Continuing my cultural whirlwind, I went to see Chris Ofili’s exhibition at Tate Britain. One of the most acclaimed British painters of his generation, Ofili won the Turner Prize in 1998 and was also chosen to represent Great Britain at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. The current exhibition is a major survey of his work, gathering together his intensely coloured and intricately ornamented paintings with pencil drawings and watercolours from the mid 1990s to today.

For me it was The Upper Room that took my breath away, even though I have seen it before it still captures my gaze and transports me into a blaze of colour and pattern, I love David Adjaye’s wooden room installation it really makes it feel very organic and smells wonderful too. I also loved the line drawings and how your focus is drawn to the dots or circles that seemed to have little faces and Afro heads in them. His latest series of paintings are much less decorative and have a magical and spiritual feel.

Here are a few quotations from reviews of the exhibition to whet your appetite before you go:

‘Hip, cool and wildly inventive’ – The Guardian

‘You can’t fail to be entertained’ – The Times

‘Modern Master of radiant colour’ – Daily Telegraph

Think that sums it up!

The exhibition is on until 16^th May.

Posted in art, colour, review

Wallpaper, Art and Culture. 6th February – 3rd May 2010

Popped up to Manchester for the ‘Walls are Talking’ private view at the Whitworth Art Gallery. Outside of London, it has the UK’s largest collection of wallpapers and as it’s the first exhibition to bring together artists’ working with wallpaper, it’s definitely worth seeing.

As I am a huge fan of Thomas Demand it was great to have another chance to see his Ivy wallpaper hung in a vast space, although it did seem to be have little less impact than it had had at the Serpentine in 2006. I wondered if this was partly down to the enormous height of the Whitworth’s ceilings and also due to not including those large photographs that it was shown with at the Serpentine space, which made the room of ivy look like it had windows. What unnerves about this paper is the sense of being confined and constricted by the dense ivy, which is perhaps how it was supposed to make you feel. The feeling is strengthened knowing that Demand’s inspiration for the ivy pattern came from a series of photographs of a tavern; a site that had been the scene for a horrific child murder, killed by its mother and step- sister.

Inspiration for the Ivy wallpaper:

Thomas Demand, Klause - Tavern, © Thomas Demand-DACS

Another gruesome murder scene is enacted in Abigail Lane’s ‘Bloody Wallpaper’ where bloodstain hand prints of the murder victim on a plain cream background are on show. But on a lighter note! I also liked Catherine Bertola’s 3D-esque installations, they reminded me of Katsuyo Kamo’s paper cut outs for Chanel. She used soot from her fire to print or stamp the floral images, which were then cut out with some floating down the walls, very Alice in wonderland !

Catherine Bertola, Whitworth Walls Are Talking 2010

Her work was perhaps (for me) the most inspiring for pushing the boundaries and for leaving you with some kind of emotional sense. By using paper in a different way than just the flat she leads nicely towards Tracy Kendal’s work. I did wonder why she (Tracy) wasn’t included in this section as her work is a fine example of 3D art wallpaper and crosses the boundaries of art and designer very nicely. And there were other surprising omissions not just individuals but a whole era.

I know this exhibition focuses mainly on the 1970s onwards but it did seem a shame that there wasn’t a reference to the 40’s – 50’s period. For example the Coles and Sons wallpapers by leading artists such as Graham Sutherland, John Aldridge and Edward Bawden and Bowden’s again a little earlier for the Curwen Press. I had always thought that this was quite a good time for the cross over of artists working in wallpaper and of course more predominantly fabrics.

What ‘Walls are Talking’ says is that wallpaper isn’t just decorative but can be a medium for social commentary. It certainly is a thought-provoking exhibition, exploring themes of sexuality gender, race, war, outside in, chemical warfare, politics to mention a few with artists such as Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Michael Craig-Martin and Angus Fairhurst using wallpaper to make bold artistic statements. Sarah Lucas’ ‘Tits in Space’ always makes me smile with its cigarettes neatly arranged into compact, pert cones!

