wild fire and the past year has seen the company expand and ‘pop up’ across Central London and its surrounding boroughs. From Kensington to Richmond, the trend has attracted both students and parents alike to rekindle their love for painting across some of London’s favourite pubs, cafes and bars.
Last week Twin Magazine was lucky enough to head down to East Dulwich’s The Plough for the Roy Lichtenstein class to see what all the fuss was about. Taking on the American pop artist’s classic Oh Jeff, guests were welcomed to The Plough, a.k.a ‘Dulwich’s Friendliest Pub’, where a section had been cornered off especially for the painting class. At the flick of a switch, 60’s music filled the room and merged with the joyous sounds of guests socialising amongst one another. Priced at £25 per ticket, guests were provided with a fresh white canvas, a palette of acrylics, brushes and an upbeat talented art tutor who guided them through the course of the night. With an example to follow and a white canvas to fill, guests were slowly navigated through sketching the basic outlines of the pop art ‘fantasy drama’ piece. Newcomers showed no hesitancy in applying the brush to the canvas and as a result Oh Jeffs sprung up in minutes, followed by a wave of determination and elation. With not a single restriction in sight, participants bid farewell to their painting woes and transformed blank canvases into mini masterpieces. As the night drew to a close, the painters reviewed and praised the clashing and charming interpretations that had resulted from the experimentation of colours and the choice of text in the speech balloon.
With a selection of fantastic nights to boot, from Banksy to Picasso, PopUp Painting is set to be the next best thing to sweep the nation.
Astralis at Louis Vuitton
Astralis is the 23rd exhibition to be held at Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton in Paris. The exhibit claims to “take visitors on a journey into this strange reality by exploring unfathomable and inaccessible worlds.” Taking it’s name from ‘Astral’, another term for ‘invisible,’ this contemporary exhibition explores the relationship between art and the many forms of the invisible: from astrophysics to cognitive science and alternative knowledge, not to mention unexplained phenomena linked to a variety of visionary or metaphysical dimensions.
Including work from a dozen international artists, l’Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton is also organising a series of unique events to run alongside Astralis. Conversations and performances, youth workshops and weekend family activities are all ways to get involved with the exhibit. Running from now until May 11th, there’s more than enough time to get lost in space.
To find out more and check for activity dates go to louisvuitton-espaceculturel.com
100 BPM
Renowned British artist Patrick Thomas returns to the UK for the first time since 2008 to showcase a collection of silkscreened bold heart diagrams in his latest exhibition titled 100 BPM. Just in the nick of time for the Feast of Saint Valentine, Thomas’ show approaches the romantic hallmark holiday through the use of free-form screenprinting and collage, a technique, which the graphic artist has been honing for the past 18 months in trending European cities Berlin and Barcelona.
Currently on display at Stoke Newington’s Hang-Up Gallery until 16th March, the graphic artist’s show consists mostly of fresh new work and limited edition pieces, with a small number of perforated prints that mimic arrow shots alongside further pieces that feature arrows installed into the walls of the gallery. Titling his first solo-exhibition after an accelerated heartbeat and the number of beats per minute of someone who is ‘in love’, the exhibition also includes prevailing and clichéd slogans such as ‘I Love My Baby’, ‘True Love’ and ‘LUV U 24/7’.
Having showcased his work on an international scale, from Florida’s Salvador Dali Museum to Tokyo’s Ginza Graphic Gallery, Thomas has released over 150 editions of work and is also featured in Studio laVista’s publications Black & White and Protest Stencil Toolkit.
100 BPM is by far one of Thomas’ strongest pieces of work and takes us on an amourous and lively graphic journey that is bound to make your heart flutter.
Wolf Moon Gathering
This Sunday if you happen to be in New York and looking for something to do, head to MoMA PS1 for Wolf Moon Gathering, an afternoon of performance hosted by Girls Against God Magazine and its editors Bianca Casady and Anne Sherwood Pundyk. The event is to be a true celebration of the wild pokies online female soul with guided mediation lead by Bryn McKay, a dance ritual evoking the Goddess will be performed by Johanna Constantine and J.Z.araA, as well as music by singers Diane Cluck and Yasmine Hamdan. The first hour will take the form of an informal ritual of initiation, where there will be healings of sound, hand washing, and many forms of feathered-smoke blessings. They suggest that you bring an item of personal significance and to be in the moment fully, meaning all phones must be switched off upon arrival to make sure you experience it with your heart and mind.
Image: Minka Sicklinger. get.your.rat.out.
