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M AG A Z I N E Spring/summer 2011
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23 June — 23 July 2011
Friendship of the Peoples
Brian Griffiths • Bridget Smith • Brighid Lowe Caline Aoun • Daniel Sturgis • Daniel Wallis Eddie Peake • Emma Biggs & Matthew Collings • Fiona Banner Gabriel Hartley • Jack Newling • Jaime Gili • James Howard Jane Harris • Joel Croxson • Julian King • Katie Cuddon Katrina Blannin • Kraig Wilson • Leo Fitzmaurice • Lucia Pizzani Luey Graves • Mandy Ure • Mark Pearson • Martina Schmuecker Michael Dean • Neil Rumming • Nick Goss • Patricia Ellis Paul Johnson • Rhys Coren • Richard Kirwan • Robert Pratt Roy Voss • Sascha Braunig • Sophie Lisa Beresford Stella Capes • Tillman Kaiser • Tim Ellis New Works
CONTENTS — 6 GALLERY GANGS
It’s a team effort at four London art galleries.
Words MICHAEL NOTTINGHAM Photography NIK HARTLEY
12 b A GIRL
Introducing b store’s first full womenswear collection for spring/summer 2011. Photography HARLEY WEIR Fashion editor CAMILLA POLE
22 TELLING STORIES
b meets four filmmakers who are distorting the space between reality and epitome. Words DAL CHODHA Photography JONNIE CRAIG
26 DESIGNER INTERVIEW
With a career spanning forty years, we talk to the designer Ian Batten.
Words DAL CHODHA Photography COLIN DODGSON Fashion editor TRACEY NICHOLSON
36 SUPER FLUX
A private performance by the artist Anat Ben-David. Photography ELLEN NOLAN Fashion editor JANE HOWARD
46 STEPPIN’ UP
Photography ALEX SAINSBURY Fashion editor JASON HUGHES
60 FA R F R O M N OW H E R E
Photography NICK DOREY Fashion editor SAM RANGER
74 G R O O V Y, L A I D B A C K A N D N A S T Y Photography MEL BLES Fashion editor STEVEN WESTGARTH
88 WA S H E D U P
Photography AITKEN JOLLY Fashion editor JASON HUGHES
104 T H E B E S S AY
This is where it’s fucking at: 90s London clubland revisited. Words MILES SIMPSON
108 b I S F O R B R U TA L I S M
A tour of London’s great estates.
Words TOM FINCH Photography KASIA BOBULA
132 MASKED
Unseen photographs of JJ Hudson.
Words MAGDA KEANEY Photography AXEL HOEDT
152 SHOP
What we’re wearing this season.
[Cover] Hannah wears top STYLIST’S STUDIO; Skirt PETER PILOTTO; Sunglasses GILES FOR CUTLER AND GROSS; Shell bracelet PEBBLE LONDON Photography AITKEN JOLLY Fashion editor JASON HUGHES Hair HALLEY BRISKER @ DAVID COFFIN MANAGEMENT Make-up AYAMI NISHIMURA @ JULIAN WATSON AGENCY Manicurist KATIE JANE HUGHES using ORLY Model HANNAH NOBEL @ ELITE LONDON
www.peterjensen.co.uk
M AG A Z I N E Spring/summer 2011
Editorial & creative director Jason Hughes jason@ bstoremagazine.com Editor Dal Chodha dal@ bstoremagazine.com Art director Christopher Colville-Walker christopher@ bstoremagazine.com Designers Ben Smith Emily Hadden Subeditor Stephan Takkides Fashion assistants Isabella Goumal Georgia Boal-Russell
Contributors Aitken Jolly Alex Sainsbury Axel Hoedt Camilla Pole Christopher Nield Colin Dodgson Ellen Nolan Harley Weir Jane Howard Jonnie Craig Kasia Bobula Magda Keaney Mel Bles Michael Nottingham Miles Simpson Nick Dorey Nik Hartley Sam Ranger Steven Westgarth Tracey Nicholson Tom Finch Advertising advertising@ bstoremagazine.com
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6
GALLERY GANGS
Words MICHAEL NOTTINGHAM Photography NIK HARTLEY
Left to right: Julia Ravenscroft, Jonathan Trayte, Juliet Oldfield, Richard Kirwan, Francesca Oldfield, Ryan Leigh, Sam Knowles, Ben Ashton, Simon Oldfield, photographed on 24 March 2011 during Jonathan Trayte’s first solo show, Under a Pine Tree.
SIMON OLDFIELD GALLERY When Simon Oldfield opened an art gallery on the day after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, at some point he must have heard a tiny voice somewhere inside, screaming in terror. If so, he did well to ignore it and forge on, because as its eponymous director he has managed to establish a successful and consistently engaging gallery – economic gloom notwithstanding. His background and training probably didn’t hurt. Before launching his full-time career as a gallery director, Oldfield was employed as a lawyer in a large City firm, working at weekends for a gallery that sold Warhol, Lichtenstein and other 20th-century greats. “It was an enlightening experience and I learned a lot very quickly,” he shares. With the support of his exhibitions co-ordinator, Julia Ravenscroft, as well as the encouragement and assistance of family members, Oldfield has realised an impressive exhibitions programme for such a new gallery. In close consultation with the artists involved – “we work very collaboratively” – the gallery mounted three group exhibitions last year as previews of the artists’ work. The first, New Symphony, inaugurated the occupancy of a new, spacious gallery, spread across the first floor of an old townhouse close to Covent Garden market. Judging from what the artists involved have been up to since, these preview shows were a resounding success: Tim Ellis exhibited at Newspeak at the Saatchi Gallery and then at SpaceX in Exeter, while Katie Cuddon is currently the inaugural ceramics fellow at the Camden Arts Centre. Both participated in New Symphon. Ben Ashton, who had a sell-out show at the gallery in February, is currently the headline artist in ‘Shifting
Boundaries in Brighton. “I’m extremely proud of all our artists as they forge ahead in their careers and build on each success,” says Oldfield, positively beaming. The gallery’s programme in 2011 opened with a series of solo exhibitions including Jonathan Trayte’s first solo show. Following Trayte, Sam Knowles’s exhibition, Fearful Sphere – which closes 11 June – is the artist’s first solo exhibition. Using books and book covers that he has cut up and reconfigured as building blocks, Knowles constructs pieces that, in Oldfield’s explanation, look at how the idea of a “grand theory” can explain the world is falling away, and explores the cracks opening up in this misconception. “You can, if you have an extensive art history background, appreciate the works on a variety of levels,” says Oldfield of both artists’ oeuvres. “But as with all good art you can take something away no matter what the breadth of your art references.” That inclusiveness of aesthetic response surely underpins the gallery’s upcoming show, Friendship of the Peoples. Oldfield is particularly excited about the collaborative show, which opens 23 June and will feature the work of 40 artists, each of whom submit one piece of exactly A1 poster size. “The show is structured around the concept of “community” and explores the very human and primeval desire to belong to something greater than oneself,” he says. “I suppose that’s at the heart of what we are trying to do at the gallery.”
Simon Oldfield’s current exhibition, Sam Knowles’ first solo exhibition – Fearful Sphere, runs until 11 June. simonoldfield.com b Magazine Gallery Gangs 7
“Fashion,” says James Hyman, “swings from one direction to another.” But he isn’t referring to sartorial trends – his Savile Row address notwithstanding. “After a period of conceptualism, you get a reassertion of painting,” the gallery owner and art collector explains. “What happened in the 70s was conceptual art, then in the 80s there was a revival of interest in the School of London.” The latter includes Bacon, Freud, Auerbach and Kossoff – giants of British figurative painting and artists who figure in both the gallery’s exhibitions and Hyman’s own writing and research (he studied and taught art history at the Courtauld and continues to publish art criticism). Hyman’s first gallery in London’s Mason’s Yard (opened 2002, “before the White Cube got there”) focused mainly on the School of London and other more established artists. But when the gallery moved in 2007 to its present location next to the Royal Academy, its focus began to include younger contemporary artists and emerging photographers. The current exhibition, Beyond the Human Clay, in many ways distils his core interests and the gallery’s overall curatorial direction. An
homage of sorts to The Human Clay – the artist RB Kitaj’s milestone 1976 exhibition that showcased British figurative painting in a period dominated by abstract art – BTHC features many School of London artists included in the 76 show. But it also includes representatives of the present era, such as the Chapmans, Angus Fairhurst and other members of the YBA school, which defined itself by emphasising the conceptual mode of expression over the figurative one that had re-emerged in the 1980s. Hyman saw some of the early YBA exhibitions, including the pivotal Freeze and Building 1 shows, and in his words “felt very insecure that the artists I loved were people like Kossoff and Auerbach.” The publicity surrounding the YBA and their Saatchi-bankrolled exploits would soon eclipse the merits of the earlier generation of artists. “It was more fun [for journalists] to write about what happened last night at the Groucho Club than about someone pottering around in Camden Town, going to the same studio for 50 years.” “A lot of it [early YBA art] was flippant, a lot of it was provocative and posturing,” Hyman
suggests. “And a lot of it didn’t say much about the human condition. Yet, at the same time, many of the key works are about mortality. The Chapmans’ Hell, Hirst’s A Thousand Years with its enclosed life cycle, Whiteread’s holocaust memorial in Vienna. A lot of the iconic pieces from that period are seriously considering mortality but using different languages.” “So I think it’s a mistake to see the groups as opposed,” he continues. “I suppose part of what Beyond the Human Clay is about is bringing some of these people together.” The common ground for both generations can, according to Hyman, be found in their overarching concern with the body. It’s a concern central to Hyman’s own interest in art: “What it is to be a human being today in a physical and psychological sense. What it’s about is people – that’s what I’m interested in.”
James Hyman Gallery’s current exhibition, a group show of figurative art – Beyond The Human Clay, runs until 18 June. jameshymangallery.com
Left to right: Valerie Whitacre, James Hyman, Christabel Armsden, Becky Davies, Charlotte McDonald photographed on 20 April 2011 during the internationally acclaimed photographer Shai Kremer’s Fallen Empires show.
JAME S HYMAN GALLERY
VILMA GOLD “We went over to the dark side a long time ago,” confesses Laura Lord, referring to when she and Rachel Williams gave up making art in the early noughties to become co-directors of the successful east London gallery Vilma Gold. The chuckle that follows this tongue-in-cheek admission is an easy one, though. Over its 10 year existence, Vilma Gold has built strong, nurturing relationships with its artists, it’s ethos more collaborative rather than corporate, with Lord and Williams on the road every month in support of artists’ exhibitions. “The gallery and its running have grown in tandem with the artists and their work – you can’t have one without the other,” says Williams. “It’s grown from being a group of friends, actually.” One of those friends is the video artist Charles Atlas, whose recent solo show is his third at Vilma Gold. Atlas began his career in New York in the 70s as filmmaker-in-residence for the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, with whom he pioneered the genre of video dance – dances choreographed for video rather than live performance. Although he has
continually made films and gained acclaim for his work with Cunningham (and for his later collaboration with Michael Clark on such projects as Hail the New Puritan) Atlas has only recently been presented strictly in an art context. “His career has really bloomed,” notes Lord. “He’s in a show at the South London Gallery at the moment, has a major solo show in Haarlem next year and has just sold a major work to the Tate.” Atlas isn’t the only artist whose star has risen with the gallery’s. Mark Titchner – known for his large, text-based pieces – was with Vilma Gold when it opened in Rivington Street in 2000, remaining through two moves – first to Vyner Street in 2003, then to the current, larger space on Minerva Street in 2006, the same year the artist was nominated for the Turner Prize. The gallery has just finished showing The Great White Way Goes Black – an exhibition that evidences the breadth of Lord’s and William’s interest and commitment. The six artists featured span all generations, a range of nationalities and various different mediums: four have never been shown in
London, despite two of those being quite established internationally. “The show includes painting, installations, performance and video – so it’s really cross-medium, which represents the gallery,” says Williams, adding: “We have a special commitment to performance.” And what of the gallery name? “It’s fictitious,” she smiles. “We didn’t really want to give our names to the gallery. It seemed to make more sense having a nonsensical name for it rather than having our names above the entrance in a kind of corporate flourish.” “Plus it also fits with the collaborative nature of the gallery,” adds Lord. “And the way we work with the artists. It’s all about them, really.”
Vilma Gold’s next exhibition, featuring new work by the Russian painters Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov, opens 8 June. vilmagold.com
Left to right: Martin Rasmussen, Laura Lord, Rachel Williams, Charles Atlas, Josh Whitaker, photographed on 25 March 2011 during Charles Atlas’s solo show ( / + \ ).
b Magazine Gallery Gangs 9
Left to right: Emily LaBarge, Bruce Haines, Volker Eichelmann, Audrey Reynolds, Adam Gillam, Paul Johnson, photographed on 24 March 2011 during Eva Berendes’ New Reliefs show.
ANCIENT & MODERN “Our gallery is one of the smallest in London, about 30 feet long and six feet wide,” says Bruce Haines, the director of Ancient & Modern. Despite the diminutive space, the gallery has had an impressively expansive schedule, mounting seven exhibitions and attending five art fairs in 2009, its first year with Bruce at the helm fulltime. And all this right after he’d curated the Welsh pavilion in Venice. “It was one of our best years, and an expensive one, but you’ve got to keep putting the energy into it to make it work.”
during the day is great. It’s almost like a family.” In addition to his regular assistants – Christies art history graduate Emily LeBarge and the young artist Matthew Welch – that family includes a stable of artists that has grown from six to twelve. “I suppose what they all have in common is a sense in their work that acknowledges their context in history,” Haines suggests. “Whether that’s Eva Berendes referencing Amish quiltmaking or 1980s furniture designers, or Volker Eichelmann’s fascination with 18th-century follies or mid-20th-century diarists.”
Before opening Ancient & Modern in 2006 with a fellow curator (who has since left), Haines had an accomplished and varied arts career in the public sector. Three years at the Oriel Mostyn gallery in north Wales were followed by a rewarding stint at the Centre for the Visual Arts in Cardiff. “It was a nice thing,” he quips, “but people were expected to pay to get in and it just couldn’t work like that.” It wasn’t until his work at the Camden Arts Centre in London that Haines reckons he was even fully aware of the commercial sector. “And I didn’t think there was a possibility I’d ever work in it,” he adds.
It’s fitting that the ups and downs of running a small commercial gallery – successful exhibitions on the one hand and the marketplace’s uncertainties on the other – find a curious parallel in Ancient & Modern’s physical location. “Whitecross Street is one of the oldest street markets in London,” he explains. “We’re right next to Bunhill Fields, which is where William Blake and Daniel Defoe are buried. So we’re in great company. But we’re also at the dividing line between two parishes: St Lukes and St Giles. One is the patron of artists, the other of beggars and thieves.” “So we’re right in the middle,” he laughs.
But into the deep end he jumped, and despite the fiscal strains of operating in a recession-racked marketplace, Haines expresses appreciation for its other rewards. “It’s really nice having this continual relationship with artists, especially trying to keep half of our programme coming from London,” he explains. “Having them pop in
Ancient & Modern’s current exhibition, a group show of photographic works – Evening’s Tears, Morning’s Dew, runs until 18 June. ancientandmodern.org
b Magazine Gallery Gangs 11
12 Photography HARLEY WEIR Fashion editor CAMILLA POLE
b A GIR L
Before the b store established itself in 2001, finding a place that sold a jolly good poplin shirt, relaxed leather shoes and pleated chinos was no easy task. So understandably, the last 10 years have established b as a mecca of sorts for menswear and as their 10th birthday approaches, Matthew Murphy and Kirk Beattie decided it’s time to welcome the b girl to the fold. It was left to the talents of Natascha Stolle – the Fashion East cultivated designer who studied English literature before completing the MA at Central Saint Martins in 2008 –
to create the brand’s first full womenswear collection for spring/summer 2011. Taking a journey to America via Africa, the collection is earthy and gamine with the Illustrator Charlotte Mann’s bold graphic print left to add a batik feel to the American buttoned-up sensibility offered for the season. True to Stolle’s distinctivly sporty treatment of luxury fabrics (a sweatshirt bomber has sheer organza sleeve detail), prints come in two dot variations and psychedelic florals on slouchy short jumpsuits and tailored silk trousers. What b does well is the “classics” so cue the
narrow tailored trouser, the belted shirt dress, the tailored shirt, the classic tee and trench for the womenswear offering – pieces that will appear every season in different guises. Also reinterpreted on film by the filmmaking duo Velvet Rain (Ivana Bobic and Rain Li) the spring/ summer 2011 collection as shown in Leaving Dreamland combines neon glamour and follows b’s girl taking a trip through an eerie LA-like landscape just hanging out and killing time.
bstorelondon.com
b Magazine b A Girl 15
All clothes B STORE (SPRING/SUMMER 2011); Sunglasses CUTLER AND GROSS; Jewellery STYLIST’S OWN Hair and make-up ZOE TAYLOR @ JED ROOT using SISLEY & BUMBLE AND BUMBLE. Models BETHANY TERRY @ NEXT AND MADDY FORD @ STORM Photographer’s assistant PHILIPP BIERBAUM
b Magazine b A Girl 21
22
TELLING STORIES
b meets four filmmakers who are distorting the space between reality and epitome.
