ANOK: The final face of Willy Vanderperre’s ‘/ 12 series’
The last of Willy Vanderperre’s /12 series with IDEA books spotlights on 19 year-old Anok Yai. As the first black model to have opened a Prada show since Naomi Campbell in 1997, the profile of Yai is a powerful way to end the series. The model embodies the energy and determination of a young generation working to ensure a more equal future for those that follow.
Throughout his series Vanderperre’s emotional and sensual photography has juxtaposed the personality and prowess of the models photographed. The images offer readers timeless portraits of young talent, sure to become iconic faces in the next few years. Explore the whole series here.
SUPERSTRUCTURES: The new architecture 1960-1990
The phrase ‘high-tech’ makes most of us think about phones, computers or intelligent dishwashers. But it’s one that makes some architects gasp with indignation. This year the Sainsbury Centre celebrates its 40th anniversary with “Superstructures: The new architecture 1960–90”. An exhibition that picks apart the architectural movement behind the centre itself and examines the controversial label of ‘high-tech’ against the wider architectural canon.
‘High-tech’ architecture was championed by legendary British architects Norman Foster (the designer behind the Sainsbury Centre) and Richard Rogers (Centre Pompidou), amongst others. This group of architects found ideas of adaptable, expandable and mobile buildings exciting. They were interested in pragmatic solutions, and inspired by earlier architectural ideas and innovations like Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes and Jéan Proves demountable house.
The high-tech style managed to blend post-war 60s utopian ideas with 19th, and early 20th century ideas about adapted architecture – a mixture that resulted in expressive and very characteristic buildings. It was a technologically focused – one might even say obsessed – development from modernism.
Talking via a malfunctioning, ironically un-high-tech Skype connection, Twin chatted with curators of the exhibition Jane Pavitt and Abraham Thomas. An era of optimistic architecture that looked to engineering and technology for new possibilities certainly seems resonant in 2018.
Could you begin by telling me a little bit about the exhibition?
Jane Pavitt: The exhibition is about this crux in late modernism, the term often used in association with it is high-tech. We have taken a rather interesting positioning I suppose… In the exhibition we show the long history of association between technology, engineering and architecture. It starts with the the Sainsbury Centre, a superstructure that is, in a sense, an enormous shed. It’s complex, beautiful, precisely engineered, but still kind of like a shed.
We used this building to explain the high-tech approach to architecture. Then we look at ground structures like the Crystal Palace, and through to the modern experiments by Prouvé and Buckminster Fuller. Finally we look at the generation of architects that we are focused on. The first part of the exhibition tell the pre-history, then we get to high-tech it self.
Abraham Thomas: Should I go back to high-tech?
Jane: Yes, I see that she’s dying to hear about it.
Abraham: One of the things that we wrestled with as curators is using the phrase high-tech without actually using the phrase high-tech. The term is very divisive, a bit like postmodernism. Many of the practitioners of postmodernism hate that label. Jane curated the big postmodernism exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum so she has been through this.
Abraham: We had to be conscious to the fact that many of these leading architects absolutely reject the term high-tech. It is reasonable to an extent, they reject it simply being a style. What we are trying to say is that it was more than a style. It was a sort of ethos, a movement. But it is a convenient term, it refers to the idea of influence of technology. In a way it is valid. But we also sort of pick it apart, don’t we?
Jane: We wanted to make it very clear that it’s certainly not a style label, although it’s often used like that. These buildings are stylistically very different. The architects reached different types of solutions, but they all share a set of principles. The Sainsbury Centre and the Pompidou Centre are totally different solutions to the same set of ideas and concerns. They respond to their sites, position and purpose in different ways. On the other hand, we felt as curators, and historians, that if there is a term that has some currency historically – it is a frequently used label in architectural history – then this is the right time to kind of, as Abraham says, pick it apart and attempt a much more nuanced understanding.
Do you think there is another term that could work better?
Jane: Architecture of advanced engineering is a good description. That’s what they are concerned with, testing the limits of certain kind of building methods. If you think of high-tech as a process, rather than a style, that’s quite a useful way of approaching it. I would say that it’s a type of technological modernism.
But people like labels, don’t they? Like art deco. Everybody has contested the meaning of art deco, but it is still a very powerful term. Postmodernism is a term that makes people angry [laughs] but it persists. Rather than abandon the label all together, we wanted to unpack and position it. These buildings share certain things about advanced engineering and precision engineering, but they can also be simple solutions.
To take an example: we have reconstructed a section of Michael and Patty Hopkins house in the exhibition. It is not high-tech in that sense. It is appropriate technology. They liked the idea of using pre-fabricated components and cost effective materials that could be assembled simply, cheaply, effectively with a powerful aesthetic.
Abraham: There are a number of examples of high-tech buildings with ideas from other explicitly progressive technological contexts. For example, here at the Sainsbury Centre, Foster created a double skinned wall which allows a lot of the servicing and utilities to be packed away, resulting in this sleek exterior surface and an uninterrupted interior space well suited for an exhibition layout. That idea came from Foster’s observations of a passenger aircraft, were you have a sort of false elevated floor where all the services can be packed underneath.
Jane: There is this section in the exhibition where we have some of the original cladding from the Sainsbury Centre next to a part from a [Citroën] 2CV van. Those ribbed aluminium panels that slot into a car are remarkably like the panels that clad this building. The term high-tech is a bit forbidding, but these buildings have almost the childhood appeal of assembling models.
Abraham: Jane’s point immediately makes me think of this amazing object in the exhibition, a project called Tomigaya. It is a mixed use, residential and cultural space in Tokyo, and the model is made from Meccano. It’s a slightly lighthearted moment in the exhibition. The model of Tomigaya encapsulates a rare notion of simplicity, an understanding of how buildings are put together. It makes it very accessible.
Jane: The Sainsbury is one of Britain’s best postwar buildings and it is extraordinarily powerful. It attracted a huge amount of controversy, admiration and criticism at the time it opened. It’s been fascinating to re-examine that. This group of architects are among the most prominent in the world and produce buildings in all typologies: office buildings, factory buildings, buildings for culture, domestic projects, airports, stations. In London, especially in transit, we all move through these buildings. You probably could encounter a Foster, Rogers, a Grimshaw building within any square mile of central London.
Abraham: I went through Heathrow today and the Rogers’ Terminal 5 has a lot of expressive engineering.
What would you say was most challenging with this exhibition? There are so many different aspects to it.
Abraham: I think it’s always tricky when you’re a temporary guardian of someone’s legacy. These are all very successful architects now, huge international names.
Abraham: Yes they are all still alive! You’ve got to be really careful with how you present that legacy. That is always the case when you’re working with any contemporary artist or architect, but I think that is particularly the case here.
One of the hardest things was to ensure that we were sensitive to their legacies, but also created a new narrative. Since the mid 80s there have been shows on these key British architects – Jane and I didn’t want to do another “Best of British Architects” exhibition.
Jane: It’s not a biography show. Architecture exhibitions are difficult. A lot of visitors may not be familiar with reading architectural plans and some of the buildings will be unfamiliar to them. We wanted to explain how buildings worked and how they were made. We’ve just come back from installing two giant wooden carved prototypes of the steel joints from Waterloo International Station. They are about a meter or so high, but fantastic objects. Like pieces of sculpture.The process of construction is fascinating for people of all ages, we are just trying to emphasise that.
“Like I’m working with them, alongside them, in tandem.”: Twin meets Terri Loewenthal
Her vivid, evocative ‘in-camera collages’ of the Californian landscape will have you captive for hours. Twin meets photographer Terri Loewenthal to talk about immersing oneself in the environment, the power of nature and startling “little old ladies in women’s restrooms.”
How did the idea of California manifest itself in your consciousness when you were growing up?