40: A Retrospective
The legendary Kate Moss turned 40 last week and to celebrate, journalist-turned-artist Russell Marshall has curated an exhibition at Imitate Modern. 40: A Retrospective features ten photographs from her long-lasting career. The images were then created on ten canvases, in ten different colour combinations to give us a visual tour of Moss’s modelling endeavours. “Celebrity can be so short-lived these days, but not so with Kate,” states Marshall. “While other celebrities have come and gone, Kate has stayed. Kate’s not just a survivor and she’s not hanging onto fame. She grows bigger, brighter and more iconic each year”.
Prints from the show are available from £285 at beautifulcrime.com and canvases are also available from £3600 on the gallery’s website.
Open until February 15th, entrance to 40: A Retrospective is free.
Warhol, Lynch & Burroughs At The Photographers’ Gallery
Today The Photographers’ Gallery opens its doors to three seperate exhibitions that look at the work of three very different artists, all influencial in their own ways. The first exhibition, Taking Shots, coincides with the centenary of William Burroughs’ birth and features over 100 works by the beatnik writer, most of which are never seen before. Featuring vintage photographs, collages and assemblages alongside postcards, magazine and book covers in the first worldwide exhibition to focus on his photographic collections. The name of the show itself, Taking Shots, refers, obviously to photography, but also to Burroughs’ well-known heroin addiction and his obsession with firearms. The second show, running alongside Taking Shots, is the European debut of David Lynch’s The Factory Photographs. The series explores derelict factories from Germany, Poland, New York and England, depicted in his usual cinematic style to capture a bygone industrial era. “I just like going into strange worlds,” said David Lynch. “A lot more happens when you open yourself up to the work and let yourself act and react to it. Every work ‘talks’ to you, and if you listen to it, it will take you places you never dreamed of.”
The third exhibition, Photographs 1976 – 1987, focuses on the last decade of Andy Warhol’s life, featuring over fifty vintage black and white prints alongside a small number of Warhol’s Stitched Works. The show will give a glipse into the daily life of the well-known pop artist as people in the streets, parties, uninhabited interiors, cityscapes, signage, still life, consumer products and miscellaneous objects that surrounded him all come to life in the gallery.
The three exhibitions run from the 17th January – 30th March.
thephotographersgallery.org.uk
Table Of Contents
Siobhan Davies’s collaboration with the ICA, Table Of Contents, is now open until 19 January 2014. Set out to reflect on the concept of archiving dance itself, the project uses Davies own history as a choreographer and dancer as a starting point. Having worked closely with five dance artists Andrea Buckley, Helka Kaski, Rachel Krische, Charlie Morrissey and Matthias Sperling, Table Of Contents looks to find answers in the way this artform creates a lasting memory, or, if indeed it can. The new body of work comes in the form of a kind of live encounter or exchange, celebrating dance as a unique and interesting way to see the world.
“You always have to push yourself beyond the image others have of you and your work otherwise you are always in the past.” Siobhan Davies, 1982
paul klee at tate modern
It’s a new year, and why not start it with a visit to Tate Modern? Twin recommends the Paul Klee exhibition, which is on display until March 9.
Paul Klee is a giant of twentieth-century art and one of the great creative innovators of the time. At Tate Modern you can rediscover Klee’s extraordinary body of work and see it in a new light. Paintings, drawings and watercolours from collections around the world are reunited and displayed alongside each other as the artist originally intended.
Acne vases
The perfect Christmas gift is here – Acne Studio’s limited collection of individually, unique and irregular vases. The collection hit the stores this Monday – but only in a few selected ones (congrats to you guys in Stockholm, Paris and New York!).
The vases have been seen as part of the interior of the Acne Studios showrooms and offices.
The 50 limited-edition irregular vases will be available for $460 at selected Acne Studios stores.
Made in London: Jewellery Now
As part of their jewellery season, Museum of London have worked with AnOther’s Fashion Editor, Agata Brehlen to curate an exhibition celebrating the diversity of contemporary jewellery making within the capital. Made in London: Jewellery Now will open on November 21, running alongside the major Cheapside Hoarde exhibition.
The exhibition brings together seven London-based contemporary jewellers. Delving into the creative processes and working methods of the designers, the exhibition paints a picture of London as a source of inspiration and innovation. Beyond presenting their work, the exhibition explores the unique professional identity of each designer, giving a snapshot of their world and imagination.
It features the jewellers, Jordan Askill, Imogen Belfield, Rachel Boston, Duffy, Husam el Odeh, Noemi Klein and Frances Wadsworth-Jones, whose work is produced in the capital.
