Neue luxury Issue 3

A GLOBAL DIALOGUE ON LUXURY IN THE ��ST CENTURY

Issue No.3 | AUD $9.95

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WELCOME TO NEUE LUXURY

DRIES VAN NOTEN

A note from our Editor in Chief.

EDITOR IN CHIEF Brett Phillips brett@neueluxury.com Telephone +61 3 9687 4899 EDITOR Roj Amedi roj@neueluxury.com

Welcome to issue three of Neue Luxury.

Let me start by extending my sincere thanks to those of you who offered your thoughtful and positive feedback following the release of our second issue.

It would appear that we were able to stimulate your curiosity and satisfy your insatiable desire for the new and the next, and for that we are grateful.

This issue explores how the value of artisanship and the hand made continue to shape our understanding of – and engagement with – luxury artefacts and experiences. In doing so, we survey the incredible work of American sculptor Barry X Ball (p2) while contrasting his process, intent and oeuvre with that of Australian artist John Wolseley (p21). We speak with Thierry-Maxime Loriot about his curatorial vision for The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk (p4), while discussing notions of tradition and regionality with sartorial icon Nick Wooster (p16). Excitingly, we also buckled up for a scenic tour through the bespoke world of Aston Martin, Rolls Royce and McLaren (p18) while understanding what it takes for Khai Liew to deliver one of the largest, and most incredible, private furniture commissions in Australian history (p24).

This year is going to be significant for Neue Luxury. With an increased focus on our international bureaus (Italy, England, Germany), we will be releasing an inaugural range of branded leather goods celebrating a dedication to craftsmanship and design. Our upcoming September issue will examine the notion of ‘Obsession’ and present the iconoclasts, makers and brands who are pursuing their ideas of luxury relentlessly, unceasingly and with a singular vision that makes it possible for them to change our view of the world.

I would once again like to thank our foundation partner Harrolds Australia’s Luxury Department Store and extend my sincere and ongoing thanks to our supporting partners Vranken Pommery, Song for the Mute, Folie á Plusieurs, Maison D’Amore, Kaimin and BPM for their extraordinary support. Importantly, I would also like to acknowledge each of our subscribers, retailers, contributors and staff for their ongoing dedication and contribution.

Collectively, you afford us the freedom and inspiration to pursue this dream.

I trust that you will enjoy this issue along with the many layers, personalities and stories that we endeavour to reveal along the way.

BRETT PHILLIPS Founder & Editor in Chief

EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR David Roennfeldt david@neueluxury.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR Lachlan Sumner lachlan@neueluxury.com PRODUCTION Maryanne Stanic maryanne@neueluxury.com FINANCIAL CONTROLLER Troy Roennfeldt troy@neueluxury.com

INSIGHT

SPECIAL PROJECTS DIRECTOR Brett Phillips brett@neueluxury.com INTERNS Tom Clapin ACCOUNTS Gary Charman gary@neueluxury.com ADVERTISING & DISTRIBUTION Brett Phillips brett@neueluxury.com PUBLISHER 3 Deep 35A/91 Moreland Street Footscray, Victoria 3011 Australia Telephone +61 3 9687 4899 Facsimile +61 3 9687 5133 Email: info@3deep.com.au Web: www.3deep.com.au © Neue Luxury MMXV ISSN: 2201-6309 SPECIAL THANKS:

Phillip Adams, Roj Amedi, Donna Anthony, Laura Armstrong, Charles Arnoldi, Michelle Avis, James Banks, Les Banner, Niamh Barry, Matthew J Bennet, Hayley Bonham, Alexander Briger, Daniel Burns, Fiona Byrne, Michelle Campbell, Mario-Luca Carlucci, Earl Carter, Nick Cave, Damian Cessario, Gary Charman, Tom Clapin, Derek Cohen, Stephen Crafti, Marcos Davidson, Neil Davies, Ian Davenport, Paola Di Trocchio, Bon Duke, Aaron Dunn, Ray Edgar, Felicia Eriksson, Lilla Fekete, Michelle Feruglio, Kyle Fortune, Inge Fransen, Rechelle Friend, Dominique Gatto, Sam Gray, Joanne Greggains, Jonathan Hallinan, Briony Hamilton, Daniel Heer, Angela Hesson, Graham Imeson, Jüdische Mädchenschule, Nathalie Miebach, Michael John Kelly, Annemarie Kiely, Margarita Kudrina, Shawn Kuruneru, Vincent Lazzara, Bonnie Ledsam, Nerida Lennon, Anne Levy, Khai Liew, Geoffrey Lillemon, Thierry-Maxime Loriot, Claudia Mandelli, Cristina De Middel, Kyungah Min, Sean Mulquiney, Jessica Naylor, Joanna Olivera, Nicolas Ouchenir, Reinoud Oudshoorn, Nichole Palyga, George Pesutto, Allain Pool, Mary Poulakis, John Poulakis, Lauren Powell, David Prifti, Anna Quinn, Marek Reichman, Restaurant Richard, David Roennfeldt, Troy Roennfeldt, Kenny Schachter, Dr Kathryn Simon, Luke Slattery, Kaya Sorhaindo, Maryanne Stanic, Victoria Sullivan, Lachlan Sumner, Melvin Tanaya, Gabrielle Thompson, Paul Tierney, Natalie Toman, Megan Travers, Bilgen Tug, Kathleen Twentyman, Dries Van Noten, James Warren, Lou Weis, Bruno Werzinski, John Wolseley, Carla Wood, Nick Wooster, Barry X Ball. 3 Deep, St.Agnes, Aston Martin, Maison D’Amore, Berghain, Soho House Berlin, Sammlung Boros Berlin, Berlinale, BLESS, BPM, Broached Commissions, Strateas Carlucci, The Woolmark Company, Cover to Cover, Efe Erenler, Execujet, Gestalten, Daniel Heer, Publishers Internationale, The Artisan Hunter, Kaimin, MagCirc, Mclarens, IPG Media, Andreas Murkudis, Song for the Mute, Folie Á Plusieurs, Press Print, Rolls-Royce, St. Agnes, Vranken Pommery, Corinne Vionnet,Joseph Walsh, Harrolds Luxury Department Store, 101 Collins Street, National Gallery of Victoria Page footer image credits: Tomas Maier (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Morpheusmedia), Tom Stoppard (commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/User:GoruPTebesanez), Hugh Jackman (flickr.com/photos/evarinaldiphotography), Isaac Bashevis Singer (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MDCarchives), Oscar Wilde (Napoleon Sarony: hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print), Mark Twain (flickr.com/photos/24354425@N03) , Henry David Thoreau (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:villy), Aimee Bender (Flickr.com/photos/harolda), Anya Hindmarch (flickr.com/photos/ukinfrance), Yasuhiro Mihara (flickr.com/photos/ frankie_chu), Thierry Andretta (flickr.com/photos/financialtimes), Tom Ford (www.flickr.com/people/22785954@N08), Richard Sennett (www.flickr.com/photos/arselectronica), Andy Wahol (www.flickr.com/photos/lionsthlm), Michele Ateyeh (flickr.com/photos/iwhc), Andy Wahol (www.flickr.com/photos/lionsthlm), Bernard Rosenblum (commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/User:Armorial) Neue Selects image credits: Broached Colonial Birdsmouth Mast: Photo by Adam Goodrum. Broached Piano Credenza: Photo by Peter Bennetts. Broached Colonial Tall Boy: Photo by Scottie Cameron. Broached East Chinaman’s File Rocking Chair: Photo by Scottie Cameron. Broached East Palludarium Shigelu: Photo by Courtesy of Azuma Makoto. Broached Hotel Hotel couch: Photo by Peter Bennetts. Broached Hotel Hotel Wall: Photo by Peter Bennetts.

Neue Berlin image credits: Sammlung Boros Berlin Photo: Courtesy of The Boros Collection, Jüdische Mädchenschule Photo: Courtesy of flickr.com/photos/ewarwoowar, Berlinale Photo: Courtesy of flickr.com/photos/bigarnex, Restaurant Richard Photo: Courtesy of Richard Restaurant, St Agnes Photo: Semra Sevin. Courtesy of St.Agnes, Efe Erenler Bernhard Willhelm, Apartment Paris. Photo: Jan Bitter, Gestalten Photo: Yves Sucksdorff. Courtesy of Gestalten, Daniel Heer Photo: Achim Hatzius. Courtesy of Daniel Heer, Soho House Berlin Photo: Courtesy of Soho House Berlin.

Cover image supplied courtesy of the artist: Barry X Ball Sleeping Hermaphrodite, 2008 - 2010 Sculpture: Belgian Black Marble, 68-1/8 x 35-1/2 x 18-1/4 inches; base: Carrara Marble, stainless steel, Delrin, 68-1/2 x 35-13/16 x 13-3/8 inches; sculpture / base assembly: 68-1/2 x 35-13/16 x 31-5/8 inches.

After the Hermaphrodite Endormi (Ermafrodito Borghese), Musée du Louvre, Paris (ex Collezione Borghese, Roma), discovered near the Baths of Diocletian in 1608, figure and drapery Roman Imperial Period (2nd century A.D.) after a Greek original (2nd century B.C.), figure restorations by David Larique (1619), bed addition by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1619). Private Collection, New York

Neue Miami image and plate credits: Charles Arnoldi, Tourniquet, 2010. Acrylic on canvas, 73x79. Courtesy of the artist and Peter Blake Gallery, Corinne Vionnet , gr, from the series Photo Opportunities, 2006. Images copyright Corinne Vionnet, Cristina De Middel, The Party, 1975. Images copyright Cristina De Middel, David Prifti, Gaze, 2008.Emulsion on metal, 12x6. Courtesy of the artist and Rice Polak Gallery, Nick Cave, Hustle Coat, 2014. Mixed media including trench coat, cast bronze hand, metal, costume jewelry, watches and chains, 54x39x13. Photo by James Prinz Photography. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, Joseph Walsh, Enigum XII Dining Table, 2013. Olive ashe with black pigment finish.

13”. Courtesy of the artist and The Todd Merrill Showroom, Nathalie Miebach, Fateful Rendezvous at Sable Island, 2014.

Fiber rush, wood, data, 18x19x18. Courtesy of the artist and Miller Yezerski Gallery, Boston, Niamh Barry, Magnitude, 2013.

Mirrored polished and black patinated solid bronze, opal glass, LED’s, 2057x1334x500. Courtesy of the artist.

Disclaimer: Neue Luxury is published twice yearly by 3 Deep Design Pty Ltd. 35A/91 Moreland Street, Footscray Victoria 3011 Australia. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission is strictly prohibited. Every effort has been made to ensure that all information is correct at the time of publishing. Opinions published are not necessarily those of the editor nor the publisher. Every effort has been made to trace accurate ownership of copyright materials used. Errors or omissions will be corrected upon request provided notification is sent to the publisher. The moral rights of the authors have been observed.

By Stephen Crafti

In the early 1980s, The Antwerp Six caused an avalanche on London’s fashion scene, not dissimilar to the Japanese designers showing in Paris at the same time. Amongst the group were Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck and Dries Van Noten. They collectively propelled the city of Antwerp to the forefront of the fashion world, with their mix of eclectic and anti establishment creations. Dries Van Noten has been a tour de force ever since, representing a beacon for independent fashion and proof that you can amalgamate idiosyncratic colours, materials and patterns with a wearable and accessible aesthetic.

Born and raised in the Belgian city of Antwerp, Van Noten was immersed in the world of fashion early on through his families interests.

His grandfather, Juhielmus Van Noten, was a tailor, whilst his father established Nutson, a large upmarket boutique in Essen on the outskirts of Antwerp. “Obviously, when one grows up in such a universe it’s part of your life, whether you like it or not. Luckily, my feelings went towards the former,” says Van Noten. When his father opened a second store called Van Noten Couture, collections from Emanuel Ungaro, Salvatore Ferragamo and Ermenegildo Zegna provided further insight and exposure into European fashion. “Both generations taught me, either directly or indirectly, this sensibility for garment making, its traditions and rituals,” adds Van Noten.

Van Noten is one of few exceptions to Belgium’s dark and brooding fashion aesthetic. Although Van Noten’s collections do include black, moss green and dark inky blue, his signature is often ‘penned’ with joyous colour and vibrant prints often appearing as though applied with a paintbrush.

According to Van Noten, what sets Belgian fashion apart, is the continual ability to personally and artistically experiment with historical and geographical references. “There was a big evolution in fashion when Belgian designers came onto the scene. I believe this remains as true today as ever,” says Van Noten. “What resonates most in my work is that I have always used elements from all over the world, yet in a personal or ‘local’ way.”

Art plays a vital role as a source of inspiration with Van Noten’s collections. Francis Bacon, for example, was the inspiration behind the women’s Autumn/Winter 2009-2010 collection. In the book Dries Van Noten published by Lannoo, Bacon’s work was said to provide a generous mix of “Disturbance, distortion and deformation – an uncompromising view of the human body and the visceral. The unlikely juxtaposition of true flesh and ‘off’ colours in clothing – extremes of emotion: tears and laughter, horror and joy…” Bacon’s paintings also informed the collections colour palette; filled with pinks, oranges and browns appearing individually and coalescing. “The palette depends on the garment. I have an unconditional passion for fabrics and of course prints, most of which we create ourselves,” says Van Noten, who also takes his cue from the way a garment drapes, or in his words, “their genesis”. “These are all essential considerations in my creative process. They tell stories. And this will most often be the departure of a new collection,” he adds.

Van Noten is also drawn to figures outside of the art world and nominates an unexpected trio of talent who embody a sense of dissent, individuality and whom unite opposing principles. “Kurt Cobain had a look that has always been part of his rock star legend. He knew how to create a world that’s both unique and personal and that’s still current today.”

Marcello Mastroianni, the Italian actor featured in films such as La Dolce Vita, “was carefree, yet had an utterly simplistic elegance,” says Van Noten noting his ability to combine his ‘Latin lover’ side with an imperfect physique. Rounding out his top three is the Duke of Windsor. “He had his particular way of assembling the improbable to give a perfect elegance, with such a British result.”

Photo: John Dolan.

These improbable combinations are often seen in Van Noten’s collections. His Spring/Summer 2014 men’s collection, for example, included patterned Nehru collared shirts worn under floral jackets with wide lapels − a homage to rock legend Jimmy Hendrix who wore a similar combination in the late 1960s. The Power Flower collection, showcased in a recent self-titled exhibition at the Decorative Arts Museum in Paris, also combined neo-orientalism with the glamour of the Renaissance. Van Noten also shows an interest in the relationship between the design and materials as demonstrated by the use of flock velour, rich damask juxtaposed against the use of the ‘wrong’ side of the fabric in various pieces.

Although Van Noten pushes the fashion boundaries, he is acutely aware of the commercial realities of fashion. “The main basis for creating a collection is to design garments that anyone can have as part of their wardrobe, to mix up pieces and make them part of their own style,” says Van Noten, who feels there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing someone walking down the street wearing something he designed. “Often they’ll wear one of my garments in a way that I wouldn’t have imagined it being worn,” he notes.

Van Noten doesn’t stray far from his self-ascribed Belgian ethos, choosing instead to break rank from the fashion status quo whilst deriving inspiration from outside of the fashion landscape. From observing and digesting different cultures to engaging with a collection of other artistic disciplines, the ability to appropriate elements from a variety of sources has only proven to elevate his status. “I will continue to draw inspiration from other cultures and history, their rites and traditions, but incorporate them in a contemporary way,” concludes Van Noten.

FOR MORE WWW.DRIESVANNOTEN.BE

NEUE SELECTS Broached Commissions.