Everything I knew about California I learned from Top Gun and Beverly Hills 90210. I spent my childhood in South Florida, on the other side of the continent. As a kid, I didn’t think California was that much different than where I grew up. We had beaches, sun, pastels and fancy cars too. I played a lot of volleyball. Same thing, different coast, right? I was a jock, competing at a national level. What seemed to matter most at the time was that the volleyball players coming out of California were better than the ones coming from anywhere else. And of course, the continual juvenile version of an east vs. west debate: which is better, Disney World or Disneyland?
I ended up in California not because of a childhood vision, but because of a rebirth later in life. Right after I graduated from college in Texas, my rental house burned down. I took the nominal insurance settlement, borrowed my mom’s manual 35mm camera, and hit the road. I traveled for over a year exploring, camping alone, aligning my schedule with the sun’s, and teaching myself to take pictures. That was when I fell in love with photography and California’s backcountry.
What about the landscape makes it compelling to photograph?
I chose to work with the eastern Sierra for this body of work. It’s not the California most people have in mind – it’s nothing like El Capitan in Yosemite, the ring of mountain peaks around Lake Tahoe, or the beaches in San Diego riddled with surfers. There’s something otherworldly about it. You see Mono Lake from above as you drive towards it, and it doesn’t even make sense. There are no rivers or streams flowing from it; being in the desert, it just evaporates. It’s away from everything, the end of the line.
When I’m thinking about where to shoot, it’s very much about using the shapes of the land as a paint brush — for example, how the curve of a dune when juxtaposed with another dune overlapping it creates a sloping line, a single gesture formed by the contours of the land. The eastern Sierra expanse is ripe with geometry, all these granite building blocks, which I use in my work. With a lack of iconic shapes like pines and sequoias, I’m able to freely use the landscape as raw material instead of subject.
Also, photographing remote landscapes means camping. I have a deep need to sleep on the land, to skip some showers. I love to lose the safety of manicured city life.
How much did you choose to engage with the predominantly male canon of Californian photography when conceiving this project?
When I had the idea for these images, it was purely aesthetically driven, at least in my conscious mind. I’m extending an invitation to step inside of these imaginary places, to have a subjective experience. Our perception of the natural world isn’t gendered. I don’t think of the conceptual framework of Psychscapes as relating to gender, however there are a number of gender norms I don’t buy into, and that offers a certain freedom necessary for creating this work. I love camping. I love being dirty. I love uncontrolled adventure. I might be less afraid to venture solo into un-manicured territory because I’m taller than most men – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve startled little old ladies in women’s restrooms!
Do you feel a tension between the wild as a free space and the idea of capturing it through photography?
I’m currently reading a book called The Ohlone Way about the indigenous people of the Bay Area. It’s a fantastic account of the abundant wilderness and wildlife here before white people “headed west.” The sky was so filled with birds that, looking up, you were more likely to see one than not. I often wonder if my life were as deeply enmeshed with the natural world, if I’d be drawn to make landscape images. My desire is to commune with my subject. Looking through the lens, I slow down and consider subtle nuances. Sometimes it’s shape, or correlation of shapes, sometimes it’s color, sometimes it’s a character trait that I didn’t notice before the camera was in my hand. Mine is a sensitive approach to photography. It’s always been an attempt to process my surroundings more deeply. What I mean to do is appreciate. If I were living off the land, I wouldn’t need to venture away from the distractions of city life in order to touch the dirt. I wouldn’t seek out the grounding feeling that immersion in nature offers. But here I am, surrounded by pavement and electronics, and I do need to visit those spaces for refuge. I am driven to make something out of the feeling of re-finding myself when I’m there.
Was there anything about the landscape that surprised you when you were working in it?
In America, when you drive through the mountains, there are often signs urging you to pull over in the most picturesque places, signs that say “Overlook” or “Scenic View.” To my surprise, these vistas don’t work. Everything is at infinite focal distance, and it feels flat. I am able to create more when I’m nestled in a dynamic environment. If I’m on a trail, say, along the side of a canyon, I’m able to utilize the huge mountain face that is reachable with one hand, and the majestic mountain ranges in the distance. Another surprise is that the horizon line, something I’ve loved photographing all of my life, proves to be a challenge with these compositions. What isn’t surprising in the least is that I’m happy to be limited to the 360 degrees surrounding me as I’m making the collage. Limitations are built into my process, and that’s a relief.
Can you talk about your compositional approach and process?
Each image is a single exposure. All of the layering and colour shifting happens in-camera. I like to think of these images as in-camera collages. There are a number of aspects I tweak as I’m compositing: the position, saturation and palette of each layer, along with all the traditional photographic controls like focus and shutter speed. I can make an environment feel soft or hard, depending on how muted or bright it is. Placing different colour washes next to each other, then saturating them just so, is often the final piece that makes an image sing – like sprinkling flake salt on top of your meal. I just experiment until I strike something that sparks the rush. Anyone who’s ever made anything knows about the rush. It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, I no longer question what I’m doing, or why I’m doing it – it’s just absolutely meant to be.
Did you feel that your relationship with the landscape changed as you were creating the images?
Absolutely. Since I’m working to distort reality, and it’s all happening in real-time. I don’t feel like I’m looking at the mountains as-they-are anyway. They immediately morph into something new and I feel like I’m working with them, alongside them, in tandem. Not only have Psychscapes changed my relationship to the landscape I’m actively working with, they’ve changed my relationship to every wild place I’ve yet to see. I can barely take a hike now without trying to envision it in the context of a Psychscape, even if I don’t have a camera in my hand.
Shooting these images involves contortions, octopus arms, propping things up with my knees. I dive deep into the unknown. It’s a reverie where I feel like I’m falling through times and places. I experiment until I stop questioning my experiments, until I find a composition that feels like another landscape altogether – a place I want to be. When I resurface, I find myself twisted into the least comfortable position attainable, a crick in my neck and knotted-up shoulders. My yoga teacher would be horrified. There’s always a “come to” moment where I finally open both eyes and think briefly, “whoa, where am I?”
Aside from the natural surroundings, did you seek inspiration anywhere else when preparing for the project?
Color plays a huge role in my drive to create these images, and paintings are where I find the most unexpected palettes. I’m surrounded by fantastic painters in my immediate community. My dear friends Joe Ferriso and Alexander Kori Girard come to mind. They both have a knack for using odd colors that when used solo, might not work; but they add other colors, and then there’s a relationship between the colors that challenges what I thought of the colors in the first place. I have an incredible painting of Joe’s in my living room where he started with rejected house paint from the hardware store, and built from there. It’s my reminder that nothing exists in a vacuum, that the correlation between two things makes a third thing. I was a touring musician for the first ten or so years of my photographic career and I draw a lot from that experience too. Attention to rhythm, composing layers of color/sound washes, and seeking collaboration with my surroundings are all instincts honed by performing pop music. Inspiration, as it goes, tends to be an ongoing concoction of every single moment of your life.
Are there other landscapes that you’re interested in approaching in the same way?
I had the idea for these images years ago, but I’ve only recently figured out how to pull them off. California is a natural starting place. Not only is this the place where I fell in love with photography, it’s the place where I’ve found my people – people who care more about creativity, social justice, and community building than paying homage to the crumbling paradigms of what we “should” do with our lives. In California, I feel encouraged to explore ideas that don’t spring from what I’ve been taught or shown, to trust my inner rebel. Hopefully my discovery will open the door to all sorts of adventures. At the moment, I’m curious about working in a tropical place, mainly because an expanse is harder to come by. Jungles are tangled, the shapes less obvious due to the uniformity of color and the dense layers of plants growing on top of one another. I wonder if Psychscapes would work in that context. I wonder if I’d be able to make images that would offer a similar sense of otherworldliness. Maybe jungle Psychscapes would feel like you’re nested inside the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And maybe that’s not so bad.
Everything is recorded: Francesca Gavin meets Toby Ziegler
What happens when you mix sound and image? This layers of contrasts and collaboration has led to one of the most interesting projects of the year, between British artist Toby Ziegler, XL’s Richard Russell and Sampha. Toby took time to talk to Twin about the project:
How did the decision to work together happen?