Tits in Space © Sarah Lucas, Courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, London

This is definitely a thought provoking exhibition and very enjoyable, there were some pieces that were more pictures rather than wallpaper; especially the ones that were canvas stretched over frames, perhaps these could have been bigger pieces so that the effect could have been felt more. But that is what opens up the discussions on ‘when does a wallpaper become a work of art?’ The majority of the papers on show weren’t made for residential use making it a very interesting take on the wallpaper today issues.

Posted in botanical, design, interior design, pattern, review, wallpaper

What I love about going to Premier Vision is that not only is it a great opportunity to peer ahead, check out trends and see cutting edge technologies that are the results of years of R&D but you get to pick up stuff (literally and mentally) that you might not normally find or have easy access to. Here’s a good example, it’s a beautifully produced colour journal called ‘Le fil du lin & du chanvre’ which gives an overview of how linen and hemp are being used across the board in design.

Le fil du lin & du chanvre, n°03

I also found ‘Geometric’, a brilliant book by Kapitza – a design studio up the road from here set up by 2 sisters. It’s great fun, loaded with 100 pattern fonts (shapes based on the forms of letters in the alphabet) and something I’m definitely looking forward to playing with. Some of the patterns reminded me of the Dutch artist and designer Karel Martens who is a favourite of mine. You can buy the book from the Kapitza online shop:

One last notable mention from Premier Vision: Jakob Schlaepfer’s brand new, awe-inspiring fabric ‘Secret Garden’, a shimmering silver gossamer with iridescent inks printed onto it. It’s one of those fabrics that photographs really don’t do justice to, you have to see it up close and feel it yourself. So, lucky me! Look out for this in the coming years time in clothing and interiors.

Posted in books, design, graphic design, pattern, review, technology, trends

At Decode, currently on at the V&A, the first thing you see is Daniel Brown’s ‘On Growth and Form’. Commissioned for the Porter Gallery, it’s just outside the exhibition and is massive in size, about 4 metres high. But despite this big scale, its position makes the work easy to miss and that, along with the fact that it’s the only Daniel Brown piece in the exhibition, is a real shame.

In it, muted colours and delicate floral, organic forms are constantly morphing to make images that change and grow; the result is hypnotic and soothing. It reminded me of a Fischli and Weiss exhibition I saw at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris back in 1999, which included Sichtbare Welt (Visible World), an installation where they layered double-exposed images of flowers on top of each other. When these slides were projected in slow transition and at a huge scale you had an illusion of movement plus a blast of colour and beauty to mind-blowing effect. Brown uses more advanced technology but the emotional power is the same; awesome and calming.

Daniel Brown 'On Growth and Form'

Seeing Fischli & Weiss’ installation when I was about to start my first wallpaper collection was a real inspiration for me to make large-scale digital banner prints. It was just at the time when both digital photography and digital printing were becoming more affordable, helping pattern and imagery become more ubiquitous in interior design.

Brown has already been commissioned to produce works for private clients but I think something like ‘On Growth and Form’ would be great in a hospital or public space. And pretty soon it might be possible to have work like this in our homes.

Daniel Brown 'On Growth and Form'

I think designers and artists seem to turn to nature images at a time of change when something comforting is needed. Fischli & Weiss’ flower installation was touring as we were approaching the end of a millennium and Brown’s work is on show as we enter a new decade, and in a period of uncertainty.

Elsewhere at Decode interesting works included the kinetic artwork ‘Weave Mirror’ by Daniel Rozin which uses image-capture combined with hundreds of C-prints that organise themselves into a light and shadow, ‘woven’ picture of the person looking at the work. It sounds (and probably is) complicated but is beautiful to look at. Oasis, a lightbox with black sand creating amoeba-like forms, the splodgey, interactive piece ‘Body Paint’ and Aaron Koblin’s ‘Flight Patterns’ a visualisation of the flights across US airspace in a single day also stood out. Unfortunately ‘Dandelion’ by Sennep/Yoke wasn’t working but I’d love to have seen it.

Decode is at the V&A til April 11^th.

Here’s where you can read more about ‘Sichtbare’ by Fischli & Weiss.