CLIO BARNARD Clio Barnard won the award for best new documentary filmmaker at the Tribeca film festival for her debut feature, The Arbor, in 2010. The film is the true story of the British playwright, Andrea Dunbar, who died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 29 having penned three acclaimed plays (all produced at the Royal Court theatre) and leaving behind three children from different men. “The truth is complicated. You’re never ever going to be simply watching the truth of a true story,” Barnard tells. “I didn’t set out to make a film about Andrea. I knew Alan Clarke’s 1986 film adaptation of her play Rita, Sue and Bob Too and I liked it a lot but I’d never seen the play, as I’m not really much of a theatre person. I found a copy of it in a bookshop and it had been reprinted along with A State Affair and at the time, I was interested in verbatim theatre – a kind of documentary theatre – which does the opposite if you apply it to film.” In The Arbor, actors lip-sync to the voices of Dunbar’s kin, questioning documentary’s aspiration to collapse the distance between reality and representation: a retelling of memories. Barnard herself grew up in Yorkshire, not far from Bradford and the infamous Buttershaw estate of Dunbar’s youth. Going on to study at Jacob Kramer college in Leeds (known today as Leeds college of arts), it was drawing and animation that first caught her attention. “At some point, I became quite obsessed with the materials and I’d started processing and developing film, which is quite a laborious process. I think at that point I became quite attached to film as a medium.” The verbatim technique used in The Arbor was seen in Barnard’s 1998 film Random Acts Of Intimacy. “I couldn’t write a script because it wasn’t a conventional film, so I was writing ideas and it was about people who’d had sex with strangers in public places.” As is often the case with her filmmaking, Barnard stumbled upon her raison d’être during the intense period of research, after meeting real people who told her their own stories. “I’d put an advert in various magazines and newspapers and I’d received lots of peculiar phone calls from people. I was so interested in the gap between knowing if people were telling the truth or not, for example, when people told me their stories, were they exaggerating them or imagining them?” She concludes: “That gap between what really happened and the account of what happened totally captures me.”
Words DAL CHODHA Photography JONNIE CRAIG
NICHOLAS ABRAHAMS Nicholas Abrahams began his career making music videos in the early 90s for the likes of the alternative music group Stereo Lab and the Icelandic band Sigur Rós. If you ask him what he does now, he’ll tell you happily that he’s wandered into the art-documentary genre of filmmaking. “The first video I actually ever made was a documentary for Cornershop’s song Waterlogged. I didn’t know how to do it as I didn’t go to film school – I just loved music,” he explains. From art into music, music into documentary, documentary into reportage, Abrahams’s work often crosses fields, the most significant crossover resulting in his 2009 collaboration with the Turner Prizewinning artist Jeremy Deller. Together they made The Posters Came from the Walls, a film exploring what drives Depeche Mode’s fans to follow the group around the world. His next project entitled Are You Man Enough to be a Woman is about Jane County, the American male-to-female transsexual performer, musician and actor. Once managed by David Bowie, County had starred in Andy Warhol’s stage play Pork in 1971 and today resides with her elderly parents in a small Baptist community in Atlanta, having to live as a man to save awkward questioning. Abrahams caught the Greyhound intercity bus to go and visit County while premiering The Posters Came from the Walls at the True False film festival in Missouri, Columbia. The journey of making a documentary is unpredictable, he notes: “You know the story but the story isn’t always the most interesting thing when you’re making a documentary. You’re dealing with myth too and creating it and I think people like Jane are aware of that too. She says she never wants to see it, but at the same time she obviously wants to leave something of herself behind. I’m interested in looking at how gay culture has influenced so much in popular culture but is never acknowledged. I mean, Jane influenced Bowie a lot and that needs recognition, I think.” He is working with Deller again too on another documentary, this time about an 85-year-old artist from Norwich called Bruce who’d worked on an album in the 60s (produced by George Martin) which never saw a release date – a fate also shared by County: Bruce’s band, The Alberts, also appeared on the first ever programme to be aired on BBC2, yet when they headed to America, they found their manager, the comedian Lenny Bruce, in jail with a drug problem. Abrahams chuckles: “Failure isn’t a theme in my work at all! These people are successful, but they don’t want to compromise. They’re happy people. I just don’t think either of them has chased the money.”
nicholasabrahams.com b Magazine Telling Stories 23
VELVET RAIN IVANA BOBIC AND RAIN LI The filmmaker duo Ivana Bobic and Rain Li say that a film doesn’t always need to do anything in particular – it just has to be good. “There are certain films you watch to escape, a lot you watch to relate to and thirdly there are films you watch for inspiration – but for me, they just have to be good films,” Li attests. The duo met on the set of Bobic’s The Priest, which was awarded best short film at the International Film Festival of Ireland in 2009. Li’s past directorial projects for various internationally renowned luxury brands including Dries Van Noten, Yohji Yamamoto and Phillip Lim encouraged a second collaboration between the directors for b store’s spring/summer 2011 women’s film Leaving Dreamland.
The fashion film genre is one that is of constant revalidation, so the two are keen to establish a third type of film. “In any film – even fashion film – you need to have a sense of narrative but you can’t be too coherent because you bore the audience to death and you can’t have a dialogue, so therefore it’s a silent film and you don’t want to make people think it’s a music video, so there is a really particular way you approach it … but at the end of the day it is still a film,” Li tells. Both hardly watch any television, Bobic has a small set with poor reception and Li reads no magazines and chooses to eschew the general social functions of the internet. “I’m very ignorant that way, I don’t want to know too much. I like to search for information rather than information finding me. Ivana is much more open-minded – I sometimes get very specific about things, whereas Ivana will take what I say and then add something new, something that I’ve probably dismissed, that’s why our collaboration works. If I do it on my own, I don’t like to think more than I need but because there are two people you have to talk about it and that really helps.” Velvet Rain aren’t twinned souls as such but the similarities are in the film directors they enjoy from Andrei Tarkovsky to Ang Lee, David Lynch, Wong Kar Wai and Terence Malick to the cultural shift they both made at a young age, Bobic from Serbia at age 5, Li from China aged 15. Discussion is key to creating good work, Bobic says. “You have to have conversation with someone that you can really trust. It creates a whole third option when it’s not just you on your own with one brain.”
JONATHAN ENTWISTLE “The work of a film director is to tell a story,” Jonathan Entwistle says. Selected by Screen International as a “star of tomorrow” in 2010, the director studied fine art at Chelsea and then graduated on to an MA at the London Film School. “At Chelsea we were told that anything pre 1980 was shit and that Lars von Trier and Werner Herzog were much more relevant,” he grins, “but when I arrived at film school, I was told that anything post 1960 was shit and I should be watching anything by Hitchcock or John Ford. I was sat in the middle – I’d never watched Hitchcock before then.” More involved in the craft of filmmaking, the LFS shunned the digital age, “even when it came down to the editing, you’d be cutting films by hand with razor blades!” Entwistle says. “That teaches you to know what’s most important. You’ve got to know what you’re looking for but to be honest, we were using 35mm film on Panavision dollies and tracks in the studio and I thought fuck this. I was watching Shane Meadows, Mike Leigh and Lars von Trier. I just wanted to pick the camera up and take it to where I knew and that was my first short – Cotton Stones – my reaction to getting out of the studio and picking up the camera.”
His second film, The Good North, looks at the candid racist underbelly in a remote northern village; the female character at the centre reflecting the often-impenetrable cycle of life. “Even though she has a shit life, she goes back into the car in the end. It is a cycle of never escaping and in a way that’s what Cotton Stones is about too, the one guy that wants to escape, can’t. That’s a little bit like I feel when I am back up there.” Entwistle’s first two films have been reactions against filmmaking rather than having any colossal social agenda and the director is thinking big with his next project. “I’m not going to pretend that I want to make shitty British movies that nobody’s going to see – that’s the old British filmmaker mindset. There are an awful lot of filmmakers making drama that want to make thrillers. They’ve growing up watching Twin Peaks and just want to be wearing a trench-coat, solving crime. Imagine combining that with something like a Chanel commercial! Can you imagine the visual power of that?”
jonathanentwistle.com b Magazine Telling Stories 25
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DESIGNER INTERVIEW — IAN B AT T E N
Words DAL CHODHA Photography COLIN DODGSON Fashion editor TRACEY NICHOLSON
All clothes IAN BATTEN
Heavy viscose suit from spring/summer 1995
“to me, style in a way has nothing to do with fashion at all ”
Wool three-piece suit from autumn/winter 1990-91 [Opposite] Whipcord jacket with satin sleeves and harrington shirt from spring/summer 1997; Glasses Ian’s own by Anglo American Optical
Ian Batten worked at the Royal Opera House as a dresser during his days at Hornsey Art College in 60s London. At the age of 17, when the designer was told he was too old to begin pursuing professional ballet as a career option, defeated he sighed: “I’ll just carry on with fashion then.” Today – over 40 years later – he sits in his narrow, Highgate shopcum-studio with no regrets and a trim legion of sartorial devotees.
Ian Batten: I never wanted to be a retailer but having the shop and studio together made sense. Many of my customers are architects actually – it’s a joke considering this small space I work from; I’ve had people come over to see the shop especially. I don’t know why they seem to like what I do a lot. Dal Chodha: Maybe architects are looking for clothes that don’t feel so heavily constructed and slip on easily. Clothes are different to buildings, after all
musicians and architects shop there and it transcends people who are just into fashion.
Do you remember your first day? I think it’s because the clothes are quiet. You just put them on and they don’t scream at you and you don’t suddenly walk out and people start staring at you – it depends on how you put it together. I guess you don’t realise that you develop a style that you can’t see. Working for over 40 years, do you think this is an aesthetic you’ve matured into?
Men are odd in a lot of ways too, they are much more specific than women and you either get someone who will come back to you or someone who is not interested at all. There is never a middle bit.
Oh yes. I mean people say to me, “you’ve been doing it for a long time so, you know,” as if you’ve reached the end of something, so you’ll know it all and I say, NO! It doesn’t work like that – you’re learning all of the time!
It might have something to do with the way men see clothing, as a sort of uniform.
Actually I spent a long time looking for information about you. I had heard stories, Matt had told me what you had done before but there was nowhere concrete to go to get any information about you. Am I just not looking hard enough?
You’re right. I had this young banker come in the other day and he put on a jacket and asked me what I thought. I said it looked fine and he turned and said to me, “you know, I couldn’t wear this to work,” and I suddenly realised he’s a banker, he wants a uniform, fitted with sharp shoulders. And that isn’t my uniform. Your collections are often more unstructured and casual, using lots of washed linens and cottons … Exactly! It was just at that exact moment I realised that that’s what bankers are trying to put over with those suits, that authoritative style and really, it just reminded me that menswear is very specific, don’t you think? It’s the same with b store too. Lots of artists,
just do art,” and I thought that sounded good.
It’s funny because, well, I don’t know, you never think that you’re still going to be doing it! Which is why I guess I’m not on the internet much – I’m of a different generation. You know the tailor, Charlie Allen? I bumped into Charlie in the street after a long time and he said to me: “Are you still doing all that designing lark?” How did you get into it? I always liked drawing at school and I remember my art teacher said to my mum at some careers thing that I ought to think about going to art school. I had no idea what art school was so I asked her and she said, “you
Well, the first girl I ever saw in there was this incredible beatnik and I thought, wow, she is so beautiful. She ended up being Charlie Watt’s wife. Ray Davis and the artist Allen Jones were at college at the same time as me too. I’m always enamoured by how nonchalant people who grew up in 60s London are about what it was like back then. It’s hard for anyone who wasn’t there to put it into context – it just seems such a free and incredibly creative time. What was it like? It was sort of interesting, but when I went to art college, I went there as a naive person, not knowing what I was going to do and in a way, everybody was the same. Then after five years of being in art school you become a different person. You enjoyed drawing, so what made you go on to do fashion? I ended up wanting to do fashion drawing actually but when I went into the fashion department they said, you can’t just do fashion drawing you have to learn about clothing – they go hand in hand. I don’t think I was particularly liked in the fashion department because the woman who ran it, had all her little girls making pretty dresses and I came in and was using charcoal and was a bit common. I didn’t get on that well there, but I enjoyed it. I remember you mentioning to me before that when you left college, you went on to work for a big fashion company. b Magazine Ian Batten 29
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Yes, it was the mid 60s and it was this huge company that did really boring, middle-ofthe-road stuff called Rona Roy – it was great training for me. I went in there naively and I designed all these dresses that were really big sellers but it was when Mary Quant and all of those people were getting publicity and the whole Kings Road thing was happening. Before that it was all a bit boring. Do you remember thinking at the time, wow, something big is happening? Oh God yes, I was absolutely aware but didn’t understand the change. I remember going into the first Habitat shop and going: “Fuck! What is this?” It was all so new, it wasn’t anything to do with what they were selling, it was the way it was displayed; there wasn’t anything around like that before – ever. And fashions were changing too Everything sort of shifted. You know, there were suddenly lots of new people coming in, naively doing things, like me. I remember doing a dress which had a big cut out of the front and suddenly it was in the newspaper, talking about me as the “new designer”. But I made some mistakes, which were fortuitous and because things were selling, they were overlooked – I would have been sacked otherwise. Looking back on it though, it was really boring.
You switched to doing only menswear in the early 90s, when all eyes were on the London set including Nigel Hall, Duffer of St George and Hope & Glory It was in about 1992 or 93, I met this friend of mine – who I was at art school with – and he’d made a lot of money in the kitchen business and he said why don’t we work together? So we did a business and I decided to do only menswear, as it hadn’t started then like it is now. Every designer was thinking they should do menswear; people like Betty Jackson were doing it too! That’s happening now with menswear designers doing womenswear
Do you remember the first time you ever noticed clothing? When I was about 13, yes, I’d just gone to secondary school and the big thing I’d always wanted – which I did get in the end – was luminous socks. I’d seen some cool guys in the playground with them and I remember buying them. I was very aware of clothing, but I don’t know why. But in retrospect, what did those socks mean? Were they to make you fit in or help you stand out?
The difference for me now is that the womenswear I do for Livingstone Studios in Hampstead is just for me, but what I did then was about working on trends. Before, it was easier because you were always out and socialising, you saw trends, you saw it early and there was a feeling but after a while that can get a bit much. I’m so pleased that I’m nothing to do with the fashion crowd now.
That’s a good question. I think I wanted to be in with a certain crowd but also not be like everybody else. I don’t even know whether it is exhibitionist or what, but actually, to me, style in a way has nothing to do with fashion at all. I saw this old man in the supermarket the other day wearing really tight trousers with a funny, short jacket - he looked like Jacques Tati actually – who is one of my heroes. He had this funny stoop but he looked great. His profile – because of the length of what he was wearing and the proportions – was such a great shape.
In what way?
I wonder if those proportions were deliberate
Well, I’m out of it. People say, “oh you’re a fashion designer,” and I say, no, I’m not a fashion designer, I make clothing: that’s it.
When I was watching Notebook on Cities and Clothes by Wim Wenders, Yohji talks about why he loves black: “because it doesn’t detract from shape.” I just love that statement and it went into my head, that’s what menswear is about. So, you know, when I’m making suits for people, one inch can make something completely ordinary, look truly stylish.
What else did you do?
That’s a pretty simple clarification
I left there and did a few other jobs and then got a job with Sterling Cooper. Anthony Price was there too and Paul Smith was making clothes for us. It was fantastic, we were always going away too and I was constantly travelling.
Well fashion is a lot to do with trends and as a designer, there is a certain period you reach, where you don’t follow the trends and it’s more about putting your stamp on something.
ianbatten.com
Wool gabardine tartan pea coat from autumn/winter 1993; Wool gabardine tartan trousers autumn/winter 2009-10 [Previous] Cotton work jacket from spring/summer 1990
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“People say, ‘oh you’re a fashion designer,’ and I say, no, I’m not a fashion designer, I make clothing: that’s it.”
