CSM Time to
catch issue 5——December 2009
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HELLO AGAIN Welcome to the autumn edition of CSM Time, the regular roundup of success stories, events and happenings at Central Saint Martins. As ever, we catch up on the past few months while looking forward – this time to a new year in which we celebrate CSM ’s 21st anniversary, the 10th anniversary of Drama Centre London and 100 years of Byam Shaw. Special thanks to guest writers Drusilla Beyfus, Robert Hanks, Hywel Davies and Seamus Mirodan (our Drama Centre reporter at large) for their contributions to this issue. We’re thrilled to have you on board! Don’t forget – our annual report will be available on the intranet from 18 December. We’ll be back in the spring. Meanwhile, we wish you all the very best for 2010. Email your stories to editor@csm.arts.ac.uk
CSM Time is produced by Marketing and Communication editor@csm.arts.ac.uk in association with Rhombus Writers, and designed by Paulus M Dreibholz (alumnus and associate lecturer). © 2009 Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design unless otherwise indicated. We have made all efforts to credit images correctly. Please contact us if we have omitted to credit or miscredited an image – amendments will be made in subsequent issues.
+ King’s cross News (4) + The rough guide to KX (6) + Movers & shakers – Art (8) + Performance – Drama Centre London (10) + Art – Byam Shaw (12) + Profile – MA Innovation Management (13) + London Design Festival (14) + Private Collection (16) + Research (18) + Profile (20) + Sustainability (21) + Portrait Project (24) + Best of the books (26) + CSM is 20 (28) + What’s on (30) + Private View (31)
CSM Time to catch up issue 5—12/09 Cartoon courtesy of Em Cartoons @ www.emcartoons.com
KING’S CROSS NEWS
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During the evening guests were taken up to the fifth floor in a hoist (which runs outside the building on scaffolding)
Guests gather in the Granary Building on the ground floor
Stella McCartney with Sir Peter Blake
‘It’s good that the college has a new purpose-designed building and I’ve no doubt the area will soon develop the bars, clubs and small theatres I liked so much in my Soho teaching days.’ —Sir Peter Blake When I interviewed him at his studio in Ravenscourt Park, Sir Peter explained the origins of his links with the college. ‘When I went to the Royal College from 1953 to 1956, in the year ahead of me were Frank Auerbach and Joe Tilson. In my year was Leon Kossoff. All of them were painters and all had just come from St Martins. That was my first knowledge of the college.’ He also shed light on what he considers sets him apart as an artist. ‘I’m a hybrid. It’s my education,’ he told me. ‘I did a graphic design course for the first year and so was an unformed graphic designer and then I studied as a painter who had trained as a graphic designer.’ Eventually Sir Peter was offered a job as a half-day tutor and later a whole day tutor at the college. ‘I wasn’t that much older than the students and it was very enjoyable to go into Soho and teach, and then go off to the Colony Room or the French House or the clubs that were run by jazz musicians. These were places where you could drink alcohol during the day if you had a sandwich.’
Sir Peter is an artist who seems to be constantly rediscovered. His current exhibition of prints in Paris is a success. He recently collaborated with Brian Wilson on a book of limited edition prints, That Lucky Old Sun, published by Genesis. The restored Supreme Court building in London features a carpet by him. And he has been commissioned to do a new painting of Saint Martin, in which the saint is portrayed giving half his cape to a beggar, for the Knights Templar crypt at St Paul’s. Matthew Williamson, Jane Rapley and Joseph Velosa
It’s interesting that the way in which Sir Peter’s work has developed across the years attracts some of the new generation’s rising stars, Stella McCartney among them. In November the London Evening Standard named Stella as one of the 20 most influential people in the capital. Drusilla Beyfus was a senior lecturer on our Fashion Communication and Promotion pathway for 19 years. A former features editor at Vogue, she contributes regularly to the Telegraph Magazine and continues to work closely with CSM on special projects.