I’ve known Richard for about 15 years. We’ve had a 15 year long discussion about music. We’ve also been talking about collaborating for ages but this is the first time it made sense. About two years ago he played me early recordings of some songs off the album, and immediately the title track clicked with this work I’ve been doing, using search engines, so I offered to make a video for that song. The installation grew out of that video.
How did you respond to the music?
Initially I set out to make a fairly conceptual video that only intersected with the song in places, using a similar image search to make a kind of visual Chinese whispers. I was aware of Sampha and Richard’s narratives behind the song, but I was trying to make a tangential video about the way images get juxtaposed online, poignant ones and banal ones. I wanted to reflect the dispassionate nature of the algorithm that drives an image search: sometimes cancer cells are visually equivalent to instagrams of pizza, and termite mounds segue with mushroom clouds. Image searches can function like cut-up techniques or tarot, highlighting our predisposition to find meaning or poetry in seemingly random juxtapositions, and sometimes looking for images online feels like consulting the oracle. In this case subconscious decisions and fate intervened in extraordinary ways to make the video far more autobiographical, and closer to the narrative of the song, than I had originally intended.
Everything is Recorded installation at Hackney Arts Centre
With this album Richard was considering his experience of temporary paralysis from Guillan-Barre syndrome, and Sampha related the song to the experience of sitting in hospital with his dying mother. During the month I was finishing the video my mother had an accident, spent two weeks in a coma and then died. So many people visited her during the course of those 2 weeks, it was a real vigil, but frequently the highly emotional atmosphere was punctured by the banal. Discussions of consciousness and mortality, jostled with lengthy conversations about sandwiches.The video took on all sort of resonances I hadn’t previously considered and I allowed myself a different sort of freedom in the final editing. So the video took this sequence of image searches as the starting point, compressing over 3000 found images and videos, but I then incorporated some photos and videos I’d shot myself.I’ve found images operate at different speeds, and editing the video was analogous to playing a musical instrument. I played the drums for 20 years and then quit in my late twenties, but for this video I made a sequence of images and ‘played’ them.
Then I decided to make a second video for a song featuring Infinite Coles called 8am. It triggered a very specific memory for me, from an acid trip when I was 16. I made a lot of work that stemmed from that one evening in a way, and it started me off using CGI in my paintings. I have this archive of 3D landscapes and objects that I used for paintings and sculptures about 10 or 15 years ago, and for this video I turned them into an animation, a sort of drive-through of this tunnelling geometric space.
Tell me about the installation you created to debut the films and how it functioned?
The song Everything Is Recorded was also central to my design for the installation at the abandoned cinema in Dalston. I wanted to project the video in an old disused cinema for the association with projected analogue images, and also as a space that clearly bore the scars of it’s history. For the installation I wanted to show the two videos I’d made on a cinema screen, flanked by two other screens with projections from webcams in real time. I wanted something that operated at a different frequency to the slightly epileptic ‘image search video’ and the CGI of the 8am video (originally I was going to use a live feed of motorway traffic cameras on the other two screens) When we found a space that could house both the projections upstairs, and the gig downstairs it seemed perfect, and immediately it was clear that the live feed should be to cctv of the stage and rehearsals downstairs. It was very interesting to have these different projections running simultaneously. When you walked into this delapidated, cavernous cinema you could hear the band rehearsing in the space directly beneath you, rumbling through the floor, and see a live link to two cctv cameras trained on the stage. It was an uncanny experience, and often took people a few minutes to compute how the sound and images fitted together. If you put on the headphones you could hear the soundtrack to the videos I made, which were projected on a larger central screen. There were two parallel audio spaces to go with the two visual ones.
What works did you show as part of the performance rehearsal area? What did you like about that context?
When I was 17 I went to Lagos and saw Fela Kuti play in his club, Shrine. It was this huge corrugated iron shed with black and white photographs lining the walls, really rickety podiums dotted around for his dancers, and a huge stage that didn’t really separate the audience from the band. Initially about ten musicians came on and started playing , and then periodically a few more people would wander on stage, have a drink and a chat, and then join in, until eventually there were about 50 people on stage. Fela came on after about four hours of this. That was partly the inspiration for the stage downstairs.
I put a low stage in the middle of the room so the audience could get close and it felt intimate, but it was a place the whole band could hang out. The space downstairs is usually a venue for weddings and is white with a tiled floor and a lot of purple furniture, but I wanted attention to be focussed on the performers and a few objects I introduced, so I put a black floor down and black drapes all around, like a Samuel Beckett production. The stage was approximately triangular with some higher and some lower platforms, and three of my my older sculptures functioning a bit like totems or sentinels at the points. The sculptures also appear in the 8am video as virtual models in a CGI landscape. On the walls there were huge posters of Robert Johnson and Ralf and Florian from Kraftwerk, who were the household gods for the whole project.
Everything is Recorded installation at Hackney Arts Centre
What interested you about the contrast and relationship between music and your work?
I used to play in bands when I was a teenager and in my twenties, but it reached a point where I was dividing my time between visual art and music, and not doing anything justice. I got sick of being the unreliable drummer so I completely quit playing. I loved what playing the drums does to your brain, and I think I can occasionally reach a similar state making visual things. I definitely think music informs my paintings and sculptures in a lateral way. I think images and objects function at different frequencies or speeds, and since I’ve started making video work that aspect has become more explicit.
The title track is very much a criticism of our relationship to the digital. How does this connnect to your own take on the internet, technology and our access to imagery?
I’m not sure if that’s what Richard and Sampha intended, but for me it’s exciting how quickly things are changing and sinister how trusting we are. My diabetic son has a sensor under his skin that talks to my phone, to monitor his blood sugar, and in a way the internet also functions as a prosthesis. The internet is a repository for many of our memories, and Google could be seen as our collective unconscious. When you do a similar image search for a picture that doesn’t exist online, the algorithm analyses the image and creates a set of visual parameters by which to find similar ones: colour, tone, composition, and to some extent subject, and shows you the most popular images within those parameters. The results change from day to day depending on what people are looking at. I found that one brownish, abstract image which reliably fed back images of fried dumplings suddenly started to prompt pictures of arid landscapes, because of a drought in California. The results also change because of the constant modification of the algorithm , and it’s scary to think how much influence the designers of these algorithms have.
The new season demands poise, precision and passion in order to do it justice. Watch the new fashion film from Agnes Llyod-Platt made especially for Twin magazine. Read the full story in the latest issue, out now.
Walter Van Beirendonck limited edition at Dover Street Market
This weekend sees the arrival of a bright, quirky new Walter Van Beirendonck installation at Dover Street Market, mirroring his electric and imaginative SS18 collection.
Designed by Alex Wolfe, the ‘Owl’s Whisper’ display reflects the geometric shapes, loud colours and sense of play at the heart of the collection. The new installation also coincides of the launch of new Walter Van Beirendonck items in store at Dover Street Market, with 40 limited edition, handmade t-shirts that combine parts of clothes from old collections. Get them while you can.
Walter Van Beirendonck
Walter Van Beirendonck
Walter Van Beirendonck
Walter Van Beirendonck
Walter Van Beirendonck at Dover Street Market
Walter Van Beirendonck
‘The fragility of plans that appear solid’: Tamar Guimarães and Kasper Akhøj at the De La Warr Pavilion
Until the 3rd of June, the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, will be transformed by immersive designs created by Copenhagen-based artists Tamar Guimarães and Kasper Akhøj, in collaboration with the designer Frederico Fazenda. This will be the very first public exhibition from Guimarães and Akhøj in the UK, who have previously shown work at LACMA and the Venice Biennale.