Heavy viscose suit spring/summer 1995; Glasses Ian’s own by Uniqlo [Opposite] Cotton work jackets spring/summer 1990; Jeans spring/summer 2010
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SUPER FLUX — Performance artist Anat Ben-David is a member of the electroclash multidisciplinary group Chicks on Speed. In 2003, she won the Goldsmiths Art Purchase Prize for “Popaganda” – a project focused on the power structures and symbolism of the Pop icon and fascist politics.
Photography ELLEN NOLAN Fashion editor JANE HOWARD @ M.A.P.
Dress MONIQUE; Tights WOLFORD
Dress ANN-SOFIE BACK; Shorts B STORE [Opposite] Waistcoat jacket B STORE
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Cuff CHRISTOPHE LEMAIRE; Belt SOPHIE HULME; Tights WOLFORD
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Necklace II. Mod. 2 “480, 3 Chain” THE MEDLEY INSTITUTE [Opposite] Shirt B STORE
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[Opposite] Scarf STEPHAN SCHNEIDER Make-up KATE LINDSEY using M.A.C PRO Model PERFORMANCE ARTIST ANAT BEN-DAVID Thanks to Kuni Awai @ b store
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Photography ALEX SAINSBURY Fashion editor JASON HUGHES
O’Shea wears trench and jeans SATYENKUMAR; Neckties CASELY-HAYFORD; Sandals GURKEES
Henry wears jacket and cargo pants CASELY-HAYFORD [Opposite] O’Shea wears belted jacket and cargo pants TIM SOAR; Sandals GURKEES
Henry wears shirt and trousers CHRISTOPHE LEMAIRE; Sunglasses CUTLER & GROSS
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O’Shea wears jacket A.SAUVAGE; Henry wears vest and scarf STEPHAN SCHNEIDER
Henry wears blazer OMAR KASHOURA; Jeans STYLIST’S STUDIO; Hat IAN BATTEN [Opposite] O’Shea wears suit EHUD; Hat LOU DALTON
Henry wears shirt LOU DALTON; Necktie CASELY-HAYFORD O’Shea wears sleeveless jacket, waistcoat and trousers LOU DALTON; Cummerbund STYLIST’S OWN
O’Shea wears blazer and T-shirt B STORE [Opposite] Henry wears blazer, trousers and hat IAN BATTEN; Sunglasses CUTLER AND GROSS Hair HIROSHI Make-up KEN NAKANO Models HENRY AND O’SHEA @ SELECT Set design GEORGINA PRAGNELL Photographer’s assistant HUGO YANGUELA Fashion assistants ALEC MATHER AND ISABELLA GOUMAL Thanks to Dounia Benjelloul @ Select
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Photography NICK DOREY Fashion editor SAM RANGER
Dress MARTINE ROSE; Skirt RAFFAELE ASCIONE; Socks FALKE; Brogues CHURCH’S
Polo shirt BETHAN SILVERWOOD; Top SIMONE ROCHA; Dress CHRISTIAN WIJNANTS [Opposite] Top BOBOUTIC; Dress RICHARD NICOLL; Socks FALKE; Brogues CHURCH’S
Polo neck MEADHAM KIRCHHOFF; Coat SOPHIE HULME [Opposite] Dress WILLIAM HENDRY
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Dress RICHARD NICOLL; Socks FALKE; Brogues CHURCH’S [Opposite] Top WILLIAM HENDRY; Skirt B STORE; Socks FALKE; Brogues CHURCH’S
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Top RAFFAELE ASCIONE; Shirt and skirt SIMONE ROCHA; Brogues CHURCH’S [Opposite] Shirt B STORE; Jumper GILES
Blouse GILES; Jumper LOU DALTON [Opposite] Cardigan MEADHAM KIRCHHOFF; Dress JAMIE COCKERILL; Sunglasses GENERAL EYEWEAR
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Dress JAMIE COCKERILL; Socks FALKE; Brogues CHURCH’S [Opposite] Top WILLIAM HENDRY; Skirt B STORE; Socks FALKE; Brogues CHURCH’S Hair BEN JONES using BUMBLE AND BUMBLE Make-up JANEEN WITHERSPOON @ JULIAN WATSON AGENCY using M.A.C Models MADDIE KULICKA @ ELITE LONDON Photographer’s assistants RONAN GALLAGHER AND WILL MARSDEN Fashion assistants CRISTINA HOLMESA AND GUY RUGERONI Retouching POSTMEN Thanks to Camilla and James @ Elite London, Provision Studios and Prolighting
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G ROOV Y, LAIDBACK AN D NAST Y
Photography MEL BLES Fashion editor STEVEN WESTGARTH
Chloe wears top JENNY POSTLE; Trousers HOLLY FULTON; Boots ASHISH
Chloe wears printed shirt ANTIPODIUM; Mesh shirt SIMONE ROCHA; Cut off maxi dress ANN-SOFIE BACK; Trousers JENNY POSTLE [Opposite] Benoni wears gillet and shorts JAMES LONG; Blazer JW ANDERSON; Shirt, waistcoat and trousers CASELY-HAYFORD; Hat MARTINE ROSE; Socks FALKE; Shoes WOOYOUNGMI
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Benoni wears blazer, T-shirt and track pants CASELY-HAYFORD; Top MARTA MARQUES AND PAULO ALMEIDA; Waistcoat (worn around waist) LOU DALTON; Socks FALKE; Shoes WOOYOUNGMI [Opposite] Model wears Chloe garmet wears A DESIGNER; jacket ASHISH; Model Dress wears CHRISTOPHER garmet A DESIGNER KANE [Opposite] Model wears garmet A DESIGNER; Model wears garmet A DESIGNER
Chloe wears cropped jacket HOLLY FULTON; Blazer B STORE; Dress MEADHAM KIRCHHOFF; Sunglasses CUTLER AND GROSS; Socks FALKE; Boots ASHISH [Opposite] Benoni wears leather top and T-shirt PIETRO FRANCH; Hat MARTINE ROSE; Necklace JW ANDERSON
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Benoni wears jacket and shorts PIER WU; Long shirt CASELY-HAYFORD; Shirt SUNSPEL; Socks FALKE; Shoes WOOYOUNGMI [Opposite] Chloe wears cropped jacket HOLLY FULTON; Top SIMONE ROCHA; Shorts LOUISE GRAY; Leggings BEBAROQUE; Necklace JW ANDERSON; Socks STYLIST’S OWN; Boots ASHISH
Benoni wears blazers and shoes WOOYOUNGMI, Shirt JW ANDERSON, Top (worn underneath) PIETRO FRANCH; Trousers MARTINE ROSE [Opposite] Chloe wears top CHRISTOPHER SHANNON; Head pieces LOUISE GRAY
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Chloe wears dress MEADHAM KIRCHHOFF; Jumper JW ANDERSON; Vest dress ACNE; Maxi skirt ANN-SOFIE BACK; Head piece (worn on hat) MEADHAM KIRCHHOFF; Hat STYLIST’S OWN; Socks FALKE; Boots ASHISH [Opposite] Benoni wears waistcoat CASELY-HAYFORD; Leather jacket and trousers PIETRO FRANCH; Shirt LOU DALTON; Socks FALKE; Shoes WOOYOUNGMI Hair KENNA @ TERRIE TANAKA MANAGEMENT using GHD SERIES STYLER Make-up KIRSTEN PIGGOTT Models BENONI LOOS @ PREMIER MODEL MANAGEMENT AND CHLOE @ FM Retouching DAVE ANDREWS @ PHOENIX POST PRODUCTION Photographer’s assistant OLIN BRANNIGAN AND MATT PREECE Fashion assistants HARRY LAMBERT, BRYAN CONWAY AND SAMUEL GALLAGHER Thanks to Mark Loy and all at Spring Studios
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WASHED UP
Photography AITKEN JOLLY Fashion editor JASON HUGHES
Hannah wears top STYLIST’S STUDIO; Skirt PETER PILOTTO; Sunglasses GILES FOR CUTLER AND GROSS; Shell bracelet PEBBLE LONDON
Harry wears blazer and T-shirt SATYENKUMAR; Vintage wetsuit BODY GLOVE; Sunglasses CUTLER AND GROSS; Sunglasses holder STYLIST’S STUDIO [Opposite] Harmony wears dress CHRISTIAN WIJNANTS; Coral earring PEBBLE LONDON
Felix wears jacket and trousers TIM SOAR (ARCHIVE); Coral necklace PEBBLE LONDON [Opposite] Hannah wears bra top and skirt B STORE; Visor BERNSTOCK SPEIRS; Coral necklace PEBBLE LONDON
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Harry wears hat SATYENKUMAR; Necklace PEBBLE LONDON; Sunglasses CUTLER AND GROSS; Sunglasses holder STYLIST’S STUDIO [Opposite] Marique wears T-shirt SATYENKUMAR; Trousers MYRZA DE MUYNCK; Sunglasses GILES FOR CUTLER AND GROSS; Shell earrings PEBBLE LONDON; Bag ALLY CAPELLINO
Marique wears jumpsuit CHRISTIAN WIJNANTS; Bikini top INSIGHT 51; Coral necklace STYLIST’S OWN [Opposite] Hannah wears MAARTEN VAN DER HORST; Shorts SOPHIE HULME; Vintage shell necklace RELLIK
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Felix wears blazer SATYENKUMAR; Waistcoat TIM SOAR; Sunglasses CUTLER AND GROSS; Shell earring TRIBU [Opposite] Marique wears jacket MYRZA DE MUYNCK; Wetsuit O’NEIL; Shell earrings PEBBLE LONDON; Belt MATHEW MILLER
Harry wears top CHRISTOPHER SHANNON; vintage wetsuit BODY GLOVE [Opposite] Marique wears top CHRISTOPHE LEMAIRE; Coral earring PEBBLE LONDON; Shell earring TRIBU
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[Opposite] Felix wears jumper HOUSE OF HOLLAND Hair HALLEY BRISKER @ DAVID COFFIN MANAGEMENT Make-up AYAMI NISHIMURA @ JULIAN WATSON AGENCY Manicurist KATIE JANE HUGHES using ORLY Models FELIX BRANCH AND HANNAH NOBEL @ ELITE LONDON, HARMONY AND HARRY GOODWINS @ MODELS 1, AND MARIQUE SCHIMMEL @ SELECT Retouching IMAG’IN LONDON Photographer’s assistants JACK DAY AND LETTY SCHMITERLOW Fashion assistants GEORGIA BOAL-RUSSELL AND ISABELLA GOUMAL Hair assistant STEPH PINDER Make-up assistants ELIZABETH HSIEH, LAUREN WALL AND MAGDELENA WINSKA Thanks to Charlie Clark and James Powell @ Elite, Julien Miachon and Ryan Frost @ Models 1, and Susannah Hooker @ Select
1 05 Words MILES SIMPSON
b E S S AY —
90s LONDON CLUBLAND January 1990: a cold, dark month and Britain was a cold, dark place. Thatcher’s reign now spanned three decades and like millions of others, I was unemployed again. Heeding Norman Tebbit’s advice, I got on my bike, well the tube, and headed to the West End to offer my services to any menswear stores that might consider employing me. I decided to cut through a still sleazy Soho on the way to Covent Garden and down at the end of Wardour Street – in among the seedy clip joints, run-down peep shows and dilapidated pubs – there was a shop and it had a sign in the window: “Staff needed.” As I stepped into the brightly lit interior from the damp gloom of the street, little did I know that things were never going to be quite the same again. Until then I had been a typical London rave kid. Swept up in the suburbs by the backwash from the summer of love, I was propelled into 1989 on a wave of baggy sweatshirts, brightly coloured wallabies and bad haircuts. No hanging out with Boy George at Shoom for me – it was all Centre Force radio and wild goose chases around the M25. I thought I was the epitome of cool but Boys Own fanzine might have described me as the epitome of an “acid ted”. But all that was about to change, because Soho was where the heart of London’s nightlife beat. Soon after I started, another young man came to work in the shop. Similar background as me, same sort of musical taste, clothes and even hair. Other people I knew had been reluctant to travel “up west” to go out but the new guy and I quickly became friends and now I had a willing partner in dance-floor crime. Initially we went to Rage, held at Heaven, a cavernous club under Charing Cross station, and the Crazy Club in the equally vast Astoria on Tottenham Court Road. It was a logical progression for us – essentially they were weekly raves in two of the biggest clubs in London. Bigger seemed to mean better
for raves but the cooler promoters were downsizing. Nicky Holloway opened the Milk Bar on the road next to the Astoria. Tiny by comparison, holding around 150 people, with its white on white interior, it was a world away from the increasingly lurid-coloured rave world as it started to go mainstream. We headed along on a Wednesday night to Pure Sexy, which in the summer of 1990 was as about as alien a name for a party as one could possibly imagine. Danny Rampling ran the night with his wife, Jenni, and everything about it felt like a reaction against the rave culture that they had helped create with their seminal night Shoom. We were blown away – cool people, white Levis, Michiko, Destroy, Sol with lime, and DJs whose names we’d only seen on flyers just hanging out. It was like a social club for London faces and the best party in town, soundtracked by real house music from the USA, slower UK stuff and the flavour of the year: Italian house. We signed up for membership and returned a number of times until things changed at the shop. My friend went to university and I was left without anyone to hit the town with. Then one morning, my membership card landed on the doormat. By this time, people were queuing round the block and it was nigh on impossible to get in. The following Wednesday, I made the journey back into Soho on my own. Strange as it sounds now, it seemed normal then. The same people were there every week, many of whom arrived on their own too, because for regulars it felt like one big special gang. Walking around town, you would see people from Pure Sexy and give each other a knowing look or a little nod; the girl in John Richmond, the lads on the Berwick Street stalls and everyone in Soho’s numerous record shops were regulars. Breeze and Dominic Moir from Quaff often warmed up for Danny, Lewis
from Bluebird, and Craig and Oscar from Trax could often be found propping up the bar. Quickly people you nodded hello to became people you stopped to chat to became people you regarded as mates became close friends you hung out with. By this time, a proliferation of small clubs had established themselves in the area – Flying, Yellow Book, Ophelia – and things had reached fever pitch at Pure Sexy. That Christmas, the Ramplings took some time off and there were ridiculous scenes ahead of the last party before their break. I could hardly get into the street as hundreds of people blocked the road outside the entrance. I was squashed next to Jon Marsh from The Beloved in the melee about 20 yards from the door. Jenni pointed in the direction of Jon and shouted: “Him! He can come in.” Two bouncers then waded out into the crowd, grabbed me by the shoulders and hauled me, beaming, through the throng into the club. Clubbing rather than raving was now what London’s clued up kids wanted to do. This popularity meant promoters were looking for ways to capitalise through bigger clubs and larger-scale one-off parties. Kinky Disco, housed in the large, fairly tatty Shaftesbury’s probably led the way, providing a haunt for every bloke from the home counties with a King Charles perm and a pair of leather trousers. The parties were fun but without question, it was rival night Love Ranch that gained the most notoriety. Promoted by Sean McClusky and Mark “Wigan”, it took place every Saturday in a chrome-and-mirrors abomination on Leicester Square called Maximus. It really shouldn’t have worked but somehow, with strikingly designed flyers and a fuck-you attitude, it captured the zeitgeist perfectly. While long locks still flowed at Kinky Disco, the clippers had come out at Love Ranch and iD Magazine ran a whole article
on “psychedelic skinheads”, ostensibly because three people in one club had cut their hair. But the affected Love Ranch attitude was a bit much. They had a banner on the dance floor that said: “This is where it’s fucking at”. But if you were where it really was at, you didn’t need a banner to tell everyone. London was now in the grip of progressive house, which has since become a byword for boring, convoluted music for blokes, but there were actually some very exciting records being made at the beginning. It was really a reaction to the more slickly produced music from New York, Rome and Rimini. The early progressive house producers started to reclaim harderedged sounds we had grown used to in the days of acid house, set them in a new context, forging a distinctive English sound. And in these earlier days, DJs mixed this up with European and American records. We went to one of the early Puscha parties and heard Andy Weatherall, Danny Rampling and Sasha dropping new progressive house, alongside Belgian techno and Miami deep house. And for a brief moment in time, it really felt like the future. Puscha really ruled the roost when it came to one-off parties for about a year, because their parties were special. Each of them was themed: “Oh So Surreal”, dedicated to Dalí, “Elvisly Ours”, (unsurprisingly) to Elvis. The decor was lavish for glorified-warehouse raves. On entering Oh So Surreal, you passed giant Dalí chairs, before entering the main room, which had hundreds of picture frames hanging from the ceiling, some of which had “art” projected on to them. At another, people without tickets were fighting to get in and inside, we heard Milk Bar podium dancer John of the Pleased Wimmin’ play records for the first time. While Pushca was consistent, the best one-off I ever went to was Extravaganza de Paris. It was meant to take place in the then disused Cafe de Paris but upon our arrival, we were greeting by a lone long-haired chap standing in the doorway who informed us that it had been moved to Old Street. In 1991, being told to go to Old Street was like being told to go to the moon – it was miles away and there was absolutely nothing there. Undeterred though, we jumped into a taxi and headed east. Old Street was deserted but we found the fitness centre and entered what proved to be something of a Roman orgy. There were three rooms: the first, a bar, where the drinks were free as they had been included in the price of the ticket. I went into room two, which was the gym, with all the equipment stacked in the corner and Kid Batchelor and Phil Perry playing acid house. I was oblivious to room three until a wet girl walked past me in her underwear. I went to explore and found a swimming pool and jacuzzi! No one had brought any swimwear and as things got messier, more and more people started to strip and dive in. Someone had smuggled some ecstasy back from Amsterdam but they weren’t like anything we’d seen before they were big, brown and looked like they should be administered to horses. The locker room had turned into a drug cubicle room and the
whole crowd seemed to be half naked, wet and off their heads – with little or no security to keep anyone in check. It was just brilliant. Another direction changer for London was the Rampling’s venture into the one-off scene. They brought New York DJ legend Tony Humphries over for a then rare appearance on UK shores. Held in some north-west London backwater, pretty much everybody who was anybody in London clubs turned up. I’m not sure how anyone else threw a party that night because every DJ in London was there, eyes fixed on The Hump and his mixing. As a party, it never went wild, but musically, Tony delivered a master class in both mixing and programming, demonstrating a level of sophistication we weren’t used to in London. London was now looking in the direction of America again and this was fuelled in no small part by the Ministry of Sound, which had opened in late 1991 with huge financial backing. Apparently it was based on the Paradise Garage, but the Paradise Garage was in Manhattan not the Elephant and Castle. We went on its second weekend and the huge, cold, high-ceilinged bar only sold juice. That might work in New York clubs with acid punch but it proved to be less of a success in south-east London. Alcohol soon arrived but it remained a soulless hall.
