In celebration of Mark Kay’s 55th anniversary, the American beauty brand has recently teamed up with The Museum at FIT New York to present a special exhibition called Pink: The History of A Punk, Pretty, Powerful Colour. For years the brand has held a strong association to the colour pink, from makeup palettes to pink Cadillacs, and now after 55 years in the business they’ve made this partnership to honour the multifaceted colour in several ways.
“Since our inception in 1963, our brand has inspired and empowered millions of aspiring entrepreneurs across the globe. In that time, Mary Kay has become synonymous with the colour pink, and this exhibition shows the world what we’ve known for years, that pink is a symbol of power passion and purpose,” said Sheryl Adkins-Green, Chief Marketing Officer for Mark Kay. The exhibition features a collection of clothing from present day to pieces which date as far back as the 18th century. It includes looks from designers such as Alessandro Michele for Gucci, Christian Dior, Elsa Schiparelli, Yves Saint Laurent, Jeremy Scott for Moschino Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons and several others. The exhibition extensively explores the history behind the colour and also how it has been used in Western Cultures. How for example in Mexico, the colour called Rosa Mexicano is associated with national identity, or in India it is worn by both genders. It also speaks to reason behind the colour’s erotic connotations, and its role in political protest and pop music culture in association to rebellious youth. The exhibit is currently open to the public The Museum at FIT New York , and will run until January 5, 2019. If you’re in town, be sure to catch a glimpse.
Italian contemporary art gallery Gagosian in collaboration with American artist Sarah Sze presents her first gallery exhibition following the artist’s participation in the Biennale di Venezia in 2015. The exhibition which is being hosted at the Gagosian headquarters in Rome, features a collection of Sze’s works which unites intricate networks of objects and images across several dimensions and mediums, from sculptings to paintings, drawings, printmakings and video installations. Sze’s Timekeeper series, a video installation which began in 2015, transforms the oval gallery of the Gagosian into an immersive environment that is part sculpture and part cinema. The exhibition acts as a form of Plato’s Cave, which confronts the viewer from simultaneous points of view and includes people, animals, scenes and abstractions in motion, flickering and orbiting randomly. In the paintings, her nuanced sculptural language adapts to the conditions of the flat support. In delicate yet bold layers of paint, ink, paper, prints, and objects, the three dimensions of bricolage are parsed into the two dimensions of collage. Here, colour draws its substantive energies as much from the innate content of found images from paint and ink. The artist is set to add her first outdoor stone sculpture to the exhibition in November, which will feature a natural boulder split open like a geode. Each of the two revealed cuts will have a sunset sky embedded in its surface, alluding to both the images perceptible in gongshi and the heavenly subjects of renaissance paintings. The exhibition will end it’s course on January 12, 2019.
Photographer and musician Ami Sioux debuts her first monograph of personal work in a photography exhibition and book titled From The Road. The book is curated as a collection of portraits, landscapes and abstracts shot during the photographer’s journey in New York, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo and Los Angeles from 2001 through 2018.
Sioux’s path as a photographer initially began in the 1990s which has been a journey which has took her throughout all these cities. She is a photographer who has shot for brands such as Hermes and Maison Margiela, but also prides herself as a photographer who demands a certain type of presence of the subjects of her images. Her work in the exhibition documents and engages a time passage with portraits of lovers and friends alongside landscapes and abstracts captured in a painterly way along with outtakes of celebrities and artists she has shot for magazines throughout the years. The entire series was shot on 35mm film and the cover of book was designed by musician and artist Matt Fishbeck. This will count as Ami’s fourth personal book. The others; Paris 48°N, Reykjavik 64°N and Tokyo 35°N are series exploring the relationships of creatives and their abiding cities. The exhibition will eventually travel to New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo, but is currently running in Paris at the Mannerheim Gallery until November 11, 2018.
