In the Nineties you needn’t have looked further than Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love to understand the spirit of the age. The couple embodied the grunge aesthetic that dominated a decade of cool in fashion and music. And in the Noughties no man influenced the look more than Dior Homme’s Hedi Slimane, whose inspiration came straight from the skinny young men he saw at gigs and on the street.

Since leaving the label in 2007 Slimane has brought his lean dark look to his photography and regularly uploads his encounters on his online diary. His latest entry, a series of portraits with 19-year-old Frances Bean – daughter of Kurt and Courtney – is a coming of age moment in recent pop cultural history. Having spent 19 years out of the lime-light, Frances’ is now a haunting beauty in her own right. Slimane’s images of her are all tattoos and ripped up jeans. It’s the portrait of an age moved on,  but that still has all the angst of its forebears.

hedislimane.com

Tags: Couretnay Love, Dior Homme, Frances Bean, Hedi Slimane, Hedi Slimane Diary, Kurt Cobain

Michael Clark artfully treads the line between rock and roll and classical dance. Over the past 26 years the post punk choreographer has put dance at the centre of contemporary culture in his collaborations with fashion designers like Bodymap and Hussein Chalayan and artists like Leigh Bowery and Sarah Lucas. Labeled the enfant terrible of the dance world his work has been performed by Ballet Rambert and the Paris Opera and has been set to the music of Iggy Pop and David Bowie.

In a striking new book eminent figures from the world of dance and beyond pay homage to the choreographer and images of his work by photographers such as Nick Knight and David Lachapelle, do glorious justice to Clark’s modern aesthetic.

Michael Clark edited by Suzanne Cotter, Michael Bracewell and 
Stephanie Jordan is published by Violette Editions in September 2011.
michaelclarkcompany.com

Tags: Ballet Rambert, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Michael Clark, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Sarah Lucas

Boy waifs and androgynous dreamers have long captivated fashion photographer Toyin Ibidapo. After years of recording her subjects from her West London home she’s finally created a mesmerizing scrapbook of her poetic portraits. Cult of Boys is an adoring tribute to the raw vulnerability of youth.

Twin spoke to Toyin about her life’s work…

When did you start taking photos?
I started when I was 18 or 19, I started by doing photograms which was fun. Still at this time I hadn’t any particular calling, it was just something I enjoyed along with all the other students. Then it progressed to shooting my fellow students, friends and family and still I didn’t know I was becoming a photographer as it was a hobby. I was on a general art and design course at Kingsway in clerkenwell 90/92. Then I decided I was better at taking pics and got into Bournemouth.

Are you self-taught or did you study photography?
I am self taught, but I also studied at Bournemouth and Poole  College Of Art And Design 92/94. I realize it’s the eye which is most important…well for me it is as I cant speak for anyone else.

When did you start shooting fashion photography?
I came into the fashion industry in 97 and tested until my portfolio was nice and juicy. I got my first break shooting for ” The Face ”  back in 98.

When did you first start photographing adolescent boys?
I guess since my student days. I had a few muses even back then, we were all students but on different courses. But if you mean the youth of the “skinny white boy ” a.k.a “The Cult Of…”  More seriously when I came into the fashion industry from 97. But I was mostly shooting girls and just the random boy here and there in the beginning. I really got it going in 99.

Aesthetically what kind of boys inspire you and why?
It’s the ones whose presence seem to go beyond just being beautiful looking and you can’t help but react to something in their personality. Maybe it’s shyness or someone who has an interesting state of mind. Yes those that inspire me must have the thing that makes you want to stare at them. They have invisible pull.

How do you cast your subjects – are they models or do you scout them yourself?
Mainly the majority are models and one or two of them have introduced me to faces they think I’d like to shoot. I prefer to meet them face to face before booking if possible so they can see what I’m about and visa versa.

What’s been the response to your work over the years?
The general response has been “when are you gonna get that bloody book out!” Lol. I would say more but my head might start to swell.