Noemi Klein’s jewellery has been specially created for the museum and displayed in four different scenes designed by DLSD Studio. Below you see images of her, working in her studio in East London.
Made in London: Jewellery Now 21 November 2013 – 27 April 2014 Museum of London, Free
Nina Manandhar
Few people have the guts to delve into the lives of young people today, with all the various stereotypes and assumptions that swirl like barbed wire around UK youth. Nina Manandhar, a publisher, artist and photographer, has fearlessly produced in depth work surveying the dynamic nature of one of the most shunned age groups. The daughter of a printer and a former art graduate, Nina made a mark with her successful archive project ISYS with Cieron Magat, an initiative that provides a lens into the style and the living experience of various communities through film, books, exhibitions and events. Now with photo-book Money On My Oyster under her belt and imminent style project What We Wore in production; Nina continues to reveal the beautiful subtleties that make everyday life.
You describe yourself as a pop-ethnographer – what does that term mean to you?
I’m not quite sure what it means … I made it up. I like to immerse myself in other people’s worlds and almost become invisible in the process of documenting them. I guess a lot of ethnography is people going to far off countries to investigate disappearing tribes but I’m more interested in the contemporary city life, so it’s more ‘Pop’ than ‘world’. I like documentary because I’m really curious about other people and how they live their lives, and it’s an honour to be allowed to get a glimpse into their worlds.
Fashion is often seen as frivolous, however your work with ISYS often comments on social contexts through style. What is your view on fashion and its cultural importance?
ISYS was set up by myself and Cieron Magat because we are both interested in people and the idea of style as a way of getting to know people, of them declaring who they are. It’s not that I’m not interested in fashion and trends, I am, but for me it’s more about style, and the meaning of style – how it is used as a tool for identification and belonging to today’s world.
Youth culture also seems to be of particular significance in your projects – what draws you to the younger communities?
I think my teenage years were a really formative time for me, as it is for a lot of people I guess. I experimented with my appearance, had a real tight group of friends and felt a real sense of belonging through the music cultures I was exposed to. It was a time when I felt a real sense of community; belonging seemed simpler then.
There has been much talk about the younger generation as lacking a counter culture and a sense of clear identity – what are your thoughts on this?
The term ‘counter culture’ is so complex. There was a clearer sense of identity for the younger generations in the past because there was far less fragmentation of identities, both for older people and young alike. I guess youth cultures today have embraced consumer society more, but since it began, youth culture has been tied up with consumerism.
What I do think about a lot in terms of the younger generation now is a sense that their lives are lived out in a state of constant ‘publicness’ through the Internet and I wonder how that affects them and how they experience the world.
You’re now working on What We Wore, what inspired you to publish the collection in a printed format as well as online?
What We Wore was initially a project on ISYS; it was a weekly format that ended up being really popular. I really like print (my dad is actually a printer) and so saw how the concept could work really well as a book. With the help of my friend Eve Dawoud, I put together a proposal and took it to Prestel, who really liked it. It’s coming out Autumn 2014. We are looking for submissions – get involved at what-we-wore.com
More on Nina Manandhar and her projects visit:
Text by Monique Todd
PROM NIGHT from ISYS on Vimeo.
Jenna Sutela: Space, Time and the Body
Struggling with the demand to be everywhere and everything at all times, (despite having only the ‘capacity to exist in one point in space and time’) Jenna Sutela is a Helsinki based writer, curator and New Media experimenter who has recently probed discussion by creating the ‘living’ media project, New Degrees of Freedom (2013).
Realised with graphic designer (and frequent collaborator) Johanna Lundberg, the project, existing offline and online, entails the creation of an avatar that transitions back and forth between real and virtual space. Featuring contributions from fields such as architecture, programming and music, the body (avatar) continuously alters its presence, acquiring a new flexibility. As the divisions between online and offline, work and non-work, presence and absence dissolve, Sutela offers a refreshing take on what actually defines the body today.
On New Degrees of Freedom there’s a line that reads ‘every new link between one’s online and offline identities removes a “degree of freedom”‘…edging towards the implications of Zuckerberg’s claim ‘you have one identity’. Is a singular identity the ultimate prison?