BROACHED COLONIAL BIRDSMOUTH MAST. DESIGNED BY ADAM GOODRUM

BROACHED PIANO CREDENZA. DESIGNED BY ADAM GOODRUM

BROACHED COLONIAL TALL BOY. DESIGNED BY CHARLES WILSON

In The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes wrote that the timber for masts and flax for sails were responsible for maintaining and expanding the colonial empires, much like uranium and petroleum do today. In this table, a birdsmouth mast is reduced to an ornamental like element that punctures the table top. Created as a Chinese Chippendale style table, the piece reflected the passing of the colonial empires by reducing the main tool of their power to a delicate detail.

Desley Luscombe, Dean of Design at the University of Technology, Sydney, had one object from her childhood that she cherished above all else; a German manufactured upright piano from the late 19th century. Having long stopped playing the instrument, the upright piano proved to be far too obtuse to serve any ornamental purpose. In redesigning and repurposing the piece as a credenza, Adam Goodrum used every part of the original, thereby extending the sentimental relationship between the artefact and its owner. The Broached Piano Credenza purposefully recycled materials and established a new life in an old love.

There is no Broached designer more uncomfortable with a narrative based design approach than Charles Wilson. Any initial trepidation and anxiety however is always overcome by his remarkable capacity to synthesize a range of historical design influences into a new object that emerges directly from his experience with Australian industry and design. The Tall Boy brings together a love for the makeshift agricultural structures of rural Australia, the slender lines of Biedermeier furniture and the simplicity of obelisks to create a unique object. Wilson proves that resistance is often a great starting point to a new creative path. Launched in 2011, the Tall Boy remains a popular object for Broached Commission.

BROACHED EAST CHINAMAN’S FILE ROCKING CHAIR. DESIGNED BY TRENT JANSEN

BROACHED EAST PALLUDARIUM SHIGELU. DESIGNED BY AZUMA MAKOTO

BROACHED HOTEL HOTEL COUCH. DESIGNED BY CHARLES WILSON

BROACHED HOTEL HOTEL FEATURE WALL. DESIGNED BY LUCY MCRAE

Of the three founding Broached designers, Trent Jansen is the most adept in narrative based design. He cannot start designing until he knows the human story, as was the case with this Rocking Chair. Starting with the discovery that an overwhelming number of Chinese migrants in the Australian gold fields were men, Trent decided to create a machine that moved in the same way as a child strapped to a mother’s back; a mechanical version of the maternal embrace for tired, exploited Chinese prospectors.

Australia’s love for Japanese design started in the mid 19th century, during the Meiji Restoration. That first wave of middle class consumption has never really abated, with Japan still exporting its exoticism and Australian’s consuming it en masse. The Broached East Palludarium Shigelu commission for Azuma Makoto focused on the transportation of exotic plants by drawing inspiration from the Wardian case, a protective container which transported imported plants without ever exposing them to the sea air.

Broached Hotel Hotel was the third collaboration with curator John McPhee, who in this instance guided designers in a focused response to the works of Walter Burley Griffins. Charles was inspired by Burley Griffins’ façade designs for the creation of this structural and decorative couch arm. Made from solid cast brass, the pattern also talks directly to the geometries used by Lucy McRae for the feature wall at the hotel’s reception desk.

Hotel receptions are one of the few static spaces in a broader journey of discovery. In response to this, the Broached Hotel Hotel feature wall embedded a passive fractal animation for hotel guests to gaze into whilst waiting to check in or out. Lucy McRae, a young master of re-engineering the body, was an obvious choice for the commission. McRae’s design reflects the decorative windows and light fixtures seen in Burley Griffins’ iconic buildings such as The Capitol Theatre in Melbourne.

Woody Allen was once quoted as saying that “you can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.”

And while some may subscribe to such a contrite and tortuous renunciation, our editorial team isn’t particularly enamoured with the thought of outliving a giant Aldabra tortoise. Which is why we took time out to speak with Lou Weis, Creative Director of Broached Commissions about which of his artefacts and objects would inevitably lead us all to a happier, albeit shorter life!

FOR MORE WWW.BROACHEDCOMMISSIONS.COM

NEUE DIALOGUE –

Global perspectives on luxury, ideas and creativity.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

STEFANO RICCI –

Luxury is a glass of water in the desert; luxury is friendship; luxury is a grandchild; luxury is health.

ANDRE WALKER –

I’m obsessed with getting things made properly, luxury can be reimagined. I just feel like we need to start looking a little closer.

PIERRE-ALEXIS DUMAS –

I think we should use the word luxury, but we should be clear about what we mean. I believe in a notion of luxury, which is more of a philosophy.

But it’s not because an object is shiny that it is luxurious.

ANTOINE ARNAULT –

We are going to enter an era in which logo and ostentation is going to be less successful. It will be about real quality.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

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Plate 01. Envy, 2008 - 2011.

PERFECT FORMS Barry X Ball and the art of improvement.

ART

By Angela Hesson

“Art is humans doing their best.” So declares Barry X Ball, seated at his computer for our Skype interview, his shelves neatly stacked with papers, a series of printouts resembling cranial cross-sections pinned to the wall behind him. Ball has recently returned from Madrid, Spain where he has been finalising work on his largest piece to date, Perfect Forms. This three-metre-tall striding figure, cast in brass and steel and coated in mirror-polished 24 karat gold, is a reinterpretation of Umberto Boccioni’s iconic futurist sculpture, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, first exhibited in 1913. In revisiting and retitling the work, Ball provides an effective encapsulation of his creative philosophy: the notion of art as something - anything - that people do “at the highest level”. Within this appealingly open-ended definition, creativity is framed as a process of improvement, as a continuous and often collaborative striving toward perfection.

From his early career as a conceptual artist working across numerous media, Ball’s practice has, over the past decade, evolved into something more specialised, identifiable by its fetishistic attention to craftsmanship and to detail. Employing a variety of rare and experimental materials, in combination with emerging digital and industrial technologies, Ball reinterprets traditional figurative sculpture to produce works that are at once historicized and unmistakably of their period. His methods range from time-honoured techniques of hand carving and polishing, to 3D scanning, virtual modelling, and computer-controlled cutting and milling. The ideal of perfection - of the best materials, the best techniques, the best makers, the best and most refined forms - underpins every aspect of Ball’s practice, from his reinterpretations of classical, baroque and futurist sculpture to his extraordinary, manipulated portrait busts of contemporary artists.

CHRISTOPHE GEORGES –

While the definition of luxury remains different for everyone, its nature is not.

One underlying commonality between many luxury items from watches to shoes to fragrance is how the human component interacts with the element of time – it’s the years spent perfecting a particular skill that can be used only on the finest products.

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In the case of Perfect Forms, the original surface of Boccioni’s work has been smoothed, its angles sharpened, nicks and scratches have been repaired and the mirrored finish has been added so that the work, quite literally, reflects the world around it. The aerodynamic, fluid form of the original sculpture was intended to convey the speed and dynamism of the emergent machine age, and this spectre of modernity is thus perhaps uniquely suited to re-interpretation within the context of 21st century technologies.

The notion of revisiting an historical work for a contemporary audience is of course not a recent one. There exist countless later versions of classical, renaissance and baroque works, whose alterations and adaptations over the centuries might provide a prototype here. Ball’s ongoing Masterpieces series, begun in 2008, of which Perfect Forms is a part, takes as its unifying theme

TOM STOPPARD –

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets.

Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

the difficult task of making new sculptures that are ‘more perfect’ than their purportedly ‘perfect’ historical prototypes. These productions are thus at once skeptical and optimistic, challenging the sacrosanct nature of their historic forbears, and simultaneously laying a clear path for contemporary and future artists: within this context, new works based upon older ones are not so much copies as upgrades.

Purity (2008-2011) was inspired by Antonio Corradini’s 18th century bust of the same name, popularly known as the Veiled Woman. This sculpture has, since its creation, been subject to countless re-imaginings, and Ball’s work thus forms the current telos in the work’s long history of reinvention. In the 19th century, the sculptor Raffaele Monti produced a highly successful, if rather less mystical variation on the work, adding a wreath of flowers around the head and subtly altering and softening the facial features in accordance with a mid-19th century taste for prettiness. Shortly thereafter, the Copeland pottery mass-produced a Parian copy of Monti’s sculpture, (now titled The Bride, in keeping with Victorian sentiment), which soon came to adorn countless middle-class mantelpieces.

Ball exhibits a very different set of motivations in his alterations to Corradini’s original form 150 years later. In his multiple versions of Purity, the most immediately apparent shift is in the material itself, where traditional white Carrara marble has been replaced by a variety of coloured stones, each with a differing level of opacity. These range from a delicate rose-tinted Iranian onyx, with all the luminous fragility of a sea-shell, to a rich and oily Belgian black marble. Each sculpture is created in-the-round, with even its underside meticulously polished, thereby eliminating the unfinished sections common to Corradini’s original and the aforementioned later copies, and making possible new modes of display. In his description of the work, Ball refers to “correcting”

ERWIN RAPHAEL MCMANUS –

The artisan soul moves toward purity of ingredients, understands the power of simplicity, makes life a craft and not a product, and treats people as unique individuals rather than commodities.

the damages that have occurred over time - filling in chips, scratches and scuffs.

The veil has been extended and its lace border removed to enhance the liquidity of the form, and in another particularly sensuous detail, Ball has polished the small section of exposed skin to contrast with the matte surface of the veil.

One might question whether Ball’s alterations hold particular cultural or political significance for his own period, or whether the overarching ideal of aesthetic perfection transcends notions of historical specificity. Ball has spoken about his elimination of religious imagery from Purity - as such the sculpture is both secularised and made universal, better available for subjective interpretation. More playfully, he also points out that he has subtly enlarged the figure’s breasts, amplifying what he describes as the “veiled yet overt sensuality” already present in Corradini’s work. Common to all of Ball’s alterations is an aura of sensitivity to the apparent intentions of the prototype’s creator. Ball explains that in the case of another work from this series, The Sleeping Hermaphrodite, the entire lower portion of the face in the classical sculpture is unfinished, and he has thus stepped in where the original sculptor (perhaps for lack of time or funds) was unable to perfect his own project.

There is undoubtedly a departure from tradition inherent in these kinds of alterations; in the case of the majority of historical versions or copies, the quality diminishes with each successive work. Broadly speaking, the process of democratisation - of making works more available and more accessible effectively compromises workmanship, employing cheaper materials, less specialised techniques and less skilled makers. What Ball endeavours to provide is, in effect, the inverse of this established paradigm, a deliberate and disciplined process of evolution rather than diminishment or simplification.

To achieve these results, Ball relies upon an extensive support system.

TOMAS MAIER –

A luxury product is signified by the material that’s used, its design, the know-how of its artisans.

Neue Luxury, No.3

Plate 02. Perfect Forms, 2010 - 2014.

Plate 03. Matthew McCaslin Homunculus (abbreviated title) 2000-2004.

Plate 04. Purity, 2008 - 2010.

Integral to this is his revival of the studio model, whereby much of the work is carried out by meticulously trained assistants, specialising in different aspects of the process, from 3D scanning and printing to hand carving and sanding. The 5000 hours of human labour it took to produce and refine The Sleeping Hermaphrodite would simply not have been achievable by an artist working alone. Prior to the mid-19th century, the tradition of the artist’s studio, (within which artisans were employed under the instruction of a master) was responsible for the creation of the majority of the world’s most celebrated artworks, and it seems fitting that Ball’s practice, with its emphasis upon refinement and faultless execution, should reinstate artisanal modes of production. Many of Ball’s assistants are practicing artists in their own right, and he speaks at length about the importance of inspiring them to produce the finest quality work, inside his studio and out of it. Old-fashioned patronage has also played a significant role in the development of Ball’s sculpture. Major patrons, including famed art collector Giuseppe Panza, have enabled Ball’s employment of assistants, his investment in new technologies, and the travel necessary not only to explore artistic prototypes, but to source the finest raw materials in which to reinterpret these.

Much of the impact of Ball’s sculpture resides in the quality of his materials, and his unconventional choice of stones is among the most innovative aspects of his practice. These are sourced from quarries around the world, and Ball - who is meticulous about individually selecting his stones and being present when they are first cut - describes the process as one that facilitates “the best connection to nature”. Many of these stones behave in very different ways from traditional white Italian marble, and there is consequently an exciting element of trial and error in achieving the final result. In the case of Mexican onyx, for example - one of Ball’s favoured materials - the veins, seams and pits that run through the stone materialize only as it is cut. Ball explains this element of serendipity as one of the more exciting aspects of his process, “I like the fact that there’s something out of control - it adds a kind of wildcard content to it”.

This effect is employed to particularly dramatic, symbolic effect in Envy (2008-2011), based upon Giusto Le Court’s Baroque masterpiece, La Invidia.

Here, the cratered, diseased appearance of the stone mirrors the corruption of the subject. The geode craters resemble the stretched, distorted orifices

of the face itself, their crystalized interiors simultaneously evoking decoration and decay. Crimson veins in the stone suggest an appropriately unbalanced circulatory system for the monstrous figure.

Perhaps the most aesthetically radical of Ball’s stone carvings feature the visages of fellow contemporary artists, manipulated and distorted and rendered in seductively tactile materials. These works, the majority of which are accompanied by extensive, poetic, playful and often indelicate titles, are seemingly Ball’s most experimental and in many cases his most visually

unsettling. Employing sophisticated digital imaging software to manipulate the cast and scanned heads, he impales, stretches, pierces and flays his subjects.

The artist also makes mirroring a feature of many of these portraits, lending a subtle element of strangeness to otherwise familiar faces.

Ball’s portrait bust of artist Matthew McCaslin (informally referred to as Homunculus 2000-2004) takes the form of an amoeba-like creature, rendered in a seemingly gelatinous translucent Mexican onyx, with tiny arms outstretched, Christ-like, beneath a bulging cranium. In an incongruously endearing detail, the arms were cast from Ball’s own infant daughter. The strange, metamorphic form is evocative of fin de siècle symbolist works such as Audrey Beardsley

or Edvard Munch’s feotuses in jars and Odilon Redon’s series of charcoal noirs in all of their dark, degenerate glory. In a 2007 lecture addressing his portraiture, Ball discussed the technical aspects of his often violent alterations to the visages of artist friends, concluding with the suggestive declaration “and then there is the question of intent”. It is a question which Ball, teasingly, leaves unanswered.

In Ball’s self-portrait with Matthew Barney (2000-2007), the two artists have been brutally martyred and fused at the scalp, presented as severed, impaled double-heads, one face screaming the other pensive, flayed skin trailing down the steel spikes that support/pierce them. The element of grotesque is further complicated by the use of surface decoration which, Ball explains “is intended to evoke tattoos, tribal scarification, patterned armour…”

Yet there is also, in the richly patterned surface, the suggestion of a kind of bourgeois domesticity. Ball describes his preference for Victorian patterns, notable, he explains for their “a-historical, multi-era, multi-style, ‘proto Postmodern’ density”. And while there is manifestly a symbolic, self-referential element in this visual allusion to the Victorian magpie-like enthusiasm for historical borrowing, it is hard not to be distracted by the prettiness of the effect.

These patterns acquired new resonance during the 2011 Venice Biennale, where Ball installed a series of sculptures at the Ca’ Rezzonico palazzo on the Grand Canal. The palazzo’s Rococo interiors include beautifully-preserved frescoes and three-dimensional wall decoration, and into the lilac-toned Stucco Room, Ball introduced the Stretched Portrait of Jon Kessler with Baroque Relief in Italian Fantastico Marble, the elaborate three-dimensional surface-pattern of the sculpture mirroring the luxurious ornament of the interior. Here, the lavishness of the historic environment seems literally to be rubbing off on the contemporary artist.