How long have you wanted to put together the Cult of Boys?
It began in 99. It was a goal I’d given myself, I didn’t stop shooting it till 09, then I had to work on the dummy, which I’d started since 08 and yes it was a head fuck and yes it took me ages.

What other photographers and artists do you admire?
Any photographer whose image makes me want to look at it just a little bit too long gets my seal of approval no matter what the technique.  Paul Outerbridge, Helmut Newton, Avedon, Will Mcbride, Bill Henson, Mary Ellen Mark, Michael Sanders, David Vasiljevic,Gregory Crewdson, Tim Walker.

Writer and Poet Maya Angelou – more people need to know about her. She’s just so inspiring. Ben Whishaw, when I first saw Perfume I was totally inspired by his performance, knocked the socks off me. Sally Man, writer Charlie Kaufman – boy I’d like to pick his brain, such an original. Him and Tim Burton. Bruce Lee, Frida Kahlo for her body to be in that much pain and still to paint – makes me love her all the more.

Then there’s this beautiful man called Simon he gets me to try and go beyond a bit like David Lynch. I admire anyone that makes me think. I deeply admire anyone  in adversity because it’s only a matter of time until they claw their way back up if they want. There are many many more.

Who is your current muse?
I have no current muses just my old skool Daniel Tighe. He’ll always be my muse as I know him best. As he dos me.  I still love Finnian Smith and Chris Tanner, I could still shoot them as It feels a bit unfinished. New muses…that’s yet to come. I’ve not been looking for a while now, plus it takes a lot to pull me in.

What’s next up for you?
I’m writing…

Cult of Boys by Toyin Ibidapo with a foreword by Tim Walker is published by teNeues in September 2011.
toyinibidapo.com

Tags: Ben Whishaw, Bournemouth, Cult of Boys, Daniel Tighe, Maya Angelou, teNeues, The Face, Tim Walker, Toyin Ibidapo

Drew Barrymore’s new music video for Californian lo-fi trio Best Coast is a street gang take on star-crossed lovers, played out across the deserted roof-tops of Los Angeles. A cartoon version of the Bloods and the Crips, Chloe Moretz plays Veronica, a member of a graffiti crew called The Night Creepers, who falls in love with a rival gang member. She’s a tragic Juliet but with more venom.

With their washed out denim and leather jackets Barrymore’s lovers come from the pantheon of Hollywood movies, from Rebel Without A Cause to Eighties teen-flicks. Complete with Hip-Hop choreographed fight scenes, Our Deal is a West Side Story for the post-MTV generation.

Watch Our Deal here

Tags: Best Coast, Chloe Moretz, Drew Barrymore, Our Deal, Rebel Without a Cause, Romeo and Juliet, The Night Creepers, Veronica, West Side Story

X Marks the Bökship are having a love affair with the letter X. Between July and December this year the project space for independent publishers on Cambridge Heath Road is releasing 26 Xs by 26 artists, designers and writers. First up is an X by Hansjörg Mayer from his 1969 Last Alphabet series followed by one by designer Harsh Patel. The individual prints will be for sale throughout the project for £15 with sales going towards funding future projects at X Marks the Bökship. All 26 Xs will be available at the end of the series. It’s an experience worth following.

bokship.org

Tags: Cambridge Heath Road, Hansjorg Mayer, Harsh Patel, Last Alphabet XALPHABET, X Marks the Bokship

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

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

“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

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

The problem with success is that once you have it it’s almost impossible to avoid being typecast by it. One of the biggest misconceptions about Tracey Emin is that her work is all about sex.  In fact, as Emin’s first major London exhibition shows, it’s about far more than her sex life. It’s about intimacy. It’s about love.  This is a love that takes no account of gender, race, or even – as we discovered via a video starring a bullmastiff – species. It appears many things go on in a bed besides sex.

Tracey Emin seems to take a lot of flak in this country.
Maybe the kind of poignant statements her work is littered with are a bit too close to the bone:

“You stop me from feeling anything”
“I do not expect to be a mother but I do expect to die alone”
“Every time I feel love I think Christ I’m going to be crucified”
“I whisper to my past, do I have another choice”

But for all the vapidity she’s accused of, this is strong stuff.

