Faye Toogood: Assemblage 5 by Friedman Benda

EARTH

MOON

WAT E R

FAY E T O O G O O D A S S E M B L A G E N o. â&#x20AC;&#x2030; 5

CONTENTS

I N TRODUC T ION

E ART H

MOON

WAT E R

LI S T OF WORKS

I N CO N V E R S AT I O N

INTRODUCTION

Assemblage 5 is an extraordinary body of work that marks a turning point for Faye Toogood. For the British designer’s first solo gallery exhibition in the United States, Toogood has created her largest collection to date: twenty-three objects arranged within an environment that is as essential to the work as the pieces themselves. Commissioned by Friedman Benda, the collection includes furniture, objects and clothing, and reflects Toogood’s desire to push beyond the conventional limits of design. Since establishing her studio in London in 2008, Toogood has gained a loyal following worldwide, working across the fields of interior design, installation, product design and fashion design. Assemblage 5 is a departure in terms of scale, breadth, fabrication techniques and materials, but continues a journey that began with the first collection, Assemblage 1, in 2010. Each of these bodies of work is part of a making process that has its own inspiration and materials but follows on closely from the previous one – either as a reaction to it, or as a further elaboration of its themes. Some objects within the collections act as a common thread: the Element table, for example, has featured in all of the Assemblages. With Assemblage 5 Toogood explores what she sees as the most basic elements – water, earth and moon – represented by three materials: lithium-barium crystal, cob and silver nitrate-covered bronze. Her inspiration was Henri Matisse’s Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence in the south of France, which she visited in 2014. In a recent interview (published in this volume) Toogood describes being profoundly moved by the experience and the attention Matisse paid to the detail of every object and surface within the space. She was also astonished to see the artist move from two dimensions to three – a shift she empathised with, having previously worked on World of Interiors magazine, where she had by necessity focused on creating images of spaces rather than actual spaces. Assemblage 5 begins with the elements she saw in the chapel: the pews, altar, chalice, relics and vestments. These are reinterpreted in a spiritual rather than a religious way, and given new meaning through Toogood’s experiments with forms and materials. Working closely with small-scale manufacturers and craftspeople, Assemblage 5 sees Toogood collaborating with a fabricator outside the UK for the first time.

Her well-known Roly-Poly chair, which was acquired for the permanent collection of the Denver Art Museum in 2014 and the National Gallery of Victoria in 2017, is made for the first time in cast lithium-barium crystal by craftspeople in the Czech Republic. In a challenging, experimental process, the piece required five months to cure in a specially designed kiln before de-moulding and polishing to its final form. Relying on the technical skills of collaborators requires considerable forethought and organisation, but Toogood’s work is also very much driven by intuition and emotion. Explanation and rationalisation come later, when she is able to contextualise her work, often drawing on her academic knowledge of the history and theory of art from her studies at Bristol University. Her approach to Assemblage 5 was motivated by a desire to explore femininity, identity and fertility – themes that have interested her since she was a young adult. The breadth and depth of Assemblage 5 will open new doors for Toogood: it sees the artist exploring textiles for the first time through the design of the vestments, and paves the way for further experiments with jewellery and adornment. In her desire to challenge limits and boundaries, drawing on emotion, intuition and narrative, Toogood gives us all space to think about design in a new way.

Vicky Richardson Vicky Richardson is a London-based writer and curator. She is the former director of Architecture Design Fashion at the British Council and former editor in chief of Blueprint magazine.

E ART H

MOON

WA T E R

LIST OF WORKS

8 – 9 T A B L E A U / E A R T H Cob composite 73 × 250 × 100 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

23 P E W B E N C H / E A R T H Cob composite 43 × 125 × 45 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

44 R O LY– P O LY C H A I R / W A T E R Kiln-formed lithium-barium crystal 61 × 84 × 59 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

10 B E A D / E A R T H Cob composite 100 × 20 × 5 cm Edition of 20 + 4 A P + Prototype

26 – 2 8 C U P / M O O N Sand-cast bronze, silver nitrate 30 × 50 × 50 cm Edition of 20 + 4 A P + Prototype

46 – 4 7 T A P E S T R Y / W A T E R Wool, cotton 140 × 280 × 5 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

11 R O LY– P O LY C H A I R / E A R T H Cob composite 61 × 86 × 59 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

30 – 31 T A P E S T R Y / M O O N Wool, cotton 140 × 280 × 5 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