THE SOUND OF SOHO Side 1 1. Blunted Dummies House For All (US Devinitive) 2. Seechi I Say Yeah/Flute On (Ital Energy) 3. Shay Jones Are You Going To Be There? (US ID) 4. Sheer Taft Cascades (UK Creation) 5. Inner City Pennies From Heaven (US Virgin) 6. C.J. Bolland Horsepower (Belgium R&S) 7. Photon Inc Generate Power (US Strictly Rhythm) 8. Soft House Company What You Need (Ital Irma) 9. Liberty City Some Lovin’ (US Murk)
Side 2 10. Acorn Arts Silence (UK X-Gate) 11. D-Rail Bring it On Down (Ital DDD) 12. React 2 Rhythm Intoxication (Guerrilla) 13. The Traveller Just Me (Belgium Wonka) Further afield, like-minded clubs across the 14. Yo! Bots country were be brigaded together as some sort I Got It (US RCA) of national Balearic network. Road trips followed 15. Nightlife City Rama to places such as Most Excellent in Manchester, Running So Hard (Ital Mighty Quinn) Venus in Nottingham, Zap in Brighton and, 16. The Good Men eventually, Back To Basics in Leeds. Give It Up (Dutch Fresh Fruit) 17. Phoenix However, clubs such as the Ministry of Sound Plaything (US Big Beat) and Back to Basics were ushering in a new 18. Johnny Parker era of club brands. The innocence of the Love it Forever (Ital C.B.R.) Balearic network would soon be replaced by 19. Leftfield mass marketing, coach tours to the likes of Not Forgotten (Outer Rhythm) Gatecrasher in Sheffield and Cream in Liverpool, 20. A.S.H.A. package clubbing holidays to Ibiza, John of J.J. Tribute (Ital Beat Club) the Pleased Wimmin’ on Top of the Pops, and magazines such as Mixmag, DJ and Muzik Selected by Miles Simpson screaming about the latest superstar DJ. This was big business and London clubland was disappearing rapidly into a vortex of handbag house, feather boas and shiny shirts. More and more money was made until the bubble finally burst on New Year’s Eve 1999, when greedy club promoters finally throttled the goose that had laid the golden egg. For many people, overpriced clubs, rubbish music and crap clothes have been their experience of house music in London. But for those of us lucky enough to be there to hear that heady mix of house styles played in small Soho basements, we really had been where it was fucking at.
Miles Simpson is a house music blogger, occasional DJ and full-time club culture obsessive. He lives in North London with some old records. ultraastrum.blogspot.com
109 Words TOM FINCH Photography KASIA BOBULA
b IS FOR BRUTALISM
Beautiful or artistically barren? The debate around Brutalism has always been ferocious. Splitting opinion right down the middle, it has been loved and hated for 60 years, though in recent times, the tedious tug of war between the “progressive” and “reactionary” camps – more concerned with ideology than architecture – has shifted to a broader and more reasoned consideration of the individual merits and demerits of specific buildings. The term “brutalism” sounds like a brutal put-down, but it was in fact coined by the architects Alison and Peter Smithson in 1953, who were inspired by the French
béton brut or “raw concrete” – a phrase used by Le Corbusier. For the Smithsons, brutalism described the repeated geometry of primary forms in concrete: the hypnotic repetition of square, cube and line to create a stark, monumental harmony. In clapped-out postwar Britain, where people’s desire for a more equal society met the economic reality of rationing, the architect’s responsibility was not only to provide a safe, habitable environment, but one that would transform the way people related to one another. Brutalist buildings were revolutionary, blurring the boundary between the home, the city and different
social classes. Not merely places to live, they offered new models for living. Though some Brutalist architects seized the opportunity to transform deadbeat communities, some did undoubtedly create structures with no real consideration for those living within them, leading to crime, squalor and alienation. Examples of the best and the worst are dotted throughout the UK, and here we present a tour of six of them. From the vertiginous streets in the sky of Robin Hood Gardens to the sedate refinement of Finsbury Park Villas, they reveal a radical set of ambitions, still dominant in architectural debate.
ROBIN HOOD GARDENS (COMPLETED 1972) ALISON AND PETER SMITHSON The husband and wife team Alison and Peter Smithson were the most experimental architects working in England at the time of their Robin Hood Gardens project. Researchers and academics, they were part of Team 10, an experimental group made up of artists, architects and theorists. In Robin Hood Gardens, Team 10 was put to the test … located in Poplar, East London, this development consists of 213 flats in two long blocks of seven and 10 storeys. The two blocks – both slightly cranked inward – exhibit
richly articulated concrete facades, helping to prevent the long linear arrangement from becoming too monotonous. The blocks are formed in vertical bands of threes. Elevated walkways bring a sense of order and freedom by offering circulation between each block. In the midst of all the grey, artificial landscaping offers a respite of green. One of Team 10’s core beliefs was that a building’s primary obligation was to its context. Yet the people who moved in soon complained that their new homes were detached from
the character of the neighbourhood and that the rigid concrete plan gave no space for any idiosyncratic, human touches. These were homes that would never be homely. Far from stepping into utopia, residents were forced to occupy a lower-class ghetto. Today Robin Hood Gardens is still the scene of fierce debate. Leading architects are calling for the building to be listed – while tenants are demanding its demolition. Regardless of its fate, it marks a milestone in the development of brutalist social housing. b Magazine b Is For Brutalism 111
KEELING HOUSE (COMPLETED 1957) DENYS LASDUN Denys Lasdun is responsible for some of brutalism’s most iconic buildings, including the Royal National Theatre and the Royal College of Physicians. An admirer of modernist heroes Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, Lasdun’s passion for planning clarity and almost diagrammatic circulation was, however, softened by the influence of English classicists such as Nicholas Hawksmoor, coupled with elements of the baroque. Such diverse inspirations create some curious twists and turns when you inspect
his buildings. On approaching the seemingly single, impenetrable form of his Keeling House development, for instance, you discover you can almost pass directly though it, as you would an alleyway. Inside, you find an organically arranged central core – with four wings each linking to blocks of flats. These flats are, surprisingly for a building of this size and shape, arranged over two floors rather than one. These features meant that, right from the start, there was a sense of neighbourly belonging and community within the scheme that was lacking in other highrise residential developments at the time.
The critics who were concerned that the vertical arrangement would encourage isolation were silenced. Keeling House’s integration of form and function was heralded a success. As a model, it would increasingly be relied upon – with housing space being squeezed ever more tightly.
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BEVIN COURT (1954) TECTON GROUP Bevin Court was built to replace warravaged housing in the area of Finsbury, north-west London and thus replicates what stood there before it in terms of scale and footprint. The building itself consists of 130 flats and ended up being a distilled version of Tecton’s previous project, the nearby Spa Green estate. Tight economic conditions left little room for excess and instead forced the architects to concentrate their efforts on the rigorous planning and interaction of spaces, achieved by enriching common areas as much as possible, with the agenda to encourage interaction between the residents.
The overall aesthetic is unmistakably constructivist in its form and its bold clarity. At its heart lies a stunning staircase that serves all floors. As you ascend, window openings strategically placed within the staircase gradually provide a widening view across London, illustrating Lubetkin’s belief that “a staircase is a dance”. He conceived the central circulation void as a narrow drum, with triangular landings cantilevered into the space, held by flights of stairs that serve alternating floors and half landings. Prior to encountering this staircase, you
can see within the ground floor entrance a large-scale mural painted by Peter Yates. In graphic blue, red and black, this mural – sitting framed, behind a balustrade – depicts a history of the borough of Finsbury and the coat of arms that symbolises the area. Yates was involved in many collaborations throughout his career and the influence of people such as Le Corbusier who handpainted murals in his buildings is evident. In this instance, the impersonal and generic nature of low-budget social housing is given a courtly dash and flourish.
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HEYGATE ESTATE (1974) TIM TINKER If Bevin Court shows brutalism at its most magnificent, the opposite is true of the Heygate estate, located just south of the Elephant and Castle. It is no surprise that the estate’s sprawling concrete blocks have been used by filmmakers to stand in for soulless eastern-bloc housing. Referred to by local planners as “London’s lost quarter”, the estate is now on the point of complete demolition and is 99% vacated in preparation for this humiliating end. (That 1%? These are the residents determined to cling on for as long as possible.)
It all began with such high hopes. At the estate, overhead walkways link the tall concrete blocks, providing a plan for a self-contained community. Initially there were even plans to extend these walkways to nearby estates and create a network of self-supporting housing communities. But these dreams of independent units ended in the reality of isolation. In person, these walkways and expanses of unoccupied facades make the space between the buildings feel distinctly cut off from the area – the noise from the busy streets and train lines noticeably deadened.
When the overpasses and terraces remained occupied by residents busily going about their business, the Heygate estate must have felt like a metropolis in its own right. But with endless empty niches and tangled walkways, it now feels like a ghost town. Only the occasional muffled chugging of trains in the background stand as a reminder that, beyond the largest perimeter blocks, the heart of the city still beats.
ALEXANDRA ROAD (1977) NEAVE BROWN (CAMDEN TOWN DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE) In Alexandra Road, Brown pursued ideals of a “continuous” and “seamless” society, where houses, schools, shops, gardens and maintenance were to be ambitiously linked as one. This vision can be glimpsed when you look over the central garden space located on the inner edge of the housing blocks – and see play areas, large chimneys and risers sitting against a backdrop of communal walkways and private balconies. This utopian model was to be arranged as per the space available, which may explain why Alexandra Road appears “cut to length”
and almost crammed into the available area. Consisting of two parallel rows of different heights, an eight-storey block faces the railway to deaden the sound and vibrations from Euston train station. The facing block is four storeys tall, with both blocks linked by a walkway that incorporates access to both.
sense the building is far more impressive than, say, the Brunswick Centre, which follows a similar extruded model, but is fully appreciable as a complete entity inside out.
As expressed in the central walkways, the geometry of the plan presents a gently arching crescent. As you walk towards the centre, you have no view of the beginning nor the end of the building. The effect is disorienting and oddly striking. In this b Magazine b Is For Brutalism 125
FINSBURY PARK HOUSING (2008) SERGISON BATES Sergison Bates provides what is often called a more refined “brutal” aesthetic, with a body of previous work that has embraced pubs, offices and semi-detached houses. Projects that revolve around their inhabitants sit convincingly with the practice’s admiration of the Smithson’s and their belief that the everyday inhabitation of spaces is as vital a consideration in the design as the debt a building must play to its surroundings. Proof of this was confirmed when Sergison Bates were commissioned to refurbish the Smithson’s summer home, the Upper Lawn, in 2003.
The provision of three new villas in Finsbury Park follows from extensive knowledge of social housing and its history. The villas – of alternate heights – cluster around a shared garden in a manner typical of houses bordering the park. In response to the paper-thin stick-on facades so commonplace in modern architecture, Sergison Bates propose a much more traditional method of construction: expressed floor slabs and flush mortar brickwork which offer a visual weight and permanence. This is countered by a subtle reference to the bay windows of nearby homes, abstracted to give the villas a
sense of familiarity within the streetscape. In short, the Finsbury Park villas celebrate the fact that people actually have to live between their four walls – a marked difference from brutalism’s early, more unforgiving years. Brutalism, it seems, has finally come of age.
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MASKED Unseen photographs of JJ Hudson.
Words MAGDA KEANEY Photography AXEL HOEDT
Some interesting observations can be made around Axel Hoedt’s photographs of the designer JJ Hudson in relation to both the photographer’s own practice and an analysis of the broader state of play in contemporary fashion image making.
meaningfully in the late 90s, when exhibitions such as Charlotte Cotton’s Imperfect Beauty articulated key concerns and working practices of a generation and identified photographers whose work, then challenging conventions, has now become the seminal of that period.
Hoedt is a German photographer who lives and works in London and who, I consider, falls into an important group of photographers currently making fashion images. Hoedt is not new to the industry – he’s been working for more than a decade and neither is he an establishment figure. His approach to his work is not defined by “fashion” but by “photography” and an intersection of the two, in his hands, demonstrates some defining and, I think, new characteristics of what fashion image making is at present, and what are the directions and aspirations with which it faces the future. These definitions and directions are different to those last discussed
The original impetus for the pictures was an editorial commission – Hoedt was commissioned by Katie Grand, then the editorin-chief at Pop magazine to make a portrait of JJ Hudson: an experimental designer who transforms found garments into masks and head pieces – part gimp S&M gear, part fucked-up Disney fancy dress, part tongue-in-cheek fashion accessory. Hoedt’s mandate as a photographer may have resulted in one or two pictures taken in an afternoon to satisfy print requirements, but it morphed into a larger and ongoing project where Hudson and his assistant were photographed in the designer’s studio in Brighton, as well as the photographer’s studio in Hackney, wearing b Magazine Masked 135
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the masks. Hoedt still works with Polaroid and film and a large-format camera. The images further his interest in the implications of making photographs in the studio, the psychological isolation of wearing a mask, the performative potential of the fashion image, and the abstract compositional form of the pieces. There is a particularly fascinating aspect to this series of photographs for me, which is a link to an unrelated series of photographs Hoedt commenced at almost the same time, around the Fastnacht festival in southern Germany. Though not connected consciously in Hoedt’s mind, these are also studio portraits made using the same method and equipment, where masking and performance extend concerns with documentation or straight descriptive presentation. Photographers such as Hoedt short-circuit the binary pigeonholes “art” or “fashion’’. These
constructs, as they are usually applied to the genre, don’t reflect the process, intellect, intent or impact of the imagery produced by a confident, complex and sophisticated generation of image makers who remind us that there is cause for optimism and celebration around contemporary fashion image making. This is all the more important in the current climate, where commercial imperatives and also some of the technological changes associated with digital photography and the commissioning process have resulted in a rightly lamented lack of creativity fashion platforms and outputs.