Sarah Byfield Riches, Nigel Carrington and Harold Tillman
A POP-up night Which graduate of BA Fashion at Central Saint Martins said the following? ‘London is an incredibly inspiring city. Everything comes to London – every gig, every exhibition, every performance. You get to see the world in London. It also has one of the best arts, design and fashion colleges in the world, breeding new talent.’ Full marks to those who recognised Stella McCartney’s voice, writes Drusilla Beyfus. Stella was speaking at a fundraising occasion in September at the Granary Building in King’s Cross, CSM ’s future home. She continued: ‘That is why King’s Cross is so important for Central Saint Martins and London. It has been designed to meet the needs of today’s students and will bring all those amazing subjects under one roof.’ Stella was part of a double act. Appearing as her own best advertisement wearing her label in the form of a scintillating sequined jacket, leggings and killer-heel shoes, she shared the spotlight with Sir Peter Blake, the celebrated pop artist.
The performance testified to longstanding links between the college, the McCartneys and Sir Peter Blake. Stella’s father, Sir Paul, was present at her degree show. Peter Blake taught on the foundation course at the college between 1960 and 1962 and has been a good friend to the institution ever since. Ties between artist and singer-songwriter date back to Blake’s iconic sleeve design for the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. The sleeve’s highly pictorial and zany mix of humour and pathos came, in part, to define the band. Sir Peter has said: ‘It’s good that the college has a new purpose-designed building and I’ve no doubt the area will soon develop the bars, clubs and small theatres I liked so much in my Soho teaching days.’ The event attracted leading alumni, senior academic staff, distinguished practitioners in allied fields and, of course, donors and benefactors. Keynote speeches by Jane Rapley, Head of College, and Nigel Carrington, Rector, focused on the relevance of the college in the 21st century.
‘London is an incredibly inspiring city. Everything comes to London – every gig, every exhibition, every performance. You get to see the world in London. It also has one of the best arts, design and fashion colleges in the world, breeding new talent.’ —Stella McCartney
Among the alumni present were fashion designers Matthew Williamson, Hussein Chalayan and Jacques Azagury, designers Zeev Aram and Sebastian Conran, retailer Linda Bennett, jeweller Wendy Ramshaw and illustrator David Downton. Stella brought along her friends Dinos Chapman and illustrator Daisy de Villeneuve. Peter Blake related an episode from his teaching days at the college. ‘It was called observational drawing and it was about how to look and how to draw. Joe Tilson and I taught it,’ he recalled. ‘We were given about £10 a week to buy material that the students would then draw from.’ ‘The first week we bought fish and at the end of the day we took all this wonderful fish over to Michael Foreman (the book illustrator and author), who lived in Old Compton Street, for a giant fry-up. Next week it was fruit. But quickly the students rumbled what was going on and when the class was finished they began to ransack our supplies. But for a few weeks we got our food from it.’ Hussain Chalayan with Melik Yoru
The rough guide to KX 6
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With an eye on our new home, intrepid second year BA Fashion Communication with Promotion students set out to prove there’s intelligent life(style) north of WC2. Check out their findings here in the crucial categories of best caff and best boozer
KING’S CROSS – THE NEW SOHO?
BREAKFAST OF KING’S Whilst most CSM students have a work ethic that borders on extreme, spending most of their waking hours sewing, practising spoken word art projects or entombed in the library, they also make a vital contribution to London’s cultural life in clubs, bars and pubs, write Jack Sunnucks and Kate Sunderland. This exhausting cycle of work and sort-ofwork is fuelled by the various caffs in and around Soho. There is no better way, surely, to counter last night’s excesses and face the oncoming crit than with a fry-up at Bruno’s of Old Compton Street.
With this in mind your correspondents spent a challenging week surveying the caffs and greasy spoons of King’s Cross in order to bring you a definitive top three. 1. Café Plaka (Grays Inn Road). All Day Breakfast is a paltry £3.50. Also incredible is the fried egg sandwich at £1.80, and the bacon roll PLUS cup of tea at only £2.50! Combining one hundred per cent value with lovely service, this is our clear favourite. 2. Valencia (Tavistock Place). With its lime walls, chandeliers and minimal grime, this inspirational venue is so much more than a caff. Beans on toast (£2.50) was pretty
The Breakfast of King’s: ‘Just the right salt to beef ratio’ at Valencia cafe
Battlebridge Basin (New Wharf Road) is the new Soho Square. The Cellar N1 (Varnishers Yard) is the new Jazz After Dark. Simmons (Caledonian Road) is the new Bradley’s Spanish Bar. Chop Chop (Euston Road) is the new Tuk Tuk. And KC Continental Stores (Caledonian Road) is the new Camisa & Sons.