As of February 2019, the Foundation Louis Vuitton will the hosting the collection of English industrialist and art collector Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947) in Paris for the first time in over sixty years. Courtauld’s family’s held significant historical ties to France. They were Hugenots, which is a group originally from the Isle of Oléron, who emigrated to London at the end of the 17th century. His family’s business, thrived as one of the greatest textile manufacturers of artificial silk in the world. Samuel traveled regularly to Paris to purchase impressionist and post-impressionist works from French dealers. He compiled one of the greatest collections of impressionist art which includes 100 pieces paintings and graphic work. The exhibition includes pieces from the end of 19th century which gives a clear idea of the pioneering role the collector held and his influence on the art of impressionism in the UK.
The collection will include works such as A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) by Edouard Manet, Nevermore (1897) by Paul Gauguin, La Louge (1874) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, Self Portrait With a Bandaged Ear (1889) which will be displayed for the first time since its presentation in 1955. After a decade of collecting art pieces, his collection was first exhibited in his neoclassical home in Portman Square in central London. Thereafter, he created the Courtauld Institute of Art and Gallery in London which was one the first university establishments in the UK devoted to art which he donated the majority of his pieces in 1932.
For her most recent body of work, London raised Liberian multi-media artist Lina Iris Viktor partnered with the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) to present an exhibition which explores the factual and fantastical narratives surrounding America’s involvement in the founding of the West African nation of Liberia. The nation was founded by the American Colonization Society in 1817, and was used as a conduit of resettlement upon and throughout the abolition of slavery. Through the exhibition which is titled “A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred,” the artist reimagines Liberia’s colonial past through the eyes of the ‘Libyan Sibyl’ which is an ancient prophetic priestess who was said to predict ill-fated futures and would later re-emerge as a common motif in American art and literature. For the exhibition, which began on October 5, 2018, Viktor uses paintings, paper works and installations to connect these references to modern and traditional West African textile culture and evocation figurative imagery. “Liberia appears in Lina’s re-imagining as a kind of paradise lost, and as a cautionary tale,” said Allison Young, Andrew. Mellon Fellow of Contemporary Art. “ At the same time her work transcends this narrative, revealing how examples of visual culture — from Dutch Wax fabrics to national emblems to gestures in the history of portraiture—exists as remnants of these colonial histories.” The exhibition runs until January 6, 2019 in the Great Hall of the New Orleans Museum of Arts.
The merging of arts and science is an ancient practice embedded into our daily lives in the simplest ways which one might not even notice. Both are attempts to understand and describe the world around us. And this year, the Manchester Science Festival produced by the Science Industry Museum, presents an immersive collection of exhibitions, performances, and installations which magnify the fusion of these two industries in over 65 venues beginning today, October 18, 2018. The festival will feature a list of both international and local artists and scientists exploring a wide variety of topics; from the impact of nuclear explosions on the human body to the controversial future of cloning and the definitions of the concept of beauty.
Three of the fair’s selected headliner events are You Have Been Upgraded, Distortions in Spacetime and Electricity: The Spark of Life. You Have Been Upgraded is a one-night-only gathering of the world’s leading scientists, academics, entrepreneurs and biohackers to showcase the art of human enchantment technologies. The event will also include themed body tattooing and will open conversation on the limits and advances of artistic and technological body modifications. While Distortions in Spacetime is an immersive installation which will replicate the experience of being within the gravitational waves of a black hole, curated by audio-visual pioneers. Electricity: The Spark of Life will be a self-explanatory event of interpretive art which explores the high-tech dependency humans hold on electricity and its transformational impact of human life. This event will feature the world premiere of new work by data design studio Tekja. Other highlights will include musical, dance and theatrical performances. The festival will run until October 28, for tickets and further information , check out Manchester Science Festival.
On their latest venture, Italian fashion house Gucci partners with artist Maurizio Cattelan to curate a project which raises conversations about the significance of originality in an exhibition titled The Artist Is Present. Creative Director Alessandro Michele is said to have shared utopia with the artist which is a dream of the Chinese metropolis; homeland to the idea of “the copy is the original.”