I guess Zuckerberg’s notion originally referred to the blurring of boundaries between private and working life. In that case, my question would be – when everything is turning into work, is there anything that’s not work? What could non-work be? How can it be enabled? To me, his statement also speaks about how the freedom to invent identities has disappeared together with the Internet turning into a visual arena where we are exposed to constant imaging, surveillance, and the workings of information economy. The idea of adding degrees of freedom to our existence by means of real-life avatars can be read as an attempt to obscure our behavior in real space, leading inconsistent lives, or atomizing our presence in order to refuse the identity politics of marketing communications. It’s time to assume physical formlessness.
Your projects span across both the digital and physical – what medium do you most enjoy working with?
I have worked on several printed publications before, such as artist’s books, and these objects continue to appear magical to me. However, the experience with New Degrees of Freedom, producing a sort of living medium and including performances and installations, feels even more relevant right now. It has allowed me to explore narrative constructions beyond the physical limitations posed by pages and screens, ephemeral stories and illustrations. I find this interesting in the face of a general information glut.
Do you think the separation between the real and virtual is a permanent one?
I believe that there is a constant oscillation between the real and the virtual – between what can be imagined and the dimension that imagination has in reality. For example, digital technology once had an alien quality in our lives, but now it represents the norm. And what happens on the Internet also changes our relation to its surrounding world.
ADD METAPHYSICS is a publishing project that thinks about the digital through materials and vice versa – what drew you to this subject in particular?
I was asked to edit a publication at a digital fabrication laboratory where artists, designers and architects meet mechanical engineers and material scientists. The publication was to spur new subjects and perspectives for approaching the shared workspace between digital representation and physical realization. ADD METAPHYSICS turned out something like an experimental foundation course on digital materiality: a schoolbook of sorts, with invited essays and assignments around topics such as the autonomy of objects, the ‘mediality’ of matter, reproduction as a site for revolution, the ideological origins of computational design…
How important do you think it is to think about the digital in terms of materials and ‘the physical’ rather than as something formless?
The Internet, for one, depends as much on material and energy as it depends on information. A network of machines and cables supports our online activities. It’s a jungle of conducting, reflecting and insulating materials—an air of electromagnetic radiation and solid residues, mixing with atmospheric currents and bodily fluids—inseparable from the Earth’s geo-processes.
Text by Monique Todd
New Degrees of Freedom, Act 2: The Spirit of a Real-Life Avatar(2013) at Antagon art event. Photos by Hertta Kiiski.
walter hugo at paul smith store
Paul Smith is about to display a new series of photographic work by London-based artist Walter Hugo at the Albemarle Street shop. The exhibition, titled We Are An Island opens to the public on October 16 to coincide with the Frieze Art Fair London.
The show will bring together two major series of works that have never before been shown in their entirety. The exhibition space will host Reflecting the Bright Lights, a collection of portraits of inspirational and creative peers from the worlds of performance, art and fashion captured in silver nitrate on glass sheets. With luminaries like Eddie Redmayne, Alice Dellal, Carson McColl, Polly Stenham, Maia Norman and Jaime Winston captured by Hugo’s 1870’s lens, Reflecting the Bright Lights creates a portrait of today’s cultural pioneers.
The second series, The Nature of Interdependence, is Hugo’s 10-piece series of giant seascapes depicting the shores of Britain and will be on view upstairs at Albemarle Street.
Walter Hugo is a multi-disciplinary artist, working within the mediums of sculpture, 19th century photographic process, film and performance. He frequently teams entrancing expressions of beauty with the application of complex methodology or scientific research and process.
Phoebe Colling-James
From today one can see the young British Goldsmiths graduate Phoebe Colling-James’s first solo exhibition at the Ritter/Zamet gallery in London.
The show’s title is inspired by the wise and endlessly rich oeuvre of seminal American writer James Baldwin. It thus sets the tone and mood for Collings-James’ exhibition and her continuous concern with racial and gender-based inadequacies played out against the austere, formal language of minimalism. Violence, sex and desire are subliminal in these artworks; they are at once beguiling and unsettling, seemingly fragile yet laden with menace.
The exhibition will be on display at Ritter/Zamet gallery, 80a Ashfield Street London E1 2BJ, from October 11 – November 23.
Frieze London – a must see event
Next week it’s time for the annual international art fair, Frieze London. The contemporary art fair takes place every October in London’s Regent’s Park.
In addition to being able to see and buy art by over 1,000 of the world’s leading artists, visitors can experience Frieze Projects, the fair’s unique and critically acclaimed programme of artist commissions and Frieze Talks, a prestigious programme of debates, panel discussions and keynote lectures.