Change can be good, say Zoe Dunkley, Iona Wolff and Mona Ragheb. But sometimes it can be scary. If you’re the type that finds it hard to cast out the old and bring in the new, you’ll be pleased to know that King’s Cross features some startling doppelgangers and Think of it all as more of an upgrade than an definite improvements on favourite Charing upheaval, and all will be well. Cross haunts. Trust us when we tell you that:
standard, but the salt beef sandwich (£3.50) was delicious, having just the right salt-tobeef ratio. We recommend venturing ‘beyond the classics’ once in a while, and salt beef is a great place to start, as well as being kosher. 3. British Library (Euston Road). No cooked breakfast, alas, but the muffins and flapjacks (£1.90) are ideal for soaking up the ultra-strong coffee (£1.50) or last night’s vodka-tonics. Other highlights include roof terrace (with sheltered smoking area!) and surprisingly attractive students from other London institutions hard at work on their dissertations. This is a great place to take your mum if she ever visits.
WINNING WATERING HOLES The ‘pub crawl’ – it’s a rotten call, but someone has to do it, say Tereza Otira, Alex O’Brien, Sal Majumder and Robert Eaton. We went to extraordinary lengths – pricing (and even sampling) cider, lager and house wine – to reveal the top five pubs within a pork scratching of our new King’s Cross home. We love: McGlynn’s Freehouse (Whidbourne Street), The Thornhill Arms (Caledonian Road), The Boot (Cromer Street), The Water Rats Theatre Bar (Grays Inn Road), and Central Station (Wharfdale Road).
The Breakfast of King’s: Valtaro, Italian Deli on Tavistock Place
Other highlights include roof terrace (with sheltered smoking area!) and surprisingly attractive students at work on their dissertations Check out the King’s Cross blog for more student guides. Visit: http://www.csm.arts.ac.uk/snapshot/category/kings-cross
MOVERS &Art SHAKERS 8
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YUKO NASU (2006)
Yuko arrived in London from Japan four years ago, and has become well known for her ‘imaginary portraits’ – featureless paintings inspired by faces she encounters every day. After graduating from CSM she quickly accumulated awards and accolades including Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2006, Jerwood Contemporary Painters in 2008, and the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2009.
Here’s a selection of ‘ones to watch’ from among CSM’s MA Fine Art graduates
As well as two solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions at the Japanese Embassy and the Ivy restaurant, Yuko has featured on the cover of Art World and in Vogue, Elle, the Independent and the London Evening Standard.
Yuko Nasu, 040509, oil on linen, 125 √ 100 cm, 2009 George Henry Longly. Image courtesy of Dicksmith Gallery
GEORGE HENRY LONGLY (2005) Jacopo Miliani, 4WEMAY
JACOPO MILIANI (2006)
Jacopo is an Italian artist working mostly with installation, photography and performance, with a focus on magic, popular culture and the collective imagination. Since graduating from Central Saint Martins he’s exhibited in Madrid, Rome and Milan. He’s held down residencies at Platform Garanti in Istanbul and Fondazione Spinola Banna in Turin, and his work has been shown at the V&A in London.
Since graduating in 2005 George has had six solo shows and many group exhibitions, working with galleries in Europe and the US. George’s work has featured in a number of collections and he has undertaken a residency, produced a touring body of work, and published a book. While he is pleased to have shown at the South London Gallery, George considers developing his practice and maintaining a studio to be his biggest achievement, and enjoys the opportunity to teach.