Launched on October 10th at the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, curated by Cattelan, the exhibition is described as an act of of appropriation. The project explores the complex relationship between image and reality and representation and presentation in the art industry. The title of the exhibition itself aims at demonstrating how the act of copying can be considered a noble act of creation. The line up features a list of over thirty foreign and Chinese artists of which propose simulation and copy as a paradigm of modern and global culture. These artist display both site-specific and existing works which question some of the most basic principles of art such as originality, intention and expression. The show explores how originality can be reached through the act of repetition, and how originals can be preserved through copies. “ Copying is like a form of blasphemy, it could seem disrespectful towards God but at the same time it is the significative recognition of its existence, ” comments Maurizio Cattelan. It is an entire appeal to prove the idea of originality is overrated. The exhibition is on display until December 16th and feature artists such as John Ahearn, John Armleder, Nina Beier, Brian Belott etc. For more information , visit Gucci.
For their latest venture , Fondazione Prada presents a collaborative effort of American publishing house Johnson Publishing Company and installation artist Theaster Gates in their latest exhibition titled “The Black Image Corporation”.
This project which is on display at the foundation’s Osservatorio venue in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, Milan explores the historic visual evolution of the contemporary African American identity. The exhibition includes the archives of the Johnson Publishing Company which feature more than 4 million images that have been captured throughout decades by photographers Moneta Sleet Jr. and Isaac Sutton. The publishing house was founded by John Johnson in 1942 and was also the mother of the two landmark publications Ebony and Jet magazines, which both celebrated black culture.
With the work of the publishing house’s two photographers, Theaster Gates has curated an exhibition which honours the culture in an a way which speaks to beauty and black female power, “for this show I hope to tease out the creation of female iconic moments created by Sleet and Sutton and also offer small forays into the lives of everyday people through never-before-seen images of the Johnson Collection. Today it seems to me a good times to dig into the visual lexicon of the American book and show images that are rarely seen outside of my community. I wanted to celebrate women of all kinds and especially black women.”
At the exhibition, while most frames contain developed images, some will show the reverse of photographs which will include the date, time and photographer. The audience is invited to freely interact and explore with these images which will be kept in various cabinets of the exhibition. On the first level of the Osservatorio, the artist has also installed original furnishing and interior design elements mimicking the publishing house’s downtown Chicago offices. Within this area, spectators will be allowed to browse and read copies of Ebony and Jet magazines while viewing Avenue In Full Bloom (2018) , which is a short film shot by gates documenting the actual office space in Chicago. The exhibition is on display from September 20, 2018 to January 14, 2019.
Dealing in themes of feminine representation in the media and the body at large, ‘Facial Recognition’ takes the work of two celebrated British-born artists and turns it into a striking visual dialogue. Images from glossy media form the basis of Melissa Jordan and Eve Ackroyd’s work; subjects are warped and reimagined, transported into otherworldly places, where the traditional figurative is given a new freedom of form.
‘Slats’, Eve Ackroyd
Jordan’s work features process-led clay sculptures, Ackroyd is solely a painter; and while in execution their work is very different, the thematic undercurrents and inherent symbolism of their subjects live intuitively in quite a similar space. The artists explain: ‘Trapped in a state of conflict between the visual narratives of their new world and the expressive postures of their past, these paintings and sculptures exist in a remote place, caught in expressions of restlessness and desire’.
The show runs from July 14-22, by appointment at Convoy Projects.
I feel as if I’m in a sylvan dream world, with animals slumbering peacefully around me – except I’m actually in dark cubbyhole in a printers’ office in Aldgate East. This is Harriet Horton’s studio and what I’m looking at are her works: she’s a taxidermist, and an unusual one at that. Her ethically-sourced pieces – brightly coloured and lent a surreal quality with the addition of neon lighting – are far from traditional.
“I can’t remember what made me want to do the neon, but I’ve always loved it, so for me merging it with taxidermy seemed quite obvious,” she explains. “I like it because it’s quite trashy. My godmother lives in Blackpool, and my family used to visit to see the illuminations, and it was kind of trippy.”
