Aesthetica Issue 83

Aesthetica

The Art & Culture Magazine

www.aestheticamagazine.com

Issue 83 June / July 2018

Conscious environments

Reactive architecture

Cinematic storytelling

Harnessing the personal experience as a blueprint for interactive fashion

Elena Mora’s intuitive designs consider the complexities of colour and lighting

Social responsibility takes the stage at the Venice Biennale presentation

Celebrating the photography of Alex Prager through a major career survey

UK £5.95 Europe €11.95 USA $15.49

immersive technology

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Aesthetica

THE ART & CULTURE MAGAZINE

www.aestheticamagazine.com

Issue 83 June / July 2018

IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGY

CONSCIOUS ENVIRONMENTS

REACTIVE ARCHITECTURE

CINEMATIC STORYTELLING

Harnessing the personal experience as a blueprint for interactive fashion

Elena Mora’s intuitive designs consider the complexities of colour and lighting

Social responsibility takes the stage at the Venice Biennale presentation

Celebrating the photography of Alex Prager through a major career survey

Welcome

UK £5.95 Europe €11.95 USA $15.49

Editor’s Note

On the Cover With a host of renowned clients including Vogue, Elle, Swarovski, Aquazzura and WeTransfer, Carolina Mizrahi is an art director, photographer and set designer whose crossdisciplinary practice traverses fine art and commerce. www.carolinamizrahi.com (p. 120).

Cover Image: Photographer: Carolina Mizrahi. PH Assistant: Giacomo Demelli.

Digital Tech: Davide Cattelan. Video Maker: Marescotti Ruspoli.

Set Designer: Luigi Battaglia. Model: Anine Van Helzen. Creative: Enrica Ponzellini. Stylist Assistants: Carlotta Taberoni and Deborah De Groot. Hair Stylist: Massimo Gamba. MUA: Martina D’Andrea. Manicurist: Agostiro Scantamburlo. Courtesy of Carolina Mizrahi and Swarovski.

A new way of seeing the world has emerged, one which has been driven by technology. There has been a major shift in both civilisation and wider patterns of behaviour as a result of the information age. I have to ask myself though, is it all negative? I have embraced technology in all facets of my life. It’s made work, motherhood and life easier. However, it’s changed us all in an unprecedented way. We want things to move faster and often with immediacy. Patience is a thing of the past, and so the fast-paced way of living is one that needs unpacking. Images are a part of our communication. You don’t say you’re enjoying a nice meal; you take a picture of it and upload it. The development of a post-production society that promotes editing, cropping and filtering is something that needs to be understood. We should do this in order to hold on to our humanity and empathy, the way it was pre-digital. Analogue did have its merits.

This issue surveys the intersection between the created and the real. Elena Mora is a set designer who has worked for Audi, Adidas, Wallpaper* and many more. Her use of still life incorporates graphic design, photography and installation to consider how we are creating idealised spaces and the transformation of objects into subjects. Meanwhile, a massive mid-career retrospective of Alex Prager opens this summer at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. Prager is one the best-known contemporary photographers, who draws upon the language of film to create some of the most innovative works to-date. She has the same presence as some of the great female artists such as Cindy Sherman. Moving into design, we take a profound look at the work of Pauline van Dongen – who is part of V&A’s The Future Starts Here – revealing how she merges fashion and technology for more sustainable solutions. We also report on this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale around the theme of FREESPACE. In photography, we showcase Carolina Mizrahi, Evelyn Bencicova, Ole Marius Joergensen, Michelle Cho & June Kim, Victor Micoud, Isabella Ståhl and Jon Setter. David Stewart gives us the Last Words. Enjoy!

Cherie Federico

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Art 16 Regular Sections This issue includes coverage of Vanessa Winship at Barbican, James Turrell at the Jewish Museum and Olafur Eliasson at Marciano Art Foundation.

24 Shifting the Focus Returning to Aesthetica with the Artificial Tears series, Evelyn Bencicova creates a fictitious world that explores the rise of technological culture.

38 Reactive Architecture The 2018 edition of the Venice Biennale assesses the social and political contribution of buildings, through a survey of international participants.

44 Into the Wilderness Visualising the longing for home, Isabella Ståhl uses the Norwegian landscape as a melancholy, desolate and deeply reflective subject matter.

56 Immersive Technology Combining fashion and interactivity, Pauline van Dongen produces responsive garments that consider the importance of the wearer.

62 Singular Perspective Jon Setter’s minimal photography celebrates the experience of the individual within the city, looking at the finer details of urban structures.

74 Uncanny Performance Michelle Cho and June Kim explore the realms of digital manipulation and choreography to address the complex nature of human identity.

84 Cinematic Storytelling A major mid-career survey highlights the work of Alex Prager, examining personal experiences through highly stylised and surreal scenarios.

90 Facets of Reality A disquieting series from Victor Micoud shatters the illusion of perfection, commenting upon the idealism of constructed neighbourhoods.

102 Elusive Sensibility Ole Marius Joergensen builds upon the insatiable and basic human tendency to gaze; the images invite the viewer to interpret as active voyeurs.

114 Conscious Environments Elena Mora’s intuitive set designs balance colour, light and form to transform objects into subjects; compelling images reach past mere aesthetics.

120 Balanced Composition Carolina Mizrahi’s bold and playful photographs traverse a line between art and design – her new works offer visually complementary worlds.

Exhibitions

Film

Music

130 The Latest Shows Featured: Brooklyn Museum; Bruce Silverstein; ICP at Mana, New Jersey; Kunsthaus Wien, Vienna; Manchester Central Library; and York Art Gallery.

134 Ecological Consideration As Sheffield Doc/Fest returns for its 25th edition, Aesthetica foregrounds the work of Neil Gelinas; Into the Okavango looks into the wilderness.

137 Modern Dualities Melody’s Echo Chamber returns with an album release after an unforeseen hiatus; Bon Voyage provides the listener with a cosmic fantasia.

Books

Artists’ Directory

Last Words

138 Rethinking Convention Viviane Sassen is celebrated through Hot Mirror, a publication from Prestel and accompanying exhibition opening this June at The Hepworth.

152 Material Developments Practitioners included in the June / July edition approach a variety of themes, harnessing nature through various textures, shapes and forms.

162 David Stewart As part of the newly established London gallery, Wren Artists introduces Stewart through images that consider the humour behind everyday life.

Aesthetica Magazine is trade marked worldwide. © Aesthetica Magazine Ltd 2018.

The Aesthetica Team: Editor: Cherie Federico Assistant Editor: Kate Simpson Digital Assistant: Eleanor Sutherland Staff Writer: David Martin

Advertisement Enquiries: Jeremy Appleyard (0044) (0)844 568 2001 advertising@aestheticamagazine.com

ISSN 1743-2715.

All work is copyrighted to the author or artist.

All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without permission from the publisher.

Advertising Coordinator: Jeremy Appleyard Marketing Coordinator: Hannah Skidmore Artists’ Directory Coordinator: Katherine Smira

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Published by Cherie Federico and Dale Donley.

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Stefanie Moshammer, A truck and a car, 2017. From the series I Can Be Her. Image: © Stefanie Moshammer.

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Aesthetics of Fiction Stefanie Moshammer A major emerging talent, Austria’s Stefanie Moshammer (b. across the history of photography combine to create new “With powerful 1988) explores the possibilities between documentary pho- forms. The artist develops her own photographs, but also colour schemes, tography and the balance of reality. She draws attention to incorporates Google Maps, film footage and video, as well as fragmented details the complexity of our contemporary perception, where the fictional shots and images purely created from imagination. and sharp contrasts, world is filtered through narrative tropes, cultural storytell- Featured in the summer presentation is work from I Can Be Her fundamental ing and myth-making, and conventions of scene and staging. (2015) – a series deeply influenced by dreams, feelings and questions are raised To date, she has undertaken several major series in obsessions, based upon a love letter Moshammer received about the nature of locations around the world, where myth and reality, from an individual named Troy C. The near-anonymous truth and fiction and poverty and hedonism, meet starkly – including Las Vegas, note sparked the inspiration for a widely acclaimed project, the veracity of the Rio de Janeiro and a Caribbean island. With powerful considering identity as part of a wider tapestry. In doing so, documentary image.” colour schemes, fragmented details and sharp contrasts, Moshammer began to build an idea of who the figure might fundamental questions are raised about the nature of truth be, or how they might know her. In the synopsis for the series and fiction and the veracity of the documentary image. She she notes: Troy created his own perception of me; as a result portrays the tension between dispassionate observation and of his letter I created my own perception of him. In my mind he became a secret garden, a mix of privacy and surveillance the inevitable poetic, imaginative and subjective dimension.

Moshammer’s approach, in which an authentic presenta- and a deconstructed space with teasing features.”

Moshammer’s first major project, Vegas and She, (2014tion of life becomes a film-like story, and imagination and actuality blur, has now made her the recipient of the first 2015) looked straight into the heart of Las Vegas’s world C/O Berlin Talent Award, a programme which supports early of illusion and pretence, following the everyday lives career practitioners. The award is the only prize of its kind in of the strippers who serve the needs of the city’s adult Europe. It showcases emerging photographers and art critics entertainment industry. In this series, Las Vegas is understood aged under 35, offering a starting point for international ex- as being a blank screen where dreams are projected, rather C/O Berlin hibitions, in Moshammer’s case with Not Just Your Face, Honey. than something with substance and an identity of its own. 7 July - 23 September The work on view at C/O Berlin’s gallery showcases the Moshammer’s work has featured in i-D, ZEITmagazin, New breadth of an innovative practice in which techniques from York Magazine and Vice, amongst many other publications. www.co-berlin.org

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Transformational Landscapes Norway Contemporary! objective landscape, but also with our interior spaces formed “It is a geography from personal memories and associations. Originally from with a unique Northern Norway, Jenssen has lived, worked and taught in quality of light, Germany for many years, drawing on memories of formative where the high experiences to create his large format paintings. The artist’s latitudes bring best-known series, Lack Of Memory (1992), builds up layers dramatic shifts in of paint to create an impression of depth and transparency. the lengths of days By contrast, Ansten, based in Tromsø, within the Arctic and nights and Circle, specialises in video and performance pieces. With temperatures a background in biology, he undertakes expeditions to plunge to icy depths.” remote locations to create surreal scenarios that highlight the relationship between humanity and nature. Also based in Tromsø, the remoter communities of the far North are a fascination for documentary photographer Ingun Alette Mæhlum. Her projects include a photobook, in collaboration with journalist Arne Egil Tønset, of their travels in the Barents region – the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and North-West Russia – demonstrating, like MKDW, the strength of cultural connections across arbitrary national boundaries. Similarly, Rune Guneriussen’s (b. 1977) process-driven conceptual art spans photography, Museum Kunst installation and sculpture, creating intuitive structures. der Westküste, Föhr Norway Contemporary! is presented at MKDW in dialogue Until 24 June with Fascinating Norway, bringing together works by the likes of Johan Christian Dahl, Edvard Munch and Peder Balke. www.mkdw.de

Rune Guneriussen, Capacity to breed and recover, 2011, C-Print/Aludibond, 125cm x 183cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Galerie Werkhallen, Remagen-Oberwinter

Situated on the German North Sea island of Föhr, MKDW is dedicated to the art and culture of the continental North Sea coast and the Baltic – where the sea is a source of connection rather than a divisive barrier; and work from Scandinavian, German and Dutch artists is presented. The museum’s current focus looks north to the dramatic landscapes of Norway, with a programme of complementary exhibitions.

Norway Contemporary! features seven artists whose individual approaches show how the overwhelming presence, grandeur and power of the surrounding topography dominates varied artistic approaches, from Romanticism to modern art, painting to photography and video to performance. It is a geography with a unique quality of light, where the high latitudes bring dramatic shifts in the lengths of days and nights and temperatures plunge to icy depths. The landscape of mountains, fjords and forests is frequently transformed by snow and ice. It is an often melancholy space where, within a short distance of the major settlements, solitude is easily found, nature is untamed and even survival can be a battle.

Practitioners included are Trond Ansten, AK Dolven, Dag Erik Elgin, Rune Guneriussen, Olav Christopher Jenssen, Jens Knigge and Ingun Alette Mæhlum. Jenssen is one of Norway’s most acclaimed contemporary artists. His work explores the possibilities of painting, through an energetic range of colour and form. Not only is it concerned with the

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Tereza Zelenkova, Peasant Baroque House, 2015. 29cm x 23cm. Silver gelatine print. Credit: Originally commissioned through the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 2015, supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Photoworks, Courtesy of The Ravestijn Gallery.

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Excavations of Memory Tereza Zelenkova: A Snake That Disappeared Through a Hole in the Wall Though she is based in London, it is the folk tales of her source of rediscovery and reconnection with the landscapes “Sources from native Czech Republic, and of wider Slavic culture, that con- of her childhood, excavating stories that exist on the cusp science, philosophy, tinue to inform the work of photographer Tereza Zelenkova of mythology. The title of the series, in fact, comes from an religion and (b. 1985). An abiding fascination throughout her work is the ancient Slavic tale about a snake “housekeeper” who inhabits mythology seamlessly idea of the portal or gateway, locations within an everyday people’s homes and brings happiness and prosperity. It is merge in the magic landscape that are charged with the potential for the mythic traditionally welcomed with a bowl of milk on the threshold. realist scenes, where The inspiration for the collection came first from a visit to the distinction or the transcendental and which suggest another realm impinging on our world, from cave entrances to the semblances the Byci Skala Cave – a partially flooded cave system and between fact and of faces in rock and trees. In her pictures, the sharply cap- archaeological site, home to prehistoric cave paintings, which imagination does tured present moment collapses and the deep past seeps in. is also the scene of ancient ritual sacrifices of women and a not hold true.”

Foam, Amsterdam, showcases A Snake That Disappeared mass grave for its victims. A more recent bloody tale surfaces Through a Hole in the Wall, which began in 2015, and evokes in Zelenkova’s pictures of a hole in the wall of the bedroom what Zelenkova sees as the dark and melancholic Czech of Countess Elizabeth Bathory at Cachtice Castle. Allegedly landscape, as well as the work of other writers and artists the world’s most prolific female serial murderer, Bathory, who have drawn on the same qualities, its hidden histories who tortured and murdered of hundreds of girls between and folk legends and the more recent horrors of the 20th 1585 and 1609, was bricked up in her rooms in the castle. century. Sources from science, philosophy, religion and my- The story gave rise to the myth that Bathory bathed in the thology seamlessly merge in the magic realist scenes, where blood of virgins in the hope of eternal youth, which in turn the distinction between fact and imagination does not hold became one of the sources for the fictional Count Dracula.

Zelenkova’s most recent series, The Essential Solitude true. The artist often photographs scenes head-on with an unforgiving flash so that the compositions are almost like (2017), develops themes from mythology, in a study of a scientific specimens, yet engage the viewer’s imagination and deserted house in London, a time capsule in the middle of Foam, Amsterdam evoke mythic dimensions. This combination of approaches a modern city. She imagines it being inhabited by a figure Until 24 June inspired by JK Huysmans’ decadent novel À Rebours, who suggests a rigorous exploration of a fantastical reality.

Zelenkova has undertaken many journeys that have been a creates a private, imaginary, world independent of time. www.foam.org

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Boundaries of Belonging Vanessa Winship: And Time Folds

Vanessa Winship, Untitled from the series she dances on Jackson, 2011-2012. © Vanessa Winship.

Born in 1960 by the Humber estuary in the north of England, America, focusing on the human hardship through which “These fragmentary where land and sea meet in an ever-shifting boundary, the structural inequality and injustice become manifest. compositions capture Winship’s images, by contrast, are often intimate portraits the human landscape idea of lives experienced on the periphery is a theme which runs through the photography of Vanessa Winship, which of individuals and, through avoiding detailed context or of these regions and turns a poetic eye on landscape and society and sees chroni- overt political commentary, capture a moment of “transition its relationship cle and fiction collide. She became the first female winner of between myth and the individual”, allowing small details to to the physical the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award in 2011, following a body take on great significance. Compiled over more than a decade one, representing of work created from travelling in eastern Europe and the of living and working in eastern Europe and its frontiers, the people engaged in Black Sea region, through the Balkans, Turkey and the Cau- major series Imagined States and Desires: A Balkan Journey cultural rituals and (1999-2003) and Black Sea: Between Chronicle and Fiction leisure activities.” casus, creating portraits of lives lived on shifting borders.

The first major UK solo exhibition of Winship’s considerable (2002-2006) are well represented at the Barbican. These body of work, And Time Folds at the Barbican, London, brings fragmentary compositions capture the human landscape together more than 150 photographs – many previously of these regions and its relationship to the physical one. unseen in the UK – as well as archival material. The exhibition Winship’s approach shifts into colour in the series Georgia: takes its title from a new series (2014-ongoing). Shown for Seeds Carried by the Wind (2008-2010) in which beauty and the first time, a mix of black and white and colour images melancholy are visible in a country blighted by scars of combined with found objects create a thought-provoking recent conflict and post-Soviet economic hardship.

Formality and intimacy combine in Sweet Nothings (2007), departure. The selection is also part of the Barbican’s 2018 season, The Art of Change, which explores how the arts portrait photographs of Turkish schoolgirls. Their uniforms respond to, reflect and bring about a revolution in the social have the counter-intuitive effect of emphasising the girls’ and political landscape. It is presented in a double bill with individuality, turning attention to their faces and the a retrospective of American documentary photographer affectionate personal messages embroidered on their lace Barbican Centre, London Dorothea Lange (b. 1965), which includes images ranging collars, which give the series its title. Though Winship’s work 22 June - 2 September from the Great Depression to the wartime internment camps ranges widely, identity, belonging and how potent forces are of Japanese Americans to the changing face of post-war expressed at the level of ordinary lives remains at its heart. www.barbican.org.uk

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Olafur Eliasson’s Reality projector in Marciano Art Foundation’s Theater Gallery. Photo by Joshua White/www.jwpictures.com.