48 C U P / W A T E R Kiln-formed lithium-barium crystal 40 × 40 × 40 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

12 –1 3 T A P E S T R Y / E A R T H Wool, cotton 140 × 280 × 5 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

32 E L E M E N T TA B L E F E M A L E / M O O N Sand-cast bronze, silver nitrate 30 × 110 × 110 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

52 – 5 3 E L E M E N T TA B L E M A L E / W A T E R Kiln-formed lithium-barium crystal 21 × 100 × 100 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

33 S P O O N C H A I R / M O O N Sand-cast bronze, silver nitrate 100 × 56 × 87 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

54 B E A D / W A T E R Hand-formed lithium-barium crystal 100 × 20 × 5 cm Edition of 20 + 4 A P + Prototype

14 S P O O N C H A I R / E A R T H Cob composite 100 × 56 × 87 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype 15 S O L I T A I R E / E A R T H Cob composite 6 × 60 × 60 cm Edition of 20 + 4 A P + Prototype 16 –1 7 T R Y P T I C H S H E L F / E A R T H Cob composite 83 × 60 × 13 cm (each) Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype 20 C U P / E A R T H Cob composite 50 × 30 × 30 cm Edition of 20 + 4 A P + Prototype 22 E L E M E N T TA B L E F E M A L E / E A R T H Cob composite 30 × 111 × 110 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

36 – 37 R O LY– P O LY C H A I R / M O O N Sand-cast bronze, silver nitrate 61 × 85 × 59 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype 38 – 39 T A B L E A U H I G H / M O O N Sand-cast bronze, silver nitrate 90 × 200 × 40 cm Edition of 8 + 4 AP + Prototype 40 S O L I T A I R E / M O O N Sand-cast bronze, silver nitrate 6 × 60 × 60 cm Edition of 20 + 4 A P + Prototype 41 P E W B E N C H / M O O N Sand-cast bronze, silver nitrate 43 × 125 × 45 cm Edition of 8 + 4 A P + Prototype

PROCESS PHOTOGRAPHY 18 –1 9 Fiberglass moulds are used to cast the cob composite for the Earth pieces: the Triptych, Tableau, Pew Bench, Cup and Element Table Female. 34 – 35 The ﬁrst layer of silver nitrate patina is being applied to the heated cast-bronze surface of the Roly-Poly Chair / M oon. 50 – 51 Cup / Water is being prepared for UV bonding. Each piece is kiln cast from lithium-barium crystal and the exterior acid polished.

I N C O N V E R S AT I O N

Eight weeks before the opening of her exhibition at Friedman Benda, Faye Toogood spoke with design curator and writer Vicky Richardson from her East London studio. V R

Your work is very much a process: one Assemblage follows on from another. So how did this one begin? F T Assemblage 5 started after I met Marc Benda. He hadn’t been too aware of my work previously. He came to the studio, and I think he was charmed by the fact that we work with space, interiors, clothes and furniture; he got very excited about the multidisciplinary nature of what we were doing. He felt an immediate connection to my last collection, Assemblage 4: Roly-Poly, in particular the Roly-Poly chair. He said he would love to do a project with me and that I’d be very welcome to do whatever I liked. From that I understood that the work could be an interior, it could be a collection of coats, it could be a chair – whatever I wanted, which was quite daunting in some respects. I allowed myself to continue Roly-Poly in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to on my own. Roly-Poly was a collection I produced without a gallery, and so there was a limit to the materials I could work with, and the number of shapes and processes. Whereas this exhibition gave me carte blanche to take the work down a new road and in a different direction. The Roly-Poly chair has remained, as has the Element table, which has been in every single collection I’ve made. But new pieces of furniture and different geometries have emerged, including textiles for the ﬁrst time. I presented twenty-three pieces of furniture and objects to Marc. I wasn’t expecting him to respond to all of them; I thought I was providing him with almost a shopping list from which he would pick and select, pick and mix. But he responded so well! He said yes, let’s go for it, and agreed that we should make the whole collection of objects. V R Did you already have an idea for Assemblage 5 in the back of your mind, ready for the right opportunity to present itself? F T As a designer you always have ideas ready – whether physically in a sketchbook or modelled out – and in this case the ideas came about very quickly. Almost within a week of being commissioned, I’d committed to shapes, pieces. I knew what had to be there.