The exhibition presents moving image and photographic works that have been selected in response to the modernist architecture of the De La Warr Pavilion, and the curious social history of Bexhill-on-Sea. Together and separately, Guimarães and Akhøj explore the residual histories of art, design and architecture, drawing unexpected connections between states of rapture and modernity. The works on display include Studies for A Minor History of Trembling Matter (2017) and Captain Gervasio’s Family (2014), which both respond to research undertaken in the small Brazilian town of Palmelo, where many the inhabitants are Spiritist mediums. These films appear alongside Guimarães’ Canoas (2010), set in the home that architect Oscar Neimeyer built for himself outside Rio de Janeiro, and Akhøj’s Welcome (to the Teknival), 2009-17, a response to the restoration of Eileen Gray’s modernist villa e.1027. We spoke to Guimarães and Akhøj about the exhibition and its complex and varied works.
Where did the name I blew on Mr. Greenhill’s joints with a very ‘hot’ breath come from?
The phrase appears on the memoirs of Arthur Spray, who lived in Bexhill-on-Sea throughout the 1930s and had a cobbler shop on Station Road, a few streets away from the Pavilion. There, on the upper floor, Spray practised healing, through hypnosis, touch, and blowing on body parts with ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ breath. He understood the universe as composed of thought vibrations, and God, within it, as a wireless broadcasting station. The title invokes a healing impulse that runs, as a theme, throughout the exhibition, like the curtain that unfolds through the space.
How do the works respond to the space they are occupying?
We discussed the space with Rosie Cooper, the Pavilion’s curator, and we all agreed that the window to the sea should stay as open as possible to allow people inside to look out and people outside to look in. But that is counter-intuitive when you are installing works that need darkness and silence, so we devised a large curtain that unfolds throughout the space, appearing and disappearing, so to say. The curtains were designed in collaboration with Frederico Fazenda and we had in mind the sea, the shore, the propagation of sound, the curves found in the work of Oscar Niemeyer and his collaborator Roberto Burle Marx.
There is an interesting connection with the original plans for the pavilion, which included a sculpture by Frank Dobson, who chose to depict Persephone, goddess of vegetation and Queen of the underworld. She was to stand on the Pavilion’s lawn, looking out to sea as if guarding her realm. The curtains function as dividers in the exhibition space but we also want to imagine that it might also stand between the earth and the spirit world, the domain of Persephone.
Take for example, Welcome (to the Teknival). This is a series of photographs of Villa E.1027, and you find many parallels with the pavilion. Known as Maison en Bord de Mer, Villa E.1027 is a modernist icon designed and built between 1926 and 1929 by Eileen Gray, in the Côte d’Azur. Taken from 2008 to 2017, the photographs that make up Welcome (to the Teknival) follow the process of renovation of Villa E.1027, now recognised as patrimony by the French state.
How do the selected works reflect the last ten years of your careers?
The exhibition is not exactly a summary of our last ten years of work – we both have worked on significant projects that are not on display at the De La Warr Pavilion. But the works were selected in relation to the pavilion, which was designed by Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff, and would be known as the People’s Palace – a centre for health and leisure, of health through leisure, that brought the language of modern architecture to the British seaside.
To what extent is Spiritism a theme throughout the exhibition?
Spiritism is not the main theme throughout the exhibition. The exhibition themes are time, illness and recovery, yet two of the works engage with a Spiritist community in Palmelo, a very small town in the Brazilian planes. The town emerged in the 1930s around a Spiritist study group and a sanatorium. Half of the city’s inhabitants are psychic mediums who hold day jobs as teachers and civil servants, and partake in daily rituals of psychic healing. For this community, spirits intervene, teach and transform the material world.
Why did you decide to focus on this particular moment in modernism in your film Canoas?
Casa das Canoas was designed by Oscar Niemeyer and was his home from 1951 to 1957, when he moved to the central plains of Brazil to work on the construction of the new capital, Brasília – a monumental project commissioned by president Juscelino Kubitschek as part of his ‘fifty years of prosperity in five’. During the 1950s, Canoas was the location of many gatherings of political and cultural figures, and its sensuous modernism contributed to the image of Brazil as an emerging modern paradise.
When the film was shot in 2010, there was a similar optimism reigning in Brazil. Yet the film overlaps the times: you have a sense of the past lingering into the present, showing that prosperity is a state of mind, and always only part of the story. And thus, Brazil’s progressive modernism and its often-celebrated ‘racial democracy’ return, as ghosts, promising a future that was not to be.
What do you think viewers will take away from the exhibition?
That is hard to tell. They might leave thinking of the contrast between the clean lines of modern architecture and the subtle substances that emanate from them; or perhaps of the fragility of plans that appear solid but which must be built on conditions that are permanently revised; they might think of electricity, of thought conduits, of hearing voices, of fits of slumber and of communication that begins with words, but eventually give way to tremors, cries, hums and beats.
Tamar Guimarães and Kasper Akhøj at the De La Warr Pavilion, open until 3rd June 2018.
Foam magazine opens their new talent exhibition later this month, a celebration of 20 emerging photographers from across the globe. An annual event which seeks to give a platform to the best of new names coming through, Foam’s support has helped to launch the careers of many young photographers.
This year sees an exciting spectrum of work. Photographs by Hari Srikhao from Thailand comment on the role of the monarchy in society, while Vasantha Yogananthan captures the journey of the Hindu deity Rama in India. There are photo sculptures by American Mark Dorf, and intense examinations of the body by Alix Marie.
See highlights from emerging photography talents below.
The Loewe Craft Prize will take place in May of this year, and already there’s a buzz around the finalists. Comprising of 30 artists from 17 countries around the world, the shortlist celebrates creativity and innovation in craft. A reflection of the diverse talents working at the moment.
Creative director of LOEWE Jonathan Anderson conceived the award to champion creativity. A part of an ongoing commitment to locate LOEWE within a wider cultural context. Speaking ahead of the second year of the awards, the designer commented: ‘Craft is the essence of LOEWE. As a house, we are about craft in the purest sense of the word. That is where our modernity lies, and it will always be relevant.’
The full list of nominees, along with examples of their work, are below.
There is a lot more fun to be had: Twin Meets Alexander Coggin
Absurd and a little bit off, but always funny. Alexander Coggin excels in the art of tender parody. This February he shows a broad range of photographs in his largest exhibition yet.
Whether it’s spending 48 hours with Gigi Hadid, snapping pictures of the supermodel being hand fed b12 drops by her mother, taking photos of Frieze art fair visitors’ clavicles, or documenting the colourful country club lives of his midwestern inlaws; Alexander Coggin always finds the absurdity in every situation. With warmth and curiosity he unveils the soft underbelly of any desirable lifestyle.“That image of Gigi with the drops is more telling than anything that you’re going to get from a staged photograph,” Coggin explains, “it says a lot about the relationship between her and her mom, Yolanda. It’s beautiful and funny and bizarre and tender in a way.”
The current exhibition, “Yeah, Magic” at Ninasagt Galerie in Düsseldorf is vast, over a 100 photographs framed and unframed in all shapes and sizes. There are images printed on mugs, clocks, sweatshirts – and on a delightfully ridiculous pair of flip flops.
Over the years Coggin has become known for his personal mix between street and still life photography, a colourful aesthetic and his unique sense of humour. His pictures capture the moments in-between perfection, and they almost exaggerate the flaws and quirks of each subject. But instead of being exploitative or down right mean – a not uncommon thing in the world of street photography – the pictures are loving and relatable. And a great way to ward off any incipient social media depression.
There is something very liberating with an old lady arm purposefully hovering over a large plate of shrimp or the low key eroticism of a gear shift. Most of all it is fun. “I think my most successful images incorporate the full human-ness that live art and theatre give you. It takes the character, the specificity of the situation, the personas we see and don’t see about ourselves and filters all of that into a single still image. At best, my work is very much alive.”
Every article ever written (this might not be entirely true) about Alexander Coggin mentions theatre in some way – you have to. It it his one main influence and his educational background. It is also, in an unexpected way, the reason he found and fell in love with photography. Coggin and his husband moved to Berlin in 2011 to take part of the then booming theatre and performance scene. But the complexity of making and acting in theatre became overwhelming.