Posted in art, botanical, design, review, technology

The Pallant House exhibition included a lot of silk square designs by Moore and scarves are something I’ve become interested in again recently. Not only does Liberty have an entire room dedicated to the scarf but they recently collaborated with that quintessential home of the scarf; Hermes (and another icon less well-known for his accessories designs, Ronnie Wood). A couple of weeks ago The Guardian ran a 4-page feature on Hermes scarves coinciding in with the publication Thames & Hudson’s book on the same subject.

What’s great about scarves is that they can be like wearable paintings – their scale seems to offer a lot of creative possibility. And they are a more affordable way of having a little bit of designer luxury and a hint of pattern and colour in these grey times.

Posted in books, colour, fashion, pattern, review

This weekend we took a trip out of town to visit Pallant House in Chichester. Extended to show the modern and contemporary art collection of architect Colin St John Wilson which includes work by John Piper, Patrick Caulfield, Sir Peter Blake, Howard Hodgkin and Lucian Freud, I was there specifically to see the Henry Moore textiles exhibition.

Moore often collaborated with David Whitehead – a leading fabric printer and also with Zika Ascher – one of my true inspirations. Many years ago I spent a few weeks working at the Ascher studio surrounded by old screens whose colours told the company’s rich creative history.

Fame in Fabric, Pathe film of Ascher studio

In the mid-1940s Ascher was known for collaborating with a range of artists including Matisse, Cocteau, Derain, Piper and Cecil Beaton. He forged a long-term relationship with Moore and the current exhibition at Pallant House tells their story brilliant. Moore’s constant sketching using so many media and materials and the textiles produced with Ascher were an exercise in trying to get onto cloth was what usually done on paper.

Moore’s textiles featuring his drawings of reclining ladies, birds and his barbed wire motifs were produced using complex techniques such as discharge printing. Their joy comes from a direct sense of Moore’s mark-making and of the artist himself.

Nowadays this is often lost in fabric design, financial considerations tend to limit the ability to experiment with tricky, time-consuming processes, instead speed, volume and cost-effectiveness are the order of the day. This means that mainstream design and production that rely heavily on computers, which definitely has its own merits, but there is perhaps a kind of flatness or lack of character in the final product. I love seeing brushstrokes or the differing weights in a hand-drawn line. It’s something I try from time to time in my own pieces.

Flora detail

Like Moore and Ascher, what works best for me is mixing different aspects – a painterly feel, handmade or retro qualities – with contemporary colours and methods in order to try and create something entirely new.

Posted in botanical, colour, design, interior design, pattern, review, textiles

Last weekend I was in Primrose Hill and spent some time at the Museum of Everything. Housed in a former dairy and recording studio, its Exhibition #1 showcases a huge selection of work by ‘non-traditional’, self-taught artists from around the world, many of whom have regular day jobs. So here are a dental technician, truck driver, transport worker, slipper manufacturer, bricklayer, scrap merchant, Prussian governess, a couple of butchers and three Reverends amongst many others.

Both the work and the overall experience are totally refreshing, exciting and inspiring – making you feel like you want to do more yourself.

Curator James Brett and the guests he invited to select the work, have assembled a show that celebrates the non-celebrity, the everyday and unrecognised. Instead, these artists make work borne of the pure joy of making, it is not self-conscious, contrived or created with any financial motivation. In an interview with The Art Newspaper Brett said ‘here, the best work has nobody guiding it; and I love his reasons for collecting (‘I didn’t get into this intellectually, I got into it emotionally.’).

The art is more than just a form of self-expression but often a kind of therapy or self-consolation. Anna Zemankova’s delicate embroidered pieces fall into this category. She began making them when feeling depressed and menopausal, always working in the wee hours.

Anna Zemánková, Untitled

Anna Zemánková, Untitled

The artists all work intuitively, in a very pure, personal and human way, not copying traditional techniques but developing their own unconventional methods. An example is Judith Scott. As part of the Creative Growth studio she created strange sculptures, objects wrapped in so much wool that they become lost and take on another identity.