Don’t miss out, buy your tickets now at friezelondon.com
October 17 – 20 2013 Regent’s Park
Artists Anonymous
As their name suggests, Artists Anonymous (AA) keep their identity well hidden. All that we know is that they are a group of three, dividing their time between Berlin and London. The anonymity is to remove the possibility of their gender and age influencing evaluation of their work.
The group started exhibiting together in 2005 and even created a gallery space in London to show their own and other artists’ work. Their rapid rise to prominence is culminating in a series of high profile international exhibitions this year, with solo shows in Stockholm, Zurich, London and Madrid between August and December.
The film above is from their exhibition at Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm. It was a remarkable installation of 49 almost identical oil on wood portraits (40 x 30 cm), showing a woman’s head changing direction from left to right.
From October 15, Artists Anonymous will display installations over three floors at the Berloni Gallery in London.
System of a Dawn, is an example of Artists Anonymous’ ongoing game of inversions and illusion with the viewer, where commonplace expectations implode from the inside out and back again.
Performer as Curator
Alison Goldfrapp will be the first person to display works in The Lowry’s Performer as Curator exhibition series opening on the 19th October 2013. The enigmatic musician will bring together work from the painters, filmmakers, illustrators and photographers who have inspired her own artistic vision in this series that aims to bridge the gap between the performing and visual arts.
The diverse selection of works will engage with the artist’s fascination with the darker side of fairy tales and folklore, through the artworks of internationally renowned artists such as Marcel Dzama, John Stezaker, Leonora Carrington, Jan Pienkowski and Lotte Reiniger. Goldfrapp, who was hand-picked by the gallery to be the first performer in this series, not only acts as front-woman in her band but art-directs all things visual also. Michael Simpson, Head of Visual Art and Engagement at the Lowry said, “Alison Goldfrapp was a natural first choice for us, given her remarkable synthesis of music and visual imagery. This is an exciting new venture for us and there are more collaborations in the pipeline”.
Goldfrapp released their latest studio album Tales Of Us on Monday 9th September.
Text by Mariella Agapiou
das innere
The German self-taught photographer and Twin favourite, Alexander Binder, is opening his first solo exhibition in Warsaw, Poland on Friday. It’s a new body of work called Das Innere with mystic photographs, which were taken during several journeys to Sicily and the Aeolian Islands in the last 3 years.
Das Innere has an ambiguous meaning in German and is used to describe the inside of a building or a physical object – but also the inner life of a human being, his thinking, his emotions, his hopes, nightmares and fears. Alexander portrays this in his exhibition through pictorial photographs from smoking volcanoes and magmatic eruptions which gives the viewer a very lively impression of the destructive power from the inner of the earth. On the other hand the images come directly from the inner of our soul and express anxiety and loneliness.
Alexander creates mystical and ethereal photos, which are characterized by a strong passion for the spiritual and the surreal.
Alexander’s photos have been exhibited internationally (Germany, France, UK, Poland, US, Canada, Northern Ireland, Italy, Netherlands). And his images were published in VICE, SLEEK, TUSH, TWIN, GUP, Fotografia, Süddeutsche Magazin and many more. His books and zines are held in the collections of the National Art Library, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Salford Zine Library, Indie Photobook Library and the Médiathèque André-Malraux de Strasbourg.
Das Innere is on display at Lookout Gallery in Warsaw from August 30 until September 24.
Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye
V1 GALLERy in Denmark presents a group exhibition with work responding to the legacy of World War II and Nazis, but the aim is to create an exhibition that highlights the increasing perils of the far right in contemporary Europe – such as the Golden Dawn in Greece, Svoboda in the Ukraine and the Jobbik party in Hungary.
Mel Brooks, the American writer, director and actor, has spent much of his career parodying Hitler and German national socialists, and his aim was to bring Hitler and the Nazi’s down with ridicule and laughter.
In 1945, he responded to the Nazi’s propaganda broadcasts by setting up speakers and singing Jewish musical theatre performer Al Jolsonʼs song ʻToot Toot Tootsie Goodbyeʼ on repeat to the Germans.
By placing together work that veers from the satirical to the deeply disturbing, the aim with the exhibition is to create a real effect in the viewer. Hitting them with horror and the unacceptable at moments when humour has lowered their barriers.
And Twin’s art editor, Francesca Gavin, is the curator of the exhibition. She is also the curator of the Soho House Collection and has curated shows internationally that include The Dark Cube at the Palais de Tokyo 2012, and The New Psychedelica at MU Eindhoeven 20.
The exhibtion is on display at V1 Gallery from September 13 until October 14.
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