– After leaving the structure of school I realised that making theatre is such a collaborative process. You need to find a production, a director, a piece of work, a house that can mount the production. My creativity became stagnant. I got into photography as a way to release this pent up creativity in a solo way, beholden to none other. I really started to enjoy Photography when I realised that I could bring the things I love about theatre into the work. It was an antidote, a therapeutic transformation.
Do you think you’re going to go back to the theatre at some point?
– I think so. I still enjoy the binary of live arts vs. still imagery – it’s either one or the other. I think that ultimately, they’ll both come together in filmmaking. That’s the natural progression, but I don’t want to rush this because I want to do it in a way that feels authentic to my eye and my interests.
Your images are often quite raw and people show sides of themselves that you usually don’t see. How do you make the subject feel so comfortable?
– There are a couple of ways to get these authentically voyeuristic shots. The work I’ve done with my husband’s family [Brothers and Others], for instance: Because they are my family, I’m comfortable around them and they don’t change their behaviour when I shoot. It took years to get to that point. When I spend a couple of weeks with them I take thousands and thousands of images, that’s all edited into a finite body of work. I get lucky in terms of numbers. And time.
And when you do a project like the one with Gigi, when you only had a certain amount of time?
– If I have a commissioned piece like that I find that the most effective way is to be a fly on the wall. Which I’m not good at. A flash is very telling. If I wasn’t shooting with flash I could be more voyeuristic, but since I like to mediate images with flash – I stick out. I have to be a little bit more sneaky about it. It’s not a natural place for me to be at all. I like to be engaged, part of the conversation and making people feel at ease with me. But when I don’t have the luxury of time, I have to be a bit more sneaky, a bit more pushy. Again, not at all a natural state for me.
Let’s talk a little more about your husbands family, how do they react to your images?
– Well, it shifted with them. I was always very nervous, kind of looking at the images and feeling like I was taking advantage of them. Especially the British Journal of Photography story that ran. They used the word privileged so many times. I was fine with it, and I know it was a necessary and an honest framing, but I felt nervous about how my husband’s family was going to perceive that frame. I called all of them, and surprisingly, no one cared. I think partly that’s because I have conversations with them when I’m shooting. We talk about how we can amplify their character, or how to take the character into something that is beyond them. Just to kind of satirise themselves, letting them explore what they represent too.
They’re part of the project?
– Definitely. If something lovely happens that is authentic, but I didn’t quite get it right in the camera, I’ll just ask them to do it again and they’ll do it. It’s great. They are part of the image making process, it gives them ownership.
Interesting. Because it can be a tricky relationship, that with your in laws.
– We have had long theoretical conversations about some great quotes by Garry Winogrand. He talks about how when you put four corners on an image you change the truth of it and create a ‘new fact’. The way they are represented is not as they are, but it is as they appear in that moment. And that moment could change from shot to shot; this isn’t the reality of who they are. I think they are comfortable with that persona play. I got lucky with them. We have the safety of our relationship, but I have had a hard time translating that element to commissioned work. Then it’s more difficult, I just don’t have the time, so, as I said, I have to be sneaky.
Have they ever vetoed anything that you’ve done?
– I’ve given them the option to veto anything. Sometimes I don’t feel comfortable shooting stuff, but they’re like “Oh get that!”.
Are you ever afraid of going to far, of being “mean”?
– If I shot ‘mean’, if I shot in a way that was disrespectful, inconsiderate, or in a way that the subject wasn’t okay with; I wouldn’t even be able to look at that image. I would not want that in my repertoire of imagery, it would make me feel shitty. So I feel like I have pretty good internal awareness of how the subject is feeling when I shoot. As I’m interested in candid moments and character it can be a little bit dangerous. There is one shot that I still feel conflicted about. It’s my friend Susan, and she said it was fine, but she doesn’t look great at all. Still it’s very telling, my favourite part of the picture is the alcohol and the caffein. You can see her displacement. There is something discontented about her, but it’s not a flattering picture.
I feel like art made by millenials often has humour. Do you think there is some reason for that?
– It could just be as easy as a response to the hard times we live in. As a millennial, as an American millennial, I’ve just been handed a shit plate for my entire adult life. But if you look hard enough there is a lot more fun to be had, a lot more life around you. I feel like I have a little more control if I can find humour in it. It’s just how I see the world.
You can see “Yeah, Magic” at Ninasagt Galerie in Düsseldorf from February 16th until March 18th.
Offering a dystopian and uneasy version of a salon the day after Valentines perfectly communicates the vision at the heart of Juno Calypso’s work. The new multi-sensory installation in Melissa Galeria space in Covent Garden is full of stark red light and casts of mannequins, offering a space that feels weird and uncomfortable. The subversion and play are recurring themes in Calypso’s work, who often works with mask, costume and theatrical stagings to explore ideas of femininity and sexuality.
Open from today, the installation will run until April, offering ample time to wholly immersive yourself in Calypso’s unsettling and compelling world.
Animation by Geriko | Juno Calypso exhibition in London
The Serpentine Pavilion 2018 will be designed by the Mexican artist, Frida Escobedo – the youngest architect in the project’s 18-year history to accept the invitation. Born in 1979, the architect, who set up her Mexico City-based practice in 2006, is the first solo woman to have been awarded the commission since the project’s founding, which begin in 2000 with Zaha Hadid.
Escobedo’s Pavilion will take the form of an internal courtyard, a common characteristic of domestic Mexican architecture. A lattice of dark cement roof tiles, designed to mimic a celosia – a traditional feature in Mexican architecture that allows a breeze to flow through a building – will form the walls that enclose the courtyard and diffuse the view out into the park. The structure will equally comprise two pivoted blocks set at an angle to reference the Prime Meridian Line at London’s Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
“My design for the Serpentine Pavilion 2018 is a meeting of material and historical inspirations inseparable from the city of London itself and an idea which has been central to our practice from the beginning: the expression of time in architecture through inventive use of everyday materials and simple forms”, said Frida Escobedo.
Frida Escobedo | Photography: Ana Hop
“For the Serpentine Pavilion, we have added the materials of light and shadow, reflection and refraction, turning the building into a timepiece that charts the passage of the day.”
The combination of these materials will work in tandem to provide visitors with a heightened awareness of time spent in play, whilst conveying how the very concept of time is central to Escobedo’s design.
The pavilion will be open to the public from 15 June until 7 October and “promises to be a place of both deep reflection and dynamic encounter. With this bold interior, Frida draws history into the present and redefines the meaning of public space. We hope visitors of all ages will create their own experiences in the Pavilion this summer as we continue in our aim of bringing the urgency of art and architecture to the widest audiences” notes Serpentine Galleries Artistic Director, Hans Ulrich Obrist and CEO, Yana Peel.
Arcades, escapism and English breakfasts: Alexa Chung’s ‘Fantastic’
A new video from Alexa Chung, directed by Jesse Jenkins, evokes the magic and nostalgia of the British seaside. Starting with a laconic reading of a John Cooper-Clarke’s poem ‘I Mustn’t Go Down To The Sea Again’ the visuals introduce a lonely dancer, spinning on the beach between cliffs. As the boy, dressed in a mustard corduroy suit, explores along the promenade, he discovers the ‘fantastic’ venue, and the allure of the glitter and musical magic inside – a gathering of women dressed in pink satin dresses and striped shirts.
“I think I’m always intrigued by that stage of youth where you’re caught in between teenagedom and adulthood.” Said Alexa Chung, creative director of her eponymous brand, of the video. “There’s a synergy between what’s going on in the video: finding one’s place in the world, tentative expression, the joy of discovery and what’s going on with our brand. Progressively feeling more confident. Britpop largely inspired this collection and that sort of ultra-British experience of soggy chips and windswept beaches and old men’s pubs and disco revivals is a time and a place I wanted to revisit in this film.”
A tribute to the joy of discovery and the energising power of music, this is the kind of romantic escapism that’s perfect for starting the week.