Horton’s path to her trade wasn’t straightforward. After studying philosophy at the University of Manchester, she went to train with George Jamieson in Edinburgh. She did taxidermy work in her spare time, on and off, for six years, and in the last year decided that she wanted people to see her pieces.
And that’s what I’m here to discuss, because Horton’s first solo exhibition, Sleep Subjects, opens on 13th November, and she’s just joined a gallery, Contemporary Collective.
“I became really obsessed with animals and their dreaming abilities and I thought it would really fun. I wanted to use lighting and other mediums to explore the visual representation of their potential REM. I wanted to make something that was about the animals rather than about the human version of dreaming.”
Photography by Joe Quigg
She prides herself on maintaining a playful narrative: “Once you’ve taken an animal out of it’s natural habitat, where it looks beautiful, and you put it in a gallery, it looks at bit out of place. I tamper with what I can but I try to do it with utmost respect because I think you have a level of care as a taxidermist. I hate all that macabre gothic taxidermy.”
Harriet’s work is quite unlike anyone else’s, which she says, is because, “One of the most embarrassing things for me would be to accidentally do something that’s quite similar to someone else’s. I followed a lot of artists and then realised that if I wanted to do it myself, I didn’t want any conscious influences, so I stopped researching people. I’ve been starting to look again recently.”
The exhibition looks set to be equally unusual, a multisensory experience with music and lighting in a crypt. The music producer is Rob Shields, a friend of Horton’s. “It’s really special that he’s doing it. It’s going to be a new thing for me, because I can only visualise what I’ve got here, so…his element will kind of change things. I think I’ll change the layout and that’s what I’m quite excited about,” she says.
Horton’s young, fresh approach is turning taxidermy on its head – and we think it’s dead cool.
Harriet Horton will be exhibiting on 13 November at The Crypt Gallery. For more info, go to harriethorton.com
1947 was a bleak year for post-war Europe: a lack of adequate housing and poverty were daily struggles. Yet that all changed thanks to Christian Dior. His iconic New Look featured fuller silhouettes, the abundance of material rebelling against the austere, masculine narrow skirts forced by rationing. The collection carried a spirit of rebirth and renewal, and heralded a return to normality.
In a new exhibition running until 1 November, the esteemed fashion house will be showcasing this sartorial revolution. Featuring a selection of haute couture pieces dating from 1947-2015, photographs, documents, memorabilia, manuscripts, original drawings, miniatures of the Barsuit, New Look dolls, patterns and toiles, along with a tribute to the legendary Miss Dior perfume, it will serve as a genealogy of Dior style.
Musée Christian Dior, 1 Rue d’Estouteville 50400 Granville, France
According to UNICEF, more than 130 million women and girls alive today have been cut in the countries where FGM is concentrated – a shocking statistic indeed. That’s what Ione Gamble, editor of Polyester zine thought, and what she sought to highlight and fight by putting the rising abundance of female talent within the spheres of art and fashion to good use.
The result is Female Matters, a one-night-only group exhibition exploring sexual liberation in the 21st century, with all profits raised going to The Dahlia Project, a charity that supports survivors of FGM.
Taking place this Thursday, 4th June, the evening has been co- curated by Polyester zine and designer Clio Peppiatt, showcasing work from some of London and the UK’s most exciting female artists including as Charlotte Mei, Samantha Conlon, Maisie Cousins, Felicity Hayward, The Digital Fairy, Ayesha Tan Jones and Eleanor Hardwick, working across a variety of mediums such as performance art, photography, film and sculpture.
The exhibition will also showcase a group collaborative installation of over twenty pairs of customised lingerie and knickers from creative agencies, zines, and collectives such as Anti Agency, The Mushpit, Sister Magazine, Bunny Collective, the PINKD book, Girls Don’t, Baroness, Skinny Girl Diet, Lorde inc, Polyester, Hanecdote, Girls Only, Me and You, Maria Pizzeria, Clio Peppiatt & others.