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Elemental Intervention Olafur Eliasson: Reality Projector Through manipulating the fundamental aspects of an environ- asson to create a site-specific work for the vast space of their “The technology ment – such as light, air and water – Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) 13,500 square feet Theater Gallery, and the result, Reality employed references is known both for creating immersive installations on a vast projector (2018) again employs light, this time generating a a pre-digital age scale and for striking interventions in public spaces. For many, dynamic shadow play by combining projections with the ex- of movies, with the he is indelibly associated with the transformation of Tate Mod- isting architecture to transform the environment into a vast, projectors beaming ern’s Turbine Hall in London in 2003 with The Weather Project abstract, three-dimensional film. The experiential artwork not white light through in which the enormous space was filled with a fine mist to re- only references the past of the gallery itself as a former movie coloured gels to create fract light, whilst a giant artificial sun and a mirrored ceiling theatre but looks beyond the walls to LA’s role as the heart of vivid saturated images enticed viewers to become part of the artwork by lying down the filmmaking business, and all the mythology of Hollywood. reminiscent of the and casting reflections high above. It proved one of the most Indeed, the technology employed references a pre-digital age era of Technicolor.” popular Turbine Hall exhibits, humanising the industrial space. of movies, with the projectors beaming white light through Eliasson describes his work as being driven by interests in coloured gels to create vivid saturated images reminiscent of perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of the era of Technicolor, in contrast to today’s ubiquitous digital the self. As such, art is a way of turning thinking into doing, images constructed from discrete pixels. An added dimension making use of multi-dimensional techniques including sculp- comes from an immersive soundtrack created by Eliasson with ture, painting, photography and film. One of his more uncon- the Icelandic musician Jónsi of the post-rock band Sigur Rós.

Eliasson continues to demonstrate a commitment to making ventional artworks saw the artist introduce a non-toxic bright green dye – used to check for leaks in plumbing systems – into art, design and creative thinking relevant to society. He foundrivers around the world without warning. Green River appeared ed the social business Little Sun in 2012 with engineer Fredin various cities between 1998 and 2001. His New York City erik Ottesen, to provide light in communities without access Waterfalls (2008) featured four man-made waterfalls at iconic to electricity, through the invention of the Little Sun solarlocations along the city’s East River, including the Brooklyn powered lamp, and to raise awareness of the need for equal Marciano Art Foundation, LA Bridge. With a $15.5m price tag, it was one of the most expen- access to energy and light around the world. He also works on Until 26 August experimental and innovative architectural projects as Studio sive public art projects undertaken in the metropolis.

The Los Angeles-based Marciano Art Foundation invited Eli- Other Spaces, in collaboration with Sebastian Behmann. marcianoartfoundation.org

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Perceptive Experiments James Turrell: Ganzfield “Aural”

James Turrell, Ganzfeld Aural, 2018. ©Jewish Museum Berlin, gift of Dieter and Si Rosenkranz, photo: Florian Holzherr.

For more than half a century, American artist James Turrell (b. veloped at Roden Crater have formed the basis for Turrell’s “Visitors find themselves 1943) has worked with pure light, exploring the mechanisms commissions around the world, including Agua de Luz, a in a space where neither of human perception and our emotional responses to light, series of pools within a pyramid in the Yucatán, and forth- the source of light space and time. From early experiments with projections, coming projects around the world, from Ras al-Khaimah to nor the dimensions his work has expanded from the gallery into the landscape Tasmania. The site itself remains incomplete, though a virtual of the interior can be discerned, removing through the creation of tunnels and skyspaces – chambers tour of it can be undertaken via the artist’s website.

At Berlin’s Jewish Museum, a temporary structure in the any frame of reference with an aperture open to the sky that frame and harness the ever-changing light. The form of the skyspace reflects the garden houses Turrell’s immersive installation Ganzfield and leaving only Platonic themes, that, as in the parable of the cave, offer the “Aural”, a liminal zone which connects the artist’s practice with the pure experience idea that we exist within a subjective reality created by the the profound symbolism of light in Judaism as something of the light itself.” limits of perceptual systems, as well as by structures of belief. that links both the beginning and end of creation. Visitors Witnessing the sky from one of the spaces, notably at dawn find themselves in a space where neither the source of light and dusk, draws attention to how humans subjectively create nor the dimensions of the interior can be discerned, reperceptions of colour. Turrell has constructed more than 80 moving any frame of reference and leaving only the pure of these locations, which can be found all over the world, in- experience of the light itself, which is constantly gradually shifting in colour. Without any idea of scale to anchor their cluding the Yorkshire Sculpture Park edition (2007).

The skyspace form laid the foundations for his most sig- perceptions, viewers experience dreamlike images, suggestnificant undertaking, begun in 1977 and still in progress, the ing banks of fog, expanses of snow or the dark of night.

A keen pilot, who has logged more than 12,000 hours in transformation of Roden Crater, the remnant of an extinct volcano in Northern Arizona. Turrell has reshaped the di- the air, Turrell considers the sky to be his canvas and studio, mensions of the crater bowl, whilst excavating chambers and and pure light to be the only subject of his creative practice. tunnels. The result is a series of spatial designs and camera As he expresses: “My work has no object, no image and no Jewish Museum Berlin obscurae that connect the crater not only with the diurnal focus. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you Until 30 September 2019 light of the sun but to the movements of the moon and stars looking at? You are looking at you looking. What is imporunfolding on celestial timescales. Techniques and ideas de- tant to me is to create an experience of wordless thought.” www.jmberlin.de

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1. Marina Tabassum, Prayer Hall, Bait ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2012. Image: Sandro di Carlo Darsa © MTA/Sandro di Carlo Darsa. 2. From the series Kawakubo: Interpreter of Dreams, 2017. © Erik Madigan Heck / courtesy of The New York Times Magazine. 3. Thomas Sauvin, from Beijing Silvermine, 2009-ongoing. ©Thomas Sauvin. 4. Joan, Florette, Palanpur, “Gribouille”, Sharon Lee, Juan-les-Pins, 1949 © Ministère de la Culture France / A.A.J.H.L. 5. Tita Salina, 1001st Island – The Most Sustainable Island in Archipelago, 2015. (Still) HD-video, color, audio, 14‘ 11“ @ Loan from the artist.

10 to See Recommended Exhibitions this Season

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Jameel Prize

V&A, London 28 June - 25 November

www.vam.ac.uk The V&A reveals the shortlist for the fifth Jameel Prize for contemporary artists and designers inspired by Islamic tradition. The eight finalists are Kamrooz Aram, Hayv Kahraman, Hala Kaiksow, Mehdi Moutashar, naqsh collective, Younes Rahmoun, Wardha Shabbir and Marina Tabassum, and the winner will be announced on 27 June before the exhibition of all eight opens. This year’s shortlist represents disciplines as diverse as architecture and fashion.

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www.beaconsfield.ltd.uk Foam Amsterdam’s latest touring exhibition of emerging photographic talents under the age of 35 from around the world comes to London, with its final selection of 20 artists out of 1,790 entries. Coinciding with Photo London, the Foam Talent exhibition acts as an annual platform for a new generation and also provides an insight into current concerns and trends within photography, such as identity and cultural narratives.

www.openeye.org.uk Three billion images are shared on social media every day. As part of Liverpool’s 2018 China Dream season, this project, subtitled A Migration of Identity, considers how that country’s rapidly changing society is reflected through the images its people produce and share, from its popular WeChat social network to a recently rediscovered archive of old 35mm negatives from the pre-smartphone era.

michaelhoppengallery.com Curated by fashion designer Paul Smith at the gallery’s invitation, the focus here is on Jacques Henri Lartigue’s (1894-1986) photographs from the 1950s to the 1970s – the later phase of a career primarily associated with creating a stylish and carefree image of Belle Époque France. These virtually unseen, late-career images contain all the joy and vivid characterisation familiar from Lartigue’s most famous work.

Foam Talent

Beaconsfield London Until 10 June

Snapshot to WeChat

Open Eye, Liverpool Until 17 June

JH Lartigue

Michael Hoppen Gallery, London Until 28 June

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Hello World

Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin Until 26 August

www.smb.museum With Hello World. Revising a Collection, Germany’s Nationalgalerie explores how a collection committed to the art of Western Europe and North America might broaden its scope to a transcultural approach.

What would the collection, founded in 1861, be like, had a more cosmopolitan understanding informed its beginnings? The project addresses a globalised age as well as the collection’s links to the history of Germany.

6. Rachel Ara, This Much I’m Worth (the self-evaluating artwork), 2017. 83 pieces of neon, steel, recycled server room equipment, electronics, computers, IP cameras, programming. 420cm x 160cm x 90cm. Image: Anise Gallery.

7. Pierre Huyghe, A Journey That Wasn’t, 2006. Super 16 mm film and HD video transferred to HD video, color, sound. The Broad Art Foundation © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. 8. Günther Förg, Tel Aviv, 2001/2007. C-Print, white glass on Dibond, 243.9cm x 163.9cm x 5 cm (framed). Photo: Frank Kleinbach, Stuttgart. © Estate Günther Förg, Suisse / VG Picture Art, Bonn 2018. 9. Branko Žnidarec, Hotel Adriatic II, 1970–71, Opatija, Croatia. Exterior view. Photo: Valentin Jeck, 2016, commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art. 10. Weronika Gęsicka, Untitled #18 from the Traces series. Courtesy the artist and Jednostka Gallery.

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The London Open

Whitechapel, London 8 June - 26 August

www.whitechapelgallery.org The latest iteration of the triennial exhibition is dedicated to artists who reflect contemporary life in the city. The show brings together a selection of 22 artists across painting, sculpture, performance and video. Included is Rachel Ara, a previous winner of the Aesthetica Art Prize with her “self-evaluating” installation This Much I’m Worth, along with Larry Achiampong, Gabriella Boyd, French & Mottershead and Vikesh Govind, amongst many others.

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www.thebroad.org The myriad ways in which artists have grappled with the representation of time is the focus of The Broad’s exhibition, featuring more than 50 works of post-war and contemporary art from the likes of Andreas Gursky, Pierre Huyghe, Anselm Kiefer, Sherrie Levine, and Sharon Lockhart. It also sees the return to the venue of Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors (2012), filmed at the historic Rokeby farm in upstate New York.

www.sk-kultur.de Bringing together three photographers, Laurenz Berges from Düsseldorf, Michael Collins from London, and Paola De Pietri from Reggio Emilia, Italy, this project finds analogies between them as they trace the phenomena of change and decay through landscapes and structures close to their homes. The images range from abandoned urban spaces to the mudflats of the Thames Estuary.

A Journey That Wasn’t

The Broad, Los Angeles 30 June - February

Tracing Transformations

SK Siftung Kultur, Cologne Until 8 July

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Toward a Concrete Utopia

MoMA, New York Until 13 January

www.moma.org This survey of architecture in the socialist former Yugoslavia, from 1948 to 1980, captures a unique strain of post-war design which reflects the conflicting demands of Yugoslavia’s anomalous status as a bridge between the West and the Soviet sphere, from skyscrapers to Brutalist blocks. It reflects a programme of rapid modernisation undertaken with utopian ideals of improving the lives of citizens.

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Family Values

Calvert 22 Foundation, London Until 22 July

www.calvert22.org The latest instalment in Calvert 22 Foundation’s project to represent social and cultural change in the New East, Family Values: Polish Photography Now, addresses visual culture through the second half of the 20th century and the end of Soviet rule, through to the current creative landscape. It coincides with the centenary of Polish independence and addresses the many links which exist between Poland and the UK.

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Shifting the Focus Evelyn Bencicova

Slovakian artist Evelyn Bencicova (b. 1992) returns to Aesthetica for the second time with works from the Artificial Tears series. A vision of the future, the collection assesses what it means to exist within today’s increasingly factitious world, and how this will progress where truths are no longer what they seem. How will we distinguish between humanity and machines? What constitutes the individual? Bencicova offers a consistent and uncanny sense of elegance, married with an unsettling and overarching tone of sterility. Pallid grey surroundings are a canvas for unrealised and perhaps unidentifiable emotions – blank and anonymous. The images centre around a female figure who – alienated from the lens – is transfixed by performative emotion. Playing with notions of perfection and clean aesthetics, each photograph becomes almost mechanistic, separating the concept of autonomy from replicable and predictable patterns of behaviour. www.evelynbencicova.com.

Evelyn Bencicova, Artificial Tears.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Evelyn Bencicova, Artificial Tears.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Evelyn Bencicova, Artificial Tears.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Evelyn Bencicova, Artificial Tears.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Evelyn Bencicova, Artificial Tears.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Evelyn Bencicova, Artificial Tears.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Evelyn Bencicova, Artificial Tears.

Courtesy of the artist.

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art

Reactive Architecture Venice Biennale Accessibility, sustainability and humanity take centre stage, pushing the literal and figurative boundaries of space through international participation.

“We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land that they have replaced,” wrote the Swiss-born philosopher Alain de Botton (b. 1969) in The Architecture of Happiness. The work, published in 2006, is a brief but elegant meditation on the duty of architects to build respectfully, thoughtfully and virtuously – to create structures that set the stage for a more promising future.

In a contemporary society marred by political turmoil, social strife and environmental challenges, the need for responsible architecture, as described by de Botton, is perhaps more profound than ever before. It’s no wonder then that this year’s Venice Biennale exhibition, aptly titled FREESPACE, is dedicated to the many generous, considerate, and democratising ways in which contemporary architects push the boundaries of space, and in doing so help to create a more sustainable, prosperous and forward-thinking world.

Grafton Architects Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, who were selected to curate this year’s programme, explain the concept: “FREESPACE encourages solutions for the wellbeing and dignity of each citizen of this fragile planet.”

To further emphasise the notion that contemporary architecture can function as a vehicle for social change, the curatorial duo penned a declaration of their guiding principles. “When we were writing the Manifesto,” the pair wrote, “we wanted primarily to include the word ‘space.’” They continue: “We also wanted a new use of everyday words, which could somehow cause us all to re-frame the additional component that we as a profession can contribute to humanity.”

Open to the public until 25 November in the Giardini and

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the Arsenale, and at smaller venues across Venice, this is the 16th edition of the Biennale, which, since its inception, has promoted both the social need and desire for architecture.

“Talking about options for architecture,” says Biennale President Paolo Baratta, “means talking about our political and institutional systems, our laws, recognised rights, the ability to implement them, about vita activa, and about our culture.”

This year’s show features 71 projects and 29 special selections, incorporating proposals, built and un-built elements, as well as physical examples that respond to the overarching concept of interconnectedness outlined in the Manifesto.

The event includes work by an international roster of names ranging from American practices Studio Gang, Michael Maltzan Architecture and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, to Australia’s John Wardle and Room11 to Toyo Ito & Associates of Japan.

Closer to home, the event’s host country is well represented by Francesca Torzo, Laura Peretti and Biennale veteran Cino Zucchi, amongst others. In recent years, Zucchi’s award-winning, Milan-based business has made headlines for its innovative creations that blend urban design, open space and structural integrity to create some of Europe’s finest mixed-use environments. Amongst Zucchi’s newest – and most noteworthy – opuses is the Pedrali automated warehouse that’s situated in the centre of the Lombardi countryside. Completed in 2016 and named Fili d’erba (which translates to “blades of grass”), the futuristic furniture-storage complex measures 7,000 square metres and boasts a sky train and self-steering shuttles. Holding the environment at its core, this project reflects the company’s

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Talli Architecture and Design.

“By testing, toying with and dismantling preconceived notions of space through architecture, it becomes possible to create environments that not only serve a basic structural function but also the greater good.”

Previous Page & Left: Design Team: Cino Zucchi, Andrea Viganò, Michele Corno. Client: Pedrali Spa. Collaborators: Alberto Brezigia, Giacomo Monari; Silvia Comi (graphic); Stefano Goffi (models). Photography: Filippo Romano, Cino Zucchi.

structures that consider the ever-evolving environment. And ethos of contributing to the landscape through synergy.

Whilst Farrell and McNamara’s presentation looks toward Denmark’s sustainability-focused Possible Spaces proposes the future of sustainability, social contribution and both its new OMA BLOX building as a paradigm for interdisciplifunctional and aesthetic design within the wider landscape, nary and cross-cultural innovation. “At the core is the shared it also pays homage to significant milestones in history and respect of the Earth as client,” state Farrell and McNamara.

Taking this theme forward are seven national participants celebrates Biennales past, bearing in mind the core values enumerated above by Baratta. The curators remark: “In ar- that are making their Biennale debut this year, including chitecture time is not linear. The practice brings past, present Saudi Arabia, the Holy See and Guatemala, whose presentaand future together … Within the overall exhibition, the past is tion, Stigma, proposes a virtual and utopian city inspired by reinvigorated from the viewpoint of contemporary architects.” the archetypal crisis of language – or “confusio linguarum” Indeed, history plays a particularly active role in one of the – that transpired in the story of the Tower of Babel. Unlike in Biennale’s aforementioned special sections, Close Encoun- the aforementioned Biblical example, translating the ideas ter. This strand shines a light on contemporary constructions behind the FREESPACE programme into the many different that were heavily influenced by well-known buildings of the languages of participants may prove to be an enriching task past. Amongst the 16 historical projects showcased are Au- for curators, practitioners and visitors alike. As McNamara guste Perret’s mysterious Parisian concert hall Salle Cortot and Farrell explain: “It is our hope that the word ‘freespace’ (from 1929) and the threshold of Milan’s Via Quadronno allows us to burrow into the aspirations, ambitions, and gen24 designed by Angelo Mangiarotti and Bruno Morassotti erosity of architecture.” A de Botton-inspired reading of the which appears to envelope its visitors and inhabitants, wel- multiplicity of languages represented in this Biennale would also take into account the lines of communication drawn not coming them home from a day spent in the bustling city.