Absolution: new exhibition addresses mental health and childbirth
A new solo exhibition from artist Camille Sanson addresses the experience of becoming a mother through her own experience. Personal and emotive, her series of photographs chronicles her body before, during and after pregnancy, at the same time evoking the state of her mental health through sculptural and transformative poses.
“I would love this exhibition to inspire women with mental health issues to seek their own healing through addressing their subconscious fears and finding a deeper connection within themselves and their shadows.” Commented Camille on the new show, adding that “It is not easy to undertake these journeys but ultimately so important if we are to strive to have a happier life, especially when bringing new souls into this world, so we can avoid transferring our own issues to our children and continuing unconscious patterns within them.”
Each image offers an unedited depiction of the body, but Camille works with paint and clay to emphasise the internal turbulence and tensions that women go through. As such, the images address the process of becoming a mother in its entirety, bringing the nuances of experience sharply into focus and offering a powerful call for communion and openness. In an age where women are increasingly breaking narratives about how they should feel and look during various events in their life, Camille Sanson’s contribution is timely, relevant and necessary.
The Veil, Camille Sanson
Gaia, Camille Sanson
The Mask, Camille Sanson
From the Waters, Camille Sanson
‘Absolution’ by Camille Sanson is at Herrick Gallery, 93 Piccadilly, Mayfair, London W1J 7NQ until February 3rd 2018.
Dying like Eva Hesse: Twin meets filmmaker Marcie Begleiter
It’s easy to see artist Eva Hesse’s life as a huge Hollywood epic, filled with love, passion, tragedy and early death. She was not only surrounded by some of the most influential artists of her time, she was one of them. But Marcie Begleiter’s documentary about the artist takes another route, focusing on remarkable artworks and a personality that resonates through time.
It was in graduate school that filmmaker Marcie Begleiter first discovered the artist Eva Hesse. She was looking for something else than the ironic, sometimes distanced work that was lauded in art magazines in the late 1980’s. “I wanted a deeper connection,” Begleiter reflects. “When I saw Hesse’s work in reproduction I was very moved. It was smart and logical, but it also pushed against that with droopy materials. It had a great shifting to it. Eva didn’t simply find something that worked and stayed there, she shifted and changed.”
It’s hard, almost impossible, to describe Eva Hesse’s work in words. During her active years the expression and method was in constant development, and her journey from painter to sculptor shifted with an almost forceful passion. She would within her short life become one of the most important and influential artists of her time. Showing her work together with contemporaries like Carl Andre, Dan Graham, Mel Bochner and Sol LeWitt – almost always as the only woman in the group.
Her early work is mainly abstract paintings that during a residency in Germany started taking a more physical form – somewhere in between a sculpture and a painting.The later sculptures, made in her final years before losing the battle with brain cancer at the early age of 34, are big evocative constructions made with latex, fiberglass, rope and a mixture of mechanical trinkets. But still with a soft, almost sexual appearance.
Eva Hesse in 1968. Photo by Herman Landshoff. Eva Hesse. A film by Marcie Begleiter. A Zeitgeist Films release.
Eva Hesse lived a life that kept shifting and changing as much as her art. A life that would have been impossible to do justice without the participation of the artist herself: the documentary is built around Hesse’s journals and letters, kept in the collection of Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio. With this extensive collection of writings (1 200 pages), Marcie Begleiter created a film where the artist’s voice rings clear. Through Eva’s own words (read in the film by actress Selma Blair) we are told an extraordinary story of a rather unusual life.
Eva’s life has the stuff of a true drama: Born to a German Jewish family in 1936 she was at age 3 put on the Kindertransport and sent to Holland together with her older sister Helen (only 5 years old at the time). Their parents managed to get out of Nazi Germany and collected their daughters at the Catholic children’s home where they were staying before they all fled to New York. The rest of their relatives were killed in concentration camps, a tragedy that deeply affected Hesse’s mother.
But the hardships didn’t end after the emigration. When Hesse was 10, her mother, in the wakes of a mental breakdown, committed suicide by jumping from the roof of a building. Later in life Hesse’s marriage with artist Tom Doyle would end in a bitter separation, and her beloved father would die suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving Hesse anxious and with a deep sense of abandonment. Still, Marcie Begleiter’s documentary isn’t tragic: It’s full of passion, art, humour and most of all of life. Until the very last breath.
– Ten different filmmakers would have made ten different films. I’m interested in artistic process and materials. There are aspects of Eva’s life that could be made sensationalistic. You have to allude to some of these things, because they are a part of the story, but what’s interesting is this person who faced enormous challenges in her life. Personal challenges and challenges in terms of the world around her, and still she found the persistence and the intelligence to create extraordinary drawings, paintings and sculptures. Even during the last year of her life, when she was greatly ill, she never stopped working. Not even from her hospital bed. And she had a great attitude about it: life doesn’t last, art doesn’t last. We still live our lives in the face of that fact.
The narrative is largely based on Evas letters and notes, could you tell me a little bit more about how you encountered and approached them?
– I had read Lucy Lippard’s book, and she quoted Hesse’s journals. A friend of mine, an arts librarian, told me that the original texts were in a tiny library in Ohio at Oberlin College. I can’t even tell you what compelled me to do it, but I wrote a grant proposal and I got funding to spend a couple of weeks reading through the material. The people at the library would bring me boxes and boxes and I sat there with white cotton gloves on and went through Eva’s personal papers. In the journals there were drawings, postcards from friends, announcements for shows. Her friends, once they knew that there was a library that kept her papers, sent in what they had. It’s all sorts of ephemera. It blew my mind. Here was this authentic, smart, insecure but absolutely self confident – kind of flipping back and forth between the pages – woman. I felt such a deep connection with the person that I encountered.
And after that you became interested in her as a subject for a documentary?
– Coming out of that first reading of the diaries I wrote a theatrical piece. A producer and friend of mine, Karen Shapiro, saw it and wanted to move it to a bigger venue. I felt that we had to get someone from the estate onboard if we wanted to do something bigger. My desire in meeting the people who knew Hesse was to begin a conversation about doing that project. But once I met Lucy [Lippard], Helen [Hesse–Charash] and Tom [Doyle], I felt it needed to be a film. I called Karen and told her that I met some interesting people in New York and that I had another idea. And she said “Oh you want to make a documentary, don’t you? ” and I answered “Yes, how do you know?” she said “I saw it in my meditation this morning. If you want to do that, I’ll produce it.” So I called Helen, to make sure that no one had done it before. She was extremely encouraging and very supportive in terms of giving us access to all materials they had.
Which part of Hesse’s life do you find most defining for her as an artist?
– I find it fascinating that she went back to Germany. This is 1964, less than 20 years after the end of the war. I went there in the 1980s and I had a hard time with it. But she went back to work in ’64, after everything that had happened to her family. She took the advantage to see Europe as an adult, to live without having extra jobs and just work. It was in Germany, partly under the pressure of being there, that she put aside traditional painting and started making three dimensional objects. That marked a real change for her. She started coming off the canvas. In the film it’s really the inciting incident of her life, that’s the change. She came back and she shot off like a rocket.
Did working with the film effect how you see and relate to Eva’s work today?
– I have come to the point where you can show me a drawing and I can pretty much nail the date of creation, within a year or two. There is a familiarity with the work that has deepened. What surprised me, is that after these years of working with her writing and her art, it has stayed fresh. I still find things that she wrote to be interesting, eye opening, inspiring and so thoughtful. It doesn’t get old.
Eva Hesse in 1966. Photo by Gretchen Lambert. Eva Hesse. A film by Marcie Begleiter. A Zeitgeist Films release.
I found the quote “Excellence has no sex” very inspiring. Do you think it’s relevant to mention feminism when you talk about Eva an artist?