Ball’s practice has something of the curious about it, poised intriguingly between archaism and progress, between centuries-old wisdom and pioneering experiment. As such, Ball is both inheritor and innovator, maintaining a sympathetic, even symbiotic, relationship with his artistic forbears. His works are interpretable in the context of continuing or completing an open-ended project. As Ball points out, Boccioni died before his futurist masterwork was ever actually cast in bronze. This Modernist icon, one we associate inseparably with a particular moment in time and a particular artist, was never actually seen by its creator, having instead come into being only as the result of a kind of

Plate 05. Photo: Courtesy of Barry x Ball

continuous, intergenerational collaboration. Implicit in this realization is the possibility that future generations of artists will continue this process, taking Ball’s works as points of departure for their own variations on a theme.

The notion of ‘doing one’s best’ is simultaneously infused with humility and grandeur - both playfully unassuming and ambitious to the point of unattainability. Reminiscent of the deceptively encouraging rhetoric of the schoolteacher, it offers no clear end-point, save that enduringly seductive, inherently elusive ideal of perfection. It is an ideal that requires constant discipline, regular re-evaluation and perhaps also, in spite of all of Ball’s postmodern reflexiveness, the suppression of cynicism. Art is humans doing their best, and the best, perhaps, is yet to come.

Image Plates Plate 01. Sculpture: Mexican Onyx, stainless steel, 22 x 17-1/4 x 9-1/2 inches; pedestal: Macedonian Marble, stainless steel, wood, acrylic lacquer, steel, nylon, plastic, 46 x 14 x 12 inches; sculpture-pedestal assembly: 68 x 17-1/4 x 12 inches. After Giusto Le Court (1627 - 1679) La Invidia, circa 1670, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice. Private Collection, Germany Plate 02. Sculpture: mirror-polished 24K gold on nickel on copper on SLA rapid prototype model and solid brass with stainless steel armature / fittings and resin filling, 21 x 16.4 x 7 inches; table pedestal / vitrine: walnut, ColorCore, aluminum, low-iron glass, 84 x 31.5 x 22 inches. After Umberto Boccioni (1882 - 1916) Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913. Edition of 7 + 2 Artist’s Proofs Plate 03. Sculpture: translucent Mexican (Puebla) onyx, stainless steel figure / shaft assembly: 74 x 11-1/4 x 8-15/16 inches (188 x 28.6 x 22.7 cm) figure: 16-15/16 x 11-1/4 x 8 15/16 inches (43 x 28.6 x 22.7 cm). Private Collection, Switzerland Plate 04. Sculpture: Belgian Black Marble, stainless steel; sculpture: 24 x 16-1/2 x 11-1/4 inches pedestal: Macedonian Marble, stainless steel, wood, acrylic lacquer, steel, nylon, plastic, 45 x 14 x 12 inches. Sfter Antonio Corradini La Purità, 1720 - 1725, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice. Private Collection, Paris Plate 05. Assistants at Work on Sleeping Hermaphrodite. Photo: Courtesy of Barry x Ball Plate 06. Sculpture: Belgian Black Marble, 68-1/8 x 35-1/2 x 18-1/4 inches; base: Carrara Marble, stainless steel, Delrin, 68-1/2 x 35-13/16 x 13-3/8 inches; sculpture / base assembly: 68-1/2 x 35-13/16 x 31-5/8 inches. After the Hermaphrodite Endormi (Ermafrodito Borghese), Musée du Louvre, Paris (ex Collezione Borghese, Roma), discovered near the Baths of Diocletian in 1608, figure and drapery Roman Imperial Period (2nd century A.D.) after a Greek original (2nd century B.C.), figure restorations by David Larique (1619), bed addition by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1619). Private Collection, New York

FOR MORE WWW.BARRYXBALL.COM WWW.SPERONEWESTWATER.COM/ARTISTS/BARRY-X-BALL Plate 06. Sleeping Hermaphrodite, 2008 - 2010.

JOHN RUSKIN –

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

REI KAWAKUBO –

Creation takes things forward. Without anything new there is no progress. Creation equals new.

ANN DEMEULEMEESTER –

I’m interested in every designer whose soul can be found in their work. If they have an idea about who they are and can express that in their work, then I can appreciate it.

UMBERTO BOCCIONI –

There is neither painting, nor sculpture, nor music, nor poetry. The only truth is creation.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

3

Photo: Brooke Hold, Courtesy of The National Gallery of Victoria.

THIERRY-MAXIME LORIOT The fashion world of Thierry-Maxime Loriot.

FASHION

By Paola Di Trocchio

Over the past year I’ve worked with Thierry-Maxime Loriot to bring The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk to its Melbourne venue at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). We exchanged daily emails, telephone and skype calls, while working side by side through installation, along with Tanel Bedrossiantz, Thoaï Niradeth and Mireille Simon from Maison Jean Paul Gaultier; master hair stylist Odile Gilbert and her team of hairdressers including Tan Doan and Hugo Raiah and of course, special Australian member Stewart Graham. As well as the NGV crew of installers, builders, exhibition designers, registrars and conservators. The exhibition was adapted for its Melbourne home from its incarnations in London, Madrid, Montreal, Stockholm, New York, Dallas, San Francisco and Rotterdam.

However it was the original conception of Thierry-Maxime Loriot; curatorial neue garde and self-confessed storyteller. In 2009 he began to decipher the archive of Jean Paul Gaultier for the first presentation of the exhibition in Montreal in 2011, but he began to prepare for his role in research even earlier.

Firstly encouraged by his parents on their frequent international travels, and then later his fashion industry experience as a model, he has combined his interests in architecture and contemporary art with an insatiable curiosity and interest in people. Much like Gaultier himself, Loriet shifted the landscape of fashion curatorial practice, presenting a complete universe of the designer with intelligent theatrics focussing on accessibility and storytelling.

THIERRY-MAXIME LORIOT: I laughed when I read that Paola would conduct this interview. I thought to myself: She is an old friend, with her it’s going to be much more fun! How is the exhibition going in Melbourne?

PAOLA DI TROCCHIO: Really well. The interest is so strong. When Stuart Harrison from the radio show The Architects asked me when had we last done a show like this I replied, we have never done a show like this before. Our last single designer retrospective was Versace in 2000, but it did not have the

HUGH JACKMAN –

For me that’s one of the great indulgences in life - a hand-tailored suit, and a great pair of handmade shoes.

4

theatrics of this exhibition, specifically with the animated mannequin faces, the moving runway, the mohawks... Did Gaultier allow you to present the show that you wanted to present?

TL: From day one he was quite open. I’m not into the classical fashion exhibitions, I’m not a purist. An exhibition should be about a person, a human being and their inspirations and collaborations. He collaborated with so many different people, from directors to performers to artists. I wanted to integrate these collaborations and show the exhibition more like his universe than something chronological. He had so many passionate obsessions throughout the years that were important to point out. He said, “just go into the archives, do your research, have fun, we’ll discuss later”. From then on every three weeks I would go to Paris and look through the archives. He made it easy for me to work with him.

We were on the same page from the beginning.

PT: So how is the archive organised? How do you get into the archive and start to work it out?

TL: It is filled with racks upon racks upon racks. I’ll always remember the first time I went there, I felt like a kid. You start with 1000 objects and then you try them on mannequins, because weirdly they don’t always look good on a mannequin. So you have to edit down, edit down, edit down. In some venues it was supposed to be 110 costumes, but we have never been able to show less than 140. It’s unusual to have such a good archive. Most people, like Madonna, didn’t think to collect until later. Everything is very well kept. Now they know the importance of archiving. However it’s still not everything. At the book signing in Melbourne, a woman came up to us with a kilt made of lamé, which was from Gaultier’s Grease collection in 1978. He was so happy and so surprised, because he didn’t even have it in his archive. He was so proud to discover his first collections were admired in Australia.

PT: I noticed there are similarities between the names of some of the sections in the exhibition, like Punk Cancan, and Gaultier’s collection titles. Is that where you looked in order to name the themes of the sections?

TL: Yes and no. In both haute couture and ready-to-wear, designers don’t

PIERPAOLO PICCIOLI –

Couture is indeed the territory of the manual experimentation, of craftsmanship of great hands.

always name their collections, but Gaultier likes to do it the old-fashioned way.

In all his couture collections, he has a name for every dress and it’s always something very fun. He takes couture very seriously. I was then inspired to find proper titles that would reflect his universe and the themes in his work.

There is a section in the exhibition called Boudoir, but he has never done a boudoir inspired collection, but we had to reflect something that was related to his childhood and to corsetry and to find the proper word. It was fun to find it.

PT: I have been reading the book Exhibiting Fashion Before and After 1971, which reflects on Cecil Beaton’s curatorship at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1971. I realised that there is an extraordinary historical difference between

the exhibitions that were curated by previous scholars and the exhibitions that Beaton or Diana Vreeland curated. There was a dynamism and playfulness in the way that Beaton and Vreeland presented their exhibitions. Then I realised that both had worked inside the fashion industry before they curated those extraordinary shows. Vreeland was a former Vogue editor who later became special consultant at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the same vein, you have also worked inside the fashion industry when you were a model. Do you see your work in the fashion industry as something that has informed your work as a curator?

ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER –

What a strange power there is in clothing.

TL: Definitely. But I don’t think it’s just from my work inside the industry.

Colin McDowell paid me the nicest compliment in his article in The Business of Fashion1. He said that the two best exhibitions in fashion history are those that were curated by Vreeland and mine. That’s nice, coming from him, it’s quite flattering. Although I’m not saying I’m exactly like Vreeland. Of course working in the fashion industry has helped me develop relationships with photographers, designers, artists and collectors, but I consider myself a storyteller.

I think different inspirations inspire you when you work. I think you can find inspiration from your childhood and past interests. I always wanted to be an architect, which is where the fun in exhibition design is. I love movies. I think we are both very lucky because we are very open-minded people. I think the same can be said about Tony Ellwood and Nathalie Bondil. They are both not afraid to take risks.

PT: When Philip Treacy came to Australia he said, “Models are the unsung heroes of the fashion industry”. The exhibition helps to draw out the creative role of the model. In the interview published in the accompanying publication, Australian model and muse Alexandra Agoston discusses her role in the creation of a dress.

TL: Yes, it’s not only about being beautiful. He’s really interested in collaboration and involving everyone in his work. But you have to be very confident about yourself and your work in order to be able to trust people and engage with them. That’s how I see people like Bondil and Ellwood. It’s the same thing. Bondil was in the movie industry before becoming a curator, so she travelled a lot and saw things. She was very open to other views. The way you are raised will also forge who you are going to become. My parents were diplomats when I was young and were travelling all the time. For example, we would plan to go to Italy one summer and they would tell my siblings and I to choose two cities each to research, and we would then have to conduct a tour for the whole family. They wanted us to understand the importance of research, and to be interested in other cultures and other people. I think my research comes from there. I’m more curious about others than about myself.

OSCAR WILDE –

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

Neue Luxury, No.3

Photo: Brooke Hold, Courtesy of The National Gallery of Victoria.

PT: Is there a storytelling element to modelling?

TL: It depends on which photographer you work with. If you work with the ones who have a very strong vision, like Peter Lindbergh, then yes. Lindbergh is really the one who invented editorial storytelling at the end of the 1980s.

He is someone who was very influenced by movies and directors such as Fritz Lang and Win Wenders. He’s like an artist who directs his subjects to reflect his own vision, which is why it is important to have good models. For example Mario Testino has worked extensively with Kate Moss. She’s a bit like the Madonna of modelling. She is a chameleon who can transform from a goddess to a punk to a housewife. She can move to different directives. All these women have great careers and there is a clear reason for that.

PT: I also see the curator as a storyteller, and the exhibition as storytelling with objects. Continuing the analogy with film, do you agree that an exhibition should be a journey, and that each thematic section is like a different act in a film?

TL: Yes, that’s how I feel. It’s like a movie. An exhibition is entertainment.

Really it is. You need to entertain people. You want your audience to appreciate your creative perspective, but sometimes it’s difficult to judge what people will respond to. It’s a very personal process. Similar to a movie or a book, an exhibition changes according to an audience’s interpretation. You know they are out there with their own point of view. It is also about giving access to the inaccessible.

PT: So after installing the exhibition in eight different venues, what was different about working at the National Gallery of Victoria?

Photo: Peter Lindbergh.

TL: Honestly, everybody has said this was the very best venue. First the exhibition space is very nice and easy to work with. There are great perspectives from one gallery to the other. Secondly, exactly what I was saying about Ellwood is true of everyone, from you to Katherine Horseman and Ingrid Rhule, to Don Heron, to everyone. Everyone is just so nice and so easy to work with. It was a true collaboration in terms of finding solutions together. The NGV also had the whole community involved and with so many sponsors. Gaultier was very touched to see how much he was appreciated. People were crazy for him.

PT: So Paris is next, and then Munich. And then is that the last one?

TL: For now…!

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk was open at the National Gallery of Victoria from 17 October 2014 – 8 February 2015, and will be continuing at the Grand Palais in Paris from 1 April – 3 August 2015.

Footnotes 1. See Colin McDowell, Colin’s Column, ‘Jean Paul Gaultier Fashion Incarnate’, The Business of Fashion, 7 April 2014 Images Plates Plate 01. Jean Paul Gaultier, Apparitions dress, from Les Vierges (Virgins) collection haute couture Spring-Summer, 2007. Images copyright Patrice Stable/Jean Paul Gaultier.

Plate 02. Jean Paul Gaultier, Tribute to Amy Winehouse, from collection haute couture Spring-Summer, 2012, dress with exaggerated hipline combining flower-motif silk embroidery, multicolored lacings and metal. Images copyright Patrice Stable/Jean Paul Gaultier.

FOR MORE WWW.NGV.VIC.GOV.AU/JEANPAULGAULTIER

Photo: Brooke Hold, Courtesy of The National Gallery of Victoria.

Photo: Brooke Hold, Courtesy of The National Gallery of Victoria.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX –

There is new strength, repose of mind and inspiration in fresh apparel.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

Plate 01.

JAROSLAW SZYCHULDA –

The best artisans can craft the most delicate, exquisite creations from the simplest, finest materials — but they need to have an addiction to perfection.

MARK TWAIN –

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Plate 02.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU –

It is an interesting question how far man would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

5

NICOLAS OUCHENIR The power of the fountain pen.

Photo: Matteo Montanari.

FASHION

By Stephen Crafti

Amongst the barrage of communications we are likely to receive daily, there lies a moment of stillness and reflection in the form of a handwritten letter by Nicolas Ouchenir. It is Ouchenir’s handmade and carefully crafted calligraphy that has enamoured designers, architects, and creative iconoclasts around the world. From his atelier in the Rue Saint Honoré, Ouchenir applies his masterful strokes to some of the most important and considered communications in the world. “My work is about love. It has to be when you’re writing something by hand to someone special,” says Ouchenir.

The gravitas of the handwritten first moved Ouchenir through the storybooks read to him as a child. “I still remember the script being as glamorous as the stories being read to me.” Ouchenir’s career path however, like many others in the creative fields, was one of chance. He began working at JMG Galleries in Paris where he noticed the signatures of artists such as Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali. “I love Dali’s signature. It’s completely free” says Ouchenir, who started to adopt this spontaneous and flowing free style for exhibition invitations for the gallery. Ouchenir’s script is far from a derivative of Roman or Gothic script or even the Art Nouveau style that he greatly admires.

While there is a sense of the past in his oeuvre there is also a sense of the present, with the voices of both Ouchenir and his clients dancing across each page. “I’m telling my life story when I pick up the pen, even though it’s guided by my client and how they wish to be presented,” he explains.

Well know publicist and gallery patron, Pia de Brantes, had noticed Ouchenirs talents and asked to meet with him, urging him to explore his talents.

“It’s not just thinking about people opening up their wallets to buy a painting.

You need to consider the whole experience from the time a guest receives the initial invitation. With the handwritten, it becomes much more personal and engaging.” That first meeting with de Brantes, initiated a long lasting

relationship that would eventually lead to Ouchenir establishing his own practice. “Pia showed me the importance of understanding people, as well as the importance of building relationships and establishing networks, whether it’s within the fashion industry or the publishing world,” says Ouchenir.