Looking forward, 63 countries from around the globe are only between practitioner and project but also between proparticipating by erecting national pavilions across the city. ject and public. “Arrangements of stone, steel, concrete, and Many of these countries are using the Biennale as an op- glass,” the thinker writes, “seem able to express themselves – portunity to engage in a dialogue about the future by ad- and can on rare occasions leave us under the impression that dressing the contemporary issues that mean the most to their they are talking to us about significant and touching things.”

Stimulating a dialogue between a structure, its surroundcitizens. Britain’s Island, for example, was designed by Adam Caruso, Peter St John and Marcus Taylor, and touches on ings and its inhabitants is a task that has been mastered themes of isolation, colonialism, climate change and Brexit. by the show’s two curators. Since establishing their awardPoland’s transformational installation – the brainchild of cu- winning outfit, Grafton Architects, 40 years ago in Dublin, rator Anna Ptak – changes in response to light rhythms, water Farrell and McNamara have become known for their abillevel and visitor interaction, confronting the need for smart ity to adroitly navigate both natural and urban elements

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Michael Maltzan Architecture, Crest Apartments. Image: © Iwan Baan.

to forge new and imaginative spaces that put people, and laboration and interaction through spatial openness. Of these usability, first. The firm’s best-known projects include the projects, the group’s principal and namesake has said: “If you towering, cliff-like Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología believe that architecture has a fundamental role in shaping (UTEC) campus in Lima, Peru, which was inspired by the city’s what an urban culture is, then architecture of course has a real dramatic natural landscape, and Milan’s futuristic Università and important role [in] projects which address social issues at Luigi Bocconi School of Economics, which boasts a suite of the scale of a city. Architecture is one of few disciplines with research offices suspended, as if by magic, over a sprawl- the capacity and ability to take on these challenges.”

The community-driven ethos of MMA resounds in the work ing undercroft. The former earned Farrell and McNamara a Silver Lion at the 2012 Biennale and was dubbed the world’s of fellow Biennale contributor Talli Architecture & Design, best new building by the Royal Institute of British Architects whose expertise lies in change-of-use commissions that aim (RIBA) in 2016, whilst the latter was named the World Build- to breathe new life into once-beloved structures. In the late 1990s, the Finnish company famously revived the deteriorating of the Year at the 2008 World Architecture Festival.

Last year, the pair – who have held numerous prestigious ing Lasipalatsi building – a functionalist icon of Helsinki.

These types of connections are rife within this year’s show. positions in higher education, including the Kenzo Tange chair at Harvard GSD and the Louis Kahn chair at Yale Uni- Through welcoming countries across borders, nationalities versity – received the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architec- and identities, it aptly touches upon that which design, architecture and ultimately, art, can offer in terms of remindture for their commitment to culture and education.

Accessibility is certainly at the forefront of the work of a ing us of our humanity. Though the overarching theme of number of Biennale participants, such as Michael Maltzan Ar- FREESPACE encompasses a wide range of interpretations, the chitecture (MMA). Over the past two decades, the progressive individual and national submissions to this Biennale are inLos Angeles-based firm has demonstrated an unwavering tertwined through a common thread: the idea that by testcommitment to revitalising its home state through a variety ing, toying with and ultimately dismantling preconceived of commercial and residential constructions. Chief amongst notions of space through architecture, it becomes possible Maltzan’s California credits are Inner-City Arts – a Skid Row- to create environments that not only serve a basic structural adjacent community centre that provides arts education to function but also the greater good of the people and which thousands of at-risk youth from local public schools each affect positive change for the world of tomorrow. Here again, year – and Crest Apartments, a 64-unit apartment building de Botton’s words on architecture ring true: “We owe it to the that caters to the complex needs of the formerly homeless worms and the trees that the buildings we cover them with will veterans who reside there. In both of these instances, MMA stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds established adaptable, functional, village-like environments of happiness. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind that encourage indoor–outdoor mobility and nurture col- of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves.”

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Right: Project: Cino Zucchi Architetti, Proger Spa And Recchi Engineering Srl. DESIGN TEAM: Cino Zucchi, Maria Rita Solimando Romano. CLIENT: MAUTO. PHOTOGRAPHY: Cino Zucchi. Location: Italy, Turin. (2005-2011). For a full list of collaborators: www.zucchiarchitetti.com.

Words Stephanie Strasnick

Until 25 November labiennale.org/architecture www.graftonarchitects.ie

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art

Into the Wilderness Isabella Ståhl

Isabella Ståhl (b. 1984) left home at 15 to study photography in Stockholm. After this, she moved between Sweden and New York, continuing to learn about image-making at the International Center of Photography, and has since pursued a peripatetic lifestyle in a number of cities, including Berlin, Barcelona and Oslo. Despite, or perhaps due to this consistent movement between countries, Ståhl is interested in the iconography of nature associated with rural Scandinavia. Melancholy and, at times, tied to a Romantic sensibility, these images communicate the involuntary desire to return to the notion of home. Open spaces of lakes, woodlands and empty roads are a compelling emblem for desolation – that is, in place of its negative connotations, also a recognition of tranquillity and a rejection of urbanisation. Ståhl’s work has been published in several online and print publications including New York Magazine, Somewhere Magazine and Juxtapoz. www.isabellastahl.com.

Isabella Ståhl, Lonely Barn, from the series In the Shadow of Dusk. www.isabellastahl.com

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Isabella StĂĽhl, Untitled, from the series In the Shadow of Dusk. www.isabellastahl.com

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Isabella StĂĽhl, Untitled, from the series In the Shadow of Dusk. www.isabellastahl.com

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Isabella StĂĽhl, Blue Forest, from the series In the Shadow of Dusk. www.isabellastahl.com

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Isabella StĂĽhl, House in the Woods, from the series In the Shadow of Dusk. www.isabellastahl.com

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Credit

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Isabella StĂĽhl, Swedish Summer, from the series In the Shadow of Dusk. www.isabellastahl.com

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art

Immersive Technology Pauline van Dongen Interactive garments transform our relationship with fashion and the environment as sustainability is linked with the individual experience.

Pauline van Dongen (b. 1986) combines technology and the individual human experience comes first; technology is individuality to create pieces that respond directly to never used for design’s sake. Building on this, van Dongen the wearer. This offers a provocative vision for the future explains that “fashion is a very personal experience, and of design that goes far beyond mere aesthetics. Rapidly we need to really understand what people would like to becoming recognised as one of the most important wear but also how they adopt clothing … there’s always this practitioners in the field, van Dongen is now featured character, this profiling going on.” By contrast, in what she internationally in major exhibitions including the V&A’s, deems our technocratic world, it is increasingly tempting London, The Future Starts Here, and she has been awarded to long for the arrival of new capabilities and new systems.

However, she expands on this with a preface: “I think we numerous accolades for her thoughtful, intellectually stimulating practice. Her radical and highly sustainable always have to remain critical and not just want what is way of working places interactivity at its core, in a move the newest, but also think about the human implications. that could have profound implications for the development Clothing is key because you can’t really pinpoint the garments down to one basic functionality. It does different of our long-term relationship with fashion.

The human form, its interaction with music and its things on so many levels – from the personal to the global.” expression through dance, was one of van Dongen’s earliest In other words, simply making use of the latest technical inspirations. She became fascinated by “the search for innovations in clothing is not enough on its own. Instead, some kind of energy, rhythm or pace,” as well as by science the pieces which she creates keep the individual constantly and medicine. “There’s a kind of amalgamation, or mixing in mind, whether van Dongen is working with designers, up of different influences, that comes with a fascination for engineers or with other cross-disciplinary collaborators.

That is not to say, though, that the clothing is devoid of the body. Really taking note of how humans move – how different physical beings interact with each other but also agency in its own right. On the contrary, she says, “you with space – feeds into the materials with which I work.” She can see that every single garment has a very active role still seeks ideas from these sources: “It’s the landscape that … it encourages a specific type of behaviour. Even with has a specific rhythm or architecture – where I see certain non-interactive garments, if you go shopping and buy a t-shirt that costs £1, the kinds of actions or activities that it patterns that I can somehow translate into materials.”

In recent work, technological expertise marries with these invites is very different from one made from a high-quality natural, structural influences to make smart, responsive gar- material or by an artisan, or which has a story to it.” This is ments that offer new ways to interact with the world around where the concept of interactivity in its full scope becomes us. The pieces remain, however, consumer-led, meaning particularly important, as it alters our engagement even

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Pauline Van Dongen, Solar Shirt. Image: Liselotte Fleur.

“In recent work, technological expertise combines with these natural, structural influences to make smart, responsive garments that offer new ways to interact with the world around us.”

Previous Page: Pauline Van Dongen, Issho.

Image: Sharon Jane D. Left: Pauline Van Dongen, Solar Shirt. Image: Liselotte Fleur.

further, so “transforming the way we look at fashion.”

Even more provocatively, these current developments could change our interactions with the world. We are seeing a profound change and one in which, van Dongen believes, clothes possess a unique capability: “If you think about the fact they’re situated between our bodies and the world, integrating sensors that measure temperature or movement for example has great potential. I believe there is a whole world still to be explored beyond their quantified interpretation.”

Indeed, the Solar Shirt (2014) has built-in solar cells that harness energy. Thinking about her own experience from having worn the garment, she feels a stronger and more personal ecological responsibility. “You maybe want to go outside more often, so you can harvest more energy … I noticed when I was wearing it, I was actually often walking on the sunny side of the street. Very small things like that are important and can raise a lot of awareness about the environment and about reconnecting with nature.”

The Solar Shirt (2015), which is part of the V&A’s presentation of van Dongen’s work stems from the clear idea that our relationship with the sourcing of green energy can be far more engaged than it is; our clothing can be a source of power, whilst also serving to re-introduce the individual to the landscape. Indeed, The Future Starts Here poses similar groundbreaking questions about connection, with different strands of the exhibition asking Are We Human? and We’re all connected but do we feel lonely? Exploring the impact that objects may have on the body, the home, politics, cities and the planet, the show – like van Dongen’s practice – challenges the choices that we make on a daily basis – decisions of how we decide what to buy, and what to wear.

Ethics come into play here; van Dongen is aware that it is not always simple to assess a product’s footprint in terms of its effects upon the planet; there are wider elements to consider when it comes to production, such as how much of an impact it requires to make the solar cells themselves, and how long the piece of clothing lasts. There are still a lot of issues that need to be researched further. In fact, it is about far more than the easily quantifiable energy.

The designer points out the importance of the wearer’s attitudes: “Ultimately, creating responsible fashion is very closely tied to people’s relationship with a garment. If it’s something they would wear for a lifetime, that’s much better than a t-shirt made with organic cotton that lasts two years. Designers should examine how they can enhance the experience that people have with their clothes.”

According to this pragmatic mode of thinking, the notion of a lasting product also incorporates an understanding of personal value and is inherent in the very existence of fashion, which, the designer notes, is “by definition a social technology because it extends the reach of our body – it’s something manmade and which announces our human capability. We express something through it.” She mentions the example of Issho (2017) – an intelligent denim jacket that offers the wearer the feeling of a comforting hand on their upper back and says this encapsulates how different qualities – whether aesthetic or material – can be brought together through the context of the individual and in the creation of the product from start to finish.

Extending its lifecycle means tracking a garment through more stages. At the moment, this does provide some problems: “As soon as the product reaches the customer,

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Pauline Van Dongen, Solar Shirt. Image: Liselotte Fleur.

once it’s bought, no one really knows how people treat it, using new and perhaps unprecedented materials comes Right: Van Dongen, Issho. how often it is worn and washed, what types of experience into play through creative and collaborative models of Pauline Image: Sharon Jane D. people go through whilst wearing the item. These factors working. It is an approach of seeking fluidity between inare unknown.” The careful use of feedback mechanisms dustries – where, for example, fashion meets with medicine could transform understanding of this in the near future, – pushing into a more resilient world of design. There are as van Dongen observes: “Once we are integrating sensors other available methods of working, too: through the use and interactivity into our clothes, this will become data of 3D programming and generative models, the way that that we can suddenly reach.” Whilst data dissemination is garments are cut can be reconsidered and transformed, becoming more prevalent – and indeed, is being reviewed making the production process even more efficient, susfor its ethical and psychological impacts – the information tainable and responsible from the offset.

Thus we come full circle; thinking about ecological soluthat will be gleaned from responsive garments can be used to shift the focus of the industry away from introducing tions and shifting the focus of fashion simply from visual worth to a broader understanding encompassing materialendless amounts of disposable fashion into the world.

The V&A exhibition highlights this design issue, evaluat- ity: “The concept of aesthetics has become too concerned ing whether projects offer strategies for collective decision- with what we see. Our psychological experience of prodmaking, and considering garments that blur the lines be- ucts is based on sensory interactions. If we want to design tween humanity and technology. Important questions must for longevity, then we should consider the impact of a be asked: should human activity be treated as a resource fabric through an all-encompassing experience of life.” As that can be harvested if the results contribute to sustain- Dieter Rams’ Good Design Principles state, items should be ability? Where should the line be drawn between private long-lasting, yet never appear antiquated.” Digital techand public worlds? How responsive should an item become nology could be key to achieving this because it enables production to become increasingly personalised, yet also before it encroaches upon personal information?

For now, van Dongen looks towards a more holistic view universally accessible. Furthermore, the existence of an of clothing where its materiality has a deeper meaning; enduring material harnesses humanity’s most basic emo- Words fabric is one of her greatest tools. “I love exploring and ma- tional understanding of the world: through touch.

Anna Feintuck Showcasing a rigorous methodology, van Dongen’s colnipulating different properties.” For Issho, she collaborated with denim manufacturer ItalDenim, and made the fabric lections have the potential to create a better planet, shaping with conductive yarns incorporated into it from scratch. It not only what we wear but how we feel, raising personal and The Future Starts Here runs was, she says, “an amazing opportunity, because you can environmental awareness in an increasingly disconnected until 4 November at the choose your own yarns, a weaving technique, and explore age. If the future of design is to meet the rapidly changing V&A, London. the boundaries and capabilities of machines through a needs of the population, then these forward-thinking gar- www.vam.ac.uk. synergy between analogue and digital.” Branching out into ments must be part of that tapestry. www.paulinevandongen.nl

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art

Singular Perspective Jon Setter

Making use of repeated formal patterns including colour, material and texture, Jon Setter (b. 1989) methodically organises details of landscapes as an abstracted expression of space. Currently based in Sydney, Australia, Setter’s photography focuses on urban topographies, as well as the changing nature of architecture as an artistic and social practice that invites emotional responses. Taking on the role of the wanderer, the artist walks through cities, documenting the individual perspective by looking into details as signifiers for the contemporary experience. In doing so, he exemplifies the fleeting and biased memories of passers-by, capturing a fraction of the all-encompassing metropolis. Each image’s title is, therefore, distinctly minimal, reflecting upon the limited viewpoint of the personal within the global. The artist notes: “I hope to establish the idea that even the most vernacular aspects of a place can have a role in the way that it is understood.” www.jonsetter.com.

Jon Setter, Teal with some Pink, 2017.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Jon Setter, Two Gold Frames, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jon Setter, Lightpole and Window, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jon Setter, Red Fence, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jon Setter, Grey, Blue and Purple, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jon Setter, White Mountain, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jon Setter, Seeing Double, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jon Setter, Tin Roof and Pink, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jon Setter, Black and Green with a touch of Red, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jon Setter, Teal Shapes, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jon Setter, Black and White with a Cyprus, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

art

Uncanny Performance Michelle Cho & June Kim

Michelle Cho (b. 1992) & June Kim’s (b. 1990) collaborative series look into the ideas of relativity in the everyday, inspired by vivid and structurally expansive architecture. Using photography and digital manipulation, the duo conjure a visual relationship with the self and its multiple identities – transfixed amongst anonymous and almost desolate sets.

Performativity plays a significant role within the images; the characters turn away from each other and embrace the walls of the structures, circling around stairs and lying against the stonework in tandem, all the while mirroring one another. Creating an overall sense of emotional consistency, the highly choreographed images look like stills from a cyclical film – where the resolution is just out of reach. The pair’s interest in creating visual symmetry and an almost poetic use of geometry has been widely recognised by the likes of Ignant, Fubiz, Refinery 29 and Elle Decoration. www.other-on.com | www.mkmicho.com.

Michelle Cho & June Kim, Untitled, 2016.

Courtesy of the artists.

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Michelle Cho & June Kim, Selves 1, 2016. Courtesy of the artists.

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Michelle Cho & June Kim, Untitled, 2016. Courtesy of the artists.

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Michelle Cho & June Kim, Untitled, 2016. Courtesy of the artists.

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Michelle Cho & June Kim, Untitled, 2016. Courtesy of the artists.

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Michelle Cho & June Kim, Untitled, 2016. Courtesy of the artists.

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Michelle Cho & June Kim, Selves 2, 2016. Courtesy of the artists.

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Cinematic Storytelling Alex Prager Translating personal experiences into hyperreal images, the renowned photographer is celebrated through a mid-career survey and monograph.

Alex Prager (b. 1979) became a photographer overnight.

After first picking up a camera at the age of 21, and before any gallerist in the world knew her name, she anonymously hung pictures in the laundry room of her apartment building in Los Angeles. Some of the pieces were stolen by people who had found a sense of connection with the work whilst waiting for the spin cycle to end. It provided an early lesson – the kinds of visual works that inspire, excite and engage people are the types that touch upon a particular moment in time. The compositions she had staged – choreographed and planned – were taken more frequently than momentary snapshots of passers-by; those that most transfixed viewers were those that were intimate, cryptic and intentional.