KAROLY KESERU (2001)
Budapest-born Karoly graduated in 2001. She’s been selected for countless exhibitions and competitions by galleries and organisations such as the Contemporary Art Society, the Royal College of Art and the Hungarian Cultural Centre. Karoly’s work has travelled the world, showing in London, New York, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Miami and Paris. It’s also been a big hit in her native Hungary, where the artist has been interviewed for network television.
In 2008 George was named by Time Out as one of London’s 40 top artists, and his work continues to feature in the press within and outside the UK.
Karoly Keseru, Untitled, acrylic on laser engraved perspex
Working from his studio in Milan, Jacopo is currently participating in a range of projects and exhibitions.
CATHY LOMAX (2003)
With her own artistic practice, Cathy also runs Transition Gallery, a contemporary art space in east London. She writes, lectures, curates, judges competitions, and seizes every opportunity that comes her way.
OREET ASHERY (2000)
Cathy set up Transition Gallery immediately after graduating to showcase her own work and that of her friends, but it soon developed its own identity. Her magazine Arty, launched at Central Saint Martins, continues to thrive.
London-based visual artist Oreet works in live art, performance, digital media, images, writing and objects. Since graduating she has won too many awards to list, and her work has been shown extensively in the UK and internationally – most recently at Tate Modern, the Jewish Museum New York, Akademie der Künste and the Pompidou Centre.
All Cathy’s projects feed into one another. She views her gallery first and foremost as an artist-led space, rather than a commercial venture, which allows her to develop ideas and connect with exciting artists.
Oreet is currently engaged in two major collaborative projects. She has a three-year AHRC creative fellowship at Queen Mary University of London, and her work continues to be discussed in books and art journals. In 2009 the first book dedicated to her work, Dancing with Men, was published. Oreet Ashery, Dancing Men
To find out more about more about MA Fine Art visit www.csm.arts.ac.uk/ma-fine-art
Cathy Lomax, Afro 3 (Marsha Hunt). © Cathy Lomax
Performance Drama centre london 10
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STANDING CHEEK BY JOWL
Drama Centre graduates and students continue to light up stage and screen at home and abroad writes Seamus Mirodan
The long-standing collaboration between Declan Donnellan’s leading classical company and the Drama Centre continues with Cheek by Jowl’s latest production of Macbeth, currently on an extensive European tour. No fewer than six Drama Centre graduates feature in the production, including Anastasia Hille (1991) in the role of Lady Macbeth and staff director Owen Horsley (BA Directing 2007). www.cheekbyjowl.com
Anastasia Hille in Macbeth © John Persson
STRICTLY DRAMA CENTRE Craig Kelly, better known as businessman Luke Strong from Coronation Street, is the second Drama Centre graduate to try his luck on Strictly Come Dancing. Craig follows hot on the heels of Don Warrington, who rose to fame in the 1970s as world-weary student Philip Smith in classic comedy series Rising Damp.
Invading Camelot Is Clerkenwell the new Camelot? BBC Casting Directors certainly seem to think so. Two recent Drama Centre graduates took the starring roles in BBC 1’s prime-time drama Merlin. Bradley James, who graduated in 2007, plays a young King Arthur alongside Santiago Cabrera, class of 2003, as Lancelot.
Bradley James and Santiago Cabrera take the star roles in Merlin @BBC
Craig Kelly tries his luck on Strictly Come Dancing © BBC
DRAMA CENTRE INTERNATIONAL
ON THE SILVER SCREEN Drama Centre talent lit up the silver screen during this year’s London Film Festival.
Drama Centre continues to grow its international programme after linking up with The School of Performance at The Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts.
The glittering line-up of DCL -trained actors included Anne-Marie Duff in the Closing Night Gala of Nowhere Boy, Jamie Sives in brutal epic Valhalla Rising, and Colin Firth in A Single Man.
Current BA Directing student Sophie Nurse was one of the first to spend two months studying in Shanghai.
Firth’s performance as a gay academic mourning the loss of his lover had earlier won him the Best Actor Award at the Venice Film Festival.