Magda Keaney is a curator and writer. Currently curator of Fashion Space gallery at London College of Fashion, her book World’s Top Photographers Fashion and Advertising’ was published by RotoVision in 2007. axelhoedt.com
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WWW.HBYHARRIS.COM BROWNS | DARKROOM | DOVER STREET MARKET | HARVEY NICHOLS | LIBERTY
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SHOP — What we’re wearing this season A. SAUVAGE asauvage.com ALLY CAPELLINO allycapellino.co.uk ANN-SOFIE BACK annsofieback.com ANTIPODIUM antipodium.com ASHISH ashish.co.uk B STORE bstorelondon.com BEBAROQUE bebaroque.co.uk BERNSTOCK AND SPIERS bernstockspeirs.com BOBOUTIC boboutic.com CASELY-HAYFORD casely-hayford.com CHRISTIAN WIJNANTS christianwijnants.be CHRISTOPHE LEMAIRE christophelemaire.com CHRISTOPHER SHANNON christophershannon.co.uk CHURCH’S church-footwear.com CUTLER AND GROSS cutlerandgross.com EHUD ehud-men.com FALKE falke.com GENERAL EYEWEAR generaleyewear.com GURKEES gurkees.com HOLLY FULTON hollyfulton.com HOUSE OF HOLLAND houseofholland.co.uk IAN BATTEN bstorelondon.com INSIGHT 51 insight51.com JAMES LONG jameslonguk.com JW ANDERSON j-w-anderson.com LOU DALTON loudalton.com LOUISE GRAY louisegraylondon.com MAARTEN VAN DER HORST maartenvanderhorst.com MATHEW MILLER mrmatthewmiller.tumblr.com MEADHAM KIRCHHOFF meadhamkirchhoff.com THE MEDLEY INSTITUTE themedleyinstitute.com NOKI novamatic.com OMAR KASHOURA omarkashoura.com O’NEIL oneill.com PEBBLE LONDON pebblelondon.com PETER PILOTTO peterpilotto.com PREEN preen.eu RAFFAELE ASCIONE raffaeleascione.com RELLIK relliklondon.co.uk RICHARD NICOLL richardnicoll.com SATYENKUMAR satyenkumar.co.uk SIMONE ROCHA simonerocha.com SOPHIE HULME sophiehulme.com STEPHAN SCHNEIDER stephanschneider.be SUNSPEL sunspel.com TIM SOAR soar-london.com TRIBU tribu.co.uk WOLFORD wolford.com WOOYOUNGMI wooyoungmi.com
CONTENTS — 6 GALLERY GANGS
It’s a team effort at four London art galleries.
Words MICHAEL NOTTINGHAM Photography NIK HARTLEY
12 b A GIRL
Introducing b store’s first full womenswear collection for spring/summer 2011. Photography HARLEY WEIR Fashion editor CAMILLA POLE
22 TELLING STORIES
b meets four filmmakers who are distorting the space between reality and epitome. Words DAL CHODHA Photography JONNIE CRAIG
26 DESIGNER INTERVIEW
With a career spanning forty years, we talk to the designer Ian Batten.
Words DAL CHODHA Photography COLIN DODGSON Fashion editor TRACEY NICHOLSON
36 SUPER FLUX
A private performance by the artist Anat Ben-David. Photography ELLEN NOLAN Fashion editor JANE HOWARD
46 STEPPIN’ UP
Photography ALEX SAINSBURY Fashion editor JASON HUGHES
60 FA R F R O M N OW H E R E
Photography NICK DOREY Fashion editor SAM RANGER
74 G R O O V Y, L A I D B A C K A N D N A S T Y Photography MEL BLES Fashion editor STEVEN WESTGARTH
88 WA S H E D U P
Photography AITKEN JOLLY Fashion editor JASON HUGHES
104 T H E B E S S AY
This is where it’s fucking at: 90s London clubland revisited. Words MILES SIMPSON
108 b I S F O R B R U TA L I S M
A tour of London’s great estates.
Words TOM FINCH Photography KASIA BOBULA
132 MASKED
Unseen photographs of JJ Hudson.
Words MAGDA KEANEY Photography AXEL HOEDT
152 SHOP
What we’re wearing this season.
[Cover] Hannah wears top STYLIST’S STUDIO; Skirt PETER PILOTTO; Sunglasses GILES FOR CUTLER AND GROSS; Shell bracelet PEBBLE LONDON Photography AITKEN JOLLY Fashion editor JASON HUGHES Hair HALLEY BRISKER @ DAVID COFFIN MANAGEMENT Make-up AYAMI NISHIMURA @ JULIAN WATSON AGENCY Manicurist KATIE JANE HUGHES using ORLY Model HANNAH NOBEL @ ELITE LONDON
www.peterjensen.co.uk
M AG A Z I N E Spring/summer 2011
Editorial & creative director Jason Hughes jason@ bstoremagazine.com Editor Dal Chodha dal@ bstoremagazine.com Art director Christopher Colville-Walker christopher@ bstoremagazine.com Designers Ben Smith Emily Hadden Subeditor Stephan Takkides Fashion assistants Isabella Goumal Georgia Boal-Russell
Contributors Aitken Jolly Alex Sainsbury Axel Hoedt Camilla Pole Christopher Nield Colin Dodgson Ellen Nolan Harley Weir Jane Howard Jonnie Craig Kasia Bobula Magda Keaney Mel Bles Michael Nottingham Miles Simpson Nick Dorey Nik Hartley Sam Ranger Steven Westgarth Tracey Nicholson Tom Finch Advertising advertising@ bstoremagazine.com
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b Magazine is published by Colville-Walker Ltd for b store. b Magazine is a registered trademark. Nothing in this magazine may be reproduced in whole or part without the prior written permission of the publishers. Transparencies and any other material submitted for the publication are sent at the owner’s own risk and, while every care is taken, neither b Magazine, nor its agents, accept any liability for loss or damage. Although b Magazine has endeavoured to ensure that all information inside the magazine is correct at time of going to print, details may be subject to change.
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6
GALLERY GANGS
Words MICHAEL NOTTINGHAM Photography NIK HARTLEY
Left to right: Julia Ravenscroft, Jonathan Trayte, Juliet Oldfield, Richard Kirwan, Francesca Oldfield, Ryan Leigh, Sam Knowles, Ben Ashton, Simon Oldfield, photographed on 24 March 2011 during Jonathan Trayte’s first solo show, Under a Pine Tree.
SIMON OLDFIELD GALLERY When Simon Oldfield opened an art gallery on the day after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, at some point he must have heard a tiny voice somewhere inside, screaming in terror. If so, he did well to ignore it and forge on, because as its eponymous director he has managed to establish a successful and consistently engaging gallery – economic gloom notwithstanding. His background and training probably didn’t hurt. Before launching his full-time career as a gallery director, Oldfield was employed as a lawyer in a large City firm, working at weekends for a gallery that sold Warhol, Lichtenstein and other 20th-century greats. “It was an enlightening experience and I learned a lot very quickly,” he shares. With the support of his exhibitions co-ordinator, Julia Ravenscroft, as well as the encouragement and assistance of family members, Oldfield has realised an impressive exhibitions programme for such a new gallery. In close consultation with the artists involved – “we work very collaboratively” – the gallery mounted three group exhibitions last year as previews of the artists’ work. The first, New Symphony, inaugurated the occupancy of a new, spacious gallery, spread across the first floor of an old townhouse close to Covent Garden market. Judging from what the artists involved have been up to since, these preview shows were a resounding success: Tim Ellis exhibited at Newspeak at the Saatchi Gallery and then at SpaceX in Exeter, while Katie Cuddon is currently the inaugural ceramics fellow at the Camden Arts Centre. Both participated in New Symphon. Ben Ashton, who had a sell-out show at the gallery in February, is currently the headline artist in ‘Shifting
Boundaries in Brighton. “I’m extremely proud of all our artists as they forge ahead in their careers and build on each success,” says Oldfield, positively beaming. The gallery’s programme in 2011 opened with a series of solo exhibitions including Jonathan Trayte’s first solo show. Following Trayte, Sam Knowles’s exhibition, Fearful Sphere – which closes 11 June – is the artist’s first solo exhibition. Using books and book covers that he has cut up and reconfigured as building blocks, Knowles constructs pieces that, in Oldfield’s explanation, look at how the idea of a “grand theory” can explain the world is falling away, and explores the cracks opening up in this misconception. “You can, if you have an extensive art history background, appreciate the works on a variety of levels,” says Oldfield of both artists’ oeuvres. “But as with all good art you can take something away no matter what the breadth of your art references.” That inclusiveness of aesthetic response surely underpins the gallery’s upcoming show, Friendship of the Peoples. Oldfield is particularly excited about the collaborative show, which opens 23 June and will feature the work of 40 artists, each of whom submit one piece of exactly A1 poster size. “The show is structured around the concept of “community” and explores the very human and primeval desire to belong to something greater than oneself,” he says. “I suppose that’s at the heart of what we are trying to do at the gallery.”
Simon Oldfield’s current exhibition, Sam Knowles’ first solo exhibition – Fearful Sphere, runs until 11 June. simonoldfield.com b Magazine Gallery Gangs 7
“Fashion,” says James Hyman, “swings from one direction to another.” But he isn’t referring to sartorial trends – his Savile Row address notwithstanding. “After a period of conceptualism, you get a reassertion of painting,” the gallery owner and art collector explains. “What happened in the 70s was conceptual art, then in the 80s there was a revival of interest in the School of London.” The latter includes Bacon, Freud, Auerbach and Kossoff – giants of British figurative painting and artists who figure in both the gallery’s exhibitions and Hyman’s own writing and research (he studied and taught art history at the Courtauld and continues to publish art criticism). Hyman’s first gallery in London’s Mason’s Yard (opened 2002, “before the White Cube got there”) focused mainly on the School of London and other more established artists. But when the gallery moved in 2007 to its present location next to the Royal Academy, its focus began to include younger contemporary artists and emerging photographers. The current exhibition, Beyond the Human Clay, in many ways distils his core interests and the gallery’s overall curatorial direction. An
homage of sorts to The Human Clay – the artist RB Kitaj’s milestone 1976 exhibition that showcased British figurative painting in a period dominated by abstract art – BTHC features many School of London artists included in the 76 show. But it also includes representatives of the present era, such as the Chapmans, Angus Fairhurst and other members of the YBA school, which defined itself by emphasising the conceptual mode of expression over the figurative one that had re-emerged in the 1980s. Hyman saw some of the early YBA exhibitions, including the pivotal Freeze and Building 1 shows, and in his words “felt very insecure that the artists I loved were people like Kossoff and Auerbach.” The publicity surrounding the YBA and their Saatchi-bankrolled exploits would soon eclipse the merits of the earlier generation of artists. “It was more fun [for journalists] to write about what happened last night at the Groucho Club than about someone pottering around in Camden Town, going to the same studio for 50 years.” “A lot of it [early YBA art] was flippant, a lot of it was provocative and posturing,” Hyman
suggests. “And a lot of it didn’t say much about the human condition. Yet, at the same time, many of the key works are about mortality. The Chapmans’ Hell, Hirst’s A Thousand Years with its enclosed life cycle, Whiteread’s holocaust memorial in Vienna. A lot of the iconic pieces from that period are seriously considering mortality but using different languages.” “So I think it’s a mistake to see the groups as opposed,” he continues. “I suppose part of what Beyond the Human Clay is about is bringing some of these people together.” The common ground for both generations can, according to Hyman, be found in their overarching concern with the body. It’s a concern central to Hyman’s own interest in art: “What it is to be a human being today in a physical and psychological sense. What it’s about is people – that’s what I’m interested in.”
James Hyman Gallery’s current exhibition, a group show of figurative art – Beyond The Human Clay, runs until 18 June. jameshymangallery.com
Left to right: Valerie Whitacre, James Hyman, Christabel Armsden, Becky Davies, Charlotte McDonald photographed on 20 April 2011 during the internationally acclaimed photographer Shai Kremer’s Fallen Empires show.
JAME S HYMAN GALLERY
VILMA GOLD “We went over to the dark side a long time ago,” confesses Laura Lord, referring to when she and Rachel Williams gave up making art in the early noughties to become co-directors of the successful east London gallery Vilma Gold. The chuckle that follows this tongue-in-cheek admission is an easy one, though. Over its 10 year existence, Vilma Gold has built strong, nurturing relationships with its artists, it’s ethos more collaborative rather than corporate, with Lord and Williams on the road every month in support of artists’ exhibitions. “The gallery and its running have grown in tandem with the artists and their work – you can’t have one without the other,” says Williams. “It’s grown from being a group of friends, actually.” One of those friends is the video artist Charles Atlas, whose recent solo show is his third at Vilma Gold. Atlas began his career in New York in the 70s as filmmaker-in-residence for the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, with whom he pioneered the genre of video dance – dances choreographed for video rather than live performance. Although he has
continually made films and gained acclaim for his work with Cunningham (and for his later collaboration with Michael Clark on such projects as Hail the New Puritan) Atlas has only recently been presented strictly in an art context. “His career has really bloomed,” notes Lord. “He’s in a show at the South London Gallery at the moment, has a major solo show in Haarlem next year and has just sold a major work to the Tate.” Atlas isn’t the only artist whose star has risen with the gallery’s. Mark Titchner – known for his large, text-based pieces – was with Vilma Gold when it opened in Rivington Street in 2000, remaining through two moves – first to Vyner Street in 2003, then to the current, larger space on Minerva Street in 2006, the same year the artist was nominated for the Turner Prize. The gallery has just finished showing The Great White Way Goes Black – an exhibition that evidences the breadth of Lord’s and William’s interest and commitment. The six artists featured span all generations, a range of nationalities and various different mediums: four have never been shown in
London, despite two of those being quite established internationally. “The show includes painting, installations, performance and video – so it’s really cross-medium, which represents the gallery,” says Williams, adding: “We have a special commitment to performance.” And what of the gallery name? “It’s fictitious,” she smiles. “We didn’t really want to give our names to the gallery. It seemed to make more sense having a nonsensical name for it rather than having our names above the entrance in a kind of corporate flourish.” “Plus it also fits with the collaborative nature of the gallery,” adds Lord. “And the way we work with the artists. It’s all about them, really.”
Vilma Gold’s next exhibition, featuring new work by the Russian painters Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov, opens 8 June. vilmagold.com
Left to right: Martin Rasmussen, Laura Lord, Rachel Williams, Charles Atlas, Josh Whitaker, photographed on 25 March 2011 during Charles Atlas’s solo show ( / + \ ).
b Magazine Gallery Gangs 9
Left to right: Emily LaBarge, Bruce Haines, Volker Eichelmann, Audrey Reynolds, Adam Gillam, Paul Johnson, photographed on 24 March 2011 during Eva Berendes’ New Reliefs show.
ANCIENT & MODERN “Our gallery is one of the smallest in London, about 30 feet long and six feet wide,” says Bruce Haines, the director of Ancient & Modern. Despite the diminutive space, the gallery has had an impressively expansive schedule, mounting seven exhibitions and attending five art fairs in 2009, its first year with Bruce at the helm fulltime. And all this right after he’d curated the Welsh pavilion in Venice. “It was one of our best years, and an expensive one, but you’ve got to keep putting the energy into it to make it work.”
during the day is great. It’s almost like a family.” In addition to his regular assistants – Christies art history graduate Emily LeBarge and the young artist Matthew Welch – that family includes a stable of artists that has grown from six to twelve. “I suppose what they all have in common is a sense in their work that acknowledges their context in history,” Haines suggests. “Whether that’s Eva Berendes referencing Amish quiltmaking or 1980s furniture designers, or Volker Eichelmann’s fascination with 18th-century follies or mid-20th-century diarists.”
Before opening Ancient & Modern in 2006 with a fellow curator (who has since left), Haines had an accomplished and varied arts career in the public sector. Three years at the Oriel Mostyn gallery in north Wales were followed by a rewarding stint at the Centre for the Visual Arts in Cardiff. “It was a nice thing,” he quips, “but people were expected to pay to get in and it just couldn’t work like that.” It wasn’t until his work at the Camden Arts Centre in London that Haines reckons he was even fully aware of the commercial sector. “And I didn’t think there was a possibility I’d ever work in it,” he adds.
It’s fitting that the ups and downs of running a small commercial gallery – successful exhibitions on the one hand and the marketplace’s uncertainties on the other – find a curious parallel in Ancient & Modern’s physical location. “Whitecross Street is one of the oldest street markets in London,” he explains. “We’re right next to Bunhill Fields, which is where William Blake and Daniel Defoe are buried. So we’re in great company. But we’re also at the dividing line between two parishes: St Lukes and St Giles. One is the patron of artists, the other of beggars and thieves.” “So we’re right in the middle,” he laughs.
