In the light of the coronavirus health crisis, Twin Magazine has partnered up with a few of our contributing artists for the sale of 10 printed photographs in charity of the National Health Service (NHS) Fund. The initiative launched this morning, features 10 photographers including Benedict Brink, Ben Weller, Daisy Walker, Jo Metson Scott, Joyce NG, Julia Noni, Marianna Sanvito, Scott Trindle, Stefanie Moshammer & Yaniv Edry who have donated 1 image each for the project.
All prints have been framed and moulded from the highest quality real black wood and UV reflected as they have been carefully packaged by our handmade sponsor G.F Smith . The cost of each print ranges from £125 -£175 depending on it’s size. For more information on how to purchase directly , visit Twinfornhs.com
American photographer Mark Mahaney is one of the talented creatives who contributed to Twin Magazine’s latest print issue. His feature which included a short photo series in the issue is expounded in his recently published hardcover book entitled Polar Night. Mahaney creates a compilation of images documenting a passage through the rapidly changing landscape of Alaska’s northernmost town of Utiqiagvik.
“It’s an exploration of prolonged darkness, told through the strange beauty of a snowscape cast in a two month shadow. The unnatural lights that flare in the sun’s absence and the shapes that emerge from the landscape are unexpectedly beautiful in their softness and harshness. It’s hard to see past the heavy gaze of climate change in an arctic town, though Polar Night is a visual poem about endurance isolation and survival, ” reads it’s foreword.
Polar Night is now available for pre-order here, and will beginning shipping shortly.
In a special series of images for Twin, we unpack the idea that perfection is on the surface. In a social media age, nothing is more important than owning your best self on the inside. You know who you are: strong, powerful and empowered. That will never change, but that doesn’t mean you can’t switch it and experiment for kicks – this #betterfacechallenge is served with a wink and a smile. Online is the space to play, take ownership of the fun you can have, all the while knowing that your perfect self is in all your imperfections.
Models Moffy at Storm, Elaine at Nii, Lola at The Squad, Aoi at Tomorrow Is Another Day, Melody at The Hive, Make Up Siddhartha Simone at Julian Watson Agency using CHANEL Vision d’Asie: L’Art du Détail and CHANELRouge Coco Flash, Hair Anna Cofone at The Wall Group, Script/Writing Sonya Titus
This week Twin Magazine opens our doors in London to a group exhibition entitled “Twin X” which celebrates a decade of local emerging talent and creativity. The showcase, which opens on January 31st at The Store X in East London, pulls on the visual archive of our biannual print publication featuring the works of several creatives throughout the industries of fashion, photography and art. Collectively curated by Twin Founder Becky Smith; Twin art editor and curator Francesca Gavin; curator and gallerist Antonia Marsh; image director Holly Hay and Twin fashion editor Naomi Miller, the exhibition is an amalgamation of the personal taste and perspective of each curator.
It is a display which collectively showcases specially-commissioned editorial images that focus on independence and individualism, which are themes that have been carried throughout the magazine since it’s conception in 2009.
“As publications have come under increased pressure to compromise over the last decade, Twin has remained a distinct and independent platform for pure creativity. The show celebrates the artists that have helped shaped and define independent publishing as it stands today, ” says Founder Becky Smith.
With work from photographers such as Stef Mitchell, Cass Bird, Boo George, Bibi Cornejo Borthwick, Dexter Navy and Akinola Davies Jr, the show deconstructs a central narrative into four sections: Photographers, Models, People and the Unseen. Exploring the thoughts behind these characters, faces and creatives who are defining the nature of contemporary creativity. The Unseen section of the exhibition will also feature never-before-seen outtake shots from the magazine’s photographic archive, providing spectators with a rare insight into the world of image-making and its process. Twin X features free admission and concludes on February 3, 2019.
Photograph by Yaniv Edry, Issue 19, 2018. Photograph by Akinola Davies Jr., Issue 19, 2018.
Following the success of previous collaborations between Nataal and Red Hook Labs, Nataal curates an exhibition of some of most exciting image-makers documenting modern Africa in a new exhibition. New African Photography III opens at the Brooklyn space in May.
The new exhibition will showcase the work of six female artists: Fatoumata Diabaté (Mali), Rahima Gambo (Nigeria), Keyezua (Angola), Alice Mann (South Africa), Ronan McKenzie (UK) and Ruth Ossai (UK/Nigeria).
Together these works celebrate female identity and diversity, offering an empowered and positive vision. A sense of energy is conveyed through the celebration of movement and the use of powerful juxtapositions – both in terms of colour and of form.
The event also coincides with the launch of Nataal’s first print issue. The website and magazine work as a platform to champion creativity and culture in Africa. You can find out more here.