Judith Scott, Untitled

Other stand-out artists for me were:

Nek Chand whose human and animal forms are made of broken crockery, bottle tops and other detritus, now accumulated into a Rock Garden:

Nek Chand, Clink and Cows

Morton Barlett, one of the most ‘established’ outsider artists, known for his unsettling, vulnerable hand-made dolls. Here’s a fascinating article about him.

Morton Bartlett, Girl in Yellow Sundress

Charles AA Dellschau who created thirteen books illustrating flying machines after a chance UFO sighting in 1899. The official website is here.

Charles AA Dellschau, 4475

Bill Traylor, a former slave who, aged 83, started to paint the people, animals and events of his life.

Bill Traylor, Black Horse

Posted in art, review

Saw Michael Clark’s Company perform the Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed et all  last night at the Barbican, absolutely fantastic! The dancers, costumes by Body Map’s Stevie Stewart and sets totally mesmerising, Michael Clark is an iconic artisan and so inspiring.

Michael Clark Company © Jake Walters. Dancers Oxana Panchenko and Clair Thomas

I love his mix of punk with classical, it has an anarchical pulse to it. Memories of 1988 I am Kurious Oranj, Leigh Bowery and The Fall. It reminded me of the 80’s just left Camberwell and set up my print studio in Rotherhithe, a time in London that was full of negative influences on art and design beset by the Thatcher government. There was a growing movement of rebellion, art students holding sit ins at the Tate Britain in dispute with the forming of the London Institute which was to bastardise the London art colleges as we knew them, Nicholas Serota informing us that although he sympathised with our goal we would be carried out of the building by the police one by one, which we were!

It was a time when designers were challenging the craft aesthetic, following on from Punk, designers such as Stevie Stewart of Body Map the Hemmingway’s ‘Red or Dead’ at Camden market, John Moore’s inspirational shop ‘The House of Beauty and Culture’ in Hackney, Pam Hogg, with Tom Dixon, Judy Blame and Fric and Frack at the pivotal 1987 Crafts Council show ‘The Makers Eye’ that pushed the conceptual boundaries of craft and production methods.

“we were rebelling against the conservative, the bland….. We are striving for excitement” says Stevie Stewart of that time (Vogue UK, March 2003).

So seeing Michael Clark again reminded me of the movement – expressional, confrontational and non-conformist times which feels so different to the mass-production tribe of fashion of today. There may not have been much money around but there was the mentality of Do It Yourself which was much more inventive and personal.

Michael Clark mixes Punk with classical, creating a tantalising explosion in sound and colour especial in ‘COME, BEEN, GONE’ – stripy jackets over bright red body suits, against brilliant blue and orange backdrops with Jean Genie and Heroes blasting out loud from gigantic speakers… jaw dropping dance movements – it had a similarity to the Anish Kapoor I saw last week, the feeling of being immersed in to the deep rhythms of colour – pure genius! Thank You Michael Clark and team!

Go see at the Barbican till end of this week.

PS … forgot to mention great programme in the shape of a record sleeve designed by Malcolm Garrett.

BBC Michael Clark Interview

Posted in colour, design, fashion, review

Some friends and I visited the major solo exhibition of Anish Kapoor last Thursday. It was a masterclass in the use of material, form, colour and surface texture in which immense power, movement, absolute stillness, stickiness, dryness, weight and delicacy are all juxtaposed.

The monumental work Svayambh, (from a Sanskrit word meaning ‘self-generated’) is a gliding, destructive piece made of red oil paint mixed with wax that moves slowly through the galleries across the entire breadth of Burlington House, mutilating itself as it goes.

Anish Kapoor Svayambh at RA

There was more drama and spectacle with ‘Shooting into the Corner’, a really exciting piece. We gathered round and waited for a few minutes for the countdown of the cannon firing. It really makes a booming noise and is sensationally anarchic in its splaying of crimson wax high up onto the plaster work of the Royal Academy ceiling – surely the old RA’s will be rocking in their graves! What’s great is that you really feel like you have seen a live piece of performance art even though the only performers are the person firing the cannon and the cannon itself.