One of my starting points was Matisse’s Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence in the south of France. Two years ago I had a really beautiful experience there. I was struck that in one space, Matisse had touched every element – including the vestments, pews, altar, cross, stained glass and murals – to create an incredible, total experience. Everything within the space had been considered. I’m not religious, but there is a spiritual nature to the elements I’ve put together for this collection. A series of cup stools is based on the shapes of chalices, which I’ve researched. There are the tapestries that are based clearly around the shape of a vestment. And there’s a table, the Tableaux, which is a nod to an altarpiece. Although they have no function, the large hanging beads are a very important aspect of the collection for me. They are telling a story and creating a space and environment in the way that Matisse created an environment in the chapel. Although the visit was two years ago, the experience is still very much with me. I loved the purity of it, which seemed to get back to the elemental and the primitive. For me that has felt integral to what I wanted to do: not necessarily to develop advanced technology, but to look back and rediscover some simple ingredients. That’s where the idea of earth, water and moon came from. V R If it wasn’t a religious experience in the chapel, what sort of experience was it? F T It was overwhelming and emotional to be in that space, beyond being touched by the care and attention to detail. I think whether you’re religious or not, those sorts of buildings can have a profound effect on you. I was focused on the materiality of it, especially recalling how Matisse’s work was mostly two-dimensional, but he was often using collage and trying to move into three dimensions. To see him so successfully make a three-dimensional space with all of those elements was extraordinary. I like a crossing and blurring of boundaries in peoples’ work, and that demonstrated to me that if you put your mind to it, you can do anything you want. There shouldn’t be any limitations. V R Your work seems very intuitive, but you’re also a highly articulate, cerebral person. You understand your ideas and where they come from. How do you reconcile intuition with the rational side of your brain? F T The work always starts intuitively. So whatever I’m producing – often in miniature format – I’ll go straight to making rather than drawing. You won’t ﬁnd any sketchbooks of my work: they don’t exist. I don’t commit to paper, I commit to three-dimensional shape and form, using basic clay most of the time. Certainly over the last two collections it’s

worked that way. It’s only through further research and development that I grasp what I’m doing. I’m able to analyse after the intuition and, I think because I studied the history of art, reflect on what’s in front of me and start to make sense of it. Within earth, moon and water and the shapes I have been making, I see a lot about femininity and fertility. I looked at what the moon represents: cycles associated with the woman and the shapes and forms that can be closely linked to being female. Having a child made me very aware of the power of nature, and being a woman and fertility. That’s what I see in the collection, and that is connected to spirituality and to where we sit within the world. There is identity within those shapes. V R ‘Pantheism’ is a term that sometimes arises in connection with you. But it’s not as literal as that, from what you’re saying. Your approach doesn’t stem from a set of beliefs. F T No, the rationale, beliefs and analysis do not define the work. The intuition does. But after making work I’m able to contextualise it. V R Before you became a designer you worked on a magazine. But you had quite a different sort of role than the writers. And you were already making at that point. F T Yes, when I was at school I was very passionate about making. I studied fine art although I wasn’t drawing or painting. I was working in installation art, which at the time was unusual. I think I was trying to address and make sense of issues of femininity. When I left school I wanted to study sculpture, but I was encouraged to do something academic. And so I studied the history of art at Bristol University. I realised I was so desperate to make for myself that I looked to the other university to do a fine art course. It wasn’t about getting an education; it was about needing to express something for myself. When I left university, I got the job at World of Interiors magazine as a stylist, and later became the interiors editor. That job was a constant demand to make and create objects and spaces that had narrative. They had to hold other people’s objects, whether they were antiques or contemporary designs. I was to create spaces for that, and therefore I always tried to find a narrative to make sense of what I was creating. When I left the magazine to set up my own studio, I continued to work as a stylist, but then started to take on more interior projects. I created installations that involved food and scent, and to some extent uniform and costume. These were multisensory environments, with everything I could get my hands on pulled into one space. I realised that what I’d been doing at the magazine was exactly that, but as