Developing strong networks and preserving a strong support base has always been integral to Ouchenir’s success. “It’s the partners and friends that surround you that give you that confidence to take on greater challenges.”

Ouchenir naturally gravitates towards commissions that provide both an avenue for creativity and collaborative satisfaction. “If I’m excited about a project, I’m extremely elated and the ink flows, whether it takes two minutes or two days.” Although there’s a wonderful fluidity to Ouchenir’s pens strokes, he also makes a point to explain that each work is “strong like concrete and there is a sense of permanence to what is created”.

Ouchenir describes himself as an artist and not a technician and that his work is analogous in many ways to ‘haute couture’ rather than ‘ready-to-wear’.

These distinctions clearly define the realms of his collaborations with the world’s

Photo: Bruno Werzinski.

most illustrious fashion figures including Azzedine Alaïa, Nina Rucci and fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Christian Dior. “With my fashion work, it’s about creating a rhythm to a line that captures a designer’s collection, defining a visual vernacular before the clothes are unveiled to the world.” When Ouchenir first collaborated with Vivian Westwood, the initial conversation involved finding a handwriting style together − an intimate brief between two creatives that can capture or communicate a designers motives.

For each commission, Ouchenir provides at least three options for his clients. “There are times, when you want to push one idea further than another, but sometimes it’s just not possible” he reflects. “One of the biggest challenges is making sure I’m happy with the result. It has to please me well before I receive feedback from a client.” However, the greatest compliment that Ouchenir receives comes in the form of letters from those inspired by his work and wanting to be calligraphers.

Ouchenir’s handcrafted work creates a rich and visceral world, capturing the reader’s attention while creating a sensitive and emotional connection.

This devotion and approach has enchanted the imaginations of audiences all over the world, most notably during Fashion Weeks, as fleeting and ubiquitous invitations flood the inboxes of the fashion elite. This is when Ouchenir’s work stands distinct, elegant and quiet. A human exchange worthy of attention.

“There always has to be an aura of excitement, of desire, as well as exclusivity” he explains.

Whilst Ouchenir’s skills are predominantly utilised for ink to paper mediums, other fields have also captured his interest. Ouchenir was commissioned to reimagine the iconic Hotel Ritz logo and “make the mark clearer and more stylish for today’s market”. He compares that project to the birth of a child, with the awe and surprise that comes after such a long period of gestation. Other recent commissions have included the production of ‘handwritten curtains’ covered in script, where Ouchenir installed transparent fabric in a Nevada based home, allowing his signature to appear written on the valley when looking out of the windows. “I worked out there were three kilometres of letters in those curtains” says Ouchenir. The work was Photo: Bruno Werzinski.

placed throughout the house allowing the sentences to float poetically throughout the space.

In an age of instant communication, perhaps it’s our underlying desire for the enduring, the personal and the permanent that draws us towards Ouchenir’s work. Like many other products and services in this commoditised world, we continue to desire a link to the artisans that have crafted or designed artefacts as a means of deriving value from (while imbuing meaning into) the things we consume.

By maintaining a lineage between the artefact and the artisan, artefacts seek to transcend their material confines, particularly if they are to be considered luxurious. Perhaps it is through this direct and personal link to Ouchenir, we continue to quite literally connect with him along with the hopes and dreams that he has come to represent.

FOR MORE WWW.NICOLASOUCHENIR.COM

Photo: Bruno Werzinski.

AIMEE BENDER –

That’s the thing with handmade items. They still have the person’s mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

KHALID SHAFAR –

The question is how do we present this heritage in a contemporary, international way.

LOREDANA TARSIA –

In a world where everything is available, a truly handmade and bespoke product is very hard to find.

ANYA HINDMARCH –

If something is hand made especially for you it is worth much more than the sum of its parts. It reminds people how much love goes into a product.

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7

Photo: Jimmy Pozarik.

SHAPING SOUND In conversation with Alexander Briger.

MUSIC

By Luke Slattery

Alexander Briger, Founder and Artistic Director of the Australian World Orchestra (AWO), sees the conductor as both an artist and a craftsman whose role is to shape sound. The audience observes a figure in black, carving crescents in the air with a baton in hand while raising, lowering and flourishing the other.

But the orchestra, poised before the maestro, is alert to their every movement - from the tilt of the torso to the arch of a brow.

“Each movement, each gesture is directed at shaping the music,” Briger explains. “Conducting is body language taken to extremes.”

Shaping, an action usually associated with constructing, sculpting and fashioning physical objects, is the core of the process. “Once the conductor has managed to get everybody together – that’s the first part – their job is to interpret the music in an individual way and to shape that interpretation for an orchestra that may have played the piece many times before and undoubtedly has its own interpretation,” says Briger.

Briger is the nephew of the renowned Australian conductor Sir Charles Mackerras, who won the first prize at the 1993 International Competition for Conductors. The idea for the AWO had been kicking around for a decade and was raised whenever Australian instrumentalists working in European orchestras collided at performances, airports and bars. In 2010, after one of many European gigs, Briger returned home resolved to ‘make it happen’. And he did. In 2011 Briger managed to reel in around 100 Australian instrumentalists for a grand Australian musical reunion at the Sydney Opera House.

The inaugural season saw Briger and Hamburg based Australian, Simone Young, take up the role as guest conductor; two years later Briger enticed the evergreen Zubin Mehta to the stage. Mehta was to lead the orchestra in the Sydney and Melbourne performances of Ivor Stravinsky’s sprightly Rite of Spring and Gustav Mahler’s magisterial Symphony No. 1.

The AWO had its first rehearsal in 2011 with Young and it was immediately clear that the orchestra of peripatetic Australians, sharing little other than nationality, had a clearly definable sound. “The tension in the room was unbearable,” recalls Briger. “They were all sitting next to their peers, and every member of the orchestra knew just how good the other players were, and who they played for. They were so nervous.” Young looked around and joked: “I feel like I’m looking at the Australian Youth Orchestra with wrinkles”.

“They really gave it their all during those rehearsals,” says Briger, who

LOUIS NIZER –

He who works with his hands is a laborer.

He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

10

conducted Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in that inaugural year.

“It was no small thing. They’d been dreaming of this and had finally pulled it off.” Most of the instrumentalists are based in the German-speaking music-sphere – one tenth of the AWO is Vienna-based – and that rich, fluid and robust sound was to dominate the newly established orchestra.

“I remember during that first year a violinist from the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra came to me and confessed that for some inexplicable reason she’d changed her sound to match the orchestra and it had become more beefy and romantic,” Briger recalls. “She couldn’t work out why but it had, almost beyond her control. Bizarre. It was one of those mysteries of human nature.”

Conductors bring their own distinct personality to the podium and Briger has studied a few as a keen student of the craft. “Mehta is pretty diplomatic when he works and his focus is on rhythm; he likes it to be incredibly tight.

Rattle is a lot more about colours and sounds, and he can be very funny. I’ve heard him announce to the Berlin Philharmonic that he wants the sound to be ‘a little more blue.”

“But somehow the orchestra gets it as soon as he starts to conduct.

They watch his eyes, and his movements, and his eyebrows, and every little movement in his body. They know they have to adapt and allow themselves to be moulded. This is the mark of a truly great conductor. The body shows everything, expresses everything. Every movement means something.”

For a conductor to scale the heights of his art, Briger believes experience in conducting opera, with its great array of musical forces, is essential. “All the greatest conductors come from opera.” The greats, in his view, all possess an innate quality that can’t be taught: charisma.

“If you want to go far, it’s important that people are drawn to you. That’s a mysterious quality. Maybe it’s some force around the body – an aura. An orchestra will make its mind up about a conductor before they have even lifted their arms. When you are walking out onto a podium for the first time the orchestra is looking at you, forming an opinion. They can sense by the way you are moving, by your arms, your eyes – some kind of electricity – whether or not you’ll be able to do something interesting. They’ve worked this out even before the first downbeat. It’s all about personality.”

The Australian World Orchestra will open its 2015 Season in Sydney, Australia on 29 July 2015.

Briger, as the AWO’s Artistic Director, Chief Conductor and Founding Impresario, was acutely aware of the artistic risks involved in establishing a new orchestra comprised of an ensemble of top-flight instrumentalists who had been shaped by their own distinguished careers. However, since its inception, the AWO has become such an uplifting ensemble that Mehta has been promoting the company as one of the best in the world.

In August 2015, star conductor and Artistic Director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle, will lead the AWO in a program with Anton Bruckner’s heavy-duty Symphony No. 8 as the centre piece. Briger is expecting wonderful things from Rattle’s collaboration with the AWO. “The eighth symphony, which was later known as The Apocalyptic, is the perfect choice” he says, “the symphony is so big and beefy. Bruckner works in big brass sections all in harmonic unison, and it’s the same with the strings and winds; Rattle is superb at building that kind of sound.”

JEAN-NOËL KAPFERER AND VINCENT BASTIEN – Luxury is a culture, which means you have to understand it to be able to practise it with flair and spontaneity.

Rattle’s predecessor at the Berlin Philharmonic, the late Claudio Abbado, was the most kinetic conductor Briger has observed at work. “He was a terrible rehearser,” Briger recalls. “He just had no clue what to say to the orchestra.

Rehearsal, according to the musicians, was a free for all. Once it came to the performance, his small stature would transform to cover and command the orchestra. It was as if the music was coming out of his baton. His performances were second to none.” However, he adds as an aside, it is not absolutely necessary to conduct with a baton. The French conductor Pierre Boulez famously only used his hands – “gorgeous hands” as Briger describes them.

In speaking to students about the qualities of a good conductor, Briger preaches the virtues of a good ear and baton technique to penetrate into the heart of the score, to understand the composer and his time; and true to testament and on the day of this interview, Briger was brushing up on Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 for a performance with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

DAVID GIROIRE –

The word luxury is often overrated. Luxury is not about high prices, but more about personal and cultural values.

FOR MORE WWW.AUSTRALIANWORLDORCHESTRA.COM.AU

STANISLAS DE QUERCIZE –

That’s what craftsmen are here to do, to leave an everlasting mark in this world.

Neue Luxury, No.3

Photos: Courtesy of Bon Duke.

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Neue Luxury, No.3

CIAO MANHATTAN An interview with Bon Duke.

IMAGE MAKING

By Paul Tierney

Gramercy Park on New York’s west side has long maintained an air of faded elegance. The buildings here have witnessed considerable changes over the years – from cool beat poets trading rhymes on the benches, to a new generation of hipsters cashing in on past glories. In the early 1990s I was a regular in the park’s infamous hotel, imagining myself as one of Manhattan’s boho-elite, drinking vodka like it was going out of fashion, and, in lieu of dinner, grazing on the bar snacks. Times were hard, but bluff and swagger came easy.

Pre-gentrification, the area seemed frozen in time, a slice of the city preserved in nostalgic aspic.

Photographer Bon Duke remembers it well. Born and raised across the river in Brooklyn; New York has always been his home. It’s the reason he takes pictures in the first place, constantly seduced by the city’s boundless charm and ever-evolving personality. As he walks through Gramercy in sub-zero conditions, police sirens blare like the melody of an urban Christmas carol.

“New York is endlessly inspiring,” he announces. “When you look down the avenues and see the skyline, it’s an incredible sight. But it’s not just the visuals that inspire me, it’s the people too. Everyone’s in their own little world here. There’s this mutual feeling of knowing you’re in a great city. Every single person here knows that they can do whatever they want. You feel the mood and energy just looking at people’s faces.”

A graduate of the city’s School of Visual Arts, Duke is fast emerging as a powerful force in fashion editorial. Shooting for a host of style magazines, he has an eye for detail, and is part of a new generation of film and image-makers influencing the fashion landscape with fresh perspectives. In 2009 he co-founded the New York Fashion Film Festival, which annually showcases short films from both students and seasoned industry professionals. To say he is ambitious is an understatement. Regularly tipped as a name to watch, Duke is bubbling to the surface with such effervescence, there seems to be no stopping this nascent, doubtless talent.

He first picked up a camera as a small child and at the age of thirteen, he started photographing his own paintings. “I was a painter originally, but not a very good one,” he laughs. “I just loved the whole ritual of getting film processed and developed, it was so instantaneous. I found painting such a slow process so I started focusing on photographs instead. It’s good to have a painting background before you start taking photos, you approach it with a lot of knowledge about colour and composition. In this digital age not having a background in another medium is a disadvantage.”

Duke is a straight talker – pragmatic and not inclined to embellishment.

The son of Vietnamese immigrants, his work ethic and attitude to life is clearly defined. Yet in the shallow waters of fashion, where his photography has flourished, that openness is highly unusual.

“To be honest, I didn’t expect to end up shooting fashion, it came about almost by accident. When I first started, my aesthetic was really minimal – I had no idea about designers and who was who. My interest comes from the beauty of the craftsmanship. Obviously when I see fashion now, it’s about how clothes lay on the body, and how they compliment a person. I see them as another layer to help me composite my images. I look for details in clothes; this is what really piques my interest.”

Looking at a cross section of Duke’s work, it is the models, not the clothes themselves that stand out. My eye is drawn to the subject’s face, often captured mid-expression, caught in reverie or despair. It says more about his style than the designer apparel these characters often inhabit.

“It’s a lot about the subject,” he agrees. “I have always focused on portraiture; I always want to photograph and know someone more as a person if their character speaks to me. Creating a connection with a subject is important to me.”

Who does he consider to be beautiful?

“Wow, that’s difficult. When you look at someone’s face, they have to have an aura. When I cast someone, they have to make me feel speechless. There are models out there that people find very beautiful and sometimes I just don’t see it. For instance, Cara Delevigne. I just don’t think she’s amazing at all, but because she’s able to take advantage of being this Instagram ‘it’ girl, she has far more presence. For me, visually, I don’t see it.”

We chat at length about notions of beauty. The fashion industry persists in selling us an ideal, but we both agree that being beautiful isn’t enough.

The nuances and gestures a model makes are often more important than the way they look. In Duke’s world, a hand can say more than any smile.

“Amazing that you noticed that,” he says excitedly. “Hands are super important to me. It’s a detail I like. People don’t realise how much is said about them through the way they use their hands. I like to capture that.”

The conversation turns technical when we try to make sense of the digital realm. In the last fifteen years, photography has changed beyond recognition with the advent of new technology. This has been a good and a bad thing.

From a democratic point of view, everyone can now be an artist, and yet the ease and speed of this new medium has created a culture of blandness and repetition. For the i-Phone generation there is no process, no integrity.

“It’s upsetting because it takes away the craftsmanship,” he says, obviously pained by this notion. “You have to craft an image and put time and effort into it, and yet young people don’t see that. I find it upsetting when young photographers have a second plan, where they don’t always see their initial ideas through and just see what happens on the day. You should try to do everything ‘in camera’ and right there on set because it’s so important to capture the moment at that time, not relying on making mistakes.”

Does he think this laissez-faire approach is dissolving the art?

“Yes, it totally dissolves the art. People that just shoot and shoot, they can’t explain it. All they can say is that it’s ‘visually appealing’.”

In recent years, as a result of studying at the School of Visual Arts, Duke’s work has transcended still photography. Now fully immersed in making short films, primarily with a fashion focus, he has developed into a fully-fledged, multi practice image-maker – something he never thought possible.

“Without even knowing it and before I even knew their names, a lot of movies influenced me. Luc Besson’s The Professional was a big one. I think it’s something about the New York feel of it. Another film that had an effect on me was Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine, which is about three French teenagers living in the ghetto. It’s an interesting storyline, about escaping from the city.

The films I can relate to are the ones that really stick out for me – they have a realness and a rawness to them.”

But being a photographer doesn’t instantly mean you can become a filmmaker.