– You can’t talk about feminism as if she was part of a movement, because she didn’t participate politically in that conversation. But she was defined by who she was, and not by what other people thought of her. In her lifetime she refused to be categorized as a female artist and she wasn’t in shows with only women. She wanted to be, aimed to be, and was, a part of the general conversation. That’s certainly a feminist stance even though she wouldn’t have used that language. Looking back, female artists of the 70s and 80s certainly saw Hesse as a touchstone, as someone who was being recognised as a peer with male contemporary artists. She was just doing what she needed to do and saying “I’m one of the best”.
From seeing the film it seems to me that whenever Hesse faced hardship, she grew. That it adds to her creativity.
– Everyone has tragedies in their life, maybe she had more than others, but it’s what she did with the tragedy that makes it interesting. That compels us to want to know more and gives us, the people looking, a connection to her bravery. Her tenaciousness and humour. I was talking to Rosie [Goldman] who’s in the film, she told me that she’d never seen anyone face death the way Eva did. There was no regret there. No regret. She was living every moment to the end. I really wanted to put that in the film. In our culture death is sort of a taboo issue, in America death is seen as a failure. A failure of modern science, a failure of medicine, a personal failure. We live a good life. We need to have a good death. And that’s something Eva did; she died a good death.
Deciding what to wear before a night out at the club can be a complex exercise. You want to look good, you want to feel good, but you also want to be able to move. Somewhere in your subconscious you want to signal your interests and alliances without looking like you’re trying too hard, and you want all of this to fill you with the confidence to go out there and just cut loose with your friends. And maybe all of that is further complicated by the hope that a specific someone, or any someone, will notice how you wear your outfit just so, and realise you are the woman / man / vision their lonely hearty has been missing. Everything you feel you feel more deeply on the dancefloor.
Little wonder then that music associated with a certain scene or a certain time always seems to come with its own unofficial uniform. From iconic subcultures like Punk and the New Romantics through to modern iterations like Riot Grrl and Emo, the birth of a visual aesthetic alongside a new sound seems a natural development. The problem is that when copying the look of a genre becomes easier than immersing yourself in it, it marks that genre out for ridicule. With the proliferation of affordable fast fashion pretty much anyone can get their hands on an approximation of any look they want. It’s no coincidence that the birth of the internet overlapped with the peak use of the word ‘poser’ as an insult. Everyone finds the ‘starter pack’ meme hilarious because it shows us how absurd so many modern tribes are; the outer trappings of a lifestyle don’t mean you actually live it.
Thankfully as with any arena where style and culture meet, there are scenes where all of this interplay between sound and style is more nuanced, and where the trends are part of the self-expression and sense of community that the best genres and club nights engender. Style on the dancefloor can richly reflect the style of the music, its inspirations and its roots. A new exhibit at Fashion Space Gallery, opening in February, will focus on the kind of stylistic dialogue that the very best scenes give rise to. The upcoming Super Sharp is an archival exploration of the style associated with the underground Jungle and UK Garage scenes in the 90’s. If you thought that the first paragraph of this piece was only relevant to women, then this exhibit is one way to cure yourself of that delusion. Curated by Tory Turk and drawing heavily on the private Moschino collection of Saul Milton, who jointly conceived the exhibition, Super Sharp features archive editorials from The Face, i-D, Dazed and underground rave ‘zine Eternity, as well as first hand accounts from the likes of PJ & Smiley (Shut up & Dance), Navigator, Jumpin’ Jack Frost, Goldie and Chase & Status. Photographs and original garments from personal collections combine with these accounts and archives to sketch a collective memory of a particular moment in UK club culture. Crucially Super Sharp will focus on the differences between the Jungle and UK Garage scenes, something that can be lost in the wave of nostalgia that a generation who never lived it have been swept up in
The style of nights like ‘Heat’, ‘Thunder & Joy’ and ‘Innovation’, giving a home to two-steppers from Hastings to Camden, was defined by its appropriation of Italian luxury brands like Moschino, Versace and D&G. Looking sharp was such an important aspect of the scene that iconic clubs like Twice as Nice enforced strict dress codes; if you wanted to get down to Artful Dodger or Wookie you needed to be looking on point. Jungle was given rise to by the UK pirate radio scene in the 90s, and Garage emerged from the 80s New York club scene which was at the time combining R&B vocal stylings with syncopated percussion and heavy basslines. Ultimately both scenes, their style and their sound, were given rise to by pre-existing black subcultures in the UK and USA – a debt the team behind Super Sharp are quick to acknowledge. The rave scene of Jungle which encouraged vibrant dressing met with the flashiness of an aspirational generation of clubbers, distilling their style as they moved through the UK Garage scene to one which signalled affluence via the right kind of Italian name and explicitly loud pattern. It would be a mistake to think all this finery was simply about peacocking though; this style of dressing was about respect and dignity, broadcasting the care and expense put in to dressing a seriously as you wanted to be taken. With the influx of women in to these male-heavy spaces came a new take on sexiness too – demanding and commanding respect and attention on the dancefloor.
As UK Garage in particular moved in to the mainstream with acts like Craig David breaking through to the top of the charts, this specificity and originality of the club culture started to be washed out. Thankfully for us, the pictures, clothes and documents included in Super Sharp show the scene’s best-dressed and pressed in their element. Girls complement their matching tops with precise lip-liner, men sweat on the floor in crisp shirts, top buttons securely fastened, and everyone is wearing sunglasses inside and someow making it look cool. Bubbles are the drink of choice and no one looks like they aren’t taking things very seriously (including, most importantly, having a good time). Dance music of any kind is always made to be danced to, and the opportunity to do that in a space where everyone is on the same level is where subcultures and styles are born. In an era where so many of the UK’s oldest and most iconic venues are being forced to close, and London’s club scene seems to be balancing on a permanent knife edge, a celebration of the pure magic this exhibit elicits feels more timely than ever. A moment pre-internet where people care more about being there than broadcasting that fact, it seems hard to imagine something so pure thriving for so long in the present climate.
Super Sharp is the first instalment of RETURN II JUNGLE: ‘a series of exhibitions and events documenting the styles and sounds of British rave culture in the nineties’ is at Fashion Space Gallery, Thursday 1st February – Saturday 21 April, 2018.
A new exhibition at the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles brings the evolution of the female gaze to the forefront of the narrative. Aligning an international rostra of women artists, the exhibition celebrates a new era of photography in which the body is examined rather than objectified; observed rather than owned.
Exhibitors include Amanda Charchian, Remy Holwick, creative duo Honey Long & Prue Stent, and Magdalena Wosinska, who together offer an exciting harbinger of the future feminine narrative in photography.
Images span the mystic and mythic to snapshots of the mundane, with Charchian drawing inspiration from psychologist J.A. Lee’s interpretation of Greek philosophy, Prue Stent and Honey Long focussing on powerful juxtapositions of material and colour and Wosinska offering raw, intimate portraits.
The future looks bright, the future is female.
Future Feminine is at Fahey / Klein Gallery from January 18 – February 24, 2018.
Bethany Williams: Menswear In Search of Social Change
When one thinks of Bethany Williams’ brand, it is not necessarily within the confines of fashion. Encompassing sociological issues, political arenas and cultural quarters, to talk about Bethany merely within the limitations of fashion would be doing the brand an injustice.
Having released her brand less than two years ago, Bethany Williams has been constructing menswear that is embedded within charities and communities, hoping to cause a real effect in the social space we engage with. Working with the charities San Patrignano and London College of Fashion, UAL’s Making for Change programme this season – two pioneering rehabilitative programmes which work closely with vulnerable women and supports their path torehabilitation through equipping them with craftsmanship and manufacturing skills and qualifications – and the model agency TIH Models,a new modelling agency supporting youth in London affected by homelessness, Bethany’s points of reference and areas of focus lay a typically socially attuned and sustainably-led focus on her third collection to date.
The menswear designer showcased at the DiscoveryLAB this London Fashion Week Men’s January 2018 through both a film created in collaboration with Crack Stevens entitled ‘Women of Change’ and the collection alongside, ‘Attenzione’.