Prager’s practice evolved after she came face to face with an image by William Eggleston at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. She notes: “Within a few days, I bought everything I needed to become a professional photographer.” Spending $80 on darkroom equipment from eBay, she unloaded savings on a professional camera – a Mamiya 645, which uses Kodak Portra colour negative film.

In an interview from the monograph Silver Lake Drive – published by Thames & Hudson – Prager recalls the early days, and the first encounters with canonical artworks that have shaped her unique way of thinking. “My mentor gave me this advice: if I wanted to be a professional photographer, then for the first two years I shouldn’t speak to any other practitioners. This way, I would be able to develop my own style, and not just learn about all the rules.”

Self-taught and devoid of formal training, she came to

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obsess over the fine details of the imagination, spending hour upon hour on the streets, trying to emulate in her own way the small, strange and dramatically potent moments she had discovered in Eggleston’s metropolitan scenes. She continues: “I would photograph until three in the morning and then work in my darkroom until six, so I could immediately process my film. I had to go work at 9am. I came home from work at 6pm and would go back out with my camera.”

As time went on, other influences started to coalesce in her work. She bought books about the New York street-lurkers Diane Arbus and Weegee, spending massive amounts of time reading about their ability to capture strangers at their most expressive, performative and vulnerable. Although unaware of her influences at the time, echoes of Cindy Sherman’s unvarnished understanding of femininity, and Gregory Crewdson’s dark, faux-glamorous take of the American suburbs can also be found within the stretches of her imagination.

The cinematic elements for which Prager is widely celebrated chart back to a childhood spent in Los Angeles. The glamorous exteriors of the city, as well as its seedy underbelly, seep through the aesthetic of her pieces, with subtle references to Alfred Hitchcock, Douglas Sirk, or the Mulholland Drive strain of David Lynch. In this sense, the early work moved away from the serendipitous, uncontrolled essence of the sort of street photography practised by Eggleston and Arbus, and towards a more staged, controlled and hyperreal aesthetic. In a 2017 interview with Flaunt magazine, she said of the link between street and staged photography: “Whilst practitioners like Eggleston find their perspective in characters already on

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Alex Prager, Irene, 2010. C-print, 121.9cm x 176.5cm (print), 124.5cm x 181cm (framed). Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong.Kong.

“The exhibition, which shares the title Silver Lake Drive with the monograph, has been years in the making, and encompasses over 40 works – including her trademark, largescale Technicolor compositions.”

Previous Page: Alex Prager, Orchestra Center (Intermission), 2016. Archival pigment print, 132cm x 121.9cm (print).

133.4cm x 122.9cm x 6cm (framed).

Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Left: Alex Prager, Nancy, 2008. C-print, 91.4cm x 95.3cm (print), 94cm x 96.5cm x 4.4 cm (framed) Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

the streets, I create mine. Someone like Bruce Gilden might have an instinctual angle when he sees a character coming towards him, but ultimately, we’re all just looking for the right moment. I just do so within a controlled environment.”

How many artists can tell such a story, and claim such a moment of singular inspiration and organic, discovery-led approaches? But, then again, how many can point to a career as successful as that of Prager, who is about to have a mid-career survey at The Photographers’ Gallery, London – a four-monthlong solo exhibition spanning two floors of the Soho gallery.

The exhibition, which shares the title Silver Lake Drive with the monograph, has been years in the making, and encompasses over 40 works – including her trademark, large-scale Technicolor compositions – alongside complete film works up until La Grande Sortie, a short created for the Paris Opera in 2015.

Curated by Nathalie Herschdorfer, it is produced in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts Le Locle and Lehmann Maupin, New York. The book and exhibition use the 2007 series Polyester as a starting point, a collection of laboriously poised yet colour-driven portraits of young femininity on the urban streets of Los Feliz. The series was first exhibited at Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, a solo show for the then 28-year-old, who, at that point, had only appeared in a few group shows. It was a huge vote of confidence, but, as Berman stated: “Her work is very reminiscent of another time.

It’s both comforting and uneasy, and that dichotomy throws you off guard.” Berman was also struck by the understanding of colour palettes, noting: “Alex’s photographs are more about the arrangement of colour than about the subject.”

Polyester oozed the synthetic glamour of life in Los Angeles and was full of visual references to Hollywood studio sto-

rytelling – specifically, how they used the bright Californian sun, even when telling the darkest stories. “I love the lighting from Hollywood movies of the Golden Era, from the movies of the 1920s until the 1950s,” Prager once remarked. “With that kind of lighting, anything can happen. It draws you in.

There can be a lot of dark things happening – things that might not have been pleasant to watch, but the lighting aestheticises them and makes watching the movie irresistible.”

From Polyester onwards, the rise in the artist’s profile and prestige was vertiginous. The following series, titled The Big Valley, was shown in 2008 at Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, and in 2009 at Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.

In 2010, at New York’s MoMA, she was included as part of the highly influential New Photography exhibition and by 2012, she had netted an Emmy for her New York Times-commissioned video series Touch of Evil, as well as securing projects with Hollywood stars like Gary Oldman and Rooney Mara, and seen her work housed permanently at MoMA, Whitney Museum, SFMOMA and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

As a growing profile began to escalate, so Prager’s work started to take on a more monumental style – a spectacle of action, colour, gesture and detail. Face in the Crowd, perhaps one of the best-known collections, debuted at Washington DC’s Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2013. Shot in a Hollywood studio, the compositions involved painstakingly re-building the kind of public spaces in which people typically congregate and share in the city – streets, movie theatres, beaches and airports.

“Sometimes I find people on the street or in restaurants,” she says of casting for the works. “I’ll walk up to people if I feel like they have something really special that sparks my imagination – the colours they choose to wear, or the way

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Alex Prager, Amy and Michelle, 2009. C-print, 121.9cm x 184.2cm. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

they style their hair. There are reasons why people do these ling a lot at one point and often felt alone amongst strangers. Right: Prager, detail of Cindy, 2008. things before they leave the house. It’s a way of communicat- I was questioning my own reality, how I perceived those who Alex C-print, 63.5cm x 128.3cm x 4.1cm.

63.5cm x 128.3cm (print), 63.5cm ing who they are.” For the pieces, she used up to 350 models were around me, and how they viewed me. A lot of my work x 128.3cm x 4.1cm (framed). Courtesy for a single shot, often bringing in a combination of friends, is about perception: how the lines between what is real and Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong. relatives and models found through agencies. The produc- what only feels real can become blurred.”

Speaking to Aesthetica, The Photographers’ Gallery curation team swelled up to 70 people, and each subject is carefully dressed and made-up before the shoot begins, so a tor Herschdorfer says: “Each of Prager’s subjects are linked by their ability to communicate very strong emotions. She very clear and recognisable tone is created in each image.

With more than 400 people on set, the settings resemble can use many different mediums and languages – still and a large-scale Hollywood film production, yet Prager sees in moving image, fashion and costume, personal and commisthis approach a clear lineage to her formative experiences sioned work – but the focus on female characters, and their out on the streets: “You can view my photography as hyper- psychological states, remains constant.” It is clear that Prager constructed and detailed,” she continues, “but I only control has grown with the camera. Whilst at first glance the pieces it all the way up until I get ready and everyone is on set and might seem like odes to the classic movies made from the waiting for it to start. Then, within that, I find the street mo- city, referencing a Los Angeles life of make-believe, they are, ments where nothing is planned. You can’t really control in fact, piercingly honest self-portraits.

“This is a survey of more than 10 years of work,” Herschdorfer people. You can put a layer of costume on them, but once you begin, they have their own emotional baggage and they says. “If you look at the early series, the subjects are indeed have their aspirations causing them to come to set that day. very young at first. But, in the later pieces, the characters Words All kinds of weird, interesting stories start to float to the sur- are closer to her age. Photography is used to follow life. Tom Seymour face. Those are always the best moments that come through.” The experience she has as a woman, and the memories she For all the cinematic prowess and high-production values carries with her, are shared through the compositions.”

The beginning of Prager’s career is remarkable, as was her Silver Lake Drive runs of the most recent works, the themes Prager explored with Polyester – of women engaging with feelings of isolation, dis- willingness to learn about photography intuitively, in a way 15 June -14 October location and vulnerability – still remain incredibly prevalent. that seemed to consciously turn its back on any of the con- at The Photographers’ She has indeed spoken of how the women in front of the lens ventional teaching methods that often pervade the industry. Gallery, London. serve as avatars for the projection of her personal emotional But without this approach, Herschdorfer says, the photog- Monograph published experiences. “I focus on women who I can use to emulate rapher would not be who she is today – a fascinating and by Thames &Hudson. what I am going through myself,” she notes in Silver Lake ground-breaking practitioner. “She’s not educated in art; she www.thamesandhudson.com Drive. “The stories I’ve made so far are about emotions.” Face learnt to listen to her own feelings. Then she found out how www.thephotographers in the Crowd was about stage fright, she reveals: “I was travel- to share them. That’s the most important thing in the world.” gallery.org.uk

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art

Facets of Reality Victor Micoud

La Cité Idéale focuses on the surroundings of Disneyland Paris, where the colossal and globally recognised entertainment industry turned itself to urban planning and construction. Paris-based Victor Micoud (b. 1987) captures the essence of this surreal neighbourhood with visual complexity – the world begins to disintegrate through its details. Interested in photography as a tool to investigate the world around us, Micoud shatters the illusion of perfection and organised domesticity, capturing the moments when chimneys shed black smoke over pristine brickwork and CCTV cameras allude to a feeling of disquiet amongst empty streets. The viewer begins to question: who has lived here? Why has it been left? And why the need for heightened security in such an enclosed town? The intriguing selection of photographs offer aesthetically and conceptually rich compositions in which an augmented fantasy has caught up with reality. www.victormicoud.com.

Victor Micoud, from the series la cité idéale, courtesy of the artist.

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Victor Micoud, from the series la citĂŠ idĂŠale, courtesy of the artist.

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Victor Micoud, from the series la citĂŠ idĂŠale, courtesy of the artist.

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Victor Micoud, from the series la citĂŠ idĂŠale, courtesy of the artist.

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Victor Micoud, from the series la citĂŠ idĂŠale, courtesy of the artist.

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Victor Micoud, from the series la citĂŠ idĂŠale, courtesy of the artist.

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Victor Micoud, from the series la citĂŠ idĂŠale, courtesy of the artist.

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Victor Micoud, from the series la citĂŠ idĂŠale, courtesy of the artist.

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art

Elusive Sensibility Ole Marius Joergensen

Shooting in sparsely-populated areas of Norway, Ole Marius Joergensen (b. 1976) creates narratives around the themes of identity, using empty topographies as spectres of unidentifiable emotions. The Asker-based artist finds inspiration in the inner and outer landscapes of country dwellers. A background in film is evident, especially within the Behind the Curtains series – building upon the insatiable and basic human tendency to look. Referencing the works of David Lynch, the photographs offer shadowy settings for voyeuristic viewers. Meanwhile, Vignettes of a Salesman examines tradition. Harking back to an age where products were bought and sold by an individual rather than ordered online, Joergensen translates the recognisable figure into a relic. The images accentuate how the act of approaching people’s homes has become mythological; the salesman’s face is hidden from the viewer in a choreography of disconnect. www.olemariusphotography.com.

Ole Marius Joergensen, from the series Behind the Curtains, 2015. Courtesy of the artist.

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Ole Marius Joergensen, from the series Behind the Curtains, 2015.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Ole Marius Joergensen, from the series Vignettes of a Salesman, 2016.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Ole Marius Joergensen, from the series Behind the Curtains, 2015.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Ole Marius Joergensen, from the series Behind the Curtains, 2015.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Ole Marius Joergensen, from the series Vignettes of a Salesman, 2016.

Courtesy of the artist.

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art

Conscious Environments Elena Mora Stylised interiors offer an intriguing perspective on how set design can create an interdisciplinary stage for idea creation and collective aspiration.

Design is an indispensable part of life. Throughout the day, ments. I believe they keep stories and memories, and when be it at work, at home or in public spaces, our activities are we choose them, they have the capacity of representing ourmarked by the use of objects. The presence of such items is selves.” As such, her works raise interesting questions, for exusually taken for granted as they meet the needs of our con- ample: how do items enter the world and why do consumers temporary lifestyle so seamlessly. However, humanity’s pas- decide to take possession of them? Which aspects seem to play the decisive role – are they functional or purely aesthetsive engagement has sparked new contemporary thought.

Postproduction – Manual for Redesigning Reality, published ic ones? To what extent are our choices influenced by current

by Royal College of Art, is one example. The manifesto cri- trends or well-targeted marketing campaigns?

Due to an unprecedented number of products, manufactiques the growing functionality of design as it influences humanity’s behaviour: “Much of this brief was written in our turers and digital outputs, these questions have never been living room. It was written whilst eating food ordered via an as complex as they are today. It is here that the words of app, from a restaurant recommended by an algorithm, de- Jonathan Ive – Chief Design Officer at Apple and Chancellivered by a self-employed bicycle courier who we tracked lor of the Royal College of Art – seems most relevant: “True using the location services enabled on his phone. We paid simplicity is derived from so much more than just the abin advance using a ‘hot coral’ coloured cash card produced sence of clutter and ornamentation. It’s about bringing order by a ‘digital, mobile-only’ bank that was founded in 2015, to complexity.” Thus, products that define our domestic and before eating on a table, cut using a CNC milling machine, professional lives – such as the iPhone that we use to schedand based on an open source design. And whilst not a single ule meetings, or the television that we use to stream content aspect of this situation would have been possible a decade – offer the possibility of effortless transitions between worlds. ago, none of it will seem particularly remarkable to anyone For entertainment, relaxation or work, successful design is imbued with potential – for any activity to be made possible. today. This is simply the shape of the normal in our time.”

Further to this, such designs can be revered for their Written by Nicola Koller, Thomas Greenall and Matteo Mastrandrea, the text reflects upon how designed products intuitive technology and timeless style. As Deyan Sudjic, are now integrated effortlessly into our day-to-day thoughts Director of Design Museum, London, writes in The Language of Things (2008): “We live in a time when our relationship and actions, thus offering a new type of lifestyle.

Elena Mora is an interior stylist and set designer who picks with our possessions is undergoing a radical transformation up on these ideas through generating compositions that are … The aesthetic, sculptural quality of a glass or a chair, infused with emotion; she transforms objects into subjects. and the intellectual elegance of a typeface are creative She notes: “I’ve always had a fascination with inanimate ele- expressions that we can appreciate in themselves.” Mora’s

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Elena Mora, Special about German Design. Editorial for Wallpaper* Magazine. Photo: Oliver Schwarzwald. Courtesy of Elena Mora.

“Objects are presented as agents of idea generation; they act as points of departure that shape tastes and raise aspirations, and there are three compositional factors that help to achieve this: colours, materials and light.”

Previous Page: Elena Mora,Classic/Contemporary.

Photo: Oliver Schwarzwald.

Courtesy of Elena Mora.

Left: Elena Mora, Special Beds. Editorial for Icon Design. Photo: Oliver Schwarzwald.

Courtesy of Elena Mora.

multidisciplinary practice offers a perfect forum for insight something – looking into how design is changing to reflect into this very subject. Originally from Italy but based in the needs of society. If such magazines are trendsetters – inHamburg, the designer celebrates the evolution of functional spiring and engaging with readers’ emotions – Mora’s comproducts into influential items: “Many design objects have missions certainly meet these criteria. “Choosing products become iconic and even when they are the result of an untold for my shoots is like celebrating the process of production; they become protagonists and tell new stories.” process, they tell the story of specific materials or lifestyles.”

As Roland Barthes proposed in Mythologies, (1957) metaWith an impressive client list that includes global brands such as Adidas, o2, Philips, Volkswagen, Ikea and Audi, Mora languages exist in everything from the books and paintings creates a spotlight for detail – and offers surreal spaces that of high art, to the slogans, trivia, toys, food and rituals of draw the viewer into a balance between subject matter and contemporary life. These metalanguages move people to composition. The resulting works transport the viewer to styl- act in a certain way – note the global use of smartphones ish constructs of crisp interiors where bed frames, lamps and – and they are embedded in everything, including today’s tables resonate with the increasing desire for minimal and designs, for example, the larger architectural spaces of city seamless surroundings. The commissions, like the featured landscapes. Thus, designs have a significant impact on the images from Wallpaper* and Icon, are informed by photog- ways that people think, and as such, curated spaces – whethraphy, installation and other visual arts. Moreover, telling er domestic or urban – have the important power to influthe right story about a product means looking for the right ence different types of social behaviour.

Mora’s images are an excellent example of this; the photoenvironment. “Every single element must coexist in harmony and embody the message we want to convey”, she reflects. shoots do not simply feed the growth of consumer culture Through these multi-sensory and dreamlike interiors, viewers but are a powerful fusion illustrating where art and comare encouraged to revisit the way in which they perceive their merce align. Objects are presented as agents of idea generasurroundings, paying attention to the details that make up tion; they act as points of departure that shape tastes and raise aspirations, and there are three compositional factors meaningful ways of living.

Such commissions are part of wider dialogues about the that help to achieve this: colours, materials and light.

These elements are also reflective of Mora’s interdiscipliinfluence of magazines in 21st century culture. Wallpaper* – established in 1996 – prides itself on being a “global design nary approach in which each brief is considered through a didestination”, whilst Icon’s – established in 2002 – “shows versity of perspectives, skillsets and visual techniques: “Many you exactly what’s happening in architecture and design different references must be distilled into every project. I’ve today, and what it means for the future.” Rather than show- always had a deep passion for interior design, contemporary casing products simply for their functionality or aesthetics, visual arts, and many aspects of the vernacular: when studythey build upon the appetite for humanity to be a part of ing a mood board, at times I find myself thinking as an art

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Elena Mora, Special about German Design. Editorial for Wallpaper* Magazine. Photo: Oliver Schwarzwald. Courtesy of Elena Mora.

director, or a graphic designer, or an interior decorator. Every son and Sofia Coppola are comparable. The Virgin Suicides (1999) and Lost in Translation (2003) are built up around aspect of this process is important.”