Alice Mann, Dr Van Der Ross Drummies, Delft, South Africa, 2017, from the series Drummies
Ruth Ossai X Mowalao
Fatoumata Diabaté, Kara et ses oreilles, 2012, from the series L_homme en Animal
Sailing Back to Africa as a Dutch Woman, 2017, from the series Fortia
Nataal: New African Photography III, 4th – 13th May, Red Hook Labs, 133 Imlay St, Brooklyn, New York. Opening times: 10am-6pm daily.
Following the wildly successful exhibition last year, Holly Hay and Shonagh Marshall are releasing Posturing as a book this month.
The beautiful tome brings together 21 iconic image makers in contemporary fashion. These photographers explore, respond to and propose new ways of using the body as a tool in the way clothing is depicted. Viewers are invited to look beyond the clothes though, at the entire art of composition and structure of each photograph. The careful curation of images allows viewers to examine fashion photography in new ways. The book portrays the spectrum of the fashion canon, from hyper-sexualised to the hyper-abstracted body. It is a celebration of the new era of strangeness in fashion, and the photographers central to leading the way.
Read our interview with Shonagh Marshall about co-curating the exhibition with Twin contributor Holly Hay here.
Johnny Dufort for AnOther Magazine, ‘Go Fish’ Autumn:Winter 2017
Charlie Engman for AnOther Magazine, ‘A Nod And A Glance A Gesture For One Word’ Autumn:Winter 2015
Lena C Emery for The Gentlewoman, ‘Practise’ Spring:Summer 2014
Pascal Gambarte for Marfa Journal, ‘Being Michael Rothstein’ March 2017
Reto Schmid for Under the Influence Magazine, ‘Relative Transparency’ Spring:Summer 2016
Inspired by the treasures within the Saint Laurent archives, the new Saint Laurent Jamie bag is a modern classic that has arrived perfectly on time for the new season. The Carré rive gauche quilting lends the classic silhouette a unique look while the metallic and leather chain references Saint Laurent signatures. Available in red and black, it’s the kind of treasure that will keep you smiling throughout the year.
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.
Military yet undone, matching but out of synch, the Louis Vuitton AW18 show brought to life a new vision of powerful women. The show was all about turning the expected on its head, and there was a palpable sense of strangeness and mystery throughout. Bags were carried on their sides, rather than upright; eye make-up streaked across one eye but left the other bare; traditional silhouettes such as pencil skirts and cashmere polo necks were mixed with peplum leather jackets and suede-shouldered pale yellow, shearling jackets. It was Nicolas Ghesquiere at his savviest, blending femininity and power to offer an original vision. Here’s to the new era.
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.
Amélie Pichard celebrates sexy. Her shoe brand does too. Presented with her footwear, you meet a brand that has titillating sensuality at the core, partnered with the somewhat odd bedfellow of comfort – not necessarily a predictable alignment but refreshing nonetheless. Here is someone who is making a damn good stab at constructing the feeling of sexy, rather than simply the look of it. Aiming to exact empowerment and pleasure to women through artisanal technique and a certain retrograde sensibility, Amélie has opened her first shop, in the wake of her successful online business and a celebrated Pamela Anderson collaboration. Locking herself into bricks and mortar signals something new for the Parisian designer: cementing herself as part of the modern heritage of her city. Amélie wishes to be the female version of Hugh Hefner, to praise the natural sensuality of women. Her aim? To herald the woman: to celebrate sexy for the self.
She is free. This is the very first thing to realise. My girls, the Pichard girls, know what they want, when they want. I don’t do things because there are rules – I don’t care about that. Pamela Anderson was my first muse: for me she is the perfect Pichard girl because she is complex, a woman, a mother, an activist, a girl boss: exactly what I love. I don’t like girls who don’t work. What does sexy mean to you? Sexy for me is everything. For me it is so important, but it must be a natural sexy – it’s not about clothes or makeup, it is about attitude. When I look at your shoes, it is like you are trying to change what sexy means, and twist how it is traditionally a male-dominated word. Your brand seems sexy for itself… Before, to be sexy, women wanted very high heels. For me it is the opposite, because if you cannot walk properly because of your shoes, you are not sexy. For me, women wearing trainers can be more sexy than women who can’t walk in their high heels. I do shoes for the girl who has her bicycle, who needs to go food shopping, who needs to live and work.
In my shop, it is a lot of things, because I am obsessed with Hugh Hefner – I want to be the female version! I want the most beautiful guys working in my shop, at the door of chez Pichard. I put a bed in the shop because I wanted to make a shop not just for shoes: a place where people can stay and live, chill, and the bed was the way of doing this. The shop is a mix of the 70’s and a bar tabac, because the French spirit is very casual, and I also love contrast. That is why the front of the shop is green, like the bars of Paris, while inside the first thing you see is a bed dressed in Pink, in varying textures.