“Absolutely,” he says emphatically. “As we discussed earlier, a lot of photographers think they can simply fix things after a shoot. But with film making you have to consider every step. They might be able to make a video technically but they forget that there has to be a great storyline or concept supporting it, otherwise it falls short. The essence of film is storytelling and people forget that.”

We talk about starting points, how in this potted world of short film making, where brands and designers demand instant gratification, it’s difficult to know where to begin.

“Music helps me visualise a storyline. I’ll put on a track and think how amazing it would be to base a film around it. I instantly start imagining a movie

DANIEL BULLEN –

As the high street can only offer garments that are mainly mass-produced in large factories, the appeal of something unique and individual becomes more sought after.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

RASEEL GUJRAL ANSAL –

Luxury is something that transcends time, taste, fashion and objects of beauty. I’m going to fall in love and have an affair with luxury for the rest of my life.

FERDINANDO CARACENI –

Elegance is forgetting what you are wearing.

in my head. Whenever I watch a Quentin Tarantino or a Guy Ritchie film, there’s something that resonates with me about the music and how it compliments the narrative. So I listen to music and come up with a random storyline, and if it’s appropriate I’ll try and incorporate it for a brand and see if it fits.”

Music helps, but how do you stamp your work with personality?

“The first thing is colour. I am very particular about colour. It’s a basic, broad element that I stamp my films and photos with. Also I approach my work like still life, and I like to have a little bit of dark humour in there too. With a lot of my work, I don’t want to say bullshit, but I know how imagery and presentation and language can really slay a viewer. I used to research advertising, and I read David Ogilvy’s book, Confessions of an Advertising Man. It was interesting how you can say a lot by adjusting or tweaking an image, and I do that with my photography. I reappropriate elements on purpose because I know it’ll have a certain effect or message.”

Duke’s most arresting film work is surprisingly simple. Enhancing the flowing diaphanous lines of Chloe, perhaps fashion’s sweetest ready to wear line, he asked Janie Taylor of the New York City Ballet to perform for him wearing the dance inspired spring/summer 2011 collection. Duke slowed the film down to mesmerizing effect, providing a completely unique viewing experience.

“I work a lot with dancers, which is amazing because they really understand their bodies, so it becomes about shape. The Chloe collaboration was more of a study for me, rather than a fashion film, because I knew nothing about ballet. It was almost like they were performing for me, trying to explain why ballet is so beautiful. To be honest, it almost felt like I was spying on them. It wasn’t overly choreographed; I almost let them build the whole film.”

With his Film Festival increasing in popularity each year, is he leaving still photography behind?

“I have a tendency to get bored with one thing so it’s a healthy balance

JEAN WIART –

An artisan is a craftsman who has full knowledge of his craft.

An artisan is first and foremost a technician.

between the two. It’s healthy and creative to do both, and they compliment each other.”

As darkness descends on midtown Manhattan, he braves himself for the cold journey back to Brooklyn. “I’m definitely in a New York bubble,” he reflects. ‘I need to know how to break away.”

He is sanguine about the future but leaves with me a parting shot about the mood of his beloved home town. “People are really unhappy at the moment about police brutality,” he says seriously. “There’s a feeling in the city, in its underbelly, that something is about to erupt. I want to capture that feeling. It’s my duty to record it.”

FOR MORE WWW.NYFFF.COM WWW.BONDUKE.COM

JAMES THOMPSON –

Quality is now paramount, authenticity is in demand, and rarity of the experience is key.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

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NEUE BERLIN Berlin is certainly no stranger to reinvention. The city’s cultural and urban redevelopment has often gone hand in hand, creating unique conditions for meaningful social, artistic and political exchange.

Home to countless initiatives – many born within the forlorn and derelict urban spaces throughout the city – it appears that Berlin’s urban planning continues to amplify the role that art, design and architecture has in projecting the aspirations, dreams and interests of its natives. Walking the streets you can’t help but feel that Berlin is a city in constant negotiation with its past, pushing against the walls to establish a new vision and future. Neue Luxury took a stroll around the city to rediscover the energy, passion and enterprise that brings such diverse, unconventional and exciting ideas to life.

BY MARGARITA KUDRINA –

Margarita’s passion for cinema and contemporary art brought her to Berlin in 2012, where she has since been active in a multitude of creative projects including writing and film.

GESTALTEN Gestalten was founded in Berlin in 1995. Since its inception, the business has expanded from a publishing house into a platform for a broad range of creative activities, including the development of workshops, exhibitions, films and video initiatives. Combining diverse artistic practices, Gestalten is striving to address relevant points of contemporary culture and expand the horizons of human perception. Having developed more than 500 books, covering some of the most compelling minds of our time, the company’s main goal is to push creative expression to new frontiers. In 2014, Gestalten opened the Gestalten Pavilion, a design store with an integrated café on the roof top terrace of Bikini Berlin. www.gestalten.com

DANIEL HEER The craft of making Rosshaarmatratzen, horsehair mattresses, has been in Swiss artisan Daniel Heer’s family since 1907, when his great-grandfather Benedikt Heer opened a saddlery in Lucerne, Switzerland. Four generations on, continuing the tradition passed down to him from his father, Daniel Heer is still making the original horsehair mattresses at Manufaktur HEER in Berlin. Through the application of sustainable materials and modern design sensibility, Heer has also made his family’s heirloom craftsmanship his own with lines of genuine leatherworks and bespoke horsehair mattresses.

Heer opened his store in Berlin in 2012 with the goal of exposing his family’s practice to the world. He is also focused on teaching young enthusiasts about the art of traditional mattress making. www.danielheer.com

SAMMLUNG BOROS BERLIN The Boros Collection is a private collection of contemporary art housed in a 3000 square metre bunker in the heart of Berlin. Built in 1941 by Karl Bonatz, under the leadership of Albert Speer, the bunker became a place for experimentation during Berlin’s transformative years following the fall of the Wall. During the nineties, the bunker became a hub for techno music and fetish fantasy. The building was purchased by Christian Boros in 2013 and converted to serve as his private residence and to house his extensive art collection. www.sammlung-boros.de

RYO KASHIWAZAKI –

By understanding the two opposing aspects and finding a balance in concepts such as modernity vs. handcraftsmanship, or inhumanity vs. humanity, we can express ourselves through crafting shoes.

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GUILLAUME DE SEYNES –

JÜDISCHE MÄDCHENSCHULE The transformation of Jüdische Mädchenschule certainly experienced its peak when the building became a small temple of contemporary culture in 2009. Founded in 1835, Jüdische Mädchenschule was Berlin’s first Jewish school for girls. Today, it holds three galleries for contemporary art on the top floor and an area for the general public on the ground floor.

Mogg & Melzer, the Jewish deli and Kosher Classroom, serve traditional kosher meals and Shabbat dinners on Fridays. The kitchen also showcases delicious customary German dishes from the beginning of the 20th century.

It is truly a place to see, taste and embrace. www.maedchenschule.org/en

EFE ERENLER Efe Erenler started building when he was eight years old. His passion for creation led him to the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin where he studied architecture and founded his namesake studio. The Efe Erenler studio has been gaining momentum with a prolific output each year. Clients of the studio come from diverse creative backgrounds, which Erenler believes to be fundamental to his approach. The practice redefines aesthetics and functionality in architecture. The close-knit team collaborate with artists, fashion designers and brands throughout Europe. www.efeerenler.com

SOHO HOUSE Soho House touched down in Berlin four years ago and immediately became a destination for creative practioners from around the world. Located in the magnificent building designed in the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) style by architects Georg Bauer and Siegfried Friedlander, Soho House maintains a strong artistic program, inviting members to attend year round book premieres, concerts and film screenings. www.sohohouseberlin.com

RESTAURANT RICHARD Swiss-born artist Hans Richard realised his haute cuisine dreams within the walls of his recently opened restaurant located in one of Berlin’s most exciting districts – Kreuzberg. The space was designed by architect Lisa Kadel, with a vision of complementing the historic wooden ceiling with exquisite pastel glass lamps. While the walls are adorned with artworks by the likes of Klossowski and Kunze; the patron’s sense of smell and taste are perhaps most captivated by the culinary skills of Tino Scodeller and John Richet. www.restaurant-richard.de

BERLINALE Berlinale is one of the most influential film festivals in the world. To the delight of cinephiles, the festival presents films from over 130 nations.

Founded in West Berlin in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually since 1978. It is considered the largest publicly attended film festival in the world. Divided into ten sections, Berlinale focuses on different genres, topics and social issues, showing up to 400 films in total alongside a long established foundation for ongoing political and social discourse. www.berlinale.de

BERGHAIN/PANORAMA BAR Set in the depths of a colossal former factory building and located on the boundary that separated East and West, stands one of the world’s most infamous nightclubs. The Berghain, a concrete labyrinth analogeous to both heaven and hell. It is comprised of several spaces including Berghain, a deep, dark cathedral dedicated to techno. The Panorama Bar, a flirty dance floor whose program pays homage to house music sits above the men’s-only club located on the ground floor. The detached former worker’s cafeteria, Berghain Kantine, also hosts exhibitions, performances and live concerts. The club’s remarkable program and penetrating sound system is open Friday through Monday morning. www.berghain.de

ST. AGNES St. Agnes church is one of the most emblematic spaces in Berlin. A physical manifestation of the dynamic urban development that characterises the city and exemplifies a unique multidisciplinary culture. One of Berlin’s premier urban planners, Werner Düttmann, was responsible for the brutalist façade of this sacred building. Various creative minds develop their ideas in and out of this vibrant atmosphere including Joerg Koch, the Editor of fashion and culture magazine 032c, architecture studio Robertneun and the Praxes Center for Contemporary Art. The 800 square metre space will also be hosting exhibitions under the curatorial leadership of the acclaimed Johann König. www.st-agnes.net

There is a saying, ‘everything changes, nothing changes’. The world and the customers are changing - there are new spending habits and we need to adapt to that. But, at the same time, our values need to stay the same - craftsmanship, quality, creativity, dream and surprise.

MARK CHO –

People are getting tired of mass brands that are expensive but insubstantial.

REBECCA ROBINS –

Luxury has become so diluted that it is practically devoid of meaning. Meta-luxury engages with a redefinition of luxury – one that is established on an economy and a culture of excellence.

Neue Luxury, No.3

NEUE MIAMI

CHARLES ARNOLDI Tourniquet is an assemblage of multiple painted canvases. It incorporates painterly techniques familiar to cubist painters (Leger, Braque, Picasso) and yet shifts the lens into contemporary languages through shadowing and other effects. Art Critic Dave Hickey, a clear fan of Arnoldi’s work, called him a ‘natural’ and a ‘profoundly innovative artist’ citing Arnoldi’s approach as being ‘wildly fresh, and natural where vision, skill, and intuition are inseparable’. Arnaldi transforms what he sees, combining instinctual and moral commitments and process.

CORINNE VIONNET Swiss photographer Corinne Vionnet produces portraits by layering hundreds of tourist images of major cities and iconic sights to produce a tangible image reflective of a collective memory. In the series Photo Opportunities, she explores how memory is always in motion, changing and personal. Her work results in impressionist landscapes that are influenced by both the personal and the communal.

NICK CAVE Nick Cave is known for his work as a performer, artist and educator. His work spans a diversity of media. The Hustle Coat is a critique of contemporary culture. Hustle coats or their facsimile are objects often associated with the American depression era. Serving as outposts when salesmen would sell anything from knives or cards, to drugs or gems from inside their coats. In contemporary culture however being hustled has transcended economics, being as familiar to Wall Street and investment trading as depression era street vendors.

REINOUD OUDSHOORN Reinoud Oudshoorn is a Dutch artist, who works primarily in iron and frosted glass. When speaking about his work, Oudshoorn says “A work must produce more space than it consumes”—a statement more familiar in the realm of architecture than perhaps sculpture. Spending any time with one of his sculptured pieces suggest spaces beyond those immediately visible. They are strongly interactive, sensual and provocative.

HANA FARSI –

Restaurants and hotels have a huge theatrical element, right down to there being a curtain call. It’s a form of entertainment.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

Every year an international skulk of art lovers, curators, artists and collectors descend upon the sun drenched streets of Miami, Florida to consume the brightest, biggest and boldest of the international art elite. With 73,000 international visitors feverishly devouring everything that Art Basel Miami Beach has to offer through its myriad of satellite fairs, sideshows and parties, one doesn’t have to look far to get a sense of how important the event is in the presentation and canonisation of contemporary and modern art. From the notorious to the little-known, the 2014 exhibitions were organised into eight major sectors: Galleries, Nova, Edition, Positions, Kabinett, Magazine, Public and Film, emphasising the intersectionality of the visual arts. Neue Luxury packed light and brought home some of the highlights.

SHAWN KURUNERU Shawn Kuruneru was born in 1984 in Toronto and now lives and works in New York. Although young Kuruneru’s work exhibits spare, expansive and mature qualities familiar in minimalist work, it casts a meditative quiet balance that pervades the space it inhabits. Working with ink and water to generate density and transparency created by brush strokes applied directly to unprimed canvas, these gestures create a visual poetry and illusory depth. Kuruneru is represented by Ribordy Contemporary, Switzerland and David Petersen, US.

ALBERTO SACCIONI –

Buy less but always buy the best products you can afford, they’ll last a lifetime and will clearly define your style.

BY DR KATHRYN SMITH –

Kathryn is a New York based writer, curator and cultural producer.

DAVID PRIFTI Prifti wrote that his photographic assemblages are informed by the formative elements that shaped his life: relationships, memories, rites of passage, aging and death. These psychologically complex images are in part due to a photographic process he employed shooting with large-format wet-plate collodion emulsions on glass. A technique very familiar to 19th century photographs. His work is in permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the DeCordova Museum, to name only a few.

NATHALIE MIEBACH Nathalie Miebach’s ‘weather’ sculptures are filled with remarkable visual complexity and playfulness that capture the devastation and impacts created by weather. Miebach utilizes data such as ecological measurements, temperature readings, sea and wave surges and then represents each by utilising materials such as wood, rope and paper. Miebach’s sculptures appear like childrens toys but in fact are visual articulations of complex scientific methodologies.

NIAMH BARRY Niamh Barry was born in 1968 in Dublin. After graduating from the National College of Art and Design, Barry opened her studio in 1991.

Barry’s conceptual light sculptures are made with a range of materials that include aluminium, porcelain, mirror, acrylic and wood, as well as her signature-mirrored hand formed solid bronze and LED. Her pieces are unique, not only for their grace but the convergence between function (light) and object. Her work is included in many private and public collections.

CRISTINA DE MIDDEL Cristina De Middel studied fine arts, photography and is now an artist and war correspondent. De Middel’s The Party, is based on the book Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, also known as ‘Mao’s Little Red Book’, a Chinese communist manifesto published in the early 1960s.

The artist explores the limits of the “photographic image to build truthful graphic testimonies and to raise a debate about the construction of opinion, history and the role that photography has played so far”.

JOSEPH WALSH Joseph Walsh founded his workshop in 1999 and is a self taught designer-maker. Walsh lives and works in Cork, Ireland. All of his work is informed by a deep engagement with nature, craft and materials. In this series Walsh ‘strips wood into thin layers, manipulating and reconstructing each into free form compositions, while shaping each layer to reveal not only the honesty of the structure but the sculpted form which is a unique collaboration of man and material’. His work has been exhibited and is included in major collections including the Museum of Art and Design, New York.

EPICTETUS –

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

ALESANDRO SARTORI –

The importance of creating a signature is not just to express your identity, but also to create a reference which you can play around with each season, yet retain this very important consistency.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

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NICK WOOSTER Style icon, entrepreneur, free agent.

Photo: Courtesy of The Woolmark Company.