two-dimensional images. The excitement of suddenly creating something three-dimensional that people could experience sent me into overload. I wanted to throw in as much as I could to make it as experiential as possible. Then one day, speaking to a great friend of mine, Tom Dixon – who has been a great mentor – he said, ‘This is crazy. Every time you do something, you have to throw it in the bin at the end. Why are you not creating permanent objects?’ Up to that point I hadn’t considered it. That’s when my first collection of furniture came about, when the making and throwing it away became too difficult and I started to want to make something more permanent and meaningful. Maybe that comes with age! V R You are incredibly ambitious, without a sense of limits, which is fantastic in the climate that we live in. But you’re very much defining your own world rather than trying to define a world for everyone else. F T I didn’t train in design, therefore I have no rules to obey, no limitations. I have to some extent wanted to create a world for myself to inhabit where I feel safe. As a child I had a very vivid imagination, and I was quite fearful of things, whether it was the dark or the world itself. I was nervous, and shy. Thus, I like building my own worlds where I feel comfortable, whether those are spaces, objects or clothes, which are all obviously about identity as well. V R Let's talk a bit about the pieces. There are twenty-three. Is there a hierarchy? F T No, what’s brilliant is that there is no hierarchy. For the gallery there might be a hierarchy as to what will sell (or not sell!). But for me the string of beads and the new Spoon Chair and the tapestries are all equally important. The way the collection will be seen and grouped is what’s important to me. There’s no differentiation in terms of the bronze with silver nitrate finish, the earth or the cast glass: they are all essential ingredients. One doesn’t work without the other. To do a complete collection just from earth would have felt like I’d drastically missed something. V R How did you end up with these specific materials? Did you try out other things first? F T I came to the materials I wanted to work with rather quickly. It started with primitive art and architecture, which have long inspired me. I spent some time in Mali ten or fifteen years ago, and visited the adobe villages. The idea of making and inhabiting mud houses, with such incredible shapes and walls that have to be rebuilt every year, was really fantastic. When I heard that there was no limitation on what I could do

for this project, it made me want to go back and back, to really bare ingredients. I wanted to find something that spoke about the future and also the past. So coming up with my own earth composite, my own adobe, my own cob, came first. Then I felt like I needed water – something that was visually less heavy. For a long time I have collected glass objects. One of my favourites is a cast glass gun that I found in a junk shop. I thought it could be incredible to make glass furniture, cast glass furniture. At that point I didn’t even know if it was possible. The only pieces I’d seen on a large scale were some of Roni Horn’s work, which I admire very much – those big slabs of cast glass. So those two materials came first, and then intuitively I felt that I needed the moon. That material came third. That’s a silver nitrate-covered bronze. V R Why the moon? F T The moon is central to everything. Central to the cycles, central to the collection. Why? I don’t have the answer yet. Maybe that will come later. V R Bronze covered with a silver nitrate patina sounds quite technical. What does that actually involve? F T It’s a series of chemicals and salts applied to the surface of bronze. It’s not an applied surface treatment or finish, but a chemical reaction where the bronze turns a dull lead-like silver, not a shiny silver. V R How did you discover it? F T I have been working with bronze for some time, investigating different finishes that can be achieved with it. It is a beautiful material to work with. One day I saw a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois coated with this silver nitrate finish. I hadn’t ever seen it before, and investigated it with the manufacturer I work with. V R Do you have a network of manufacturers? F T Yes. Unlike some of my friends, who have large workshops and produce everything there, I work more as an editor. I have found lots of manufacturers and craftspeople with whom I like to work. Specifically I like to combine my thought processes with their skills. Often I ask them to do something they’ve never done before, and they don’t know why they’re doing it, and the end result pleases them as much as it pleases me. V R Your studio in East London is not a workshop with wet areas or noisy industrial areas. So how do you use the space? F T I describe the studio as a house or a home. It is a home for Toogood, and all the people who work here are part of a family. For a long time before this, my studio was my kitchen table at home. I like the idea that