Hugh Hefner made something crazy. He enjoyed sex, he enjoyed women, because women are the most beautiful things on the earth. I have a big collection of Playboy at my place – for me it is my favourite magazine.
I make shoes to tell stories. Before this, I was making clothes, but I felt a bit lost as it wasn’t very artisanal – I love artisanal creations more than fashion. I love the way you make something. One day, I discovered the last shoe factory of Paris, and I fell in love with what they were doing. I saw one of the workers working in an atmosphere of the smell of glue, of dust, making these tiny and delicate shoes, and I just thought this is so cool!
It is always women of the past, who aren’t in our world anymore – they are from a time long gone so I can’t meet these women, I don’t know these women: it gives me simply fantasy, and everything starts with fantasy. Sometimes I just need to see an image – you know the movie Paris, Texas ? For five years I fantasised about this movie, despite having never seen it, just pictures – after that I designed a whole collection around the images I knew. For me it is all about fantasy, and telling a story I want to tell that is always between the past and the present. Once I have finished designing, shaped by the past, I will imagine the shoes on my friends who are modern and contemporary: if the shoes appear right then I am happy.
The launch of the shop – it was crazy because we made a fête au village, so all the street was totally full! We partnered with the bar opposite us and had a Claude Francois impersonator perform.
Bumbags are back, but Miu Mui has made so much better than the average offer. Introducing the Miu Rider: ostensibly your everyday, hip swinging, but rendered with such decadence and craft that it is elevated to something else entirely.
What were you doing at Halloween? If the answer didn’t involve hitting up the Twin x Browns East party, something must have gone spookily wrong in your evening.
Bringing together some of London’s fiercest creatives, the night saw live performances from the likes of Skinny Girl Diet and Stefflon Don (the 25 year old rapper about to start working with Drake).
Set design by Alice Kirkpatrick saw the space in Shoreditch transformed into a Stranger Things, 80’s themed haven – with a vintage MR2 providing endless Instagram fodder. Scents by Timothy Han and films by Emily McDonald worked to create eerie, surreal vibes that, coupled with cocktails served in IV drip bags and tattoos on the house, made for a night to remember: the most fitting tribute to a new issue of Twin magazine you won’t forget.
Photographer Sophie Davis talks to Twin about her series of work, ‘The Unresolved’.
I began this series nearly two years ago, having been constantly exposed to images of beauty ideals from a young age through media and popular culture. Starting this series felt like a necessary step for me to try and understand my fascination with beauty and the female form.
‘The Unresolved’ is a growing body of work and the girls I photograph start out as strangers to me. I ‘collect’ my subjects around London, they are just normal women who I feel instantly drawn to because of their physical appearance. I ask them to sit for me if they are interested. These sittings are mostly done nude.
Surprisingly, through the many girls I have photographed I have only ever had one no, which I think speaks volumes about how we as women are curious about seeing ourselves laid bare. It could be seen as searching for validation, wanting to feel beautiful in a world that makes us constantly insecure.
The images have become part of a growing archive, a collection of female flesh, both a celebration of the magnetising allure of the woman but also an exploration into the limits of objectification.
The method of my work has been described as predatory in nature, more ‘male gaze’ than ‘female’ (which I can’t help but see as reductive, as women have the ability to desire just as much as men). But alongside the seemingly callous ‘pick ups’ there is a tenderness to the photographs that remove them from an objectifying, colder viewpoint – it is down to the close ups. The details in the folds of skin and stray hairs, the remnants of another human being. There is the intimacy and closeness you would assume exist between lovers. I am always amazed at the level of trust each girl puts in me, and the friendships that come out of some encounters.
‘The Unresolved ‘is an exploration of the limits of the female gaze and the ‘trap of beauty’ and our constant hunt for it. In exploring with such issues with this body of work, it has given me further insight into our conditioning, and the confusion that surrounds the self in relation to images of the ‘ideal’. There is a hunger in the images, both from myself as photographer and from the subjects themselves, it’s a desire to be seen, to be looked at to be the one do the looking.
Something about this month’s launch of Rihanna’s new beauty line – Fenty Beauty – has touched a nerve with consumers and it’s not entirely owing to her A-list cred. In a sea of celebrity-endorsed fashion and beauty collections, Fenty stands out thanks to its notably diverse range of foundation shades (all 40 of them, near revolutionary in its inclusivity), from lightest of alabasters to the deepest of coffees, with a range of authentic skin-loving undertones as well. Word on the street is that customers are liking – and buying – what they see: there are reports of the darkest shades selling out instantly, which flies in the face of the argument of bigger brands that producing darker shades is a risk for their profit margin. But it’s not only dark-skinned girls loving the range, a number of people with albinism have sung the praises of Fenty for making shades light enough for pigment-free skin, using the hashtag #AlbinoMatch to broadcast the discovery on various social platforms.