FASHION

By Paola Di Trocchio

NICK WOOSTER, MENSWEAR STYLE ICON, ENTREPRENEUR AND SELF-CONFESSED BRAND, WAS IN MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, RECENTLY IN HIS ROLE AS STRATEGIC CONSULTANT FOR WOOLMARK, WITNESSING THE TRANSFORMATION OF NATURAL FIBERS INTO WOOL. “To see how the raw materials are processed is the missing piece for me” he reflected. Wooster has spent over twenty-five years working with leading luxury department stores such as Barney’s New York, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman as well as fashion labels like Thom Browne; buying and editing while progressively and subtlety impacting the global landscape of men’s fashion. On the street, his personal style attracts a kind of hysteria for its blend of class, subversion and tradition. After traveling to every major capital in the world Nick Wooster sat down with Neue Luxury to discuss style and luxury.

PAOLA DI TROCCHIO: Do you think there is a place for regionality when it comes to fashion?

NICK WOOSTER: I do. In fashion and in physics the same rules apply.

For every action there is a reaction. As things become more homogenised or more regular there is always going to be a desire for the opposite. I think that consolidation and conglomerates do occur, but there is always going to be something opposing it.

PT: Australian designers of the 1980s like Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee, were often inspired by our landscape and the tonality and texture of place. Is that something that interests you?

NW: For me it just boils down to: ‘is stuff cool?’ Designers that go to Japan for the first time or designers that go to a tropical island, or to Scotland, always manage season after season, year after year to inspire. It’s just their take on that experience. You can take ten people to the same place and they are all going to have a different experience.

TOM FORD –

What we did at Gucci was to democratise luxury. My own company is a bit of a reaction to that. It’s about bringing back the human touch to service - real quality for a real luxury brand.

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PT: In the context of menswear, what would luxury mean to you?

NW: The only luxury left is time. It’s also the one thing that is unattainable.

PT: The only truly limited resource.

NW: But the same things that used to apply to the concept of luxury still apply today. Does it feel good? Is it hard to get? Is it handmade? Those are the hallmarks of how we could define luxury today. And that could apply to a sneaker by the way.

PT: Does tradition have a place when it comes to menswear in the 21st century?

NW: I think it will always have a role. To be relevant in menswear you have to be inside the box. And that box is something traditional. Of course people like Hedi Slimane, Rick Owens, Miuccia Prada and Thom Browne have all managed to go right to the edge but they are still within that box. That box can be the most confining thing or the most liberating thing. As long as you stay in the box you are going to be relevant. Rick Owens is maybe more

avant-garde than someone like Thom Browne but there is always an aspect that is familiar and I think that is what resonates with menswear. The minute you go outside of that, it becomes irrelevant.

PT: Do you have mentors?

NW: I have several. The first was Charlie Roth, who gave me my first job at sixteen. I worked at a family clothing store in Salina, Kansas. He was the son of the founder of the store and hired me as a kid in high school, and I really feel like he taught me everything in terms of the fundamentals of getting dressed properly. When I moved to New York it took a few years to work in this world, but Peter Rizzo who was at Barneys New York was the person who taught me everything about taste. He taught me how to identify the right fabric,

CARLINE BOUILHET –

There is nothing more exciting than the knowledge that a worldwide luxury brand has just manufactured something that no one else will ever have.

what to look for in a collection and how to edit. The training that those two men provided me has stayed with me to this day.

PT: You have described yourself as a filter, a voice, an editor and a teacher.

Which role do you enjoy the most?

NW: I enjoy the one that I get to do. I don’t take being here and the projects I work on for granted. This morning I talked to students because it’s my duty to be able to share my knowledge in some way, but by the same token, the filter of editing is great. We all do that. Everybody who gets dressed in the morning plays that role. You’re deciding what to wear. When you do it for a store, for a magazine, you might do it on a bigger scale, but you’re still making that decision. That’s a job that everybody has to do, maybe some enjoy it more than others. It’s a skill that has to be taught.

PT: As one of the most avidly followed men in fashion, are you ever burdened by the responsibility that what you put on in the morning will ultimately be critiqued around the world by the evening?

NW: I honestly don’t think about it. I’m probably one of the most insecure and fearful people in life. I’m afraid of everything. But somehow getting dressed isn’t one of them. I don’t like to get my picture taken. I think of myself as kind of shy, but I do exactly the thing that draws attention to myself even though I don’t think about it. I am aware that when it’s fashion week there are likely to be photographers documenting that event, and I hope that I look good, that my clothes fit. Michael Kors says every woman wants to look taller and thinner.

But I know it’s true about men as well. They just do. So I worry about that.

I worry if I am going to have an unflattering picture. But I am grateful that those who have taken a picture of me so far have been kind. Do I make mistakes?

Absolutely. Unfortunately now many more people can see those mistakes.

PT: We’ve seen a huge shift in men’s fashion over the past couple of years.

What do you think has been the biggest driver of that change?

NW: It has to be the internet. Men don’t like asking for directions. I think it’s the same with getting dressed. Most men don’t know what to do, and rather than ask, they can now secretly find the answers online. So the internet has helped make men feel more comfortable with thinking about how they look.

I think that’s been the single most important factor.

PT: What do you think is going to contribute the most to the landscape in the future?

NW: The internet. The ability to look online is probably the thing that is going to change everything. In terms of retail, publishing, entertainment, you name it.

SALVATORE FERRAGAMO –

There is no limit to beauty, no saturation point in design, no end to the materials a shoemaker may use to decorate his creations.

FABRIZIO VOLTERRA –

The only clothing brand you wear should be your own initials.

Every industry today is dealing with transition. But the bottom line is that commerce is going to happen. People are going to buy clothes, people are going to consume entertainment, people are going to watch things, people are going to read things, but clearly the ways that they do it are fundamentally changing.

PT: So what’s next for you?

NW: In January 2014 I embarked on something I said I was never going to do: work for myself and become a brand, 2015 is going to be a continuation of that.

FOR MORE WWW.WOOLMARK.COM WWW.NICKWOOSTER.COM

TOMAS MAIER –

Think how many times I’ve made a blazer in my life, how many shirts I’ve made. What’s interesting is to strive for a certain perfection, and what’s perfect is nothing.

Neue Luxury, No.3

Photo: Courtesy of Rolls Royce.

OBJECT D’ART Inside the rarefied world of prestige and bespoke cars.

AUTOMOTIVE

By Kyle Fortune

IN THE RAREFIED WORLD OF PRESTIGE AND BESPOKE CARS, LUXURY IS A TERM USED TO DESCRIBE THE OPPORTUNITY TO CREATE AN INCREDIBLY PERSONALISED OBJECT D’ART. A PLAYGROUND WHERE DISCERNING CLIENTS AND ENGAGED DESIGNERS DISCARD STANDARD SPECIFICATIONS IN FAVOUR OF A WORLD OF LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES, PERSONAL EXPRESSION AND THE FULFILMENT OF DREAMS.

While all luxury marques will indulge some level of individualisation and customisation, the UK has some of the most established super luxury and performance brands where bespoke interaction have long been considered the norm. Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, Bentley and relative newcomers McLaren Automotive all have departments whose remit is to act upon bespoke requests.

While such individual personalisation isn’t unique to either marque, it is, in an historical sense a peculiarly British phenomenon.

“People say they don’t need our cars, they buy them because they’re beautiful. They buy them because they create a personal feeling with the car, and Q exemplifies that process. It endorses it and allows people to create a piece of their own inspiration,” says Dr Matthew J Bennett, General Manager of Q and VIP sales for Aston Martin. Q is the personalisation department that works in the very best tradition of Aston Martin, in order to cater to the marques

JEAN CASSEGRAIN –

More customers want to know what is behind the products they are purchasing, and I believe they are happy to engage in the manufacturing process.

18

most discerning, demanding and exacting clients. As a not so subtle nod to Aston Martin’s most famous literary driver, the division takes the already very exclusive and creates the opportunity to realise something even more distinctive.

As Bennett stands in front of a beautifully crafted presentation case, filled with swathes of the finest leathers, sculpted painted blocks, their shape deliberately chosen to demonstrate the effect of light and shade on

the hue, he remarks “Creating a catalogue for Q is almost impossible as new ideas come from every part of the world”. Marek Reichman, Head of Design at Aston Martin, favours this endless opportunity adding, “the only limit is your imagination”.

It’s a tradition that Aston Martin has had since its inception; Reichman notes, “it’s at the very core of our brand”. The hand-made element of Aston Martin’s cars accommodates for imaginative innovations in vehicle design, and the firm only produces a small number of cars each year, with just 65,000 Aston Martins having been built in over 100 years.

RICHARD SENNETT –

Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse; the desire to do a job well for its own sake.

“One thing all of our clients share is the experience,” Bennett explains. “The journey of meeting us, talking to us and having some fun is as important as the end product. What is unique about Aston Martin is the close proximity of design engineering and sales, and the fact that the clients’ get to talk to the same guy that designed the car.”

“We assume that this whole idea of personalisation comes from the home, but the car and the automotive industry really started it all, you can even look at that from the perspective of tailoring. A lot of our craftsmen and seamstresses came from the tailoring trade, which is all about people and individualisation” Reichman explains while reflecting on numerous commissions he is personally involved in each year. “Everyone’s a different shape, size and has different tastes. What we do is very much about that. This is about our clients taste.

We don’t police it, we advise. We don’t say you can’t have a bright green, we actually say this bright green would work with this bright yellow and this bright red.”

Colour choice is indeed an intensive process and the ideas behind each decision are varied and nuanced. Whether it be blue paint to match a kitchen blender for a Bentley Continental GTC or even a Rolls-Royce Wraith painted to echo the Jaguar MKII driven by television detective Inspector Morse.

Such demands might seem simple, but Rolls-Royce’s Head of Bespoke Sales and Marketing, Richard Collar is quick to note that achieving this particular customers request, meant an investment of time equivalent to painting eighteen Wraiths off the standard palette and two-tone paint process.

Cultural and geographical influences are also a significant consideration for makers. A car destined for a Middle Eastern client might look out of place on a grey British day, but under the shimmering brightness of an equatorial sun, it’s perfect. “The joy of the bespoke offering,” says James Warren of Rolls-Royce, “is that we don’t have to second-guess that, we don’t just offer the limited twenty colour palette, there are 44,000 to choose from and that means it can be anything to anyone, no matter where they are in the world”.

MARIA GRAZIA CHIURI –

For us the quality of manufacturing makes the idea stronger.

It’s something that Reichman at Aston Martin recognises only too well and admits that colour has the power to surprise. “You may happen to be driving down a road in India and see an array of saris hanging up to dry and although you would never imagine those colours working together, they really do look fabulous. We are always working with our designers to create a nuance in our colours. There are so many tonal differences in one colour that you can always get them to blend and match.”

Aston Martin’s bespoke capabilities aren’t limited to surface treatments.

A client wanting to celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, not only took advantage of a collection of unique leather, paint and fabric options, but also requested that some of the stone from the wall be inlaid into the interior Q badge. There’s little that Aston Martin’s craftsmen and women cannot deliver. Underlining their exquisite ability and upon the marques centenary, the Q division filled the fine slithers between the stylised wings on the company’s badge (said to be derived from a scarab beetle) with the lustrous green shell of its inspiration. Bentley’s Mulliner Division responds to everything from unique leatherwork and wood finishes to champagne chillers, collectively adding to an already arduous manufacturing period reaching up to 400 hours or more. And the price? No one really asks.

In the current market there’s increasing demand for individualisation and simultaneous demand for exclusivity. Aston Martin’s One-77 project from 2009-12 has built just seventy-seven exclusive Aston Martin hypecars with a £1.2 million price tag. Each, says Reichman, was unique. One client famously loved the cars aluminium structure so much that he purchased a chassis to display on his wall as art. “Projects like One-77” says Reichman, “are where the real potential is. It’s not simply colour and materials, it’s shape and form, stance, style, attitude and feeling.”

“Our clients almost always have very good taste. And while industry standards can often dictate that adding up to 30 percent in specialised options results in the depreciation of the resell value of a vehicle, to some it’s not an

MARK POWELL –

Bespoke isn’t just the clothing, it’s the persona that comes out from wearing the clothing.

Neue Luxury, No.3

Photo: Courtesy of Rolls Royce.

issue. It’s the same as engraving your initials on the back of your watch. You’re in this for the long term, you’re creating something that’s special to you. Our clients understand value, with value being defined as style, exclusivity and something that has never been before - that adds huge value to the experience.

In the end that’s the bit that drives the decisions and not the final cost” admits Bennett. The process is enjoyable for the clients and as well as those working on the project, Bennett explains, “the experience is fun and challenging because you gain so much inspiration and there are no restrictions to the

creative vision. In the end that’s what provides unique value to our clients”.

This is something McLaren’s Special Operation (MSO) department has witnessed with its P1 supercar project. There is so much opportunity for the creative vision. James Banks, Head of Commercial Operations at MSO says, “one of our key mantras is ‘never say no’. We’ll do what you like whenever its possible within the law and available budget. One of the first questions I always ask of clients is whether you’ll be taking it to the racetrack or the opera. And then you’ve got to think about how that might change in time, a car you wanted to race becomes the car you take out for an evening”.

There’s no greater example of Bank’s thinking and the scope of MSO’s ability for one-off bespoke cars than the McLaren X-1, a retro-deco-inspired fantastical car based on the 12C. Its anonymous McLaren-dedicated owner wanted something completely different, with none of the exterior panels or lights carried over from the original car. Never to be seen again after its 2012

unveiling at Pebble Beach, the X-1 might not be to everyone’s taste but it does indeed represent the zenith of hand built bespoke production.

While Bentley and Rolls-Royce might not deliver such overt and ostentatious one-off creations, Bentley’s 2008 Continental GTZ Zagato, a series of just nine cars, harks back to an age where coach builders and design houses created unique bodywork on running chassis. Zagato’s most prominent relationship remains with Aston Martin and the Z badge is still synonymous with the marque. The collaboration has produced iconic outcomes such as the 1960’s DB4 GT Zagato and the most recent 2011 V12 Zagato, Virage Shooting Brake Zagato, DBS Coupe Zagato Centennial and Spider Centennial with the former three celebrating Zagato’s ninety-fifth anniversary.

Cars like Aston Martin’s CC100 Speedster of which only two were built, were cars very close to Reichman’s heart. “The CC100 is a kind of spiritual embodiment of our DNA and to be able to do that for a client is very rewarding.” Such machines are inevitably expensive, but Reichman suggests that with their clients, it has little to do with money. It’s the realisation of a dream and in the world of collectables these vehicles are rightfully considered investments.

As enjoyable as the process may be for clients, it’s clearly liberating for Reichman to be given the outlet to channel his creativity. “We do things that we sometimes show as experiments; invariably they capture someone’s imagination so much that they must have one. That for me is the biggest buzz, as it adds credence to your imagination and validates your desire to inspire, to generate interest and to enthuse your own team. Should a client see our thinking and love it, then in the world of bespoke cars, they can have it.”

FOR MORE WWW.ASTONMARTIN.COM WWW.ROLLS-ROYCEMOTORCARS.COM WWW.CARS.MCLAREN.COM

Photos: Courtesy of Aston Martin.

Photo: Courtesy of McLaren.

Photo: Courtesy of McLaren.

Photo: Courtesy of McLaren.

MICHAEL ANDREWS –

The business of bespoke, ‘anti-retail’.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

ELLIOTT ROWLAND –

To me, the word ‘bespoke’ represents a mystical journey.

It is both a voyage and a personal discipline, to create a gentleman with a tailor’s eye for detail.

MEG WOODHOUSE –

In a world of product symmetry, it becomes more important for consumers to be able to point to their individuality, even if it costs more.

MICHELE ATEYEH –

Luxury is absolutely in the eye of the consumer. That said, traditionally “true” luxury can be defined by recognizable design, premium quality material, and exclusive distribution.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

19

JOHN WOLSELEY Heartlands And Headwaters.