The idea is to create an environment with narrative abilities their locations – whether through shadowy suburban houses that will be both eye-catching and intriguing. According to or anonymous hotel rooms. Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Mora, a key way to make people fall in love with a product The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) offer similar intricate landis to communicate its mood effectively. Yet the striking use scapes. Perhaps two of Anderson’s best-known films, they of colours depicted in the featured images is not the only became iconic owing to their bold colour schemes and rich, aspect to be analysed here; the compositions are also char- complex sets. Undeniably, every detail is an anchor point for acterised by a signature sense and manipulation of space. the narrative to play out for the viewer; the set design almost Since architecture is an important source of inspiration, sets becomes part of the cast. Anderson has noted: “Usually become structural topographies in their own contextual right. when I’m making a movie, what I have in mind, first, for the “This very sense of scale, dealing with proportions of the di- visuals, is how we can stage the scenes to bring them to life in the most interesting way, and then how we make a world mensions, is not as easy as we might imagine”, she says.

Domestic items gain a completely new character thanks for the story that the audience hasn’t quite been in before” to their arrangement; within Mora’s representations they are (Interview for Collider, 2012, Christina Radish). Essentially, dispersed amongst architectural elements – such as arches, Mora “presents scenarios that amplify the DNA of the brand”, stairs or wall fragments – to create smaller, self-contained building up sets around the intent of the product. Therefore, vignettes. The highly stylised and polished environments are her sophisticated and thought-provoking contexts do more a journey into another world that is parallel to our own, filled than simply commercialise domesticity or its individual with narratives yet to be written and actions which are yet to products in the pursuit of idealism. Each satisfying compositake place. Here, Mora includes the presence of the viewer. tion is a way to embrace innovation, celebrating design by The settings serve as a playground for the audience’s imagi- inspiring audiences about ways it can enrich their lives.

It was Dieter Rams who said: “Design is not about pandering nation and each individual is invited to be a part of the space. to luxury buying incentives but producing orientation – and As a result, the onlooker becomes a consumer of ideas.

Mora unfurls this notion further, proposing that her works behavioural – systems for a complex and complicated, yet provide powerful visual narratives, like stages waiting for simultaneously fascinating, open world. It is about seriously events to unfold. “I want to create the illusion that something considering how to make this world a place.” Indeed, Mora’s just happened or is about to happen”, she notes. In such a practice, informed by the best examples of today’s design, way, the viewer is compelled to become part of the composi- offers curated spaces for the imagination, where work spaces, tion. Combining aesthetically pleasing and meaningful com- bedrooms, or living rooms are transformed into more than ponents, the fantastical settings in the films of Wes Ander- functional rooms – they become icons.

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Right: Elena Mora,Classic/Contemporary.

Photo: Oliver Schwarzwald.

Courtesy of Elena Mora.

Words Agata Toromanoff

www.elenamora.com

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art

Balanced Composition Carolina Mizrahi

With a host of renowned clients including Vogue, Elle, Swarovski, Pandora, Aquazzura and WeTransfer, Carolina Mizrahi (b. 1982) is an art director, photographer and set designer.

Her cross-disciplinary practice traverses a line between fine art and commerce. Having graduated from London College of Fashion in 2013, Mizrahi has accrued a number of international commissions and exhibitions as well as creating several acclaimed personal series with a bold and recognisable aesthetic – images that construct new, surreal worlds.

Each of Mizrahi’s projects presents a geometric playground where block colours, product placements and playful styling come together as complementary counterparts. Harnessing the possibilities of set design, the artist presents complex sensory environments that draw the eye into a vibrant stage. Ultimately, the photographs utilise the spaces between reality as potential pathways into the wider imagination. www.carolinamizrahi.com.

Photographer: Carolina Mizrahi. PH Assistant: Giacomo Demelli.

Digital Tech: Davide Cattelan. Video Maker: Marescotti Ruspoli.

Set Designer: Luigi Battaglia. Model: Anine Van Helzen.

Creative: Enrica Ponzellini. Stylist Assistants: Carlotta Taberoni and Deborah De Groot. Hair Stylist: Massimo Gamba. MUA: Martina D’Andrea. Manicurist: Agostiro Scantamburlo.

Courtesy of Carolina Mizrahi and Swarovski.

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Photographer/ Art director: Carolina Mizrahi. Floral Design: Yan Skates. Set designer: Phoebe Shakespeare. Stylist: Sorrel Kinder. Hand Model: Kateryna @ Hired Hands. Feature Model: Minnie Mae @Needhams Models. Courtesy of Carolina Mizrahi and Aquazzura.

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Photographer: Carolina Mizrahi. PH Assistant: Giacomo Demelli. Digital Tech: Davide Cattelan. Video Maker: Marescotti Ruspoli. Set Designer: Luigi Battaglia. Model: Anine Van Helzen. Creative: Enrica Ponzellini. Stylist Assistants: Carlotta Taberoni and Deborah De Groot. Hair Stylist: Massimo Gamba. MUA: Martina D’Andrea. Manicurist: Agostiro Scantamburlo. Courtesy of Carolina Mizrahi and Swarovski.

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Photographer: Carolina Mizrahi. PH Assistant: Giacomo Demelli. Digital Tech: Davide Cattelan. Video Maker: Marescotti Ruspoli. Set Designer: Luigi Battaglia. Model: Anine Van Helzen. Creative: Enrica Ponzellini. Stylist Assistants: Carlotta Taberoni and Deborah De Groot. Hair Stylist: Massimo Gamba. MUA: Martina D’Andrea. Manicurist: Agostiro Scantamburlo. Courtesy of Carolina Mizrahi and Swarovski.

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Photographer/ Art director: Carolina Mizrahi. Floral Design: Yan Skates. Set designer: Phoebe Shakespeare. Stylist: Sorrel Kinder. Hand Model: Kateryna @ Hired Hands. Feature Model: Minnie Mae @Needhams Models. Courtesy of Carolina Mizrahi and Aquazzura.

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Photographer: Carolina Mizrahi. PH Assistant: Giacomo Demelli. Digital Tech: Davide Cattelan. Video Maker: Marescotti Ruspoli. Set Designer: Luigi Battaglia. Model: Anine Van Helzen. Creative: Enrica Ponzellini. Stylist Assistants: Carlotta Taberoni and Deborah De Groot. Hair Stylist: Massimo Gamba. MUA: Martina D’Andrea. Manicurist: Agostiro Scantamburlo. Courtesy of Carolina Mizrahi and Swarovski.

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exhibition reviews

1 The Sea is the Limit Various artists

Exploring timely notions of migration, dispossession and na- focus on the individual is evident in Nick Ellwood’s illustrational borders, York Art Gallery’s The Sea is the Limit brings tions, using the universal language of drawing to understand together 11 international practitioners who question ideas of the human condition. They capture the stories of refugees in nationalism, free movement, inclusion and exclusion. At once Calais through an engagement with line and expression.

Foregrounding ideas of human connection and compaspersonal and universal, the contemporary works delve into sion, Vanessa Vozzo’s project, APNEA, uses interactive media the lives of the artists whilst addressing an ongoing issue.

Contemporary artist and curator of the show Varvara Shav- to map the emotions of those crossing the sea. Through rova’s interactive piece, Blankets Project, combines media im- photographs, videos, pieces of writing and original artefacts agery with snapshots of her family history, offering a deeply found on wrecks – with a focus on that of 3 October 2013 at connective experience. An interest in news representation Lampedusa – it highlights the importance of collective action.

By combining installation, drawing, painting, film and VR, and information dissemination continues throughout the exhibition, as Vladimir Miladinović’s piece creates an arena The Sea is the Limit offers an interdisciplinary viewing experience, and the opportunity to connect on multiple levels. for questions about contemporary conflict and propaganda.

Shahram Entekhabi’s film My Mother – the History of Iran Poignantly demonstrating this continuing issue, the show entakes a similar approach, personalising mainstream historiog- courages viewers to look beyond mainstream media depicraphy by combining documentary with personal narratives. A tions, proving art’s potential as an agent for change.

Words Eleanor Sutherland

York Art Gallery 4 May - 2 September www.yorkartgallery.org.uk

2 It’s Not Me, It’s a Photograph Elina Brotherus

It’s Not Me, It’s a Photograph shows 20 years of material from the Helsinki School photographer Elina Brotherus, whose peculiar and innovative project reflects on the act of taking pictures whilst negotiating between dualities, playfulness and seriousness, self-portraiture and landscape.

Some works, including those where she is accompanied by dancer and choreographer Vera Nevanlinna, are inspired

by Fluxus and follow strange instructions. In Find Five Errors (2017), Brotherus and Nevanlinna appear to be performing a strange dance routine, their right legs clothed in garish purple leggings. In Passing Music for a Tree (2017) they are captured mid-pose as they prance like ponies.

Brotherus’s main project combines self-portraiture with epic photographs of often misty, mysterious landscapes, many with direct art-historical reference points. Der Wanderer 2 (2004), reproduces the scene from Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1819) as Brotherus

stares pensively at a lake and mountains. Femme á sa toilette (2001), a reference to Degas, sees the artist sitting huddled naked in a washbasin whilst the wire for the analogue camera connects the peculiar intimacy of the scene to the conditions of its own production as a self-portrait.

Nu au Bullepack (2002), in which Brotherus, nude, stands tall, staring straight into the lens, is but one example of her relentless self-examination. The viewer cannot help but notice how the continuities in her aims and practice are inverted by her physical appearance – time has unalterably changed her face and body if not her practice.

Brotherus’s stunning topographies, like the pieces from the Very Low Horizon (2001) and Landscapes and Escapes (1999), look almost like colour-field paintings; her main achievement as a practitioner is to tie the dramas of human identity to the sublimity of nature. The exhibition is a crossdisciplinary presentation of the contemporary condition.

Words Max L. Feldman

Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna 14 March - 19 August www.kunsthauswien.com

3 Risking Life and Lens: A Photographic Memoir Helen M. Stummer

In 1977, Helen M. Stummer – aged 30 – returned to school.

What began as a project to use photography as a way to develop her painting skills evolved into a lifelong pursuit of documenting struggles between race and overarching class systems. Practising on city blocks, buildings and families, she captured children growing and fighting to survive in bleak, often hazardous environments.

Over the course of nearly four decades looking into the hardships of New York communities, she came to realise that many of her photographs were in fact self-portraits. Having suffered emotional and physical abuse as a child, Stummer began to create images that connected with the people behind the lens – who experienced economic deprivation and societal hardships on a daily basis. The camera enabled the artist to navigate what was once a no-man’s land – East 6th Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, from the 1970s to the 1980s – and forge deep connections with her subjects.

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In some cases, she followed families through generations as they experienced the endless cycle of life, death and birth, casting each time a poetic eye on abject poverty and violence, putting herself in dangerous and intimate situations. James Jones (1994), for example, shows a boy bathed in golden light from a window in an empty and otherwise dim stairwell, a nod to Rembrandt-like chiaroscuro: out of darkness comes light.

It is this sense of urgency and intimacy that runs through ICP’s thought-provoking and deeply human exhibition. As Cornell Capa, the center’s founder, proposed, Stummer’s work exists as “concerned photography” – images that communicate an intimacy and compassion with humanity beyond the lens. As the artist famously notes: “You can’t shoot and run, you’re not going to get intimate photographs like that,” Stummer said. “If you don’t take a risk, you will never do anything meaningful.”

Words Olivia Hampton

ICP Mana, New Jersey 26 February - 29 June www.icp.org

1a. Vanessa Vozzo, Apnea Project (installation still). Image Courtesy of the artist. 1b. Taus Makhacheva, Baida, 2017. Image Courtesy of the artist. 2. Elena Brotherus, Der Wanderer 2, 2004. Š Elina Brotherus. 3. Helen M. Stummer, Leaning Tree, Clinton Avenue and Peshine Avenue, Newark, New Jersey, December 3, 1982. ŠHelen M. Stummer.

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4a. Matthew Murray, Charnel Clough, Saddleworth Moor, 2016. Courtesy of the artist. 4b. Matthew Murray, Winter Clough, Pudding Real Moss, Wessenden Moor, 2015. Courtesy of the artist. 5. Paz Errázuriz (born Chile, 1944). Evelyn, 1982, from the series La manzana de Adán (Adam’s apple), 1982-1990. Gelatin silver print, 39.5cm × 59.7cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galería AFA, Santiago. © Paz Errázuriz. 6. Trine Søndergaard, Untitled, Reflection #7, 2014. Archival pigment print. © Trine Søndergaard, Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York.

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4 Hit the North

a celebration of photography across five decades

Hit the North presents an eclectic collection of photography that provides a bridge across four decades, featuring eight figures who capture the contemporary condition through a regional lens. Moving between various styles and subject matter, the works here contribute to a wider tapestry of debates about the changing nature of image-making, and its power to communicate distinct cultural identities.

Avoiding stereotypes and pictorial tropes, the selection of works offers grand rural and domestic vistas, assessing the complexity of what it means to exist within different parts of the landscape as part of a wider tapestry of experiences. Daniel Meadows and Paul Floyd Blake look back upon history as an archive of emotion. Blake’s urban reportage provides humour from the gritty hinterlands, offering visual irony from behind the jocular posters of churches in working-class neighbourhoods. Reminiscent of the influential images of Martin Parr, the compositions

work to engage the viewer through an almost archival lens.

Similarly meditative are the works of Ian MacDonald, which – in stark monochrome – border on social realism through their presentation of iconic yet almost modest landscapes. Shipyard scenes stretch into the distance, creating rugged rhythms that run across the expanse of the frame. Matthew Murray’s series Saddleworth Moor, meanwhile, comprises undulating photographs that offer open expanses that verge on the cinematic. Deep shadows cut up the land and draw the viewer’s eye – here nature, as a sublime phenomenon, is re-acquainted as a space for reflection.

Ultimately, the exhibition leaves audiences questioning the overarching relevance of the idea of a northern identity weaving the artists together – with such a diverse range of approaches on display here, they offer universal perspectives from social, political and environmental worlds that move from the borderlands to something much larger.

Words Patrick Allen

Manchester Central Library 19 April - 30 June www.manchester.gov. uk/centrallibrary

5 Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985 a retrospective

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 reassesses and celebrates the fundamental contribution of the titular artists historically, socially and conceptually.

This expansive survey, involving more than 120 visionary practitioners and 260 pieces, is unified by the concept of the female body being a voice for expression. Reaching into the depths of cultural change, Brooklyn Museum showcases a tipping point when underrepresented voices became – for the first time – a collective chorus.

The symbolic pieces on view here traverse a range of mediums; they come from essential figures such as Lygia Pape, Ana Mendieta, Marta Minujín and Paz Errázuriz – a photographer who went under the radar in order to make some of the most important, and dangerous, images of Chile in the 1970s and 1980s. As Errázuriz famously notes: “‘They are topics that society doesn’t look at, and

my intention is to encourage people to dare to look.”

Indeed, the world-renowned image Evelyn which comes from the series Adam’s Apple, implores audiences to connect with the sitter – who, reflected through a mirror – stares into the lens with a relaxed and assertive gaze.

Organised into nine topical sections, including Social Places; Resistance and Fear; and Mapping the Body, the show marries large, poignant concepts with addressing accessible yet fundamental ethical considerations.

Through these thought-provoking compositions, the show highlights the ways in which the female body became a means of questioning and reinventing the established canon; through their reclamation of the female form, these Latin American and Latina artists forged an unprecedented change in the industry – something that endures well into the minds of 21st century viewers.

Words Jennifer Sauer

Brooklyn Museum, New York 13 April - 22 July www.brooklynmuseum.org

6 A Reflection

Trine Søndergaard

Merging elements of past and present, Trine Søndergaard’s images bring a continuity to juxtaposed vintage features and contemporary aesthetics. Antique lace and clothing of eras past decorate female subjects, always photographed from behind or aside, averting the viewer’s gaze. A Reflection, a solo exhibition of her latest project, examines both her recent work, and selections across previous series.

Known for her formal portraits offering an unexpected, intimate view, Søndergaard positions subjects with precision, never engaging the camera’s eye. This characteristic perspective alludes to Franz Kafka’s concept of “a room inside,” the private emotional space that exists within everyone. Søndergaard’s works haunt with a lens this untouched personal sphere made acutely visible, crafted with a light hand and brimming with quiet, dense emotion.

Søndergaard is drawn to photography as a medium with-

out definitive bounds, obscuring where the artist’s hand ends and the subject begins. Her timeless images freeze and capture discrete moments with a relativity that transcends culture and era. Throughout her body of work, there is a central emphasis on detail, and what is not shown may be as telling as what Søndergaard reveals. Lines and the angle of the lighting are also essential aspects of the photographic scene.

Each picture is an exploration of itself, a projection of a specific moment in the subject’s ruminations, and of that very distinctive interior space. There is a dialectic between detail and openness here, with enough space available for the viewer to find him or herself within its parameters.

Through layers of meaning and emotion, Søndergaard’s images provide a powerful, expressive visual commentary.

A Reflection beautifully uncovers the quiet intensity of nuanced, private moments within our interior worlds.

Words Jennifer Sauer

Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York 3 May - 30 June www.brucesilverstein.com

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Neil Gelinas, Into the Okavango.

film

Ecological Consideration Into The Okavango

“Ultimately, Into The Okavango serves not only as a means of raising awareness about the grave threats currently killing the wilderness, but as a reminder of what’s expected of us as a member of the human race.”

Words Beth Webb

Into The Okavango screens at Sheffield Doc/Fest, 7-12 June. www.sheffdocfest.com

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Within the first few minutes of Into The Okavango, a National pathy. We hug, a lot. At least once a week every team member Geographic documentary about the last great wilderness, the hugs at the end of the day when we land, especially if we’ve Okavango Delta, Dr Steve Boyes, the team leader, describes the had a traumatic or difficult experience. Hugs are important.”