But into the deep end he jumped, and despite the fiscal strains of operating in a recession-racked marketplace, Haines expresses appreciation for its other rewards. “It’s really nice having this continual relationship with artists, especially trying to keep half of our programme coming from London,” he explains. “Having them pop in
Ancient & Modern’s current exhibition, a group show of photographic works – Evening’s Tears, Morning’s Dew, runs until 18 June. ancientandmodern.org
b Magazine Gallery Gangs 11
12 Photography HARLEY WEIR Fashion editor CAMILLA POLE
b A GIR L
Before the b store established itself in 2001, finding a place that sold a jolly good poplin shirt, relaxed leather shoes and pleated chinos was no easy task. So understandably, the last 10 years have established b as a mecca of sorts for menswear and as their 10th birthday approaches, Matthew Murphy and Kirk Beattie decided it’s time to welcome the b girl to the fold. It was left to the talents of Natascha Stolle – the Fashion East cultivated designer who studied English literature before completing the MA at Central Saint Martins in 2008 –
to create the brand’s first full womenswear collection for spring/summer 2011. Taking a journey to America via Africa, the collection is earthy and gamine with the Illustrator Charlotte Mann’s bold graphic print left to add a batik feel to the American buttoned-up sensibility offered for the season. True to Stolle’s distinctivly sporty treatment of luxury fabrics (a sweatshirt bomber has sheer organza sleeve detail), prints come in two dot variations and psychedelic florals on slouchy short jumpsuits and tailored silk trousers. What b does well is the “classics” so cue the
narrow tailored trouser, the belted shirt dress, the tailored shirt, the classic tee and trench for the womenswear offering – pieces that will appear every season in different guises. Also reinterpreted on film by the filmmaking duo Velvet Rain (Ivana Bobic and Rain Li) the spring/ summer 2011 collection as shown in Leaving Dreamland combines neon glamour and follows b’s girl taking a trip through an eerie LA-like landscape just hanging out and killing time.
bstorelondon.com
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All clothes B STORE (SPRING/SUMMER 2011); Sunglasses CUTLER AND GROSS; Jewellery STYLIST’S OWN Hair and make-up ZOE TAYLOR @ JED ROOT using SISLEY & BUMBLE AND BUMBLE. Models BETHANY TERRY @ NEXT AND MADDY FORD @ STORM Photographer’s assistant PHILIPP BIERBAUM
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TELLING STORIES
b meets four filmmakers who are distorting the space between reality and epitome.
CLIO BARNARD Clio Barnard won the award for best new documentary filmmaker at the Tribeca film festival for her debut feature, The Arbor, in 2010. The film is the true story of the British playwright, Andrea Dunbar, who died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 29 having penned three acclaimed plays (all produced at the Royal Court theatre) and leaving behind three children from different men. “The truth is complicated. You’re never ever going to be simply watching the truth of a true story,” Barnard tells. “I didn’t set out to make a film about Andrea. I knew Alan Clarke’s 1986 film adaptation of her play Rita, Sue and Bob Too and I liked it a lot but I’d never seen the play, as I’m not really much of a theatre person. I found a copy of it in a bookshop and it had been reprinted along with A State Affair and at the time, I was interested in verbatim theatre – a kind of documentary theatre – which does the opposite if you apply it to film.” In The Arbor, actors lip-sync to the voices of Dunbar’s kin, questioning documentary’s aspiration to collapse the distance between reality and representation: a retelling of memories. Barnard herself grew up in Yorkshire, not far from Bradford and the infamous Buttershaw estate of Dunbar’s youth. Going on to study at Jacob Kramer college in Leeds (known today as Leeds college of arts), it was drawing and animation that first caught her attention. “At some point, I became quite obsessed with the materials and I’d started processing and developing film, which is quite a laborious process. I think at that point I became quite attached to film as a medium.” The verbatim technique used in The Arbor was seen in Barnard’s 1998 film Random Acts Of Intimacy. “I couldn’t write a script because it wasn’t a conventional film, so I was writing ideas and it was about people who’d had sex with strangers in public places.” As is often the case with her filmmaking, Barnard stumbled upon her raison d’être during the intense period of research, after meeting real people who told her their own stories. “I’d put an advert in various magazines and newspapers and I’d received lots of peculiar phone calls from people. I was so interested in the gap between knowing if people were telling the truth or not, for example, when people told me their stories, were they exaggerating them or imagining them?” She concludes: “That gap between what really happened and the account of what happened totally captures me.”
Words DAL CHODHA Photography JONNIE CRAIG
NICHOLAS ABRAHAMS Nicholas Abrahams began his career making music videos in the early 90s for the likes of the alternative music group Stereo Lab and the Icelandic band Sigur Rós. If you ask him what he does now, he’ll tell you happily that he’s wandered into the art-documentary genre of filmmaking. “The first video I actually ever made was a documentary for Cornershop’s song Waterlogged. I didn’t know how to do it as I didn’t go to film school – I just loved music,” he explains. From art into music, music into documentary, documentary into reportage, Abrahams’s work often crosses fields, the most significant crossover resulting in his 2009 collaboration with the Turner Prizewinning artist Jeremy Deller. Together they made The Posters Came from the Walls, a film exploring what drives Depeche Mode’s fans to follow the group around the world. His next project entitled Are You Man Enough to be a Woman is about Jane County, the American male-to-female transsexual performer, musician and actor. Once managed by David Bowie, County had starred in Andy Warhol’s stage play Pork in 1971 and today resides with her elderly parents in a small Baptist community in Atlanta, having to live as a man to save awkward questioning. Abrahams caught the Greyhound intercity bus to go and visit County while premiering The Posters Came from the Walls at the True False film festival in Missouri, Columbia. The journey of making a documentary is unpredictable, he notes: “You know the story but the story isn’t always the most interesting thing when you’re making a documentary. You’re dealing with myth too and creating it and I think people like Jane are aware of that too. She says she never wants to see it, but at the same time she obviously wants to leave something of herself behind. I’m interested in looking at how gay culture has influenced so much in popular culture but is never acknowledged. I mean, Jane influenced Bowie a lot and that needs recognition, I think.” He is working with Deller again too on another documentary, this time about an 85-year-old artist from Norwich called Bruce who’d worked on an album in the 60s (produced by George Martin) which never saw a release date – a fate also shared by County: Bruce’s band, The Alberts, also appeared on the first ever programme to be aired on BBC2, yet when they headed to America, they found their manager, the comedian Lenny Bruce, in jail with a drug problem. Abrahams chuckles: “Failure isn’t a theme in my work at all! These people are successful, but they don’t want to compromise. They’re happy people. I just don’t think either of them has chased the money.”
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VELVET RAIN IVANA BOBIC AND RAIN LI The filmmaker duo Ivana Bobic and Rain Li say that a film doesn’t always need to do anything in particular – it just has to be good. “There are certain films you watch to escape, a lot you watch to relate to and thirdly there are films you watch for inspiration – but for me, they just have to be good films,” Li attests. The duo met on the set of Bobic’s The Priest, which was awarded best short film at the International Film Festival of Ireland in 2009. Li’s past directorial projects for various internationally renowned luxury brands including Dries Van Noten, Yohji Yamamoto and Phillip Lim encouraged a second collaboration between the directors for b store’s spring/summer 2011 women’s film Leaving Dreamland.
The fashion film genre is one that is of constant revalidation, so the two are keen to establish a third type of film. “In any film – even fashion film – you need to have a sense of narrative but you can’t be too coherent because you bore the audience to death and you can’t have a dialogue, so therefore it’s a silent film and you don’t want to make people think it’s a music video, so there is a really particular way you approach it … but at the end of the day it is still a film,” Li tells. Both hardly watch any television, Bobic has a small set with poor reception and Li reads no magazines and chooses to eschew the general social functions of the internet. “I’m very ignorant that way, I don’t want to know too much. I like to search for information rather than information finding me. Ivana is much more open-minded – I sometimes get very specific about things, whereas Ivana will take what I say and then add something new, something that I’ve probably dismissed, that’s why our collaboration works. If I do it on my own, I don’t like to think more than I need but because there are two people you have to talk about it and that really helps.” Velvet Rain aren’t twinned souls as such but the similarities are in the film directors they enjoy from Andrei Tarkovsky to Ang Lee, David Lynch, Wong Kar Wai and Terence Malick to the cultural shift they both made at a young age, Bobic from Serbia at age 5, Li from China aged 15. Discussion is key to creating good work, Bobic says. “You have to have conversation with someone that you can really trust. It creates a whole third option when it’s not just you on your own with one brain.”
JONATHAN ENTWISTLE “The work of a film director is to tell a story,” Jonathan Entwistle says. Selected by Screen International as a “star of tomorrow” in 2010, the director studied fine art at Chelsea and then graduated on to an MA at the London Film School. “At Chelsea we were told that anything pre 1980 was shit and that Lars von Trier and Werner Herzog were much more relevant,” he grins, “but when I arrived at film school, I was told that anything post 1960 was shit and I should be watching anything by Hitchcock or John Ford. I was sat in the middle – I’d never watched Hitchcock before then.” More involved in the craft of filmmaking, the LFS shunned the digital age, “even when it came down to the editing, you’d be cutting films by hand with razor blades!” Entwistle says. “That teaches you to know what’s most important. You’ve got to know what you’re looking for but to be honest, we were using 35mm film on Panavision dollies and tracks in the studio and I thought fuck this. I was watching Shane Meadows, Mike Leigh and Lars von Trier. I just wanted to pick the camera up and take it to where I knew and that was my first short – Cotton Stones – my reaction to getting out of the studio and picking up the camera.”
His second film, The Good North, looks at the candid racist underbelly in a remote northern village; the female character at the centre reflecting the often-impenetrable cycle of life. “Even though she has a shit life, she goes back into the car in the end. It is a cycle of never escaping and in a way that’s what Cotton Stones is about too, the one guy that wants to escape, can’t. That’s a little bit like I feel when I am back up there.” Entwistle’s first two films have been reactions against filmmaking rather than having any colossal social agenda and the director is thinking big with his next project. “I’m not going to pretend that I want to make shitty British movies that nobody’s going to see – that’s the old British filmmaker mindset. There are an awful lot of filmmakers making drama that want to make thrillers. They’ve growing up watching Twin Peaks and just want to be wearing a trench-coat, solving crime. Imagine combining that with something like a Chanel commercial! Can you imagine the visual power of that?”
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DESIGNER INTERVIEW — IAN B AT T E N
Words DAL CHODHA Photography COLIN DODGSON Fashion editor TRACEY NICHOLSON
All clothes IAN BATTEN
Heavy viscose suit from spring/summer 1995
“to me, style in a way has nothing to do with fashion at all ”
Wool three-piece suit from autumn/winter 1990-91 [Opposite] Whipcord jacket with satin sleeves and harrington shirt from spring/summer 1997; Glasses Ian’s own by Anglo American Optical
Ian Batten worked at the Royal Opera House as a dresser during his days at Hornsey Art College in 60s London. At the age of 17, when the designer was told he was too old to begin pursuing professional ballet as a career option, defeated he sighed: “I’ll just carry on with fashion then.” Today – over 40 years later – he sits in his narrow, Highgate shopcum-studio with no regrets and a trim legion of sartorial devotees.
Ian Batten: I never wanted to be a retailer but having the shop and studio together made sense. Many of my customers are architects actually – it’s a joke considering this small space I work from; I’ve had people come over to see the shop especially. I don’t know why they seem to like what I do a lot. Dal Chodha: Maybe architects are looking for clothes that don’t feel so heavily constructed and slip on easily. Clothes are different to buildings, after all
musicians and architects shop there and it transcends people who are just into fashion.
Do you remember your first day? I think it’s because the clothes are quiet. You just put them on and they don’t scream at you and you don’t suddenly walk out and people start staring at you – it depends on how you put it together. I guess you don’t realise that you develop a style that you can’t see. Working for over 40 years, do you think this is an aesthetic you’ve matured into?
Men are odd in a lot of ways too, they are much more specific than women and you either get someone who will come back to you or someone who is not interested at all. There is never a middle bit.
Oh yes. I mean people say to me, “you’ve been doing it for a long time so, you know,” as if you’ve reached the end of something, so you’ll know it all and I say, NO! It doesn’t work like that – you’re learning all of the time!
It might have something to do with the way men see clothing, as a sort of uniform.
Actually I spent a long time looking for information about you. I had heard stories, Matt had told me what you had done before but there was nowhere concrete to go to get any information about you. Am I just not looking hard enough?
You’re right. I had this young banker come in the other day and he put on a jacket and asked me what I thought. I said it looked fine and he turned and said to me, “you know, I couldn’t wear this to work,” and I suddenly realised he’s a banker, he wants a uniform, fitted with sharp shoulders. And that isn’t my uniform. Your collections are often more unstructured and casual, using lots of washed linens and cottons … Exactly! It was just at that exact moment I realised that that’s what bankers are trying to put over with those suits, that authoritative style and really, it just reminded me that menswear is very specific, don’t you think? It’s the same with b store too. Lots of artists,
just do art,” and I thought that sounded good.
It’s funny because, well, I don’t know, you never think that you’re still going to be doing it! Which is why I guess I’m not on the internet much – I’m of a different generation. You know the tailor, Charlie Allen? I bumped into Charlie in the street after a long time and he said to me: “Are you still doing all that designing lark?” How did you get into it? I always liked drawing at school and I remember my art teacher said to my mum at some careers thing that I ought to think about going to art school. I had no idea what art school was so I asked her and she said, “you
Well, the first girl I ever saw in there was this incredible beatnik and I thought, wow, she is so beautiful. She ended up being Charlie Watt’s wife. Ray Davis and the artist Allen Jones were at college at the same time as me too. I’m always enamoured by how nonchalant people who grew up in 60s London are about what it was like back then. It’s hard for anyone who wasn’t there to put it into context – it just seems such a free and incredibly creative time. What was it like? It was sort of interesting, but when I went to art college, I went there as a naive person, not knowing what I was going to do and in a way, everybody was the same. Then after five years of being in art school you become a different person. You enjoyed drawing, so what made you go on to do fashion? I ended up wanting to do fashion drawing actually but when I went into the fashion department they said, you can’t just do fashion drawing you have to learn about clothing – they go hand in hand. I don’t think I was particularly liked in the fashion department because the woman who ran it, had all her little girls making pretty dresses and I came in and was using charcoal and was a bit common. I didn’t get on that well there, but I enjoyed it. I remember you mentioning to me before that when you left college, you went on to work for a big fashion company. b Magazine Ian Batten 29
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Yes, it was the mid 60s and it was this huge company that did really boring, middle-ofthe-road stuff called Rona Roy – it was great training for me. I went in there naively and I designed all these dresses that were really big sellers but it was when Mary Quant and all of those people were getting publicity and the whole Kings Road thing was happening. Before that it was all a bit boring. Do you remember thinking at the time, wow, something big is happening? Oh God yes, I was absolutely aware but didn’t understand the change. I remember going into the first Habitat shop and going: “Fuck! What is this?” It was all so new, it wasn’t anything to do with what they were selling, it was the way it was displayed; there wasn’t anything around like that before – ever. And fashions were changing too Everything sort of shifted. You know, there were suddenly lots of new people coming in, naively doing things, like me. I remember doing a dress which had a big cut out of the front and suddenly it was in the newspaper, talking about me as the “new designer”. But I made some mistakes, which were fortuitous and because things were selling, they were overlooked – I would have been sacked otherwise. Looking back on it though, it was really boring.
You switched to doing only menswear in the early 90s, when all eyes were on the London set including Nigel Hall, Duffer of St George and Hope & Glory It was in about 1992 or 93, I met this friend of mine – who I was at art school with – and he’d made a lot of money in the kitchen business and he said why don’t we work together? So we did a business and I decided to do only menswear, as it hadn’t started then like it is now. Every designer was thinking they should do menswear; people like Betty Jackson were doing it too! That’s happening now with menswear designers doing womenswear
Do you remember the first time you ever noticed clothing? When I was about 13, yes, I’d just gone to secondary school and the big thing I’d always wanted – which I did get in the end – was luminous socks. I’d seen some cool guys in the playground with them and I remember buying them. I was very aware of clothing, but I don’t know why. But in retrospect, what did those socks mean? Were they to make you fit in or help you stand out?
The difference for me now is that the womenswear I do for Livingstone Studios in Hampstead is just for me, but what I did then was about working on trends. Before, it was easier because you were always out and socialising, you saw trends, you saw it early and there was a feeling but after a while that can get a bit much. I’m so pleased that I’m nothing to do with the fashion crowd now.
That’s a good question. I think I wanted to be in with a certain crowd but also not be like everybody else. I don’t even know whether it is exhibitionist or what, but actually, to me, style in a way has nothing to do with fashion at all. I saw this old man in the supermarket the other day wearing really tight trousers with a funny, short jacket - he looked like Jacques Tati actually – who is one of my heroes. He had this funny stoop but he looked great. His profile – because of the length of what he was wearing and the proportions – was such a great shape.
In what way?
I wonder if those proportions were deliberate
Well, I’m out of it. People say, “oh you’re a fashion designer,” and I say, no, I’m not a fashion designer, I make clothing: that’s it.
When I was watching Notebook on Cities and Clothes by Wim Wenders, Yohji talks about why he loves black: “because it doesn’t detract from shape.” I just love that statement and it went into my head, that’s what menswear is about. So, you know, when I’m making suits for people, one inch can make something completely ordinary, look truly stylish.
What else did you do?