Of course this isn’t Rihanna’s first foray into the world of beauty, with products from her RiRi for MAC collection reportedly selling out in hours. However, with a whole makeup line created by the original bad girl herself – and with names like Trophy Wife, Moscow Mule, Sinnamon, Killawatt and Pro Filt’R – this one’s got RiRi written all over it, in a very good way.
Catch it quick! The new collaboration between Aries x Vans launches at midnight. There’s also fresh patches, sweats and a whole new AW17 collection to get stuck into.
Founded by Central Saint Martins graduateSofia Prantera and graphic designer Fergus Purcell, Aries has quickly become a cult brand since it launched some five years ago. Marrying the 90s streetwear aesthetic with modern style, the label offers easy, transitional pieces all with that Aries edge. Think logo t-shirts, frayed denim and hoodies, as well as patches, tie dye and silk tracksuits to boot.
Aries ‘No Problemo’ sweatshirt, £120
This latest collaboration sees the brand delving further into subcultures, offering a new customised trainer that will debut alongside a film by Jeremy Pollard. Expect these shoes to sell out as fast as their printed t-shirts, and be ready to click ‘buy’ when the clock strikes 12.
Whether it’s phone cases, patches, berets or bags, customisation is the trans-seasonal trend that we can’t get enough off. Hot off the Topshop SS18 catwalk, customised tees from the runway show are available to make your own at Topshop’s customisation pop-up in their Oxford Street store.
Head over over any time this week to tap into that fierce, independent attitude: because while wearing your heart on your sleeve is good, your name on your chest is better.
The room was succulent with energy before the show had even started, but Molly Goddard SS18 trumped all feverish expectations as it began. Opening with Edie Campbell, an e-cigarette dangling from her lips, the show offered a strong, louche party girl spirit, wrapped up in signature smocks and empire lines.
Taffetas, sequins and dense cotton was finely rendered here, with Goddard honing in on fine details as much as the big, stand-out aesthetics which have made her show one of the must see of the season – hell, even Sadiq Khan was on the front row.
Finely tuned ruche detail lent organic curves to backs and sleeves, while juxtapositions of form gave fresh vibes to familiar silhouettes. Cropped cardigans and blazers in rich tangerines, lemon-curd yellows and midnight blues translated the Molly Goddard girl into a more contemporary setting, while sequin smocks and sheer dresses were the wearable, fun escapism we’ve all been looking for.
“The doctor told me to watch my drinking. Now I drink in front of the mirror.” the show notes quipped: the show itself an exuberant realisation of the confident, funny, playful and seductive Molly Goddard girl that we have come to love so well.
Beds have always offered a world within a world, a place where sex, loss, pensiveness and commonality can all exist in the same place, and sometimes all at once. It is these dichotomies and juxtapositions that photographer Cass Bird plays with in a new exhibition at Red Hook Labs in New York.
This new series of portraits tells the story of her family, with pictures of wife Ali, and their two children weaving a story of laughter, intimacy and feeling connected.
Alongside familial images are examples of Bird’s fashion photography, which has featured in publications such as French Vogue and Wall Street Journal, as well as Twin magazine.
‘Self Portrait with Mae’ (2014), Photography Cass Bird
Here the same off-kilter, fluid and sensitive compositions relay an eye that is totally attuned to its subjects; whether it’s professional or personal, Cass Bird communes with these moments rather than directs them.
‘In Bed’ is on at Red Hook Labs, Brooklyn until September 24th.
Francesca Gavin (Twin, Art Editor) curates a new exhibition in Paris, inspired by the cultural power of the humble champignon.
The exhibition explores the mushroom through cultural and historical narratives, focussing on how this simple fungi has operated at the heart of ritual for thousands of years.
Hannah Collins, ‘The fragile feast, madonna and ceps.’ 2012 – 2017. | image courtesy of galeriepcp
“They were an early form of female empowerment” Peter Cybulski, of galeriepcp tells me, adding that women used mushrooms for a source of income throughout the 19th century.
Throughout contemporary art, the mushroom can also be seen as a source of inspiration, with creatives looking towards it for its ability to signify nature, as well as more abstract, and psychedelic references.
Seana Gavin, ‘mushroomscape’, 2017 | image courtesy of galeriepcp
Bringing together a diverse and exciting range of international artists which includes Hannah Collins, Sylvie Fleury, Seana Gavin, Carsten Holler and more. This new exhibition covers painting, collage, film and photography to offer an exciting and surprising survey of the mushroom, and the strangeness it embodies.
John Millei ‘maria sabina #1’, 2016 | image courtesy of galeriepcp
Champignons! curated by Francesca Gavin is at galeriepcp in Paris until 10th November 2017.