Boyes’s on-screen openness can in part be credited to his sensation of being without the safety and control of mankind.

When asked when he’s felt this moment more than ever, thoughtful demeanour, but also a longstanding friendship Boyes reflects on a scene that he believes captures the spirit with Gelinas, who was inspired to make the documentary after of the film in its entirety: when a lone hippopotamus attacks spending time with Boyes whilst undertaking research in the one of the team’s canoes. The survivors manage to climb to Okavango Delta. “He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a brothshore, they hug, and then inspect the damage to their vessel. er,” says Gelinas. “He’s clearly a compelling character, and the “It was completely my fault,” Boyes says. After the incident, landscape and wildlife were so cinematically rich that I knew he learns that the hippo reacted out of fear: an act of protec- this was going to be my first attempt at a feature documentary.”

The film moves swiftly between grand moments of natution rather than aggression. Alone by the river, Boyes voices regret, angry at the mission’s arrogance, which in light of ral beauty and joyful interactions with the team. For every close, breathtaking shot of a wild elephant, there’s one of their near-death experience is a humbling scene to behold.

The film is a collaboration between Boyes and director local guide Tumeletso “Water” Setlabosha, dancing to pass Neil Gelinas, who have extensively explored the Okavango the time, or Costa dreaming of a cheeseburger with ketchup.

Ultimately, Into The Okavango serves not only as a means basin, a source of water for over a million people, to find new species and determine threats. The team are a fascinating of raising awareness about the grave threats which are curensemble, from seasoned guides to environmental scien- rently killing the wilderness, but as a reminder of our oblitist Adjany Costa, whom we first meet in her grandmother’s gations and our heritage as members of the human race. old apartment, where she is recalling early memories of war. “People must learn that it is a basic human right to explore … a Boyes’s affable persona brings real gravitas to the documen- right to be wild,” says Boyes. “We must all know that not long tary, and he speaks with the highest fondness for his team: ago we were all wild. Ten thousand years ago, our entire world “We are family, united by the wild and this shared experience,” was wilderness … The wilds that created us are almost gone. he says. “Families survive if they communicate and show em- We need to save them, and we don’t have much time.”

Narrative Adaptation On Chesil Beach

Florence’s battle still rings true: “I think that young people “‘It was incredibly are exposed to a real onslaught of narratives about sex,” important to us that says Karlsen. “They are overwhelmed. They feel anxiety.” this film is not about Florence finds solace in performing classical music, build- nostalgia or digging ing a career upon her talent, whilst giving herself a trajectory into the past. We very much within her own control. “I was drawn to Florence wanted to avoid and the notion that a decision that you make, particularly in that Brexit-style your youth, can have such huge amplifications in your life,” thinking that the says Karlsen, who had Ronan in mind for the role instantly, past is always rosy. as did McEwan after working with her on Atonement.

It’s not that at all.’”

As an actress whose roles rarely step into the modern day, there is a ready assumption that On Chesil Beach may share the same nostalgic traits apparent in Ronan’s more romantically inclined films, such as Brooklyn. Karlsen is quick to dismiss such notions: “It was incredibly important to us that this film is not about nostalgia or digging into the past.

We wanted to avoid that Brexit-style thinking that the past is always rosy. It’s not that at all. It’s a place where young people were seen and not heard, where Florence has to get her instructions from a sex manual that she has to read behind a closed door. It’s about oppression and choking.”

Words Though the film remains true to the era in everything from Beth Webb the sense of changing values to the patterned carpets, it’s this message that sets On Chesil Beach apart from its period drama peers and which lingers far beyond its final scenes. www.lionsgate.com

Still from On Chesil Beach. Courtesy of Lionsgate UK.

Based on the bestselling novella by Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach may at first glance emulate a period romance between Florence (Saoirse Ronan) and Edward (Billy Howle), both in their early 20s and from different backgrounds, but quickly shifts to a largely unspoken dialogue about sexual authenticity, as relevant to today as to the 1960s setting.

Producer Elizabeth Karlsen took an interest in the project over a decade ago, drawn to McEwan’s painfully honest accounts of virginity and isolation: not the fond fumblings often associated with young sex, but the sterile and shameful attitudes felt by the story’s protagonists. “It was interesting to tell a love story where the actual physical seduction, which is the spark of the relationship, goes to a space that you don’t usually see in films,” Karlsen says. “There wasn’t the language for Florence and Edward to access in order to express themselves to each other like there might be today.”

The honeymoon night hangs over the film like a black hole; pulling the couple in with a sad inevitability only to spit them out violently shortly after. Florence, the product of a controlling household, shuns physical intimacy as her own means of sexual identity, choosing to remain safe and attuned to her needs rather than succumbing to Edward’s.

It’s a trait that seems out of place at the time of the “Swinging Sixties” and again in today’s liberal context, where sexual authenticity is often associated with promiscuity. And yet

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Photo Credit: Delaram Pourabdi.

music

Creative Autonomy TT

“If Warpaint tend to favour the esoteric, drawing inspiration from the tarot, Theresa Wayman’s LoveLaws delights in the personal laid bear, detailing the emotional ups and downs of romance.”

Words Charlotte R-A

www.ttlovelaws.com

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She may have made her name with gauzy, sultry guitar music in feted LA quartet Warpaint. But a stalwart fidelity to rock was never Theresa Wayman’s plan, according to the press release that accompanies her debut solo album, LoveLaws. “I’ve never wanted to be just a rock person,” the guitarist/vocalist explains, “so I’m finally fulfilling my vision from 20 years ago.”

Going solo, under the moniker TT, is about “having fun,” she explained in a recent interview with DIY Magazine. “With Warpaint, I felt like I was backed into a corner and had to fill a certain role. I just didn’t want to do that.” Warpaint formed in 2004, and have gone on to release three, critically acclaimed albums, including 2016’s The Fool. After a decade plus of recording and touring in the band, it makes sense that Wayman is itching for some creative autonomy.

And yet, whilst she’s promptly carved that space out for herself, LoveLaws is really no radical departure for Wayman. It’s touted as a record that forgoes Warpaint’s guitar-centric MO, a trip-hop inspired record that draws instead on beats, basslines and samples. Those elements are all present – from the field recording sample at the beginning of Safe to the programmed drums and synth loops that feature throughout. But these are mostly subtle additions – not quite axis-titling stuff. And the guitars are still there, from the tremolo of I’ve Been Fine to the muffled lines on the Portishead womp of Love Leaks. Even with the maelstrom of grinding, grainy, industrial-lite noise

at the end of I’ve Been Fine, and the lo-fi, Cocorosie-like vocal FX on Sassafras Interlude, the overall vibe is still discernably Warpaint-like: sensual; dreamy; melancholic; mid-tempo.

If Warpaint tends to favour the esoteric inspiration from the tarot, LoveLaws delights in the personal laid bear, detailing the emotional ups and downs of romance from Wayman’s perspective as both touring musician and single mother (she has a 12-year-old son). There’s love here, and loss – the usual beginnings and endings – but she manages to express it all with a surprisingly potent ache, from the pangs of longing from break ups to the almost superhuman desires we can feel.

The music that Wayman makes in Warpaint is frequently described as escapist, a word that takes on vaguely pejorative qualities given the all-female make-up of the band. But as she demonstrates here, on songs like Safe and Tutorial – escapism isn’t necessarily frivolous; it’s not always the stuff of doodles and daydreams and flights of fancy. Escapism – especially the kind that’s allied with pleasure, intimacy and shared experiences – can also be a radical thing, a place where we might “dissolve the mind” in order to better express ourselves.

Ultimately, she notes, this is what making and consuming art is all about: discovery, idea generation, change and personal growth. “The whole point is getting to know yourself through what you’re doing and having fun and exploring. It’s pretty much the point of life. To me, at least.”

Modern Dualities Melody’s echo chamber

shifting psychedelia frilled with wild flutes, jumping basslines “That sense of the and oscillating prog guitars. The bedrock – an expert study unfettered is rife on in chimeric, controlled chaos – is the work of Fredrik Swahn Bon Voyage. There’s (The Amazing) and Reine Fiske (Dungen), who recorded the a sample-and-scratch album with Prochet, post-accident, during a stay in Sweden. magic throughout, “Swedish nature helped me to breathe and soothed me,” the kind of crateshe told Pitchfork. “I had a majestic forest with a lake three digging, vinylminutes’ walk from my home. Recording sessions were a flipping manoeuvres break in our lives, an escape from our frustrations as young you’d expect from adults, parents, musicians and embittered life jugglers. We a turntablist.” had no structure and we stepped out of our comfort zones.”

That sense of the unfettered is rife on Bon Voyage, with its elastic, cosmic fantasias. There’s a sample-and-scratch magic throughout, the kind of crate-digging, vinyl-flipping manoeuvres you’d expect from a turntablist. Tempos, beatlines, textures and moods all shift with seamless, mind-warping precision: organic to electric; soulful to silly; vintage to futuristic. Prochet is an equally precarious presence, bilingual vocals shifting from chic, breathless and heavily accented sighs to the occasional, sudden, short-and-sharp scream.

Black Sabbath fans will recognise echoes of 1973’s A Na- Words tional Acrobat amongst the tangled riffage of one trippy track. Charlotte R-A It’s an incongruous strain that arrives with zero foreshadowing, and yet it feels oddly at home here – proof, perhaps, that Bon Voyage is the right kind of wrong: winningly weird. www.dominorecordco.com

Photo credit: Diane Sagnier.

It’s fair to say that Bon Voyage, Melody Prochet’s second album as Melody’s Echo Chamber, has had a painfully protracted release. The French singer originally broke out in 2012 with a self-titled psych-pop debut produced by her then-beau, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker. Critical applause followed, and the next project commenced – first in partnership with Parker, and then other, unspecified collaborators. But those recordings, laboured over “for years”, were scrapped.

When Bon Voyage’s Spring 2017 release was eventually announced, on Prochet’s 30th birthday, shortly afterwards a statement was made by the singer’s family explaining that she had been in an unspecified but “serious” accident, resulting in broken vertebrae of the spine and neck and a brain aneurysm. A long period of hospitalisation would follow; the album and all attending tour dates were put on hold.

We’re still in the dark about the circumstances of Prochet’s misfortune – and seem likely to remain so. What we do know, thanks to a sole, pre-release interview with Pitchfork, is that recent years have been a “personal desert of heartaches”, but that the accident was not without its silver linings: “Today I feel blessed, as I’m healed. It’s been traumatic but it has beautifully put some perspective into my eyes and broke a life pattern that didn’t work for me. I’m lucky it revealed more light.”

For her fans, the album itself is enough. It sees the light of day on 15 June, via Domino, and is a thrill: dreamy, shape-

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© Viviane Sassen for Double. From the book Viviane Sassen: In & Out of Fashion. Courtesy Prestel.

books

Rethinking Convention hot mirror

“By playing with unexpected associations, Sassen’s images align with Breton’s definition of Surrealism as ‘pure psychic automatism’, defined as the belief in the reality of unconscious thought.”

Words Gunseli Yalcinkaya

Published 22 June Prestel www.prestel.com www.hepworthwakefield.org

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The photograph is a window to the subconscious in this new tality are blurred, with many photographs combining unmid-career retrospective, Hot Mirror, by renowned Dutch canny imagery with funereal symbols. Inhale (2011), for artist and photographer Viviane Sassen, published by Prest- example, portrays a sleeping woman with purple leaves over el. Drawing on literature by André Breton, as well as psycho- her eyes and lips, invoking the custom of placing pennies analyst Carl Jung, Sassen uses the image as a playground, on the eyes of the deceased for safe passage to the afterlife. experimenting with themes of life and death through her “Her images of dreamers often shift between serene slumber and death in the flicker of an eye,” says Clayton. dream-like compositions that reconfigure the human form.

Another (more literal) way this is revealed is in Sassen’s Drawing on works from the last 10 years, as well as new projects and collages, Hot Mirror cites Surrealism as its use of light. Recalling the Jungian idea that the shadow main influence: disjointed bodies, fantastical landscapes is representative of what is hidden in our subconscious, and unnatural shadows feature heavily. In Untitled (2012) UMBRA (2015), which takes its name from the Latin term from Roxane II, a single lower leg hovers ominously against for “shadow”, depicts dark blocks of colour which obscure a blue backdrop, whilst in Uppsala (2017) a shadowy pair the human form and so create indeterminate shapes. “The of breasts resemble sand dunes. By playing with these un- shadow is not simply a negative symbol, as the Surrealist expected associations, Sassen’s images align with Breton’s Manifesto notes; the ‘terror’ it can produce is ‘precious’, in revealing a richness of emotion and experience as well as a definition of Surrealism as “pure psychic automatism.”

With a contextualising essay by Eleanor Clayton and necessary counterpoint to light,” explains Clayton.

Reinventing the human form, whether through contrastexcerpts from an interview with the artist by Robbert Ammerlaan, the volume foregrounds death as a reoccurring ing colours, cleverly positioned mirrors or the use of visual theme. Sassen speaks about her father’s suicide and her trickery, Sassen offers a disjointed vision of reality that lies own near-death experience as a student in India. “I still have outside the parameters of conventional photography. With times when I think a lot about death, often at unexpected an exhibition of the same name running alongside it, at The moments, when I completely shut myself off from the out- Hepworth Wakefield (22 June - 7 October), Hot Mirror is an exciting publication that offers a comprehensive overview of side world … As soon as the door is closed”, she explains.

Often the lines between unconscious dreaming and mor- one of the most pioneering figures in photography today.

Visual Dialogues the eye

Departure, 2012 by Julia Fullerton-Batten.

Ahead of its global expansion to London and New York, (1983-1985), which gives intimate snapshots of working- “The camera as an Stockholm-based cultural institution Fotografiska cel- class families in Thatcher’s Britain, the “magic language” lies observational tool is a key theme. Through ebrates its eighth anniversary with The Eye, published by in the image’s ability to create a dialogue with the viewer.

Swedish photographer Magnus Wennman’s series Where social media and digital teNeues, featuring over 250 images by photographers inthe Children Sleep (2015), for example, follows a group of technology, the lens cluding Martin Parr, Ren Hang and Sebastião Salgado.

Accompanied by essays from Albert Watson, Vee Speers, refugees fleeing wars in the Middle East. Here, the viewer is has made everyone Catherine Edelman and Fotografiska co-founders Jan and given an insight into war through the eyes of children escap- a witness, whether it Per Broman, The Eye uses images from all genres to dem- ing its reality. Portraits in places of rest show the subjects is to capture a family onstrate the authority of photography. “The power of the at their most vulnerable. “It was an incredibly powerful and gathering or a sunset, a medium has never been greater,” says Watson. “Whether it’s moving portrait of the horrors of war, from a perspective we war zone or a catwalk.” a mother’s iPhone snapshot of her daughter or a portrait by seldom experience – that of children,” agrees Speers.

Elsewhere, Albert Watson’s Monkey with Gun, New York City master photographer Irving Penn, the power is there.”

The camera as an observational tool is a key theme run- (1992) pictures a close-up of a chimpanzee’s hand holding a ning throughout the book. Through social media and digital revolver against a stark white background. Presented in black technology, the lens has made everyone a witness, whether and white, the leathery hand contrasts the cold sheen of the it is to capture a family gathering or a sunset, a war zone or gun – its memorability is in its similarity to a human hand. a catwalk. However, whilst this has democratised the practice “The photo is stark in its simple minimalist approach, but also of fine art photography by expanding the platforms through graphically powerful,” explains Watson. “It is also conceptual, Words which people can express themselves, not all images commu- so the viewer can approach it on many different levels.”

Gunseli Yalcinkaya Ultimately, each image in The Eye is chosen to provoke nicate something meaningful or further, inspire change. “We are often immersed in a deluge of banality,” explains Speers. a reaction. As such, the publication encourages readers to Nevertheless, what gives the pieces in The Eye authority is question what they see, and to open a wordless dialogue in teNeues their memorability. From David LaChapelle’s A New World order to instigate conversation. “I think our main goal is to (2017), where he paints on negatives to create hyperreal set- start a conversation and give inspiration which can lead to www.books-teneues.com tings with bubblegum hues, to Martin Parr’s New Brighton inspiring a more conscious world,” says Broman. www.fotografiska.com

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film reviews

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Lady Bird Greta Gerwig

Knowingly, irritatingly precocious in a self-conscious sort of way, 17-year-old Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) yearns for a way out of what is, to her, at least, an annoyingly mundane life in tedious Sacramento. Plotting to escape to a faraway university that she believes will seemingly solve her state of domestic ennui at a stroke, she also goes hell for leather into her senior year in high school, navigating a turbulent route through friendships, profanity and sex.

Greta Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical tale sets Lady Bird against her stolid and put-upon mother (Laurie Metcalf), who provides a counterpoint to the teen’s search for rebellion. Gerwig adopts a non-judgmental stance; she lays bare the stand-off between mother and daughter but never takes sides, with the story rightly balancing out in favour of neither.

In fact, Ronan’s character’s rebelling smacks of both naivety and desperation, just as Mom’s natural caution is borne both of experience and of a hidden backstory that is (deliberately) never delivered until the final reel, and then only revealed through an elliptical aside.

Less a story of angst and awakening than a portrait of mothers and daughters, Lady Bird represents arguably Gerwig’s most personal, most pertinent and most mature writing to date. It also benefits from a tight, multigenerational ensemble cast around Ronan and Metcalf (in particular Tracy Letts as the quietly depressed out-ofwork dad) who relish and lap up the accomplished script.

One of the film’s strengths is that it never opts for the obvious narrative move. Lady Bird’s journey is of her own making. And when it comes, the gentle and rewarding denouement takes the viewer by surprise.