Tracey Emin: Love is what you Want spans the artist’s entire career to date, and includes many specially commissioned and previously unseen works.  This show opens the eyes to the vast expanse of Emin’s oeuvre.  She’s prolific – working successfully in many media.  Add to that she’s feisty, controversial and fun. We don’t care if some love to hate you Tracey. We love to love you.

Tracey Emin : Love is what you Want is at the Hayward Gallery until August 29.

Images by David Levene. Words  by Beverley Knowles

Tags: Beverley Knowles, Hayward Gallery, Love is what you want, tracey emin

It takes 98 seconds for artist Richard Phillips to transform troubled actress Lindsay Lohan into a modern Hollywood venus. In his intensely poetic film portrait, Lohan emerges from a sparkling blue Malibu mansion pool dripping sex, vulnerability and glamour. A modern Bardot in a white bikini, whose image is bigger than ever. The film is a love-letter that transcends the tabloid drama and turns her into an untouchable star.

Richard Phillip’s Lindsay Lohan premieres June 1 in Commercial Break until June 5, as part of the 54th Venice Biennale.
gagosian.com

Tags: Bardot, Gagosian, lindsay lohan, Richard Phillips, Venice Biennale

This spring isn’t for cleaning. Granta have launched their new issue and it’s all about women wielding pens, not dusters. For The F Word, the magazine has enlisted a posse of female writers to share their thoughts and imaginations on the nature of feminism now and way back when.

From Rachel Cusk on divorce to A.S Byatt on academia in the Sixties and Seventies, it’s clear that while there have been some almighty leaps, there remain some distinct bounds. Jeanette Winterson holds a mirror up to contemporary romance, while Clarisse d’Arcimoles’s photo essay Un-Possible Retour is a lemon-sweet study of girlhood from adult-memory. With stories emerging from Ghana to Great Britain The F Word is alive with love, sex and house-hold chores, but in a post-feminist world the role of women is far from clean-cut.

granta.com

Tags: A.S. Byatt, Clarisse d'Arcimoles, Ghana, Granta, Jeanette Winterson, Rachel Cusk, The F Word

With Twin‘s imminent fourth edition all about rebellion, the time couldn’t be riper for Flash Projects’ latest pop-up photography show, Street Fighting Man: Fifty Years of Youth Protest. Recent months have seen an electric surge in youthful uprising, as the young and angry have taken to the streets in a way not seen for over a decade. From the top up fees protests in London to last week’s riot against Tesco’s in Bristol, a new generation is asserting itself in ways reminiscent of the Sixties’ student protests.

Taking its name from The Rolling Stones‘ track, Street Fighting Man, which was inspired by Mick Jagger’s experience of an anti-war demonstration in 1968, the celebrates how youth culture and media have conspired to create historic moments over the past fifty years. Bands like The Rolling Stones, whose concerts were often accompanied by riots, and The Clash were mouthpieces for fans. While photographer Caroline Coon’s pictures of punk bands The Sex Pistols and The Slits not only record a seminal scene but asserted the right to individual identity. Today, these images of the Brixton and Poll Tax riots are a reminder of how difficult times breed discontent and dissidence. Often change doesn’t come quietly, it resounds on the streets.

Street Fighting Man. 50 years of youth protest is on at Flash Projects, 5 Savile Row, W1S 3PD until the 4th June 2011.
flash-projects.co.uk

Tags: Brixton Riots, Caroline Coons, Flash Projects, Mick Jagger, Poll tax, Sex Pistols, Street Fighting Man, Tesco, The Clash, the rolling stones, The Slits