That’s a pretty simple clarification
I left there and did a few other jobs and then got a job with Sterling Cooper. Anthony Price was there too and Paul Smith was making clothes for us. It was fantastic, we were always going away too and I was constantly travelling.
Well fashion is a lot to do with trends and as a designer, there is a certain period you reach, where you don’t follow the trends and it’s more about putting your stamp on something.
ianbatten.com
Wool gabardine tartan pea coat from autumn/winter 1993; Wool gabardine tartan trousers autumn/winter 2009-10 [Previous] Cotton work jacket from spring/summer 1990
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“People say, ‘oh you’re a fashion designer,’ and I say, no, I’m not a fashion designer, I make clothing: that’s it.”
Heavy viscose suit spring/summer 1995; Glasses Ian’s own by Uniqlo [Opposite] Cotton work jackets spring/summer 1990; Jeans spring/summer 2010
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SUPER FLUX — Performance artist Anat Ben-David is a member of the electroclash multidisciplinary group Chicks on Speed. In 2003, she won the Goldsmiths Art Purchase Prize for “Popaganda” – a project focused on the power structures and symbolism of the Pop icon and fascist politics.
Photography ELLEN NOLAN Fashion editor JANE HOWARD @ M.A.P.
Dress MONIQUE; Tights WOLFORD
Dress ANN-SOFIE BACK; Shorts B STORE [Opposite] Waistcoat jacket B STORE
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Cuff CHRISTOPHE LEMAIRE; Belt SOPHIE HULME; Tights WOLFORD
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Necklace II. Mod. 2 “480, 3 Chain” THE MEDLEY INSTITUTE [Opposite] Shirt B STORE
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[Opposite] Scarf STEPHAN SCHNEIDER Make-up KATE LINDSEY using M.A.C PRO Model PERFORMANCE ARTIST ANAT BEN-DAVID Thanks to Kuni Awai @ b store
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Photography ALEX SAINSBURY Fashion editor JASON HUGHES
O’Shea wears trench and jeans SATYENKUMAR; Neckties CASELY-HAYFORD; Sandals GURKEES
Henry wears jacket and cargo pants CASELY-HAYFORD [Opposite] O’Shea wears belted jacket and cargo pants TIM SOAR; Sandals GURKEES
Henry wears shirt and trousers CHRISTOPHE LEMAIRE; Sunglasses CUTLER & GROSS
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O’Shea wears jacket A.SAUVAGE; Henry wears vest and scarf STEPHAN SCHNEIDER
Henry wears blazer OMAR KASHOURA; Jeans STYLIST’S STUDIO; Hat IAN BATTEN [Opposite] O’Shea wears suit EHUD; Hat LOU DALTON
Henry wears shirt LOU DALTON; Necktie CASELY-HAYFORD O’Shea wears sleeveless jacket, waistcoat and trousers LOU DALTON; Cummerbund STYLIST’S OWN
O’Shea wears blazer and T-shirt B STORE [Opposite] Henry wears blazer, trousers and hat IAN BATTEN; Sunglasses CUTLER AND GROSS Hair HIROSHI Make-up KEN NAKANO Models HENRY AND O’SHEA @ SELECT Set design GEORGINA PRAGNELL Photographer’s assistant HUGO YANGUELA Fashion assistants ALEC MATHER AND ISABELLA GOUMAL Thanks to Dounia Benjelloul @ Select
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Photography NICK DOREY Fashion editor SAM RANGER
Dress MARTINE ROSE; Skirt RAFFAELE ASCIONE; Socks FALKE; Brogues CHURCH’S
Polo shirt BETHAN SILVERWOOD; Top SIMONE ROCHA; Dress CHRISTIAN WIJNANTS [Opposite] Top BOBOUTIC; Dress RICHARD NICOLL; Socks FALKE; Brogues CHURCH’S
Polo neck MEADHAM KIRCHHOFF; Coat SOPHIE HULME [Opposite] Dress WILLIAM HENDRY
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Dress RICHARD NICOLL; Socks FALKE; Brogues CHURCH’S [Opposite] Top WILLIAM HENDRY; Skirt B STORE; Socks FALKE; Brogues CHURCH’S
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Top RAFFAELE ASCIONE; Shirt and skirt SIMONE ROCHA; Brogues CHURCH’S [Opposite] Shirt B STORE; Jumper GILES
Blouse GILES; Jumper LOU DALTON [Opposite] Cardigan MEADHAM KIRCHHOFF; Dress JAMIE COCKERILL; Sunglasses GENERAL EYEWEAR
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Dress JAMIE COCKERILL; Socks FALKE; Brogues CHURCH’S [Opposite] Top WILLIAM HENDRY; Skirt B STORE; Socks FALKE; Brogues CHURCH’S Hair BEN JONES using BUMBLE AND BUMBLE Make-up JANEEN WITHERSPOON @ JULIAN WATSON AGENCY using M.A.C Models MADDIE KULICKA @ ELITE LONDON Photographer’s assistants RONAN GALLAGHER AND WILL MARSDEN Fashion assistants CRISTINA HOLMESA AND GUY RUGERONI Retouching POSTMEN Thanks to Camilla and James @ Elite London, Provision Studios and Prolighting
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G ROOV Y, LAIDBACK AN D NAST Y
Photography MEL BLES Fashion editor STEVEN WESTGARTH
Chloe wears top JENNY POSTLE; Trousers HOLLY FULTON; Boots ASHISH
Chloe wears printed shirt ANTIPODIUM; Mesh shirt SIMONE ROCHA; Cut off maxi dress ANN-SOFIE BACK; Trousers JENNY POSTLE [Opposite] Benoni wears gillet and shorts JAMES LONG; Blazer JW ANDERSON; Shirt, waistcoat and trousers CASELY-HAYFORD; Hat MARTINE ROSE; Socks FALKE; Shoes WOOYOUNGMI
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Benoni wears blazer, T-shirt and track pants CASELY-HAYFORD; Top MARTA MARQUES AND PAULO ALMEIDA; Waistcoat (worn around waist) LOU DALTON; Socks FALKE; Shoes WOOYOUNGMI [Opposite] Model wears Chloe garmet wears A DESIGNER; jacket ASHISH; Model Dress wears CHRISTOPHER garmet A DESIGNER KANE [Opposite] Model wears garmet A DESIGNER; Model wears garmet A DESIGNER
Chloe wears cropped jacket HOLLY FULTON; Blazer B STORE; Dress MEADHAM KIRCHHOFF; Sunglasses CUTLER AND GROSS; Socks FALKE; Boots ASHISH [Opposite] Benoni wears leather top and T-shirt PIETRO FRANCH; Hat MARTINE ROSE; Necklace JW ANDERSON
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Benoni wears jacket and shorts PIER WU; Long shirt CASELY-HAYFORD; Shirt SUNSPEL; Socks FALKE; Shoes WOOYOUNGMI [Opposite] Chloe wears cropped jacket HOLLY FULTON; Top SIMONE ROCHA; Shorts LOUISE GRAY; Leggings BEBAROQUE; Necklace JW ANDERSON; Socks STYLIST’S OWN; Boots ASHISH
Benoni wears blazers and shoes WOOYOUNGMI, Shirt JW ANDERSON, Top (worn underneath) PIETRO FRANCH; Trousers MARTINE ROSE [Opposite] Chloe wears top CHRISTOPHER SHANNON; Head pieces LOUISE GRAY
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Chloe wears dress MEADHAM KIRCHHOFF; Jumper JW ANDERSON; Vest dress ACNE; Maxi skirt ANN-SOFIE BACK; Head piece (worn on hat) MEADHAM KIRCHHOFF; Hat STYLIST’S OWN; Socks FALKE; Boots ASHISH [Opposite] Benoni wears waistcoat CASELY-HAYFORD; Leather jacket and trousers PIETRO FRANCH; Shirt LOU DALTON; Socks FALKE; Shoes WOOYOUNGMI Hair KENNA @ TERRIE TANAKA MANAGEMENT using GHD SERIES STYLER Make-up KIRSTEN PIGGOTT Models BENONI LOOS @ PREMIER MODEL MANAGEMENT AND CHLOE @ FM Retouching DAVE ANDREWS @ PHOENIX POST PRODUCTION Photographer’s assistant OLIN BRANNIGAN AND MATT PREECE Fashion assistants HARRY LAMBERT, BRYAN CONWAY AND SAMUEL GALLAGHER Thanks to Mark Loy and all at Spring Studios
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WASHED UP
Photography AITKEN JOLLY Fashion editor JASON HUGHES
Hannah wears top STYLIST’S STUDIO; Skirt PETER PILOTTO; Sunglasses GILES FOR CUTLER AND GROSS; Shell bracelet PEBBLE LONDON
Harry wears blazer and T-shirt SATYENKUMAR; Vintage wetsuit BODY GLOVE; Sunglasses CUTLER AND GROSS; Sunglasses holder STYLIST’S STUDIO [Opposite] Harmony wears dress CHRISTIAN WIJNANTS; Coral earring PEBBLE LONDON
Felix wears jacket and trousers TIM SOAR (ARCHIVE); Coral necklace PEBBLE LONDON [Opposite] Hannah wears bra top and skirt B STORE; Visor BERNSTOCK SPEIRS; Coral necklace PEBBLE LONDON
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Harry wears hat SATYENKUMAR; Necklace PEBBLE LONDON; Sunglasses CUTLER AND GROSS; Sunglasses holder STYLIST’S STUDIO [Opposite] Marique wears T-shirt SATYENKUMAR; Trousers MYRZA DE MUYNCK; Sunglasses GILES FOR CUTLER AND GROSS; Shell earrings PEBBLE LONDON; Bag ALLY CAPELLINO
Marique wears jumpsuit CHRISTIAN WIJNANTS; Bikini top INSIGHT 51; Coral necklace STYLIST’S OWN [Opposite] Hannah wears MAARTEN VAN DER HORST; Shorts SOPHIE HULME; Vintage shell necklace RELLIK
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Felix wears blazer SATYENKUMAR; Waistcoat TIM SOAR; Sunglasses CUTLER AND GROSS; Shell earring TRIBU [Opposite] Marique wears jacket MYRZA DE MUYNCK; Wetsuit O’NEIL; Shell earrings PEBBLE LONDON; Belt MATHEW MILLER
Harry wears top CHRISTOPHER SHANNON; vintage wetsuit BODY GLOVE [Opposite] Marique wears top CHRISTOPHE LEMAIRE; Coral earring PEBBLE LONDON; Shell earring TRIBU
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[Opposite] Felix wears jumper HOUSE OF HOLLAND Hair HALLEY BRISKER @ DAVID COFFIN MANAGEMENT Make-up AYAMI NISHIMURA @ JULIAN WATSON AGENCY Manicurist KATIE JANE HUGHES using ORLY Models FELIX BRANCH AND HANNAH NOBEL @ ELITE LONDON, HARMONY AND HARRY GOODWINS @ MODELS 1, AND MARIQUE SCHIMMEL @ SELECT Retouching IMAG’IN LONDON Photographer’s assistants JACK DAY AND LETTY SCHMITERLOW Fashion assistants GEORGIA BOAL-RUSSELL AND ISABELLA GOUMAL Hair assistant STEPH PINDER Make-up assistants ELIZABETH HSIEH, LAUREN WALL AND MAGDELENA WINSKA Thanks to Charlie Clark and James Powell @ Elite, Julien Miachon and Ryan Frost @ Models 1, and Susannah Hooker @ Select
1 05 Words MILES SIMPSON
b E S S AY —
90s LONDON CLUBLAND January 1990: a cold, dark month and Britain was a cold, dark place. Thatcher’s reign now spanned three decades and like millions of others, I was unemployed again. Heeding Norman Tebbit’s advice, I got on my bike, well the tube, and headed to the West End to offer my services to any menswear stores that might consider employing me. I decided to cut through a still sleazy Soho on the way to Covent Garden and down at the end of Wardour Street – in among the seedy clip joints, run-down peep shows and dilapidated pubs – there was a shop and it had a sign in the window: “Staff needed.” As I stepped into the brightly lit interior from the damp gloom of the street, little did I know that things were never going to be quite the same again. Until then I had been a typical London rave kid. Swept up in the suburbs by the backwash from the summer of love, I was propelled into 1989 on a wave of baggy sweatshirts, brightly coloured wallabies and bad haircuts. No hanging out with Boy George at Shoom for me – it was all Centre Force radio and wild goose chases around the M25. I thought I was the epitome of cool but Boys Own fanzine might have described me as the epitome of an “acid ted”. But all that was about to change, because Soho was where the heart of London’s nightlife beat. Soon after I started, another young man came to work in the shop. Similar background as me, same sort of musical taste, clothes and even hair. Other people I knew had been reluctant to travel “up west” to go out but the new guy and I quickly became friends and now I had a willing partner in dance-floor crime. Initially we went to Rage, held at Heaven, a cavernous club under Charing Cross station, and the Crazy Club in the equally vast Astoria on Tottenham Court Road. It was a logical progression for us – essentially they were weekly raves in two of the biggest clubs in London. Bigger seemed to mean better
for raves but the cooler promoters were downsizing. Nicky Holloway opened the Milk Bar on the road next to the Astoria. Tiny by comparison, holding around 150 people, with its white on white interior, it was a world away from the increasingly lurid-coloured rave world as it started to go mainstream. We headed along on a Wednesday night to Pure Sexy, which in the summer of 1990 was as about as alien a name for a party as one could possibly imagine. Danny Rampling ran the night with his wife, Jenni, and everything about it felt like a reaction against the rave culture that they had helped create with their seminal night Shoom. We were blown away – cool people, white Levis, Michiko, Destroy, Sol with lime, and DJs whose names we’d only seen on flyers just hanging out. It was like a social club for London faces and the best party in town, soundtracked by real house music from the USA, slower UK stuff and the flavour of the year: Italian house. We signed up for membership and returned a number of times until things changed at the shop. My friend went to university and I was left without anyone to hit the town with. Then one morning, my membership card landed on the doormat. By this time, people were queuing round the block and it was nigh on impossible to get in. The following Wednesday, I made the journey back into Soho on my own. Strange as it sounds now, it seemed normal then. The same people were there every week, many of whom arrived on their own too, because for regulars it felt like one big special gang. Walking around town, you would see people from Pure Sexy and give each other a knowing look or a little nod; the girl in John Richmond, the lads on the Berwick Street stalls and everyone in Soho’s numerous record shops were regulars. Breeze and Dominic Moir from Quaff often warmed up for Danny, Lewis
from Bluebird, and Craig and Oscar from Trax could often be found propping up the bar. Quickly people you nodded hello to became people you stopped to chat to became people you regarded as mates became close friends you hung out with. By this time, a proliferation of small clubs had established themselves in the area – Flying, Yellow Book, Ophelia – and things had reached fever pitch at Pure Sexy. That Christmas, the Ramplings took some time off and there were ridiculous scenes ahead of the last party before their break. I could hardly get into the street as hundreds of people blocked the road outside the entrance. I was squashed next to Jon Marsh from The Beloved in the melee about 20 yards from the door. Jenni pointed in the direction of Jon and shouted: “Him! He can come in.” Two bouncers then waded out into the crowd, grabbed me by the shoulders and hauled me, beaming, through the throng into the club. Clubbing rather than raving was now what London’s clued up kids wanted to do. This popularity meant promoters were looking for ways to capitalise through bigger clubs and larger-scale one-off parties. Kinky Disco, housed in the large, fairly tatty Shaftesbury’s probably led the way, providing a haunt for every bloke from the home counties with a King Charles perm and a pair of leather trousers. The parties were fun but without question, it was rival night Love Ranch that gained the most notoriety. Promoted by Sean McClusky and Mark “Wigan”, it took place every Saturday in a chrome-and-mirrors abomination on Leicester Square called Maximus. It really shouldn’t have worked but somehow, with strikingly designed flyers and a fuck-you attitude, it captured the zeitgeist perfectly. While long locks still flowed at Kinky Disco, the clippers had come out at Love Ranch and iD Magazine ran a whole article
on “psychedelic skinheads”, ostensibly because three people in one club had cut their hair. But the affected Love Ranch attitude was a bit much. They had a banner on the dance floor that said: “This is where it’s fucking at”. But if you were where it really was at, you didn’t need a banner to tell everyone. London was now in the grip of progressive house, which has since become a byword for boring, convoluted music for blokes, but there were actually some very exciting records being made at the beginning. It was really a reaction to the more slickly produced music from New York, Rome and Rimini. The early progressive house producers started to reclaim harderedged sounds we had grown used to in the days of acid house, set them in a new context, forging a distinctive English sound. And in these earlier days, DJs mixed this up with European and American records. We went to one of the early Puscha parties and heard Andy Weatherall, Danny Rampling and Sasha dropping new progressive house, alongside Belgian techno and Miami deep house. And for a brief moment in time, it really felt like the future. Puscha really ruled the roost when it came to one-off parties for about a year, because their parties were special. Each of them was themed: “Oh So Surreal”, dedicated to Dalí, “Elvisly Ours”, (unsurprisingly) to Elvis. The decor was lavish for glorified-warehouse raves. On entering Oh So Surreal, you passed giant Dalí chairs, before entering the main room, which had hundreds of picture frames hanging from the ceiling, some of which had “art” projected on to them. At another, people without tickets were fighting to get in and inside, we heard Milk Bar podium dancer John of the Pleased Wimmin’ play records for the first time. While Pushca was consistent, the best one-off I ever went to was Extravaganza de Paris. It was meant to take place in the then disused Cafe de Paris but upon our arrival, we were greeting by a lone long-haired chap standing in the doorway who informed us that it had been moved to Old Street. In 1991, being told to go to Old Street was like being told to go to the moon – it was miles away and there was absolutely nothing there. Undeterred though, we jumped into a taxi and headed east. Old Street was deserted but we found the fitness centre and entered what proved to be something of a Roman orgy. There were three rooms: the first, a bar, where the drinks were free as they had been included in the price of the ticket. I went into room two, which was the gym, with all the equipment stacked in the corner and Kid Batchelor and Phil Perry playing acid house. I was oblivious to room three until a wet girl walked past me in her underwear. I went to explore and found a swimming pool and jacuzzi! No one had brought any swimwear and as things got messier, more and more people started to strip and dive in. Someone had smuggled some ecstasy back from Amsterdam but they weren’t like anything we’d seen before they were big, brown and looked like they should be administered to horses. The locker room had turned into a drug cubicle room and the
whole crowd seemed to be half naked, wet and off their heads – with little or no security to keep anyone in check. It was just brilliant. Another direction changer for London was the Rampling’s venture into the one-off scene. They brought New York DJ legend Tony Humphries over for a then rare appearance on UK shores. Held in some north-west London backwater, pretty much everybody who was anybody in London clubs turned up. I’m not sure how anyone else threw a party that night because every DJ in London was there, eyes fixed on The Hump and his mixing. As a party, it never went wild, but musically, Tony delivered a master class in both mixing and programming, demonstrating a level of sophistication we weren’t used to in London. London was now looking in the direction of America again and this was fuelled in no small part by the Ministry of Sound, which had opened in late 1991 with huge financial backing. Apparently it was based on the Paradise Garage, but the Paradise Garage was in Manhattan not the Elephant and Castle. We went on its second weekend and the huge, cold, high-ceilinged bar only sold juice. That might work in New York clubs with acid punch but it proved to be less of a success in south-east London. Alcohol soon arrived but it remained a soulless hall.