this is our home – it’s where we think and create. A lot of prototypes are made here, and for the clothing we make lots of the limited editions here. We will paint something or make something from an experimental material. But there is no casting, welding or large-scale industrial work. I suppose I’ve chosen this mode because my skill set doesn’t allow me to go quite as far as my head wants to go, so I need to find other people and rely upon their skills. That’s quite a risk sometimes, but it’s exciting. I never know what I’m going to get at the end. It’s not like I’m forming a pot, and I know in advance what it will look like. This is a process involving collaboration. Through that process you have to take quite a few risks. Fortunately I’m okay with risks! V R There’s always the gratification of people surprising you through collaboration. You have an idea and someone else takes it further. How far have you cast your net in finding makers to collaborate with? F T Before this, everything I ever made had been made in the UK. That is the case as well for two thirds of this new collection: the earth pieces and the bronze pieces. But for the cast-glass ‘water’ pieces, we had to work with people who really understand glass, so we went to the Czech Republic. They have the size of kiln needed. The Element Table is a metre by a metre, and it takes a big kiln to accommodate it. That has been a leap of faith, since some of the pieces take months to cure, and after a lot of waiting and worrying, in the end they may crack. The process is that we create a mould, called a refractory mould. The chunks of glass are put into it and heated to an extreme temperature. The curing process then takes five months and is literally just the cooling down. There is so much glass in the Roly-Poly chair that it takes that long to cool. It’s like baking the ultimate cake. It has to cure before you can ship it, and we will know by Christmas if the piece has worked or not. V R That sounds nerve-wracking. F T It is. But a bit of adrenaline can be a good thing! VR So the glass was made outside the UK, but the cob and bronze were made in the UK? F T Yes, both outside London. The patination of the bronze is done in London, but the other two manufacturers are outside London. I have worked with bronze before, but this type is much finer. It’s a silicon bronze that is usually used for fine art pieces. The pieces are cast in parts and then welded together. For the cob pieces, I worked with someone who helped me develop my own composite, which is made up of aggregate, pigment, cement and resin, mixed together and cast moulded.

V R It doesn’t have straw? Traditionally it would have had straw, but this doesn’t. I worked on about thirty samples, which looked like little loaves of bread, to find the perfect ‘earth’ pigment, the perfect cob. It’s been an exciting challenge to get it right. V R Are there risks involved in those materials, too? F T Mainly to do with cracking, or not getting the mix right. It took several attempts to ensure that the amount of resin in the cob is the absolute minimum to provide the glue to hold everything together, so that when someone sits on a bench it doesn’t just fall to pieces, but at the same time it retains that quality of the ‘earth’. It’s been a challenge to devise the perfect recipe. V R Do you find the functional side of design a limitation? F T Yes, sometimes. I quite openly say that. I’m not an industrial designer. I’ve never claimed to be one. I am interested in the play between form and function, but from my perspective form is more important than function. Probably most designers would never, ever say that. V R Because in today’s world we all have to be so practical, and designers are often driven by issues, be they environmental or social. F T I think that’s fantastic. Utility is important, but there are lots of people better than me at solving those problems and issues. My work, being intuitive and predominantly sculptural, offers something else. A lot of people are struck by my work and feel connected to it in a way that perhaps they wouldn’t with a more functional design. What I’m offering and working on is something different – objects that are imbued with meaning. For the tapestries and the beads, for example, I can’t claim function. They are purely decorative. But the pieces of furniture have a clear function. Roly-Poly is a chair, the Element is a table, the Cups are side tables or stools – however you want to use them. They operate clearly within the realm of furniture, and play with recognisable, familiar forms. But in terms of perfect ergonomics and industrial design function, I’m not in that camp. V R Those familiar forms, as you call them, are some of the most basic forms of home. Are you intentionally trying to make your audience feel comfortable? F T Not intentionally. I worked with a warm, natural blonde wood in my very first collection, Assemblage 1. But the second and third collections were very angular, hard and dark, and involved steel mesh. They were reflective of my life at the time: I chose those materials because there FT

was an element of frustration and anger with myself and with the design world. After the first collection I’d been pigeonholed into the ‘British wood group’, as I called it – the craft group, which was just on the up, when people were fine about using the word ‘craft’ again. I got really cross about the situation and came back with a collection that was aggressive and black. But after having my daughter, the last collection and this collection certainly have connotations of softness and childlike forms. The naïveté of some of the work and its primitive nature is important to me – it’s not necessarily conscious, although I can see it. I love that people say, ‘they’re so 1960s’, or, ‘they’re so Art Deco’, or, ‘they’re so African’. Studying art history has given me the ability to know my references and be quite adept at shuffling them in my head. I love that people read and feel different things when they see the work. V R You’ve created a scale model so you can play around with the arrangement of objects in the gallery space. How have you understood the space and responded to it? F T When Marc asked me to create the collection, he described the gallery. There are two parts – the underground basement part and the larger gallery upstairs that is reserved for fine art. At first he said that the underground gallery would hold my exhibition, but a month later when we met again, he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about this, and I really want to move your exhibition to the first floor, the larger space, because I feel that it needs that room.’ It was exciting but a bit daunting as well to know I had to fill the main space. The first thing I needed to do was create a model of it so I could understand how the pieces would sit in it. Although they are large and there are twenty-three of them, this space is huge; it’s normally dedicated to large-scale Ettore Sottsass, Byung Hoon Choi and even Richard Serra works. I have never presented my work in a space bigger than four by four metres, so the model was necessary to get my head around the scale. When I made miniature scale models of the objects and furniture, they looked very small, but I play with them as if in a doll’s house – arranging and rearranging. I actually still haven’t committed to how everything will be shown in the exhibition. But I keep coming back to the chapel, and the idea that the arrangement of the benches and chairs will nod to that format. V R Have you altered the space at all? F T Not yet, but I know that I will need to intervene in the space and, having just completed all the pieces, I’ll now focus on the experience people will have in the space, because that’s as important as the objects.