What fragrance to wear with vintage clothing? This is a question I often ponder. Should one team a delicious piece of vintage with an equally arcane perfume – a Shalimar or a Miss Dior or an Arpege – and thus create a sort of double whammy of historically resonant cloaking.  Or do you update a vintage outfit with a  resolutely contemporary perfume and allow it to provide an olfactive update/contrast to your outfit?  Well perhaps Dior have dreamed up the answer.  Collection Privee is a wonderful edit of eight wonderfully uncommercial new fragrances. These are perfumes with integrity: rich with history and imagination yet completely contemporary.  New Look 1947 is not only a  fantastic name and idea for a perfume – a scent inspired by that timeless nipped-in silhouette – it is, in my humble opinion a  great choice to team with that prized vintage dress.  The constituent notes are tuberose, rose, jasmine and vanilla.  It is a modern floral, not cloying and concentrated like the florals of yore.  Nor has it been corrupted into one of those horrible ubiquitous cynically commercial fruity florals. Or rendered cologne like by the addition of too much citrus. No, it is ladylike and powdery and ideal if you want to feel feminine and precise without feeling blousy or saccharine.

Words by Bethan Cole

Tags: Arpege, Bethan Cole, Collection Privee, Dior, Miss Dior, New Look 1947, vintage

For her debut feature film, Irish director Alexandra McGuinness has created a bacchanal of fashion and fast-living reminiscent of Antonioni’s Blow-Up and Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Inspired by the story of Odysseus’ sailors losing all desire tfor home after tasting the fruit of the Lotus

plant, Lotus Eaters, follows a clique of privileged sybarites living an increasingly decadent and vacuous London existence.

Among them is Alice, an ex-model and struggling actress who is jaded by her friends hedonistic lifestyle, tired of the unbridled excess and the white-noise of the morning after. Her path negotiates the fracturing relationships of her friends as she struggles to find a life that will make her happy.

Shot in black and white and featuring a host of hot young fashion designers such as Simone Rocha, alongside nascent acting talent like Antonia Campbell-Hughes and singer/songwriter Johnny Flynn, Lotus Eaters is more than just a beautiful film, it’s a paean to contemporary London.

But while the backdrop of local cafés and boutiques immortalises the capital’s vibrance, the overall effect is more fantastic than real. Like Evelyn Waugh’s Bright Young People before them, McGuinness’ lotus eaters belong to a perennial epoch of youth, where despite beauty and riches, all that glitters is not gold.

Lotus Eaters premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
lotuseatersmovie.com

Tags: Alexandra McGuinness, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Blow-up, Evelyn Waugh, Johnny Flynn, La Dolce Vita, Lotus Eaters, simone rocha

House of Hackney has finally arrived. Bringing chintz back but with an East London stamp, the interior design brand’s non-conformist wallpaper, bed linen and furniture is an antidote to identikit Ikea fatigue and you can now shop their bold take on traditional furnishing online.

To coincide with the launch of the website, the inventive couple behind the label, Frieda Gormley and Javvy M Royle are hosting a pop-up shop until Sunday. Installed in a Dalston town house, House of Hackney’s three collections, Dalston Rose, Queen Bee and Hackney Empire will deck each of the four floors, literally floor to ceiling.

Expect a plethora of fine bone china, tasselled lampshades and chaise longues in the House of Hackney’s fabrics and prints. Kiss goodbye to white walls and embrace the flock.

House of Hackney pop-up is at 76 Stoke Newington Road, Hackney, London N16 7XB until 3 April.
houseofhackney.com

Tags: Dalston, Frieda Gormley, House of Hackney, Javvy M Royle

Over the past six years, immersive theatre experience, You Me Bum Bum Train, has been a runaway train gathering speed; each new show sells-out faster than the last and every passenger gets off having had the ride of their life.

The concept is far from simple, with each performance consisting of an audience of one performed to by a cast of close to 200. The viewer is hurtled through a picaresque series of intimate scenes and surreal situations. However with the details of each show a closely guarded secret, it’s left to the posters to sum up the spirit of the night.

Over the years, Bum Bum Train creators Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd, who met while studying illustration at Brighton University, have cooked up the brilliant posters themselves and an exhibition of the best is currently at the Drawers Gallery in East London.