THE SOUND OF SOHO Side 1 1. Blunted Dummies House For All (US Devinitive) 2. Seechi I Say Yeah/Flute On (Ital Energy) 3. Shay Jones Are You Going To Be There? (US ID) 4. Sheer Taft Cascades (UK Creation) 5. Inner City Pennies From Heaven (US Virgin) 6. C.J. Bolland Horsepower (Belgium R&S) 7. Photon Inc Generate Power (US Strictly Rhythm) 8. Soft House Company What You Need (Ital Irma) 9. Liberty City Some Lovin’ (US Murk)
Side 2 10. Acorn Arts Silence (UK X-Gate) 11. D-Rail Bring it On Down (Ital DDD) 12. React 2 Rhythm Intoxication (Guerrilla) 13. The Traveller Just Me (Belgium Wonka) Further afield, like-minded clubs across the 14. Yo! Bots country were be brigaded together as some sort I Got It (US RCA) of national Balearic network. Road trips followed 15. Nightlife City Rama to places such as Most Excellent in Manchester, Running So Hard (Ital Mighty Quinn) Venus in Nottingham, Zap in Brighton and, 16. The Good Men eventually, Back To Basics in Leeds. Give It Up (Dutch Fresh Fruit) 17. Phoenix However, clubs such as the Ministry of Sound Plaything (US Big Beat) and Back to Basics were ushering in a new 18. Johnny Parker era of club brands. The innocence of the Love it Forever (Ital C.B.R.) Balearic network would soon be replaced by 19. Leftfield mass marketing, coach tours to the likes of Not Forgotten (Outer Rhythm) Gatecrasher in Sheffield and Cream in Liverpool, 20. A.S.H.A. package clubbing holidays to Ibiza, John of J.J. Tribute (Ital Beat Club) the Pleased Wimmin’ on Top of the Pops, and magazines such as Mixmag, DJ and Muzik Selected by Miles Simpson screaming about the latest superstar DJ. This was big business and London clubland was disappearing rapidly into a vortex of handbag house, feather boas and shiny shirts. More and more money was made until the bubble finally burst on New Year’s Eve 1999, when greedy club promoters finally throttled the goose that had laid the golden egg. For many people, overpriced clubs, rubbish music and crap clothes have been their experience of house music in London. But for those of us lucky enough to be there to hear that heady mix of house styles played in small Soho basements, we really had been where it was fucking at.
Miles Simpson is a house music blogger, occasional DJ and full-time club culture obsessive. He lives in North London with some old records. ultraastrum.blogspot.com
109 Words TOM FINCH Photography KASIA BOBULA
b IS FOR BRUTALISM
Beautiful or artistically barren? The debate around Brutalism has always been ferocious. Splitting opinion right down the middle, it has been loved and hated for 60 years, though in recent times, the tedious tug of war between the “progressive” and “reactionary” camps – more concerned with ideology than architecture – has shifted to a broader and more reasoned consideration of the individual merits and demerits of specific buildings. The term “brutalism” sounds like a brutal put-down, but it was in fact coined by the architects Alison and Peter Smithson in 1953, who were inspired by the French
béton brut or “raw concrete” – a phrase used by Le Corbusier. For the Smithsons, brutalism described the repeated geometry of primary forms in concrete: the hypnotic repetition of square, cube and line to create a stark, monumental harmony. In clapped-out postwar Britain, where people’s desire for a more equal society met the economic reality of rationing, the architect’s responsibility was not only to provide a safe, habitable environment, but one that would transform the way people related to one another. Brutalist buildings were revolutionary, blurring the boundary between the home, the city and different
social classes. Not merely places to live, they offered new models for living. Though some Brutalist architects seized the opportunity to transform deadbeat communities, some did undoubtedly create structures with no real consideration for those living within them, leading to crime, squalor and alienation. Examples of the best and the worst are dotted throughout the UK, and here we present a tour of six of them. From the vertiginous streets in the sky of Robin Hood Gardens to the sedate refinement of Finsbury Park Villas, they reveal a radical set of ambitions, still dominant in architectural debate.
ROBIN HOOD GARDENS (COMPLETED 1972) ALISON AND PETER SMITHSON The husband and wife team Alison and Peter Smithson were the most experimental architects working in England at the time of their Robin Hood Gardens project. Researchers and academics, they were part of Team 10, an experimental group made up of artists, architects and theorists. In Robin Hood Gardens, Team 10 was put to the test … located in Poplar, East London, this development consists of 213 flats in two long blocks of seven and 10 storeys. The two blocks – both slightly cranked inward – exhibit
richly articulated concrete facades, helping to prevent the long linear arrangement from becoming too monotonous. The blocks are formed in vertical bands of threes. Elevated walkways bring a sense of order and freedom by offering circulation between each block. In the midst of all the grey, artificial landscaping offers a respite of green. One of Team 10’s core beliefs was that a building’s primary obligation was to its context. Yet the people who moved in soon complained that their new homes were detached from
the character of the neighbourhood and that the rigid concrete plan gave no space for any idiosyncratic, human touches. These were homes that would never be homely. Far from stepping into utopia, residents were forced to occupy a lower-class ghetto. Today Robin Hood Gardens is still the scene of fierce debate. Leading architects are calling for the building to be listed – while tenants are demanding its demolition. Regardless of its fate, it marks a milestone in the development of brutalist social housing. b Magazine b Is For Brutalism 111
KEELING HOUSE (COMPLETED 1957) DENYS LASDUN Denys Lasdun is responsible for some of brutalism’s most iconic buildings, including the Royal National Theatre and the Royal College of Physicians. An admirer of modernist heroes Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, Lasdun’s passion for planning clarity and almost diagrammatic circulation was, however, softened by the influence of English classicists such as Nicholas Hawksmoor, coupled with elements of the baroque. Such diverse inspirations create some curious twists and turns when you inspect
his buildings. On approaching the seemingly single, impenetrable form of his Keeling House development, for instance, you discover you can almost pass directly though it, as you would an alleyway. Inside, you find an organically arranged central core – with four wings each linking to blocks of flats. These flats are, surprisingly for a building of this size and shape, arranged over two floors rather than one. These features meant that, right from the start, there was a sense of neighbourly belonging and community within the scheme that was lacking in other highrise residential developments at the time.
The critics who were concerned that the vertical arrangement would encourage isolation were silenced. Keeling House’s integration of form and function was heralded a success. As a model, it would increasingly be relied upon – with housing space being squeezed ever more tightly.
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BEVIN COURT (1954) TECTON GROUP Bevin Court was built to replace warravaged housing in the area of Finsbury, north-west London and thus replicates what stood there before it in terms of scale and footprint. The building itself consists of 130 flats and ended up being a distilled version of Tecton’s previous project, the nearby Spa Green estate. Tight economic conditions left little room for excess and instead forced the architects to concentrate their efforts on the rigorous planning and interaction of spaces, achieved by enriching common areas as much as possible, with the agenda to encourage interaction between the residents.
The overall aesthetic is unmistakably constructivist in its form and its bold clarity. At its heart lies a stunning staircase that serves all floors. As you ascend, window openings strategically placed within the staircase gradually provide a widening view across London, illustrating Lubetkin’s belief that “a staircase is a dance”. He conceived the central circulation void as a narrow drum, with triangular landings cantilevered into the space, held by flights of stairs that serve alternating floors and half landings. Prior to encountering this staircase, you
can see within the ground floor entrance a large-scale mural painted by Peter Yates. In graphic blue, red and black, this mural – sitting framed, behind a balustrade – depicts a history of the borough of Finsbury and the coat of arms that symbolises the area. Yates was involved in many collaborations throughout his career and the influence of people such as Le Corbusier who handpainted murals in his buildings is evident. In this instance, the impersonal and generic nature of low-budget social housing is given a courtly dash and flourish.
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HEYGATE ESTATE (1974) TIM TINKER If Bevin Court shows brutalism at its most magnificent, the opposite is true of the Heygate estate, located just south of the Elephant and Castle. It is no surprise that the estate’s sprawling concrete blocks have been used by filmmakers to stand in for soulless eastern-bloc housing. Referred to by local planners as “London’s lost quarter”, the estate is now on the point of complete demolition and is 99% vacated in preparation for this humiliating end. (That 1%? These are the residents determined to cling on for as long as possible.)
It all began with such high hopes. At the estate, overhead walkways link the tall concrete blocks, providing a plan for a self-contained community. Initially there were even plans to extend these walkways to nearby estates and create a network of self-supporting housing communities. But these dreams of independent units ended in the reality of isolation. In person, these walkways and expanses of unoccupied facades make the space between the buildings feel distinctly cut off from the area – the noise from the busy streets and train lines noticeably deadened.
When the overpasses and terraces remained occupied by residents busily going about their business, the Heygate estate must have felt like a metropolis in its own right. But with endless empty niches and tangled walkways, it now feels like a ghost town. Only the occasional muffled chugging of trains in the background stand as a reminder that, beyond the largest perimeter blocks, the heart of the city still beats.
ALEXANDRA ROAD (1977) NEAVE BROWN (CAMDEN TOWN DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE) In Alexandra Road, Brown pursued ideals of a “continuous” and “seamless” society, where houses, schools, shops, gardens and maintenance were to be ambitiously linked as one. This vision can be glimpsed when you look over the central garden space located on the inner edge of the housing blocks – and see play areas, large chimneys and risers sitting against a backdrop of communal walkways and private balconies. This utopian model was to be arranged as per the space available, which may explain why Alexandra Road appears “cut to length”
and almost crammed into the available area. Consisting of two parallel rows of different heights, an eight-storey block faces the railway to deaden the sound and vibrations from Euston train station. The facing block is four storeys tall, with both blocks linked by a walkway that incorporates access to both.
sense the building is far more impressive than, say, the Brunswick Centre, which follows a similar extruded model, but is fully appreciable as a complete entity inside out.
As expressed in the central walkways, the geometry of the plan presents a gently arching crescent. As you walk towards the centre, you have no view of the beginning nor the end of the building. The effect is disorienting and oddly striking. In this b Magazine b Is For Brutalism 125
FINSBURY PARK HOUSING (2008) SERGISON BATES Sergison Bates provides what is often called a more refined “brutal” aesthetic, with a body of previous work that has embraced pubs, offices and semi-detached houses. Projects that revolve around their inhabitants sit convincingly with the practice’s admiration of the Smithson’s and their belief that the everyday inhabitation of spaces is as vital a consideration in the design as the debt a building must play to its surroundings. Proof of this was confirmed when Sergison Bates were commissioned to refurbish the Smithson’s summer home, the Upper Lawn, in 2003.
The provision of three new villas in Finsbury Park follows from extensive knowledge of social housing and its history. The villas – of alternate heights – cluster around a shared garden in a manner typical of houses bordering the park. In response to the paper-thin stick-on facades so commonplace in modern architecture, Sergison Bates propose a much more traditional method of construction: expressed floor slabs and flush mortar brickwork which offer a visual weight and permanence. This is countered by a subtle reference to the bay windows of nearby homes, abstracted to give the villas a
sense of familiarity within the streetscape. In short, the Finsbury Park villas celebrate the fact that people actually have to live between their four walls – a marked difference from brutalism’s early, more unforgiving years. Brutalism, it seems, has finally come of age.
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MASKED Unseen photographs of JJ Hudson.
Words MAGDA KEANEY Photography AXEL HOEDT
Some interesting observations can be made around Axel Hoedt’s photographs of the designer JJ Hudson in relation to both the photographer’s own practice and an analysis of the broader state of play in contemporary fashion image making.
meaningfully in the late 90s, when exhibitions such as Charlotte Cotton’s Imperfect Beauty articulated key concerns and working practices of a generation and identified photographers whose work, then challenging conventions, has now become the seminal of that period.
Hoedt is a German photographer who lives and works in London and who, I consider, falls into an important group of photographers currently making fashion images. Hoedt is not new to the industry – he’s been working for more than a decade and neither is he an establishment figure. His approach to his work is not defined by “fashion” but by “photography” and an intersection of the two, in his hands, demonstrates some defining and, I think, new characteristics of what fashion image making is at present, and what are the directions and aspirations with which it faces the future. These definitions and directions are different to those last discussed
The original impetus for the pictures was an editorial commission – Hoedt was commissioned by Katie Grand, then the editorin-chief at Pop magazine to make a portrait of JJ Hudson: an experimental designer who transforms found garments into masks and head pieces – part gimp S&M gear, part fucked-up Disney fancy dress, part tongue-in-cheek fashion accessory. Hoedt’s mandate as a photographer may have resulted in one or two pictures taken in an afternoon to satisfy print requirements, but it morphed into a larger and ongoing project where Hudson and his assistant were photographed in the designer’s studio in Brighton, as well as the photographer’s studio in Hackney, wearing b Magazine Masked 135
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the masks. Hoedt still works with Polaroid and film and a large-format camera. The images further his interest in the implications of making photographs in the studio, the psychological isolation of wearing a mask, the performative potential of the fashion image, and the abstract compositional form of the pieces. There is a particularly fascinating aspect to this series of photographs for me, which is a link to an unrelated series of photographs Hoedt commenced at almost the same time, around the Fastnacht festival in southern Germany. Though not connected consciously in Hoedt’s mind, these are also studio portraits made using the same method and equipment, where masking and performance extend concerns with documentation or straight descriptive presentation. Photographers such as Hoedt short-circuit the binary pigeonholes “art” or “fashion’’. These
constructs, as they are usually applied to the genre, don’t reflect the process, intellect, intent or impact of the imagery produced by a confident, complex and sophisticated generation of image makers who remind us that there is cause for optimism and celebration around contemporary fashion image making. This is all the more important in the current climate, where commercial imperatives and also some of the technological changes associated with digital photography and the commissioning process have resulted in a rightly lamented lack of creativity fashion platforms and outputs.
Magda Keaney is a curator and writer. Currently curator of Fashion Space gallery at London College of Fashion, her book World’s Top Photographers Fashion and Advertising’ was published by RotoVision in 2007. axelhoedt.com
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