ART

By Dr Angela Hesson

THE STORY OF THE PELICAN OPERATES AS AN EVOCATIVE MICROCOSM OF JOHN WOLSELEY’S CAREER: IN THE WINTER OF 2014, THE ARTIST WAS CAMPED IN A SWAMPY AREA JUST SOUTH OF MATARANKA IN THE NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA NEARING THE CONCLUSION OF SIX WEEKS SPENT CREATIVELY IMMERSED IN THE WILDERNESS. THE CAMPSITE WAS A SINGULARLY UNROMANTIC ONE, SITUATED BENEATH A MOTORWAY VIADUCT NEXT TO A SMALL, SOUPY DAM. UPON WAKING EARLY ONE MORNING, HE SPOTTED AN INERT BLACK AND WHITE FORM AT THE WATER’S EDGE AND WAS MOVED TO INVESTIGATE.

“I thought I was looking at a Friesian cow,” Wolseley recalls, his excitement at the discovery still apparent. “What it actually was, was a dead, partially desiccated pelican! And so I took it to my camp and inked it up…inked her up… and began to work with her.”

Wolseley’s partner of the past twenty-five years, curator Jennifer Long, relates her first glimpse of the avian haul with an air of familiar, amused resignation. When she arrived to meet Wolseley at Alice Springs, having driven the couple’s battered ute from their home in the Whipstick Forest more than 2000 kilometres away, she was greeted not only by the spectacle of the pelican, pegged out to dry in the breeze, but also by the lamentably less decomposed body of a juvenile bustard, whose temporary shroud of a plastic bag soon filled with maggots. Such is the nature of Wolseley’s practice (and indeed, of the couple’s shared eccentricity and pragmatism), that a bag of maggots represented not so much a spectre of horror as a handy aid to speedy decomposition. The odour emanating from the bag apparently also provided an effective guarantee of space and privacy at campsites on the long drive home.

When I visit Wolseley in his St Kilda studio, he is in the process of completing the monumental work in which the pelican appears - Dystopia The last wetland, Gwydir 2184 - and he spends some time balanced atop a rickety ladder affixing the five metres of paper to the wall with drawing pins. The work is soon to feature in Heartlands and Headwaters, Wolseley’s major exhibition opening at the National Gallery of Victoria on 11 April, 2015. Comprising around forty-five paintings and fifty drawings, the exhibition is the result of four years work, guided by Wolseley’s characteristic merging of scientific curiosity, adventurous spirit, wry humour, and pantheistic reverence for nature.

The project has been sponsored by Sir Roderick Carnegie (described by Wolseley as “a modern day Medici or Doge”), whose patronage made possible the artist’s numerous journeys into the Australian wilderness, from Kakadu to Skullbone Plains, to seek out new sites, new materials and new methods.

Even as acts of patronage go, this was an unusually generous and open one.

With no specific instruction as to the nature, subject or scale of the works (save that they relate to Australian landscape - already Wolseley’s creative focus) the artist was effectively granted complete freedom to explore his ideas.

And so to return to the pelican, and its artistic afterlife. Wolseley’s bird

Plate 02.

Plate 01.

Plate 03.

printing is not for the faint of heart. The process, in which the naturally deceased instrument is covered with ink, tossed onto a sheet of paper, covered with another sheet, weighted, and then left for hours or days to leave its mark, is reminiscent of the kind of childhood experiment a parent might anxiously consider for traces of psychopathy. That this process should result in the most expressive, delicate and tender marks – each feather delineated on the paper, sharp beak outlined like the ancestral archaeopteryx- is an indication of Wolseley’s rare foresight, capacity to marginalise squeamishness and to privilege wonder, and see enchantment where others might perceive abjection.

Wolseley is of course not the first artist to make creative use of dead animals, but his reluctance to capitalise on the associated shock value sets his creations apart. Far from the voyeuristic spectacle of Damien Hirst’s slaughtered, maggot-ridden cow’s head, Wolseley’s animal finds are memorialised with an air of veneration. The artist himself refers to the pelican’s impression as “a sort of shroud of Turin”.

Many of Wolseley’s artistic interactions with nature have their origins in much earlier practices. His bird printing is in effect an extension of ‘nature printing’, a process developed in the 18th century and popular among scientists and amateur naturalists, whereby a natural specimen (most commonly a piece of foliage) would be covered with pigment and pressed between sheets of paper to leave its mark. Experimental printing techniques have always been a feature of Wolseley’s practice; having received his artistic education at Byam Shaw and St Martin’s School of Art, the artist was already a specialist printmaker, and his work bears the traces of both his rigorous training, and of an imaginative desire to infuse the medium with something more haphazard or tempestuous.

Driven in part by a professed desire for wildness, Wolseley departed the cosy green hills of his native Somerset and settled in Australia in 1976, at the age of thirty-eight. Here, he embarked upon a project of acquainting himself

as intimately as possible with the peculiarities of the Australian landscape.

This approach necessitated, from the outset, a nomadic existence, a continued program of exploration and discovery. As Wolseley explains “What I like doing most of all in the world, is immersing myself in a location which is completely new to me; wandering about and making drawings of the intimate processes and natural history of the place”. Wolseley has always cultivated a dualunderstanding of both micro and macro forms and processes within nature, describing himself as “one who tries to relate the minutiae of the natural world - leaf, feather and beetle wing - to the abstract dimensions of the earths’ dynamic systems”. This sense of intimacy with the environment is communicated in his characteristically hybrid practice, combining the traditional media of landscape sketching (in particular watercolour, pencil and charcoal) with more serendipitous, nature-based techniques. In Natural History of a Sphagnum Bog, for example, a delicate watercolour depiction of the bog’s surface, complete with reflected cloudy sky, is integrated with the trailing, flattened foliage of running marsh flower and the spongy imprints of mosses.

Wolseley’s works are consistently marked by an innovative manner of touch, an unlikely sensuality resulting from a kind of surrender to landscape rather than manipulation or domination of it. In his willingness to let nature make the first move, so to speak, he effectively inverts the traditional power dynamic of artist-naturalist-explorer in the colonised land. He is not describing so much as receiving. There is an air here of reverence, of subjugation to, and collaboration with, the landscape. His 2007 exhibition, Travelling West to Sunset Tank, saw the invention of what Wolseley terms the ventifacts - large sheets of rag paper released into areas of wilderness to blow in the wind and interact with whatever natural forms grow or reside there. After a period of weeks, the artist would return to the site to reclaim them, battered and moulded by wind and sometimes water, inscribed by the charcoal fingers of burned branches, nibbled by insects and scuffed by the earth. Wolseley describes the magic of

rediscovering the newly-formed ventifacts “often held in the arms of trees or nestled in the banks of sand”.

There is the sense, in these descriptions and their associated practices, of nature speaking through the artist. As he explains, “I am finding ways of collaborating with the actual plants, birds, trees, rocks and earth”. It comes as no great surprise, then, that a particular politics is reflected within these collaborations/communications. The cotton farms which dominate the upper section of Dystopia (in which the pelican appears), are already having a detrimental impact on the ecosystems of northern NSW. In earlier works, Wolseley has painted delicate endangered herons perched in the shadow of immense power station cooling towers; he has mapped areas of deforestation and incorporated graphs of changing climatic conditions into lush landscapes.

A depiction of flotsam washed up on a lake’s edge included amongst its picturesque assemblage of feathers, pebbles and shells, aluminium ring pulls and tangles of fishing line. That images which are, in effect, spectres of looming natural disaster should maintain such a sense of beauty is indicative of Wolseley’s subtlety, his understanding of the complexity of ecosystems, and of the equally complex human activities and motivations that threaten them.

His works are evocative, quietly persuasive rather than didactic; this is very much a case of show-don’t-tell.

For all Wolseley’s fascination with geology, zoology, cartography and climate change, there exists simultaneously within his work a profoundly tactile, even corporeal quality. This is an artist who refers, in the same breath, to graphing the migration of an endangered godwit, and to dancing with trees. In the Romantic tradition of inspired naturalism, Wolseley’s paintings, prints and drawings are subtly infused with both reverence and irreverence, with mysticism and with actuality. Like William Blake or Samuel Palmer - two of his most beloved if distant forbears - Wolseley fuses an understanding of nature’s minute particulars with a taste for the visionary, the immanent and the sublime. Heartlands and Headwaters is the amalgamation of a lifetime’s contemplation of nature in all of its unknowable immensity and exquisite intricacy, from the jewel-like carapace of the beetle to the great flatness of the floodplain. One is struck by the profound, fragile complexity of the Australian landscape, and equally by Wolseley’s place and that of his creations within it - delicately suspended between poetry and politics, between science and sorcery.

Image Plates Plate 01. Detail of: John Wolseley, Natural history of a sphagnum bog, 2013, watercolour on eight sheets 140x400cm. Private Collection, Melbourne.

Plate 02. John Wolseley releasing sheets of paper near Sunset Track to be collected after they have been inscribed by the burnt scrub Photo: Jennifer Long.

Plate 03. John Wolseley, Murray Sunset Refugia with 14 Ventifacts, 2008-09, carbonized wood, watercolour and graphite on paper, 120x232cm; 267x495cm. Private Collection, Melbourne.

Plate 04. John Wolseley, The Great Floodplains of Garrangali and Garangarri, 2012-13.

Private Collection, Melbourne.

FOR MORE WWW.JOHNWOLSELEY.NET WWW.ROSLYNOXLEY9.COM.AU/ARTISTS/1/JOHN_WOLSELEY WWW.AUSTRALIANGALLERIES.COM.AU/ARTISTS/9-ARTISTS/178-JOHNWOLSELEY Plate 04.

FAUSTO PUGLISI –

Craftsmanship in Italy is something extremely connected to society, it’s something that people at the end of the day don’t do just for money.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

MADELEINE GRUMMET –

I find most of the time it’s the handmade things that I’m drawn to and that tend to be the keepers! I’m into the provenance, the story, of and in things.

ERWIN RAPHAEL MCMANUS –

True creativity does not come easy; creativity is born by risk and refined by failure.

BRYANT H. MCGILL –

Artisan variation is beautiful to the unique eye of the beholder.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

21

Image: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter, Rove and Zaha Hadid, Zaha Hadid Architects.

KENNY SCHACHTER The wild word of art.

ART

By Dr. Kathryn Simon

Kenny Schachter has marked the art world with his own refreshing discourse and vision as an art dealer, curator and writer. Influenced by the view that art should not pander to an exclusive form of dialogue or be held hostage by the select few. In fact one of the things that stands out most within his work is a convergence of both high and low culture, a love of substances and material and a refreshingly open and sharp mind. He is at the forefront of a democratising movement that believes in the widest diffusion of art, art discourse and analysis. On the rare occasion that he did pause for air, we met before our annual pilgrimage to Art Basel Miami Beach.

KATHRYN SIMON (KS): What are you up to now?

KENNY SCHACHTER (KSS): I’m mainly curating exhibitions independently and writing for various publications including British GQ, ARTnews, Vulture and a column in the Gloom, Boom and Doom Report for economist Marc Faber.

KS: It amazes me to see how much license these publications are giving you.

KSS: (Laughing). Yeah, it’s fun. I’m enjoying it. I’m on my way to Miami to cover the fair [Art Basel Miami Beach] which is the biggest thing right now.

KS: What I find especially refreshing about your work is the way you understand the convergence between high and low. I remember going to your gallery Rove in London a few years ago and you had an exhibition on rocks titled Between a Rock and a Hard Place?

KSS: Yes, curated by Danny Moynihan. That exhibition included old masters and contemporary provocations.

KS: There were even Chinese scholar rocks. It was astonishing to see the variety of expressions!

ZAHA HADID –

Architecture is how the person places herself in the space.

Fashion is about how you place the object on the person.

22

KSS: There was a Courbet in the show and the gigantic Hirst installation.

It covered the gamut.

KS: It was such a good example of the current cultural landscape. You seem adept at discerning what’s important in a non exclusionary way while creating a new statement—one that feels relevant, not driven exclusively by the market.

KSS: It’s amazing how the art world has grown more in the past ten years than in the past one hundred. I have always been very democratic in my enterprises and try to reach out to as many people as possible. When I started, I remember

reading about various people in the art world saying that if they could have fifty of the right audience members in the room, that would be enough. In contrast, I’ve always strived for five thousand of the wrong people and have tried to expand the community that engages with art at any level. The art world has grown so exponentially since I started getting involved, it hardly needs me to bang my drum anymore to get people engaged with art, but that’s

DANA THOMAS –

Look for quality: you should never pay thousands of dollars for something that is less well made or the same as something you can find for less than $100.

what I do. I love to share information by teaching and writing.

KS: You are a critical and positive voice, informing and opening up the art world. Frankly, that isn’t so prevalent when it comes to what is actually happening in the art market and within art itself. Whether it’s your passion, or your keen insight into what’s happening; you do speak, write, and participate in revealing that dialogue. Fortunately for us, it breaks up what might appear as a consensus of some kind. What are your feelings about the art fairs and biennials?

KSS: A lot of people bemoan art fairs because they’re sort of an anti gallery show typically consisting of group installations. While they don’t provide the artist with the capacity and platform to expand their ideas and their practice, they do allow everyone to engage and see more work than what would otherwise be possible in a two to three hour tour of the London galleries.

It’s important to be able to access information at fairs, auctions and biennials efficiently. All the different venues today including galleries, museums and private museums just add to the bigger pool of material to see.

KS: It removes some of the exclusivity and allows more people into the conversation?

KSS: The number of people visiting museums, galleries and fairs is increasing.

As one of the few people involved in the economics of the business, I feel compelled to share how these transactions and machinations work – because there are just so few ways for people to get access to that kind of information.

KS: How did you get started?

KSS: I wanted to do something creative and entrepreneurial. Having been raised in the suburbs of Long Island, I was never exposed to an art gallery until I was in my mid-twenties. I came to art through visiting museums and studying philosophy, unaware of any activity where I could coalesce my interests. I tried various careers. I studied law, and then practiced for a short period, but that

MICHAEL ALDEN –

I do not think that classical clothing is in vogue. I think that people are becoming more and more interested in “custom, bespoke tailoring”.

was more an exercise in hiding from the marketplace than trying to find my place within the legal community.

KS: I just remembered a particular adventure with mens ties early in your career, are you willing to share that?

KSS: Sure. After I finished law school I thought a creative practice was to be in the fashion business. I wasn’t even cognizant that there was such a thing as a commercial art industry, so I saw fashion as a potential interest and worked for a tie company. I thought that would be the best way to learn the business and help to work towards becoming a designer. Going in through sales was the only way I could to get an inroad. I literally went door to door with my resume in the garment center of New York. I found a job with this tie designer who was the grandson of a famous Italian designer. He was traveling around the East Coast of the States with these two gigantic bags of ties trying to sell them to the mum and pop fashion boutiques.

KS: I have a vague memory about someone getting tied up in order for you to break free of the owner?

KSS: I needed to get out of that business. I happen to be allergic to silk, and the company was going under because the proprietor was having issues with his gambling. At one point I had to bring on an allergy attack by rubbing the ties on my face to extricate myself from the commitment. I had to leave.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

KS: When did this all occur?

KSS: It was before I realised I passed the bar, which was quite a surprise to me.

The person who funded the tie designer’s fashion business was an art collector from New Jersey who was already collecting young and emerging artists. So for all intents and purposes in my early years of curatorial practice, I was employed by this young art collector who collected the work of emerging artists before there was a consensus about them.

ANDY WARHOL –

Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

Neue Luxury, No.3

Photo: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter, Rove and Joe Bradley.

Image: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter, Rove and Zaha Hadid, Zaha Hadid Architects.

KS: Were you actually trading and reporting to work everyday while you were a student—and dealing art on the weekend?

KSS: I lied to my family and told them I was actually in night law school.