Conjuring Toulouse Lautrec’s paintings of the Moulin Rouge, drenched in a wave of sea-side ribaldry, each poster is a rollicking, riot of colour that doesn’t so much hint at what might be in store, but rather whacks one over the head Punch and Judy style. You have until Saturday to enter the world of You Me Bum Bum Train.

You Me Bum Bum Train Poster Exhibition is on until March 26 at The Haggerston, Drawers Gallery, 438 Kingsland Road, London, E8 4AA.

Tags: Drawers Gallery, Kate Bond, Morgan Lloyd, theatre, You Me Bum Bum Train

Some statistics are calculated to make blood boil. For the women behind London’s Bird’s Eye View Film Festival in particular, it’s the fact that only six per cent of directors and twelve per cent of screenwriters are women. But instead of getting mad, Bird’s Eye View is getting even.

Following a host of screenings and events featuring prominent women in the film industry, this year’s festival is closing with the UK première of a film that socks it to the boys.

Tiny Furniture is the award winning début of 24-year-old writer-director-actor Lena Dunham. Wryly autobiographical, Dunham plays 22-year-old Aura, a film graduate going through a quarter life crisis after returning home to her artist-mother’s TriBeCa loft. According to Lena, it’s about a girl in transition and the women who love her: “I set out to tell an honest story that incorporated aspects of my own life, but knew my life had parallels with many others”. Shot in her own home on a minimal budget and with her family as co-stars; Dunham’s film is a stirring call to arms.

Tiny Furniture closes the Birds Eye View Film Festival, at BFI Southbank on 17th March.
birds-eye-view.co.uk

Tags: Bird's Eye Film Festival, Lena Dunham, Tiny Furniture

Teo Connor (No Days Off) and Loren Platt (Work It) have lined up a legion of female creatives to mark International Women’s Day with The W Project. In their words, “As women working within the industries and thinking about International Women’s Day, and the wider issues of the position and representation of women in our society, we felt that providing a spotlight for creative women would be a suitable way to mark the day and nurture the budding and blossoming of creative talent throughout our society. We want to be part of building a better creative community for the future.”

thewproject.co.uk

Images courtesy of Tara Darby, Amy Gwatkin and Emma Sheridan.

Tags: International Women's Day, The W Project

The Barbican’s latest exhibition Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970’s brings together the work of three of SoHo’s artistic anarchists – Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown and Gordon Matta-Clark.

The trio were collaborative vigilantes amidst escalating economic turmoil, with Manhattan’s industrial wasteland providing the creative playground for their territorial endeavors.

Laurie Anderson seems the most trusting of New York’s badlands, cataloging dreams induced by sleeping in various locations across the city in the Institutional Dream series, including a nap on the beach at Coney Island. In another room you come across her attempts to reverse the street’s code of conduct with a photo series recording the men of SoHo who made seedy comments to her in the street. Two young guys leaning out of a Chevrolet who moments before had cat-called Let’s go for a ride cutie are snapped along with a man near a fire hydrant who had muttered, “I’d like to screw you baby.”

If Anderson’s concern is the social or intangible effects of New York’s wild downtown district, Matta-Clark’s reaction is much more invasive. Blurring boundaries of sculpture and architecture, MC went as far as dissecting chunks of the city’s rooftops in a bid to catalogue his ‘anarchitectural’ view of unusable properties in Staten Island and Queens.

The interactive and exhibitionist kinship between the three artists is maybe best illustrated by the work of the second female artist, performer Trisha Brown, who teetered on the surface of this disturbed cityscape; taking her medium of dance off the stage and onto the rooftops.

This is a rare and revealing survey of New York’s recent history in the shady era before high rents and fashionable quarters. And it’s bound to inspire some very modern admiration for their original brand of daredevil urban creativity.

Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s is at the Barbican Art Gallery, until 22 May 2011.

Words by Julia Hobbs

Tags: Gordon Matta-Clark, Julia Hobbs, Laurie Anderson, Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, The Barbican, Trisha Brown