Words Tony Earnshaw

Universal Pictures www.universalpictures.com

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The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro

There has often been a feeling that Guillermo del Toro’s Spanish-language movies, such as The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), far outweigh his forays into English. Films like Pacific Rim (2013) and Crimson Peak (2015) are studio blockbusters that rather diluted his vision. So it’s heartening to see the Mexican director finally bring his sensibilities to the masses with an Oscar-winning off-kilter monster-movie romance.

With the call for greater diversity in cinema, del Toro’s timing couldn’t be better with a story that celebrates the other, although anyone believing he deliberately boxticked his screenplay to include a mute, a black woman, a gay artist and an amphibious creature is sorely mistaken.

Set in 1962, it tells the story of Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a cleaner – left mute from a childhood accident – who works in a hush-hush government facility.

Living next door to her closeted friend Giles (Richard

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Jenkins), Elisa spends her days with the outspoken Zelda (Octavia Spencer) mopping floors. There, chained in a tank, is a new “asset”, a fishy humanoid (Doug Jones) captured from the rivers of South America and now exploited by Michael Shannon’s sociopathic character. And so begins one of the strangest meet-cutes as Elisa and the creature bond (eating soft-boiled eggs).

Despite the Cold War setting, The Shape of Water nods towards Trump’s America, but it’s also a love-letter to cinema, to The Creature from the Black Lagoon and countless other B movies del Toro admires. Luminously shot and scored, respectively by Dan Laustsen and Alexandre Desplat, the performances are delightful, in particular del Toro regular Jones, who brings real emotive soul to the monster. Both aesthetically pleasing and structurally compelling, this is an utterly charming film, this is bold and beautiful cinema at its peak.

Words James Mottram

Fox Searchlight www.foxsearchlight.com

This is Congo Daniel McCabe

Daniel McCabe’s debut feature documentary is an intimate portrayal of the conflict in The Democratic Republic of Congo that has claimed more than five million lives. Speaking through key players, including military commanders and a whistleblower, This is Congo provides an unfiltered look at a country divided.

With a genuine strength of presence and intent, this is filmmaking of the highest calibre, unflinching in its commitment to confronting the plight of humanity. What should resonate is how the philosophical and Buddhist contemplation of man’s relationship to suffering is exhibited in its extreme reality. Whilst our proximity to the violence is harrowing, the early placement of the camera to frame human faces cast with fear, with glimpses of active artillery in the background, reminds viewers how a single image can transport us to a distant reality, in a sensory context. McCabe forces his audience

to confront the violence, not permitting the viewer to leave with an impression, but to be transformed, left with memories that we can never dismiss.

Highlighting the film’s meticulous construction, oral expression intertwines with image and sound in a harmonious marriage. This concept of union is symbolised beautifully as one character reflects: “To grow up as a child in Congo according to God’s will, is to grow up in paradise. Perhaps because of the will of man, growing up in Congo is to grow up in misery.” With an overwhelming sense of humanity lost, there are glimmers of the ingenuity of survival, including one man and his sewing machine, who has run from multiple wars, yet has utilised this cherished possession. For Europeans, it is a reminder of the cruelty of our colonial heritage: conquests and abandonment which have sparked the entrance of bloodshed and division as a way of life.

Words Paul Risker

Abramorama www.thisiscongo.com

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music reviews

1

Body/Head The Switch

Consisting of legendary former Sonic Youth multiinstrumentalist Kim Gordon and Bill Nace, Body/Head produces experimental noise rock at its most twisted. For their latest project, the Massachusetts duo have created a five-song journey testing the very nature of these two talented musicians’ creativity, and the listener’s resolve in trying to work out what on earth is actually happening.

The Switch packs in a feast of very extended, super-heady improvisational songs, often sounding like a thousand rusty delay pedals were used in unison creating what can best be described as dusty, dirt and desert music.

The atmospheric meanderings veer frequently into pure sound design territory, with psychedelic noise and sparse guitar twangs befitting of a Robert Rodriguez scene complete with a mirage brandishing empty road and birds of prey scavenging. Whilst a challenging listen at points,

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highlights such as the opener Last Time show the real skill and rich history of the two writers. Kim Gordon’s jittery vocals are panned amongst a kaleidoscope of buzzing, hissing and reverb that makes the guitars sound 10 miles away. That being said, it is almost impossible to listen to songs such as Change My Brain, more like an experiential art piece than something one would listen to for pleasure.

The closing track, Reverse Hard, takes nearly five minutes to wince its way out of solid fuzz into an intricate cacophony of discordant electric guitars and deeply chopped and elastic vocals, pinging between the speakers and giving insight into the habitat one imagines this sound was conceived from. Overall, this record is like an acid trip that constantly teeters on the edge of existential nightmare, occasionally dipping entirely into a fearful hazy world of brain humidity and swiftly melting sanity.

Words Kyle Bryony

Matador Records www.bodyheadmusic.com

Colt Hilary Woods

Colt, the debut from Dublin-based multidisciplinary artist Hilary Woods, is a testament to the creative power of loneliness. Through these eight tracks (all of which are selfproduced) the singer unveils a complex and poetic inner wilderness. This record, which mixes classical instruments, found sounds and a tape machine, possesses the kind of singular vision and confessional quality than can only come from creating art in a state of personal isolation.

The record, which was mixed in Berlin by James Kelly (Altar of Plagues, WIFE), has a dreamy, downtempo quality that offers both a cinematic and, on more rhythmic tracks like Jesus Said, hypnotic experience. It lands somewhere between a soundtrack to a dystopian thriller and the washed-out acoustic resonance of bands like Warpaint and Daughter. It’s no surprise, then, that Woods wrote and recorded much of the album in an abandoned house as well as any other free spaces she could find.

Five-minute opener Inhaler sets the tone for the rest of the album with a quiet and moving reverie on the impact of loss. Here, we find barely-there synths and long, droning noises that sneak up to a swell of off-kilter sorrow. The record finds its rawest moment in the unrequited love song Black Rainbow during which Woods croons “I just wanted you to see your stars align/ But the skies they change/ In every heartbeat” over twinkling piano and slow, drawn out strings. Elsewhere, a quasi-religious element comes through on Sever, which feels like a prayer, though on closer inspection the lyrics portray a disillusionment and certain catharsis in giving in to difficult emotions.

At its heart, Colt is a record unafraid of those in-between, noiseless moments that come with the creation of mournful and reflective music. Here, Woods has created a fearless portrayal of heartache, isolation and listlessness. Just watch out as it hits home with devastating impact.

Words Grace Caffyn

Sacred Bones www.hilarywoods.com

3I’m All Ears

Let’s Eat Grandma

I’m All Ears is the eagerly awaited follow-up to acclaimed debut I ,Gemini by Let’s Eat Grandma, otherwise known as British teenage vocalists, songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth. For this second long-player, the duo has collaborated with producers David Wrench (The xx/Frank Ocean/FKA Twigs), SOPHIE (famed for her own material and work with Madonna and Charli XCX) and Faris Badwan (The Horrors).

It’s an enthralling fusion of sounds and an innovative love affair with pure pop, vintage synths, poignant intimacy, inventive loops and retro-sounding drum solos.

Created over a two-year period, I’m All Ears represents the journey taken by childhood friends Walton and Hollingworth, through friendships, relationships and the growing presence of technology in society. Whereas previously there was a striking similarity in the two, from

the fusion of their voices to wearing complementary outfits, each has found a new confidence and independence.

Lyrically, I’m All Ears is notably more open and less cryptic, combining an underlying joy with subtle humour.

The power pop of Falling Into Me and I Will Be Waiting sound ready-made for radio whilst recent single Hot Pink is a modern ballad brought to life by soft-layered synths and quirky vocal stylings. There are songs about selfdiscovery and consumerism but the overriding theme is movement, the infinite possibilities of the world brought before the two friends by the strong bonds they share.

United with this new inner strength and identity, I’m All Ears is a magical and experimental album that confirms Let’s Eat Grandma as one of the most creative bands around right now. Indeed, this kind of skewed, outsider pop has never sounded more mainstream.

Words Matt Swain

Transgressive Records www.letseatgrandma.co.uk

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book reviews

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The Art of Architectural Daylighting Mary Guzowski

The central premise of this book – that daylight can serve as a building material – provides a fascinating lens on twelve buildings from around the world. Each case study focuses upon a “master of light”, exploring the various ways that this medium has been used in interior spaces.

There are some technical features throughout, such as the use of isolux contour techniques (a way of “mapping” light), and the book certainly takes the science of daylight into consideration, but it has a broader point to make, too. It successfully demonstrates that light, whilst objectively measurable, is not solely a quantitative feature in design. The architects featured embrace an intuitive approach, acknowledging that unpredictability is important. Dynamic, changing qualities are shown to be positive, subjective though their interpretation may be.

Divided into six sections, Guzowski’s text – and the

beautiful accompanying images – take the reader around the world. In Scotland, Glasgow School of Art’s Reid Building exemplifies “choreographed light”. Visibility is a medium for developing a conversation between Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s 1909 Mackintosh Building and Steven Holl Architects’ recent conjoining structure.

Ultimately, the reader is drawn to how light shapes the way people move around the finished building, including their interactions, just as the light itself is manipulated in the design process.

Whilst this book will appeal most to practitioners, educators and students, there is definitely plenty for the interested non-professional, too. With its clear focus, accessible, engaging text and high quality production, it is an insightful and thought-provoking journey through a number of today’s most influential structures.

Words Anna Feintuck

Laurence King Publishing www.laurenceking.com

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California Contemporary Grant Kirkpatrick

Southern California is often regarded as the home of sophisticated modern living. Embodying this ideal, California Contemporary highlights residences designed by Grant C. Kirkpatrick and his firm, KAA Design. A rich sense of Paradise runs throughout the publication, which offers a collection of bright images and detailed drawings of Kirkpatrick’s projects. Opening with the visual essay The Nature of Nature, which describes his philosophy, the book emphasises the importance of the wild landscape, demonstrating its influence on KAA’s developments.

The first section, The Ideals, traverses notions of nature, craftsmanship and outdoor living, unearthing the integral themes that define the architect’s practice. Offering a deeply immersive reading experience, the buildings combine clean lines, glass screens and open-air terraces, demonstrating an ongoing concern for connecting with

the environment. An indoor-outdoor flow is vital to the structures, as organic objects function as focal points and the colour-drenched landscape remains always in view.

Where They Live, the latter half of the book, offers case studies of completed homes and their inhabitants. From a nautical-inspired building on the edge of the Pacific Ocean to a hillside family residence, each project is deeply informed by its owners whilst bound to the landscape. Positioning residential design as the “most powerful and personal platform for architecture to affect our lives”, Kirkpatrick highlights the universality of “home.”

Princeton’s publication reveals the architectural expertise that lies behind the mythos of the Californian Dream.

The structures presented here – each designed to intensify the beauty of the locale – offer a sublime optimism that reflects the limitless lifestyle of their unique habitat.

Words Eleanor Sutherland

Princeton Architectural Press www.papress.com

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Double Take Jojakim Cortis & Adrian Sonderegger

In our society, constantly awash with streaming images, can we still claim the photograph captures objective truths? Jojakim Cortis and Adrian Sonderegger offer an interesting answer to this familiar question. Using photography to dissect its own processes and reveal inner workings, they demonstrate that every image is a construction – both a material and a psychic one. Double Take recreates visuals from centuries of history, revealing how a photo becomes an icon in the popular imagination.

The footprint of the first man on the moon, cemented forever in our minds as a symbol of humanity’s milestones, was intended as nothing more than an experiment to test the compressibility of the moon’s surface.

Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer-winning Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (1945), the iconic picture of American patriotism, was the soldiers’ second attempt. In reconstructing these moments, the creators allude to the fabrication involved

in all photography and remind us their acceptance as truth is the result of complex associations and responses.

A short paragraph for each historic image explains its creation, context and reception. An adjacent page features Cortis and Sonderegger’s beautiful reproduction of the iconic photo in question. Sometimes a miniature model, sometimes a painting giving the illusion of depth, and more often a collection of materials diverse as plate glass, card, styrofoam, water, cotton and plastic toys, the visual result is always uncannily similar to the original.

By the end of the book, another theme unexpectedly, emerges: images that reach iconic status in the public imagination often have a certain anonymity at their core.

Photography has always been about something rather than the pursuit of capturing reality – it is also about the desire to project ourselves into that reality, to reassure ourselves we passed through the material world.

Words Sarah Jilani

Thames & Hudson www.thamesandhudson.com

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artists’ directory

DAVID GOOD David Good is a Brooklyn-based artist and designer whose work examines the role of the Internet in society. He conceptualises social media platforms as a medium to explore feelings of loss, absence, excess and anxiety. In his resulting collage work, Good juxtaposes bright colours, subdued gradients, and pixelated noise with old photographs, creating a familiar yet enigmatic nostalgia for the past, present and future. Good received his MFA in Communications Design from the Pratt Institute in 2017.

www.davidgooddesign.com | Instagram: @davidgooddesign

harriet moutsopoulos Sydney-based Harriet Moutsopoulos is a collage artist who works under the name Lexicon Love. Drawn to the surreal and unsettling, she seeks out the unexpected connections between humour and tragedy. Ultimately it is the way in which collage art challenges traditional notions of aesthetics, which she finds most appealing.

www.lexiconlove.com I Instagram: @lexicon_love

Changyeon Lee

A Thousand Breaths, a kinetic installation utilising Baby’s Breath (Gypsophila Elegans),

preserved and dyed, wood, prepared motor, micro-controller and human breath pattern data.

Matthew Adam Ross American artist Matthew Adam Ross, based in Los Angeles and New York, considers his practice to be a line of enquiry.

It is an expression of the fundamental questions we usually only ask ourselves in private moments. He notes: “The questions I ask are the life rafts to rescue the nostalgia in me, that I dare hope and dare believe is in you and is in us.” www.matthewadamross.com

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Changyeon Lee is a New York-based award-winning artist and director of Studio god’s gift. His practice specialises in kinetic sculpture through the use of mechanical components and natural objects. The work shown here, A Thousand Breaths, represents human breathing in a form of which Lee refers to as “motion amidst rest.” From the artist’s personal experience of being in a coma, the installations in this series articulate perspectives on the transitory versus the perpetuity.

www.studiogodsgift.com

YSD Having graduated from UAL in disciplines ranging from ceramics to wood bending, YSD comprises a trio of designers who combine their disciplines to create unexpected organic outcomes. Their most recent project, A Fraction of Time, is a marble clock that highlights the growing issue of marble waste; it takes hundreds of years for marble to form deep in the mountains and civilisation is rapidly exhausting this finite resource. The shape reflects a quarry that the trio visited – a mountain with chunks missing owing to man-made extraction.

Between 4-7 July 2018, YSD will be exhibiting work at One Year In – New Designers, showcasing A Fraction of Time and their new range of products.

www.ysddesign.co.uk

Collaboration between the artist and London-based fashion designer Florence Bridge.

Denholm Berry Milan-based British artist Denholm Berry approaches portraiture with an innovative and unconventional methodology. Blending psychological spaces with expressive physicality, the figures presented in the works are at once anonymous and inviting – emotions and identities are open to the viewer’s interpretation. www.saatchiart.com/denholm | Instagram: @denholm_berry

Yoko Kubrick

Anton Hoeger Anton Hoeger’s paintings offer a realist apolitical stance, rejecting satire as a reading and instead focusing on inventive narratives and avant-garde composition.

Looking at the importance of environment and observation, each piece encounters a meeting point between humanity and the spaces that surround us.

The piece shown here is entitled In Lovely Blueness.

www.antonhoeger.com

Yoko Kubrick is a California-based sculptor and visual artist.

Inspired by landscapes of her childhood in Guam, Hawaii and California, she creates sculptures that explore organic forms that embody sensuality and a connection with nature.

She is inspired by the archetypal language of the collective unconscious and expresses herself with shapes associated with plant life, land formations, and the emotive language of form.

Kubrick is currently working in Pietrasanta, a city referred to as Italy’s Little Athens for its marble laboratories, bronze foundries and community of local and international artists.

www.yokokubrick.com

For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com

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acrymx

Arturo Correa

Acrymx is a Paris-based artist interested in abstraction in all its forms, from the geometrical to the lyrical. His macro-photographic approach allows him to be concerned both with the manufacturing of images and with their subjective effects upon human perception. Focusing on material and light, he plays with form and colour to fascinate the senses. www.acrymx.com I Instagram: @acrymx

Arturo Correa is an American-Venezuelan visual artist based in Naples, Florida. Flat, frontal and with no concern for perspective or horizon to ground the viewer, Correa’s paintings combine figures and text as well as contemporary and historic iconic imagery. Materiality and spirituality, pain and love, yearning and hope are all reflected in the work. www.arturocorrea.net

chisato yasui

Darrin Jenkins

Japan-based artist Chisato Yasui works in ceramics and mixed media, visualising intangible concepts such as harmony and emotions surrounding relationships. Foregrounding subconscious desires into three-dimensional objects – with a minimal palette, Yasui’s award-winning pieces reflect the organic world and offer both visual and textural relief. www.chisatoyasui.com I Instgram: @chisatoyasui

Darrin Jenkins is a multi award-winning lifestyle and still-life photographer.

Utilising the latest techniques he explores composition, emotion and elegance. Jenkins enjoys the process of making images from diverse briefs.