The film is a poetic narrative that celebrates the strength of the communities of San Patrignano and Making for Change, and explores how fashion can incur social and environmental change.
Throughout the film, the theme of ‘second chances’ was explored, drawing parallels between the second chance given to the discarded materials from which Bethany created the fabrics at San Patrignano, and the second chance given to the women involved in both of these innovative programmes.
Through these social responsibilities that carry through the ethos of the brand, Bethany showcased a range that was less collection and more collective: shaped by the communities and charities involved, culminating in a selection of looks that tied together as a diverse multimedia display.
The presentation held an atmosphere of steadfast serenity, the models standing straight and majestic under a strong and direct spotlight in their ensembles, allowing for the audience to inspect the techniques and the fabric. The music emanating from the film was disarmingly enveloping: you were welcomed into the space, relaxing your senses in order to explore the film presenting life in San Patrignano and the resulting work they have created with the Making For Change community, Chris Carney Collections (a recycling facility where Bethany’s raw materials are sourced) and cottage industry hand knitters on the Isle of Man.
Bethany’s clothes are more than clothes – they are supportive measures, they are projects in itself. The garment design is led by sociological injunction and followed up with design rationale: recycled fabrics and the focal charities leading the shape, texture and function.
Speaking of her design process, Bethany notes: It always starts with the charity or community that I am working with, then it goes to the waste materials that I want to use, then it goes to the fabric and then from the fabric I work out the form: it is initially inspired by the charity I choose to work with from the start.
Bethany chooses to show one collection a year, due to the prolonged process involved in each collection, the level of external organisation and support expected, and the bespoke nature of the garments. Presenting around the London Fashion Week Men’s dates allows her to capitalise on audience, and frees up the year to focus on projects with various partners and institutions.
Sustainability is steadily growing as one of the key issues the fashion industry is choosing to address. Being a consultant and lecturer alongside her brand, Bethany has seen the approach others are taking: “I think sustainability has become such a big concern at the minute. I consult for bigger brands as well as doing my own projects, and companies are thinking about it, and thinking about the future. I work with Kering and they have their sustainability department and its massive. All kering brands also need to have a sustainability manager at your brand. They are looking at processes for luxury across the entire supply chain: people are really looking at it and thinking about the future.”
There are things that can make the heart beat faster – we all have our own hit list – but for London Fashion Week Men’s what will be a focus moving forward is the celebration of brands that are looking at the picture that far exceeds the fashion frame: brands where integrity and social responsibility is one of their first salutations.
And what would Bethany like her brand to stand for? Through her delightfully positive, softly spoken lilt “creating a solution through innovation”.
Celebrating the beautiful self: Twin meets 19 year old trans model Maxim Magnus
In many ways 2017 has played out like the opening of Love Actually, in that, while unprecedented levels of political and horrors at home and abroad (Donald Trump being elected as President of the United States being just one of them) it was also a year which saw the widening of society to accept, and champion the many diverse individuals that make up society. It was a year of hope, love and a refreshed sense of community, as well as destruction and devastation. This cultural revolution was seismic and long overdue; the fact that it happened, though, at least ensures that while the struggles to ensure fair and diverse representation, pay, the future looks just a little bit brighter – even if Trump is still in power.
One of the many exciting new voices to have emerged this year is the 19 year old trans model Maxim Magnus. Her journey began at 14, when she started transitioning, and five years later she has already partnered with Gurls Talk to speak on their panel in Berlin and has featured in campaigns for the likes of My Theresa x Valentino and MAC Cosmetics, as well as opening the first show at fashion week this year.
As such, Maxim has become a leading voice in the LGBT community, inspiring others with her personal story as well as her activism through her Instagram page. Twin caught up with Maxim to talk about her journey so far, the role fashion can play in activism and what’s in store for 2018.
What were your experiences of growing up as a trans woman?
Growing up I was always a very happy child, even though I knew something about me was ‘different’; I never made anything of it. When I was 13/14, I realised I was in the wrong body and something had to change. Finding out you’re stuck in the wrong body is awful, but it’s even worst when you realise it in the period where everyone around you is starting to develop and starting to do things you can’t do, like having sleepovers, or talking about boys, etc. All very superficial things, but very important things to a person of that age. I had been bullied before coming out as trans, so when coming out, I was always really defensive when talking to people about it. I think growing up trans made me grow up a lot quicker than the people around me, because I had to deal with issues teenagers shouldn’t ‘normally’ have to deal with. I constantly had to think about how I was presenting myself, doctor’s appointments, depression. Even though I had a lot of friends growing up, I experienced loneliness a lot.
Were you instinctively drawn to fashion as an industry, and how did you get into modelling?
I have always gravitated towards the fashion industry, probably since the moment I could talk. From a young age I would look at all of the fashion magazines or go through my mom’s closet and I would get so excited to get dressed every morning. When I was a teenager, I used fashion to show people my true identity and gender. I was always really fascinated by models, but never thought I would be able to be one. It was one of my teachers at Conde Nast who approached me and told me to start modelling.
How do you see fashion and activism aligning?
When you look at the history of fashion, it is very clear that fashion and politics are close. What happens in the world affects the fashions of a certain period. Right now, human rights are more talked about than ever before and the fashion industry is supposedly full of the most open and creative minds, therefore it would only make sense that these individuals are the ones speaking up. The industry is also highly influential, and it has an enormous platform to reach people, to me, it only makes sense to use that platform for the greater good, as well as to show the beautiful creations made by these artists.
Who are your favourite image makers?
My taste in photographers really varies. I love the old-school classics from Helmut Newton, but then I also love the amazing fantasy world of Tim walker, and the raw over-exposed mind of Juergen Teller. I am absolutely obsessed with photography, I could talk about my favourite photographers for ages.
What changes have you observed over the last 5 years both within the transgender community and society as a whole, and what are you most proud of?
In the last 5 years, the community has gotten so much exposure. When I started transitioning around that time, there was not as much information about the community as there is now. I think rights-wise a lot has changed as well and I’m super happy that parts of the world are finally embracing the community, even though there is still a lot of work to do. I’m super proud of all the individuals who have powered through and become their beautiful selfs, because it is hard; even in today’s society.
You recently worked with Gurls Talk – what was that like, and how did you find the reception amongst that community?
Working with Adwoa and her team was one of the best experiences, and probably my highlight for 2017. They welcomed me with such kindness and they were so open-minded, it was amazing to work with a group of people who have the same mindset as me. Dr. Lauren and Alexa, who were also part of the panel are also two amazing people and I loved working with both of them. After the talk, some girls came up to me and they were crying, that really touched me – I never want people to cry when they listen to my story but it’s nice to know that a) people can relate to my story and b) that what I’m doing is actually helping some people.
What are your views on how the industry moves the conversation forward and enacts positive change over the next 5 years?
I think the industry has to want to change, and they shouldn’t do it just because people are telling them to or because it will bring them good press coverage. Just the same way that I don’t want to be hired as a model solely because I am trans. I think the industry owes it to the world to use its platform to talk about these issues, and to embrace every type of human being – this doesn’t just go for the trans community. I can only hope that the industry will move towards a more diverse range of humans, as fashion should be inclusive.
What’s in store for 2018?
I have a lot planned for the new year. Firstly I hope to graduate from university. After that, I hope to be able to fully focus on modelling and activism. Right now, I use my Instagram platform to get my message out there, but I would like to do a lot more in I can only hope that the industry will embrace me, but so far I have gotten so many amazing opportunities which I am so grateful for.
Celebrate the festive period at this Friday, 15th December with a Harley Weir book signing at Claire de Rouen.
Harley Weir’s new book, Paintings offers a different focus for one of fashion’s most iconic contemporary photographers, shifting the subject matter from humans to paint and texture. The images contain the same energy and precision as her portraits, playing with rhythms and juxtapositions within a more confined space.
Stop by the hallowed book shop this week to pick up your own copy – and browse the rest of their beautiful stock (including, of course, Twin).
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