The objects are part of a family, part of a group, part of the Assemblage, and therefore need to have their environment. V R But they’re also universal enough that they could be moved to another environment? F T Yes, I hope so. They should work in everyone else’s space, too. The idea of provenance, belonging and coming from somewhere, is important in my work, and so the narrative helps to provide that. With our clothes, for example, on every item there is a ‘passport’ where we list the manufacturers involved in making it, and the name of the shop you’re buying it in. You also write your name in it. So although it’s simply a coat you know where it comes from, and you know it’s yours, and if you pass it on to someone else, they know, too. Compared to a cold plinth display, it gives you a greater potential connection to an object. V R Are there are any materials in this collection that are entirely new to you? F T Tapestry and working with soft materials is new. I’ve worked with clothing but I haven’t done that with objects or furniture. The tapestries represent a desire to ﬁnd softness in the collection. They are digitally made, not hand woven, because I wanted to communicate three paintings that I had done. As I said, it’s quite rare for me to do anything on paper, but these are painting and charcoal drawings based on earth, water and moon, and they also have photographic collage elements of body parts. I worked on a small scale – they are A4 drawings, but will be blown up to be three metres high. I’m quite excited about them, and at having a new medium as part of the installation. I’ve also never worked with glass before, and I’m excited about that. In terms of the beads and the solitaire sets, I’ve yet to analyse why they are in the collection, but I think it’s probably bound up with the individual, the person. The very nature of a solitaire set is that you play it on your own. It’s a primitive game – it’s a board and some balls and that’s it. It’s been reinvented continually throughout history, but it’s a game for yourself. The beads have a religious connotation, and feminine connotations of jewellery. V R Your use of collage seems an interesting new development – collage is associated with political art, Dada and Pop art. It’s a medium that is very embedded in speciﬁc cultures and eras. But I don’t associate you with any of those ways of working. F T I’ve always been a collector of images and imagery. I think in terms of images as much I think in terms of shapes. I’ve often said that I’d love to have conversations in the passing of imagery. I don’t exactly know why

the images are in the paintings, but it felt necessary. The body needed to be in there, although it’s represented in the objects. On a ﬂat painting it was hard to get across, so cutting up bits of magazine felt like the most appropriate way to communicate how earth, water and moon feel to the body. V R I think that’s a particularly exciting element in the collection: the merging of vestments, which are not everyday garments, with collage, which is so literal. F T Maybe it’s my magazine background. I left magazines to move away from the two-dimensional. I felt quite frustrated by it. I think I’m just at the point where I’m considering working in two dimensions again. I’d love to do more textiles. V R What other areas might you move into next? F T I’m currently very interested in adornment. So I’d love to do a jewellery collection. It would be a real challenge to do a sculptural jewellery collection.

This catalogue has been designed and printed in an edition of two hundred and ﬁfty copies to coincide with the exhibition at Gallery Friedman Benda, February 23 – April 15, 2017. Printed in the United Kingdom All text © the author 2017 All works © the artist 2017 Catalogue and all contents © the artist and Friedman Benda 2017 fayetoogood.com friedmanbenda.com

Friedman Benda Jennifer Olshin Alice Higgins Carole Hochman Erica Miranda Ed Williams Erica Boginsky Chelsey Cohen Curator Brent Dzekciorius Faye Toogood Jan Rose David Horan Florence Hill Stephen McCombe Soraia Samju Pia Chevalier Oriana Striebeck Timo Wuchner Graphic Design A Practice for Everyday Life Final Photography Angus Mill Process Photography Jan Rose Text Vicky Richardson Special Thanks Stephen Patience Amee Patel

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