“I love the way light and composition can create moods, enhance form and be provocative, illusive and tempting.” www.dj-photo.com

eric wiles

Gerard Byrne

Northern California-based artist Eric Wiles combines fine art and landscape photography to reveal dynamic images of natural beauty and manmade objects. A contemporary approach has brought his work to wider attention including an exhibition at the Musée du Louvre. Wiles was recently nominated for the prestigious International Color Awards as well as the Black & White Spider Awards. www.ew-photo.com | Instagram: @eric.wiles.photo

London-based Irish artist Gerard Byrne’s extensive practice represents a versatility in contemporary painting. Through figurative portraits and demonstrative landscapes, Byrne offers an insightful journey of international locations in Europe and the USA. In 2017 he established The Gerard Byrne Studio, Fine Art Gallery in Dublin. www.gerardbyrneartist.com | Twitter: @gbyrneartist

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JAMIE HLADKY

JANICE GOBEY

Jamie Hladky’s photographic practice is formed around sense of place.

Having moved from the UK to Singapore and Australia, he has become interested in feelings of transience and permanency; immigration, identity and the permission to belong. Hladky embarks on long rail journeys, walks and road trips, to explore huge landscapes at a human pace. www.jamiehladky.com

In a world that she finds increasingly disconnected and alienating, Melbourne-based artist Janice Gobey hopes to forge a connection with the viewer, allowing them to sense the emotions of the human and animal subjects in her paintings, and to feel the tactile qualities of fur and drapery.

Through her work, Gobey hopes to generate a sense of empathy. www.janicegobey.com | Instagram: @janicegobey

joseph hillier

Laurent PeacocK

Based near Newcastle, Joseph Hillier combines traditional sculpture casting and construction techniques with live motion capture technology and 3D scanning. He has collaborated with dancer Lizzie J Klotz for a major new solo exhibition, Pause, Play, which will be presented at Cheeseburn Sculpture Gardens, Northumberland, at their Open Weekend 25-27 August. www.josephhillier.com

Laurent Peacock is a Sussex-based furniture designer who combines a fascination with materials and human emotion. Working on bespoke designs, aesthetics meet functionality through highly contemporary production. Upcoming exhibitions include One Year In – New Designers 2018 and Celebration of Craftsmanship and Design 2018. www.laurentpeacock.com | Instagram: @laurentpeacock

Mina Talaee

Nina Ullrich

Mina Talaee is a visual artist, sculptor and researcher based in Tehran. Her work addresses power relations and cultural hegemony as well as issues such as displacement and migration. Her skills include working with wood, metal, fibre, and traditional techniques such as kilim and carpet weaving. Talaee has a PhD in Art Research and her work has appeared in more than 30 exhibitions around the world. www.minatalaee.com

Nina Ullrich is a London-based designer. The mood and aesthetic of her all-black collection displays minimalist sensibilities fused with hints of the gothic. Her handmade leather work is complemented by a jewellery collection of sleek long silver crosses and pearls. Ullrich will present the collection at PURE London, 22-24 July. www.ninaullrich.com | Instagram @_ninaullrich

For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com

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artists’ directory

Akinori Towma

aliette bretel

Akinori Towma is a Japanese artist living in the USA. He harnesses the power of natural phenomena such as sunlight, snow and rain to produce his artworks. For the Lightning Drawing piece shown here, a canvas was strategically positioned under the path of a lightning bolt.

This project is an experimental collaboration with Shinichi Sumi of Chubu University and Takeshi Morimoto of Kindai University. www.akinoritowma.com

Aliette Bretel is a Cambridge-based Peruvian photographer and visual artist. She is a graduate of El Centro de la Imagen in Lima. In theTransition series, she examines the characters of people who live in nursing homes in South America. Bretel’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions and art fairs in Buenos Aires, Lima, Ankara, Cambridge and London. www.aliettebretel.co.uk Instagram: @aliettebretel

Waiting Room, Lima, 2002. From the Transition series.

Alma Štrkljević

anca stefanescu

Based in Split, Croatia, Alma Štrkljević is currently completing an MA degree.

Her photography is concerned with questions of subjectivity, and the relationships between photographer and viewer and between the photographer and the model featured in the work. For the Lines, Nudes series, she collaborated with Josipa Krolo, approaching the human body as sculpture. www.almastrkljevic.tumblr.com Instagram: @alma.strkljevic

For Bucharest-born, Londonbased Anca Stefanescu, time is a constructed concept and painting is a practice through which she finds a universal connection of life, devoid of context. Stefanescu has exhibited at numerous art fairs including World Art Dubai and artexpo New York; she looks forward to an upcoming show at the Amsterdam Whitney Gallery in New York. www.ancastefanescu.com

ben dobson

claudia pombo

Cambridge-based Ben Dobson explores texture, colour, perspective, light and shade using mineral, vegetable and animal matter prepared with skill for the microscope and camera. He recently exhibited at the historic MichaelHouse Café in Cambridge and he will next be exhibiting at the Fulbourn Art Fair, 14-15 and 21-22 July. www.themicroscopeman.com Twitter: @microscopeman74

Brazilian-Dutch painter Claudia Pombo offers an adapted view of nature and human situations.

Different forms of creative expression include illustrations of Amazonian mythology, metaphysical art, as well as landscapes. The piece shown here is entitled Human Failure. www.clpombo.wordpress.com clpombo.art@gmail.com

Dariusz Labuzek

ELEANOR FRANCES

Poland-born, San Francisco-based Dariusz Labuzek’s primitive-style paintings are inherently figurative, yet their naïve imagery is predominantly design orientated. The work has an illustrative quality that is founded on an abstract painterly aesthetic. His latest group exhibition Fragmented: Forms, Particles and Points of View is on show at Artspace 8 in Chicago.

UK-based illustrator Eleanor Frances specialises in stationery and prints. Combining bold lines with bright colours, Frances harnesses contemporary trends to offer playful compositions for a variety of editorial and commercial clients.

The piece shown here is entitled Lookin’ Sharp, Sister.

Instagram: @eleanorfrancesillustration

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Eleni Foundoukis

emily tapp

Of dual UK / Greek nationality, Eleni Foundoukis studied at Central Saint Martins and Camberwell College of Arts. In her collages, absurdity and humour combine in an obtuse narrative to create a universe populated with lost, deluded or infantilised characters, in a nonsensical, sometimes psychotic, sometimes comic environment. www.efoundoukis.wordpress.com Instagram: @eleni.foundoukis1

Emily Tapp investigates the mining and quarrying industries of Cornwall. She excavates colour from the local land, making pigments from waste materials to produce historically inspired hues.

The resulting paintings, ceramics and paper works reflect not only on the geological history of the area, they act as a reminder of the industries that once thrived there. www.emilytappart.com Instagram: @emilyoliviatapp

Emma Habbeshon

Eva Vázquez Abraham

Emma Habbeshon is a contemporary studio jeweller based in London. Her fascination with the visual beauty found in science and mathematics has informed two of her current collections, which depict geometric and organic forms. She works in silver and gold to produce timeless pieces that are striking and elegant. www.emmahabbeshon.co.uk Instagram: @emmahabbeshonjewellery Facebook: emmahabbeshonjewellery

Spanish artist Eva Vázquez Abraham, aka Kokonekoeve, is based in Barcelona. Working with textile art, painting, drawing and sculpture, she creates a symbolic world in which boundaries between imagination and reality disappear, to portray human nature from the perspective of the animal that she believes inhabits us. The work shown here is Pájaro, a collaboration with photographer Nini La Mira. www.kokonekoeve.com

Francesca Busca

gill miller

Italian and British artist Francesca Busca is inspired by textures from the everyday. At the heart of her practice is the notion of rethinking, reusing and repurposing materials through mosaic, mixed-media, installation and photography.

She employs colours and details from both natural and artificial objects, to convey wider messages about the contemporary experience. www.francescabusca.com Instagram: @francesca_busca

The light and colour of southern California are an influential and iconic presence in visual culture.

Los Angeles-based Gill Miller takes an energetic and vibrant approach to this aesthetic in the series Urban Summer, Urban Winter. He considers a personal relationship with the environment and landscape, and how this has shifted perspectives on his art and life. www.gillmillerart.com

Fertile Ground, 2018. Oil on canvas.

120cm x 120cm x 4cm.

Hasti Sardashti

isis

Iranian-born Hasti Sardashti is based in London. Her work addresses experiences of migration and a life in perpetual motion.

Making art, often based on selfportraits is a vital practice in order to maintain a sense of stability, calm and fluidity. Sardashti believes that in a world in constant flux, art offers both a home and a space to express one’s authentic self. www.hastisardashti.art

Alice Merhautová is a Czech designer with a strong connection to nature. She works with stones and minerals, which she collects and creates jewellery and other objects. A preference for untreated stone allows its pure natural crystallisation to shine through.

The name of the brand comes from the goddess Isis because of an interest in Egyptian mythology. www.lisis.cz Instagram: @isis_jewellery

For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com

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Isobel Egan

jane gottlieb

Working exclusively with porcelain, Isobel Egan takes inspiration from architecture, memory and emotion.

The translucence and delicate quality of the material allow her to explore our relationships with space and how it shapes us. Egan’s work is featured in several permanent collections; she has received numerous awards and will represent Ireland at the European Ceramics Context 2018 in Denmark. www.isobeleganceramics.com

The California-based artist creates an idyllic vision by enhancing, collaging and painting her photographs using Photoshop. The resulting images transcend the norms of both reality and colour. Her work is held in numerous public collections and the most recent exhibition Jane Gottlieb Photographs France was held at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of Calfornia, Santa Barbara. www.janegottlieb.com

jane runchman

Jason Clarke

London-based jewellery designer Jane Runchman revels in creating bespoke pieces for clients. She works primarily with gold and a variety of precious and semi-precious stones and each piece is handmade in her studio. Inspired by the space, colour and light found in nature, she believes that jewellery is a sensuous evocation of the person it was designed for. www.janerunchman.com

Jason Clarke uses art therapy to manage his bipolar disorder.

It helps to release the pressure in his head from disturbing voices and visions. Exhibiting his work brings mental health issues to a wider audience; better understanding and education can reduce stigma. www.jasonclarke-bipolarart.com Instagram: @bipolar.art Pinterest: @bipolarart0305

JEAN DAVIS

jessie pitt

Jean Davis explores the balance between transience, stability and intention in her painting. She uses gestures taken in isolation from her subjects’ movements to remove context from the narrative and to allow elements of her subconscious to guide the finished work.

Jessie Pitt is an Australian artist based in Austria, whose contemporary landscapes are inspired by mountains, light and shadow. Her pieces echo changing moods and the deeper essence of natural environments. She utilises a mixture of mediums on unstretched canvas.

Pitt recently presented work at The Other Art Fair Los Angeles. www.jessiepitt.com Instagram: @jessiepitt_art

www.jeanzart.com

jody little

julijana ravbar

Jody Little is a Scottish artist who lives and works in London. He uses painting, drawing, collage and printmaking to create textured and layered portraits, as well as contemporary urban scenes. The piece shown here is Butler’s Wharf, from a series inspired by his walks along the river Thames in London.

Slovenia-based Julijana Ravbar is an internationally known abstract artist. She strives to make art that moves and inspires whilst allowing the viewer to form an individualised connection with the work. She notes that her work is an abstract reflection of what is within her heart and soul. Ravbar’s paintings are purchased and displayed in private collections across the world. www.artfinder.com/julijana-ravbar Instagram: @julijana_ravbar_art

www.jodylittle.co.uk Instagram: @jodylittleart

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A Part of La Meije, 2017. Charcoal, graphite, ink and acrylic on canvas, 95cm x 95cm.

Passage Into Midnight, 2018.

Acrylic painting, 100cm x 100cm.

karla guerrero

kat gaidukova

Karla Guerrero is a photographer based in Mexico City. She explores the poetry that resides in spaces, objects and nature, depicting the image within imaginary scenarios.

Her work has been exhibited in Mexico, Spain, the UK and Greece.

Guerrero won the National Award of Mexico at the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards. www.karla-guerrero.com Instagram: @karl.gt

Dubai-based artist Kat Gaidukova challenges the frenetic pace of modern life through portraits that express people’s identities in raw moments that capture emotion and personality. Through photography and digital art, her unique works submerge the viewer in an aesthetic experience.

Instagram: @art_from_kat_dxb

Liisi Eelmaa

Mandira Bahl

Liisi Eelmaa (b. 1982) is an Estonian artist. In her series Replicate an Effort she blends photography and painting. Throughout the works she examines the nature of painting and its boundaries: where we see paint as a substance or when it begins to be the image. Eelmaa simultaneously transforms the object into different scales, weights and subjects.

Instagram: @liisieelmaa

Mandira Bahl is an Indian photojournalist based in New York.

A recent graduate of the International Center of Photography, her practice is a blend of documentary and commercial. The series entitled Garbage City focuses on the business of waste after it has been collected, considering its economic value and the impact on those involved. www.mandirabahl.media Instagram: @mandira_bahl

María Ossandón Recart

markus gollner

María Ossandón Recart is an awardwinning artist based in Santiago de Chile. The Reconstruction series is part of a project based upon the collection and reconstruction of broken ceramics from across the world. The works traverse universal memories with personal experiences, creating an almost archival representation of the landscape. www.mariaossandon.com Instagram: @mariaossandon

Photographic and artistic alterations are at the centre of Markus Gollner’s creations. Producing eye-catching, thought-provoking images that utilise both hyperreality and technicality, Gollner’s personal and commercial series consist of imaginative, conceptually striking pieces that tread a line between reality and a dreamlike plane.

His latest series is entitled Subway. www.markusgollner.com Instagram: @markusgollner_photo

mhairi ballantyne

misa sawairi

In her recent artworks, painter Mhairi Ballantyne is drawn to the allure of distant places. The immersive environments created are remote yet within reach, imparting a sense of the known.

Misa Sawairi is a New York-based Japanese spatial artist and designer.

The series Ripple Trip utilises urban streets as a canvas where she finds and records materials.

Each expression consists of two photographs, taken before and after the artist’s intervention with the site, documenting the results of small actions. The images not only record Sawairi’s travels, they reflect upon the whole idea of communication. www.sawairimisa.com

www.mhairiballantyne.co.uk Instagram: @mhairiballantyne

For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com

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Nikolaos Mantziaris

Peter Coates

Nikolaos Mantziaris is a Greek artist and dentist whose work is mostly inspired from social problems and the impact they have on humankind.

His intention is focused on provoking discussions around these issues to raise awareness and find viewers who feel the same.

Mantziaris’ practice examines the combination of many different materials and techniques for the creation of large-scale wall art. www.nikosmantziaris.com

Peter Coates is a UK-based artist who combines his graphic design training, use of vibrant colour and imaginative imagery to produce lasting pictures.

His art screens, original oils, acrylics and giclée prints are widely sought after. Coates has participated in numerous exhibitions throughout the UK and France. www.petercoatesart.co.uk Twitter: @petercoatesart

PIERRE GEIER

Priyanka Shah

Pierre Geier is a German digital pinup illustrator from Saxony.

His artwork combines alternative portraiture with pop culture, sci-fi and fantasy. Presenting a new kind of painting, the works are influenced by Albert-Joseph Pénot.

Priyanka Shah’s is a London-based textile designer. In her work she focuses on developing geometric patterns from two dimensions into three-dimensional installations for commercial interiors. Shah’s client base includes Marks & Spencer.

http://bloodywing.deviantart.com http://digitalpinup.art Instagram: @p.geier

www.priyankashah.co.uk Instagram: @priyankashah.design

Vessel Studies No. 6, 2018. Oil and pastel on canvas. 180cm x 130cm.

Sophie Zhang Beijing born, London-based artist Sophie Zhang creates a meeting point between imagination and memory in her work. She captures the experience of time in a static two-dimensional image. Her latest work is filled with symbolic allusions and draws upon the syntax of drawing, painting and sculpture. www.sophiejwzhang.com Instagram: @sophiejwzhang

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Tejbir Singh Tejbir Singh is an artist and architect based in Bahrain. Architectural influences are visible in his streetscapes, heritage and urban landscapes, which are rendered with ink pens, watercolours, oils, pastels and other media. He has held and participated in exhibitions in India and Bahrain. tejbir.artspan.com Facebook: Tejbir Singh

wioletta gancarz

yann

Wioletta Gancarz is a Polish abstract painter living in Switzerland. She enjoys exploring the beauty of colours and simple shapes via a fluid process. “I allow my creativity to flow without any judgement. It’s also about curiosity and moving beyond all I know. Everything is liquid, changeable.” Her work can be found in private collections around the world. www.wiolettagancarz.com Instagram: @wioletta.gancarz.art

YANN is a Hong Kong-based artist who primarily creates figurative works using oil on canvas and mixed media. She is a also a sculptor and creates installation art projects; her creative philosophy of embracing art in daily life provides a strong foundation for her aesthetic and visual style. YANN’s work has been exhibited in Hong Kong and Europe. yann-artist.com

Stone of the Philosophers, 2016.

200cm x 200cm x 5cm.

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Aesthetica

THE ART & CULTURE MAGAZINE

www.aestheticamagazine.com

Issue 83 June / July 2018

CONSCIOUS ENVIRONMENTS

REACTIVE ARCHITECTURE

CINEMATIC STORYTELLING

Harnessing the personal experience as a blueprint for interactive fashion

Elena Mora’s intuitive designs consider the complexities of colour and lighting

Social responsibility takes the stage at the Venice Biennale presentation

Celebrating the photography of Alex Prager through a major career survey

UK £5.95 Europe €11.95 USA $15.49

IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGY

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David Stewart, Halt, 2013.

last words

David Stewart Wren Artists

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Many of my images are of inter-related characters, stories and places that have developed from an observation of family, society and relationships.

Halt, much like my other works, offers a wider reflection upon everyday life.

There is an underlying sense of humour within the image, and its deadpan nature allows the viewer to interpret and imagine beyond the limits of the scene. Overall, photography allows me to achieve a heightened sense of reality. The process of using a large format camera means that the details are accentuated and can be seen more clearly; audiences are unsure as to whether they’re looking at a captured moment, a staged set, or something more surreal. The work appears next in the programme at Wren London, with an exhibition running mid-September to November. www.wren.london.

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