4th of June- Box Studio Shoreditch. 7-11pm- one night only
It’s not often that a fashion photographer wields enough influence to create an issue of Vogue featuring only black models; neither is it very common for just one person to photograph each and every cover of Vogue Italia for the past 20 years. But then, Steven Meisel’s extraordinary passion and talent set him up for an illustrious career from his early days as a fashion illustrator.
International auction house Phillips is launching a travelling selling exhibition of Meisel’s work. Role-play has already visited Paris, and will be arriving at 30 Berkeley Square in London from 16 December to 11 January next year, before heading to New York.
The show features 25 images that capture Meisel’s most notable contributions to fashion photography, including an image from the 1990s, when Meisel was instrumental in welcoming the grunge aesthetic into mainstream fashion. He has since concluded that the image is one of his favourite pictures, as, in his words, it ‘captured a real cultural moment of a music scene and a fashion scene fusing together to create a new look.’
Meisel has undoubtedly become one of the most significant fashion photographers working today and this exhibition is a brilliant opportunity to view his work as it is intended to be seen.
Steven Meisel: Role Play opens tomorrow, 16 December till 11 January 2015. Located at Phillips 30 Berkeley Square London.
For aficionados, fashion is much more than a frivolous indulgence in the latest trends. It is about self-expression, identity and creativity. This is what the major autumn exhibition at the London Design Museum intends to celebrate. Women Fashion Power opens on 29 October, looking at the ways in which women are using fashion to define and enhance their place in the world. Fittingly, the exhibition is designed by Dame Zaha Hadid, the first and only woman to have won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004. She herself is well known for her fashion statements, currently sporting pink ombré hair.
It will feature exclusive interviews, an immersive multimedia journey including archive photography and film footage, and historic pieces of clothing to illustrate a timeline of fashion over the past 150 years, from restrictive corsets to Louboutin’s statement heels. There will be an iconic Yves Saint Laurent ‘Le Smoking’ suit, a Mansfield suit worn by Margaret Thatcher and a Jacques Azagury dress worn by Princess Diana, amongst others. To add to the excitement, over 25 contemporary women will be featured in the exhibition, and each of them has donated one of their outfits. Naomi Campbell, Dame Vivienne Westwood, Livia Firth (wife of Colin), Roksanda Ilincic and Natalie Massenet (of Net-A-Porter) are just a few of the famous names.
Fashion, it seems, is growing ever more important as a tool of empowerment, for building a reputation, attracting attention, and asserting authority. You might want to think on that when you plan your next outfit…
Women Fashion Power at the London Design Museum, from 29 October to 26 April.
This week, contemporary artists Alexandra Baumgartner, Beatriz Crespo, Florence Reidenbach and Su Ling Gyr are displaying their own personal confrontations with femininity at the GYNAECEUM exhibition in Berlin.
Curated by Tippi Ling, the installation is set in a 1920s apartment — a rather fitting location considering the exhibit’s questioning of female confinement to the domestic space.
Baumgartner’s collages will explore themes such as social constraints and the decay of the human body, whilst Crespo’s paintings examine the daily rituals in women’s lives. Reidenbach’s combination of folklore and fantasy delves into the creation of feminine identity, whereas Gyr analyses notions of beauty throughout history with her multimedia approach.
GYNAECEUM is not just a beautiful ode to the female artistic talent of today, but also an empowering retrospective on just how far we’ve come.
At times, Marianne Faithfull the Sixties legend has threatened to overshadow Marianne the real and living person. But after over thirty years in the spotlight, and the former pop ingénue has battled addiction to continue to put out records.
It’s fitting then that her curated exhibition at Tate Liverpool should be titled Innocence and Experience and nothing better sums up the show then a 1976 Mapplethorpe image of Faithfull, seemingly uneasy as she transitions from her Sixties naïveté to a dark awareness of life’s depths.
Having selected works from the Tate Collection, Innocence and Experience reflects upon Faithfull’s artistic influences, as well as those over her private life. Dark and romantic, the works in this exhibition are brought together by a curator whose life will be forever intertwined with art and performance.