Anish Kapoor Shooting Into The Corner

Here’s the cannon on YouTube.

After all the drama of these two pieces, I loved the quietness of ‘When I Am Pregnant’. A pregnant tummy form protrudes out from the wall, seemingly effortless as there are no joins in plaster work or signs of its making. The urge to touch it was almost overwhelming, just like when you see a friend who is pregnant there is always an urge to ‘cup the tum’. To me the piece really captures the essence of human form and makes it tangible. Similarly captivating were ‘Yellow’ and ‘Hive’ both for their scale and form which make you want to climb inside and inhabit them.

The exhibition is on until 11^th December so do try and see it if you’re in London.

Posted in art, colour, review

Elsewhere at Frieze here are the most memorable pieces I saw:

Conrad Shawcross’ ‘Slow Arc in a Cube II’ at the Victoria Miro stand. The transience of the patterns that it created were mesmerising and reminded one of the impermanence of imagery, ironic within an art fair.

Slow Arc Inside a Cube by Conran Shawcross

Interesting shadows on the wall.

A silver bird in a tray by Irish artist Dorothy Cross, show by the Frith Street Gallery. Equally transfixing.

Dorothy Cross Bird Bowl Frieze 2009

Raqib Shaw at White Cube  elements of traditional handpainting.

Shaw’s work combines a number of traditional techniques from applied arts and crafts such as fabric handpainting, ‘cloisonné’.

Raqib Shaw Freize 2009

Rudolf Stingel
He creates very textural, wallpaper-like images. His work looks like the canvas has been molded with a flock wallpaper or even block printed on top of plaster to give indentations / reliefs. Seeing him again at Frieze reminded me of his silver foil room installation at the Whitney in New York in 2007.

Posted in art, craft, review

With a lot of the more established galleries playing it safe and wheeling out the usual suspects, undoubtedly the most imaginative and thought-provoking work at Frieze this year was to be found within Frame – a section perhaps inspired by Zoo and even the organisation and space of which was a breath of fresh air. What stood out for me here was Alan Kane at Ancient & Modern.

The title ‘Collection of Mr. & Mrs. L.M. Kane’, and installation of his parent’s art collection within Frieze were a playful move. Their trinkets, and kitsch homely objects taking out of context and into a gallery setting and presented using the art world’s language, questioned and satirised its reverence of the ‘important’ collector.

Collection of Mr & Mrs Kane, Alan Kane 2009

Three original Figurines, Collection of Mr & Mrs Kane by Alan Kane 2009

Even if it’s mass-produced tat, we’re all collectors. Here’s my attempt!

Bird Tat

Group Tat

Posted in art, review

That’s how Suzy Menkes once described Missoni in the International Herald Tribune. Italy has a strong tradition of craftsmanship in small, family run companies that started off in fabric-making and combined this with their interest in colour and pattern: Etro, Zegna and Ratti are other good examples.

The other day, I went to see the exhibition ‘Missoni: Daring to be Different’ at the Esoterick in Islington and listened to a talk by Luca Missoni, son of the founders Ottavio and Rosita Missoni. What impresses me about Missoni is the intimacy and creativity that the company has maintained even now, over 50 years later and such a big, global success.

Ottavio and Rosita Missoni. Source wikipedia

Missoni rug Kalahari Viola. Source Missoni Rugs Blog.

Missoni rug 'Kong'. Source Missoni Rugs Blog

For me, the other key to Missoni’s special identity lies in its meaningful and ongoing relationship with art. Missoni takes a genuine interest in the work of artists – people like Giacomo Balla, Sonia Delaunay and Gino Severini whose use of colour have been so influential on the company are truly valued and embraced by Missoni. This goes well beyond tie-ins such as Louis Vuitton with Stephen Sprouse and Takashi Murakami, deeper than Jurgen Teller photographing Cindy Sherman for Marc Jacobs’ adverts. And whilst the Missonis do collect they seem to draw this into their own work more than Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge who gathered objects and paintings for their home.

Posted in colour, design, fashion, pattern, review, textiles