There was no such program of course. I was in fact working for Prudential Bache on the trading floor of the American Stock Exchange and if attendance was required at night school I’d have a friend add me into the class list without having to attend. I sat the exams after cramming a week before. Killed two birds with one stone.

KS: Describe your early introduction to the curatorial world?

KSS: I was procrastinating for a legal exam once and was dragged in to see the

it remains entirely the same. Since I moved here I’m working with The Tate, The Serpentine, The Royal Academy, The Victoria and Albert. I teach at the University of Zurich and I give periodic lectures at George Washington University, Yonsei University in Seoul and the London Business School.

People are coming through my home on a regular basis. It’s a dynamic place where things are always changing on the walls.

KS: You did some work with Zaha Hadid didn’t you?

KSS: I love working with Hadid and I did for a number of years. After commissioning two concept vehicles designed by Hadid (Z. Car and Z. Car II), the latest commission was the Z. Boat (presently in production in Germany).

estate sale of Andy Warhol right in the midst of the sale of all his jewelery, watches, art collection, and cookie vases. That was really the very first time I was exposed to art being sold, and it’s something that coloured my thinking ever since. I was under the assumption that art went from the studio of the artist into the museum, and I was entirely unaware that there was any commercial facilitation or system for art. That was the most eye opening experience. To this day everything I have done in the curatorial world and in my writing has to do with the commercial dissemination of art, the whole system of how art becomes a product or a commercial entity that emanates from the imagination of the artist. I’ve been critiquing, practicing and commenting on how the system works ever since.

KS: When I met you, you were the darling and the bad boy of Maxwell Anderson (former director of The Whitney Museum of American Art) and Thomas Krens (former director of the Guggenheim Museum) and the trustees of the Whitney and the Guggenheim in New York were coming down to your place to see your art collection when you were on Charles Street (later becoming Rove Gallery).

KSS: Right. You have a good memory. It’s funny because my life has changed so dramatically since moving to London ten years ago and yet in other ways

I also curated a project of Vito Acconci recently in Zurich and I will do so again in the commercial side for the [Art] Basel fair in Switzerland in June. In my mind there isn’t much of a difference between dealing with someone like Hadid or another artist, except that she piques my interest at a level between functional objects and art. In that sense what’s incredibly difficult is a Sisyphean task of trying to start an entirely new collecting genre. It’s a kind of inbetweeness.

It’s inspired me to become more involved and push myself to have more interaction in the field.

KS: What is catching your attention now and what artists are you looking at personally?

KSS: I’m engaging on every level I can and throwing myself into whatever I can. I’m where the action is, not unlike a wartime reporter in the trenches.

Economics has become a main stay of the discourse in art today. Being able to engage in art professionally also gives me this very particular and acute perspective from which to speak and write about it.

KS: What are your feelings about performance art? Although Richter’s painting is performative, I am thinking of work from performance artists including Tino Sehgal.

KSS: I have written on Sehgal in the New York Observer and I am interested

Photo: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter, Rove.

Image: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter, Rove and Rudolf Stingel.

in it. As much as I am interested in this kind of relational aesthetic that steers away from the object and paintings, towards a more interactive experiential performative practice, in my notion of art appreciation, I’m a kind of a prude.

I love paintings on canvas and relate to many varieties of art from traditional pencil drawings to installations and what they now (for some stupid reason) call post internet art, which basically uses the web as a jumping off point for making works. You know, I really want to see as much as I can, read as much as I can, learn as much as I can, to think about how it relates to the commercial side and the non-commercial side of art practice.

KS: I’m wondering if you are working in architecture now and how working in that discipline is different for you?

KSS: As the art market became hyper accelerated between 2004-2008 – which was sort of capped by Damian Hirst’s £1 million sale at Sotheby’s – the market crashed. To continue working, I became involved in design to clear my palette and get away from the overly commercial side of art. The art market has really exploded since then, however, it’s become something else entirely which is what I report and write about now. So now, through writing, I have come to embrace it instead of running from the commercial side of art and over speculation, and all of the ways the business is changing, and how people perceive and consume art. It’s become such an inflated genre in itself. It’s given me a whole new lease on wanting to get back involved and push myself to have more interaction in the field, just to have more things to write about in a sense.

KS: What new trends do you see in art? Are you looking at any particular artists now?

KSS: I brought together an exhibition with the artist Joe Bradley whom I worked with from 2002-2004. I established some of his first exhibition opportunities. He is currently in a group show called Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World that just opened at MoMA. We hope to work alongside each other on his earliest body of work which is a complete divorce from his modern works that he became very well know for.

I’m also collecting Rudolf Stingel, Vito Acconci, lots of young artists and the conceptualists of the 1960s and 1970s.

KS: How do you feel about the digital space?

KSS: There are so many people that have been trying to crack the internet and its relationship to art and obviously there’s a plethora of sites and loads of different platforms from which people are communicating, buying, selling and engaging with art. It’s interesting to observe how the things that were least intended to have an impact on the art sector are the very things that are having tremendous impact. Not only on the making of art, but in how people are becoming informed about new trends.

You can see how these exchanges have been evident in Jeff Koons work as well as Parker Ito, Ed Fornieles, Petra Cortright and Damien Hirst’s diamond encrusted skull, For the Love of God. All of these artists are using the Internet for information and also as a medium. Previously you would have experienced or engaged with art that incorporated technology in a very cumbersome way. I find that art is now getting much more fluid at incorporating these technologies, and making it even more profound and incredible to experience.

Like the artist Wade Guyton, who I showed in 1997. He was using digital photography and incorporating ways of using printers, to make his paintings look like very traditional paintings on primed linen, incorporating all of the random accidents of his computer manipulations prior to printing on giant custom made Epsom printers. That work is really exciting and builds upon Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol’s silk screens, while taking Richard Prince and Christopher Wool’s silkscreen pathology to another level.

These are things that we are going to be seeing more of, in ways we can’t yet define.

FOR MORE WWW.ROVECARS.COM WWW.ROVEPROJECTS.COM

Photo: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter, Rove and Joe Bradley.

Photo: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter, Rove and Joe Bradley.

PABLO PICASSO –

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

A global dialogue on luxury in the 21st century

Image: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter, Rove and Wade Guyton.

ELIO FIORUCCI –

The next big issue for fashion is not China’s economic boom, but Chinese creativity.

MARK TUNGATE –

An interest in small artisanal brands may be a trend, but unless they have some kind of financial backing, quite frankly they are screwed.

ROBERT TRIEFUS –

Today’s ‘click of a button’ society will in fact only serve to reinforce the values of true luxury.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

23

KHAI LIEW A moment in time.

DESIGN

By Ray Edgar

Two years ago, contemporary Chinese art collector Judith Neilson offered furniture designer Khai Liew perhaps the biggest private commission in Australia: 190 pieces, including a sixteen metre dining table made from Brazilian cherry wood. Sixty hand-carved dining chairs, rugs, standard lamps and table lighting, made without any aesthetic or financial restrictions, make up what is collectively named Indigo Slam. Precedents exist, of course.

Liew compares it to banker and art collector Adolphe Stoclet commissioning architect Josef Hoffmann of the ‘Vienna Workshop’ and the ‘Vienna Secession’ movement, to build a total work of art for his house, The Stoclet Palace, between 1905 and 1911.

But then Khai Liew has an ingrained interest in historical precedents. For the past eighteen years his studio has established a reputation for beautifully crafted furniture, which draws on international styles from across all eras.

Ancient Egyptian chairs, 14th century linenfold, Shaker austerity, nineteenth century arts and craft, and Chinese and Japanese construction techniques may be called into service at any time. Yet despite this postmodern layering, Liew’s style tends toward the modernist reduction epitomised by Scandinavian design.

To commission a complete collection from one designer ascribes in many ways to a “traditional sense of luxury,” he acknowledges. “It’s luxury goods, but at the same time the secret of this is that it doesn’t look like ‘rich people’s’ furniture.

“I’ve always felt that all the work we do has to have a humility to it.

It shouldn’t be about my ego or making grand gestures. It just has to be about beauty and capturing beauty in form.”

Aside from the obvious grandeur of a sixteen metre long table, the collection needn’t look grand; it just has to feel like it’s part of the home, he says, “It has to be domesticated. It has to be comfortable; the material has to have good haptic qualities. Anything like wood, wools and fibre all have domestic qualities to them”.

“If materiality naturally provides the heart of the finely crafted furniture, it’s guided by a governing philosophy,” Liew explains. Above the entrance to his Adelaide workshop are two posters. One carries an old Islamic saying: ‘Beauty is goodness written in matter.’ The other carries three words: ‘Domesticity’, ‘Spirituality’ and ‘Humility’.

Photo: Courtesy of Sam Noonan.

Photo: Courtesy of Grant Hancock.

“My cabinetmakers see these two posters as they come in to remind themselves of the kind of work that’s required from the workshop,” he says.

“I’ve always tried to instil what we term, unconscious beauty – beauty that’s not always apparent. It doesn’t strive to be beautiful – it has to be pure. My idea of beauty is purity. And it has to transcend the material. It has to be spiritual as well.”

Where better to begin than with light? Working on Neilson’s commission for the last two years has been an exercise in “capturing light on a piece of furniture,” Liew explains. “It’s an exploration of how I can shape a leg and in that process capture light on the particular curve or angle.”

As with all his work, however, it’s about telling a story – “it has to have a life of its own”.

Liew may baulk at the grand gesture, but the ambition is evident. He wants the Indigo Slam collection to embody “the story about where we are now in Australia in terms of decorative arts…I’ve always thought that a piece of furniture is a window into a culture at any point in history,” he explains.

At a time when critics question whether in fact we need yet another chair, let alone a whole collection, Liew contends that each generation must design to claim their own moment in history. “One hundred years from now someone can look back and say that particular work defined that time.”

Photo: Courtesy of Grant Hancock.

Photos: Courtesy of Grant Hancock.

Khai Liew’s dedicated design approach is predicated on a series of happy accidents. He became an expert in colonial furniture by collecting and restoring it simply to finance his university education. As a Chinese-Malaysian immigrant it was also a convenient way to learn about Australian culture.

“It took me to country towns and auctions and the back streets of Tasmania,” he remembers. “The furniture was unappreciated. I could fill a van for $100 and there was a limitless supply.”

His first design commission came from Ron Radford, then director of the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA). “He was aware I had good cabinetmakers and I had already made reproductions of frames and cabinets for him to match other work. So he said ‘can you design something for me that would fit in with the new extension?’ Maybe it was false confidence, but to me it was just a piece of furniture, not rocket science. That one commission led to another and I haven’t stopped since.

“The AGSA bench established the path of how I approached the whole design process. To make things look as simple as possible – but to hide complexity behind that simplicity. That’s one of the main tenets for me in terms of designing luxury. It’s very sophisticated and highly resolved, but looks simple.

You’re not confronted by this really complex object that you have to work hard to absorb and enjoy.”

Beneath the bench’s simple exterior, Liew selected a sophisticated ancient Chinese construction technique – a three-way mitre joint – to provide greater strength at the corners.

Since then Liew’s work has joined the collections he once sold his colonial pieces to, including the National Gallery of Australia and the Powerhouse Museum. Meanwhile he has exhibited in group shows at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Design Museum in London.

“One of the reasons his work is collected by major institutions is there is more to it than just the simple functional aspect,” says Brian Parkes, who included Liew in the major touring exhibitions Freestyle: New Australian Design For Living (2006) and Wood: Art, Design and Architecture (2013). “These things

capture values that relate to nostalgia, history, as well as simple things like warmth and comfort within both the form and material.”

For anyone feeling the need to question a luxury purchase, Liew designs his furniture to last hundreds of years. “I think in terms of generations with my work. I imagine each piece having to last 200 years,” he says.

and traditional techniques and how they might be incorporated into beautifully crafted contemporary furniture.

“Liew’s work is all about craftsmanship, but he doesn’t make it,” says Parkes. “He sits in an interesting zone [of artisanship]. His skills aren’t as good as the people he engages. But he has an intimate knowledge that allows him to direct each artisan.”

As Liew explains, “I’m not a cabinetmaker, but I used to restore furniture so I’m used to being very careful with the kind of work I do. All of my cabinetmakers have at least twenty-five years of experience working with fine cabinetry”.

These skills are evident in the exquisite detailing: from the kangaroo leather handles of Gwyn (2010) to the faceted surfaces of the Minton (2007) cabinet that reflects light while revealing the materials grain. In Liew’s designs the use of linen fold is not just as a traditional inset. It might dominate as an origami like gesture on the top of a table, or the back of a chair (Dakota, 2007), or across the entire front of a sideboard (Linenfold, 2007).

For all the serious historical references, Liew also includes humour and lateral thinking. The overlaid top on the Double Dutch (2009) side table may suggest a table-cloth made from timber, but to Liew its tapered edges also harbour a zoomorphic quality; “they are like a dog’s ears,” he chuckles.

Similarly the Prue (2010) cabinet, a collaboration with artist Prue Venables that formed part of Liew’s Collectors series, was inspired by the Arts and Craft movement. Its wimple-like top references 19th century architect Charles Voysey’s designs of clocks and block towers. But the Canadian rock maple and pierced porcelain cabinet is also laden with Australian vernacular references such as meat safes and enamelled pannikin pots. It even carries a distinct lean which Liew says was inspired by the quintessential Australian outback painter Russell Drysdale’s taciturn country women whose arms were often cocked on a kinked hip. “I was thinking of that great Australian image,” he says. “A lot of my work is about images and bits of history pieced together.”

If this attitude suggests an ‘art for art’s sake’ ethos, Liew emphasises the importance of refinement: “I try to distil it all into a form, keeping in mind that there is very fine craftsmanship underpinning the process and outcome.”

Indeed the distillation of that fine craftsmanship – of Liew’s quest for beauty into pure form – will manifest in Indigo Slam. The commission includes a series of carved limewood artworks no higher than 200 millimetres, featuring the “heroic aspect of each piece”.

“If the leg of the chair is the hero idea of the chair, I will make a miniature sculpture of that,” says Liew.

By creating a collection of ‘heroic’ abstract sculptures, Liew fulfils his design ambitions to capture the essence of a piece on a scale that’s both intimate in size yet grand in vision. Indigo Slam will indeed be a total work of art, and as Liew intends, capture an important moment in history.

Indeed the advantage of such an ‘heirloom piece’ is that you can rationalise its initial price over generations. What’s more, artisanal pieces traditionally increase in value over time. Exclusivity too becomes a by-product of the work, owing to the time invested into its craftsmanship.

“Khai’s current output is so pre-committed that if you are thinking about a commission you will have to wait years,” says Parkes. “It’s luxury through scarcity as opposed to audacious display.”

“This kind of luxury takes time,” says Liew. “It’s not something you can rush. Skill is everything in addition to awareness space – an idea of what to do.”

Eight artisans in Liew’s studio bring his designs to life in either unique one-off pieces or limited editions of ten. Liew’s designs are exercises in form

FOR MORE WWW.KHAILIEW.COM

Photo: Courtesy of Randy Larcombe.

DOMENIXO DE SOLE –

In luxury, you have to have an aesthetic, a vision for the brand. However, in the end, the product is everything.

24

LUCHINO VISCONTI DI MODRONE –

Customisation is the last frontier of luxury, and most of all, the most beautiful expression of savoir-faire passed on through generations.

BERNARD ROSENBLUM –

Tomorrow will there be a future? I think in ten years at the rate things are going there will be no more craftsmen. When that day comes museums will become graveyards.

SEBASTIAN COX –

If we can develop a product that possesses subtle evidence of craft, then I believe it resonates with a customer’s primitive maker urges.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION – www.neueluxury.com twitter/neueluxury

Neue Luxury, No.3

Le Cinéma Olfactif de

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DAISIES (SEDMIKRÁSKY)

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