Innocence and Experience curated by Marianne Faithfull is at Tate Liverpool 20 April – 2 September 2012 tateliverpool.org
Santorini is the latest super hot spot marked out for art domination. With the mission of promoting emerging and established artists, right now the Biennale is calling for artists to send in their material for consideration.
Working to the theme of The Past: Memory and Nostalgia, the exhibition will be a melange of everything from graphic design to sculpture and industrial design.
In particular, Curator of Illustration for the Santorini Biennale of Arts 2012 Nicky Peacock, has her eye casting out for fashion illustration. She says, “I will be living in Santorini for four months this summer during the biennale and this will no doubt be somewhat of a culture shock for a town-based girl like myself.
“With this in mind, I’m interested in works that are a little incongruous to a paradise island – a little discordant and out of place. As an artist and curator, this is the kind of thing that fascinates me and keeps me on my toes – something dark to contrast with all that sunshine!”
Santorini Biennale takes place form 01 July to 30 Sept 2012
Go to www.santorinibiennale.gr to submit your work
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present is a powerful documentary which takes its viewer inside the mind of one of the Twentieth Century’s most provocative performance artists.
Directed by Matthew Akers, the film is an account of Abramović’s three decades and counting career, her both professional and personal relationship with Uwe Layseipen, and a behind the scenes look at the emotional journey leading up to her extensive 2010 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
At the three month-enduring retrospective, the Belgrade-born artist engaged her viewers in a performance piece which entailed a varying audience member sitting across from her at a table in silence, solely staring into the 65-year-old’s eyes in an attempt to question the concept of art becoming life.
Marina Abramović has always been a fascinating creative force, but this documentary will be the first opportunity to see the woman behind the legendary artwork. It might just be her most inspiring performance yet.
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present is set for release on July 6. marinafilm.com
From portraits to reportage and award-winning advertisements to Pirelli calendars, the images of Brian Duffy are an iconic documentation of decades past. Now the Proud Chelsea gallery is making a tribute to the photography legend, who passed away in 2010, by displaying a rare collection of his signed prints.
Starting his career in the Fifties as a freelance photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, Duffy went on to photograph the likes of Jean Shrimpton, John Lennon and David Bowie, most memorably for the cover of his Aladdin Sane album.
Duffy, alongside David Bailey and Terence Donovan – nicknamed the Terrible Trio by British press – innovated the style of documentary fashion photography by capturing the zeitgeist of Swinging London in the Sixties.
After making the decision to abandon still photography, the English photographer and film producer famously attempted to burn all of his negatives in 1979. Fortunately, a few priceless artifacts remain, making this exhibition both a poignant photographic homage and an unmissable visual experience.
Duffy: The Lost Portraits is on display until May 13 at Proud Chelsea, 161 King”s Road London SW3 5XP.
The metamorphoses of Cindy Sherman knows no boundaries, so it makes sense that an exhibition honouring her work is in a place as vast and all-encompassing as the Museum of Modern Art gallery in New York.
Looking back at her three decades and counting career, the just opened showcase contains over 170 of Sherman’s iconic pieces and portraits, witnessing her take on roles from cinema noir actress to Jean Fouquet’s Madonna of Melun. But Sherman’s countless transformations are beyond pure dress up and trying on a new persona; they are a deep questioning of identity, representation and the role and placement of women in society.
Rather than being solely retrospective, the exhibit is also the first showing of Sherman’s photographic murals from 2010 in America, as well as Carte Blanche: Cindy Sherman, a screening of films made and curated by the conceptual artist, which is fitting considering the strong influence of the medium on her work. The movies will range from horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to John Waters’ Desperate Living, whilst including Sherman’s short film Doll Clothes and feature film Office Killer.
The extensive display of her work shows that even under wigs, prosthetics and layers of makeup, the real Cindy Sherman is always unmistakably there.
Cindy Sherman is on display until June 11 at The Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery, MoMA, 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019 moma.org
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