Colin Firth in A Single Man
Sophie Nurse on the Drama Centre’s international programme, Shanghai
RUSSELL, SQUARE In an in-depth interview with the Sunday Times, Russell Brand – renowned during his time as a Drama Centre student for keeping a pet mouse in his hair – claims to have turned over a new leaf.
‘Knowing there are deeply talented artists here from all around the world made me feel The former hedonist says he’s looking a lot more settled in my work,’ she said. forward to keeping his soul pure through yoga and his newfound love of pop singer Katy Perry. Manuel will be pleased!
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Congratulations to recent graduates whose work has been picking up prizes and plaudits ESCAPE INTO ARCHWAY A new single channel video work by Byam Shaw BA graduate Diana Smith is set on the four roads that lead to Archway, north London, and stars a local funeral horse.
Profile MA innovation Management
By allowing discourse to flirt with discourse, one CSM postgraduate course is helping business and design to develop a new, shared language
CHAMPIONS OF CHANGE
The film reverses the Hollywood formula of a rider on a white horse galloping into the sunset. Escape Into Archway explores what happens when a black horse – led, not ridden – enters our consciousness and travels to the heart of Archway at dawn.
Now in its second year, CSM ’s MA Innovation Management takes, as its starting point, the idea that innovation happens at boundaries. ‘Where disciplines and cultures rub up against one another – that’s where the opportunities lie for really imaginative change,’ says course leader Jamie Brassett.
For a week in October the unfinished film was shown at shops in Archway, including a fish & chip shop, a beauty salon, a pound shop, a credit shop and a cafe.
Maurice Citron’s back, crack and sack
MAURICE IS NEW SENSATION
EMBASSY ROLE FOR MATHILDE
These mini-screenings were an opportunity for the artist to talk to residents about their encounters with horses, and to invite them to the final screening which saw the film projected onto a white horse in the public space outside Archway Library.
Recent MA graduate Maurice Citron was among 20 rising stars whose work went on show at the New Sensations 2009 exhibition in Shoreditch, London, in October.
Congratulations to recent MA graduate and Saatchi online artist Mathilde Jensen, winner of the Royal Danish Embassy’s 2009 Frame Your Talent contest.
Curated by a panel including Charles Saatchi and supported by Channel 4, the show set Escape Into Archway has support from Archway out to repeat the success of 1997’s Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy – the event Investigations & Responses (AIR ), the Byam Shaw project that helps artists connect that introduced a wide-eyed public to Tracey with local life, and – unusually for a recent Emin and Damien Hirst. graduate’s work – from Arts Council England. Of his work mixing found objects with fabrics and other materials Maurice says: You can catch the film at Archway Library ‘I try to avoid the habitual and the during opening hours until 12 December. preconceived. I keep an eye on thoughtless moments, escapes, times when I forget www.outgalloped.com myself. This is when ideas open up.’
The biannual competition offers Danish art students an opportunity to showcase their work for a six-month period at the embassy site in Sloane Street, London. Mathilde’s winning entry will be on display from November 2009. Says Mathilde: ‘My work explores the influence of our surroundings – especially new surroundings. I draw on research into other people’s experiences of encountering or negotiating the spaces around them, my own memories and my imagination.’
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MAIM , to give it its cheerful acronym, was set up in response to two things. The first was a growing buzz about the importance of innovation across business. As Gordon Brown put it in a speech back when he was Chancellor, ‘Our challenge is not just to encourage creative industries, our priority is to encourage all industries to be creative’.
Meanwhile, from his vantage point as contextual studies head for CSM ’s BA in Product Design, Jamie noticed that design consultancies were increasingly being asked to use their design skills ‘further up the business food-chain’, applying them not just to branding issues but to a company’s whole commercial strategy.
Where disciplines and cultures rub up against one another – that’s where the opportunities lie for imaginative change
Another major plus is the sheer diversity of the students that the course attracts. ‘We’ve got footwear designers, fashion designers, product designers and industrial designers,’ Jamie says. ‘We’ve got people with backgrounds in IT, accounting, marketing, and insurance. And they arrive from Colombia, Latvia, Korea, Malaysia, Hungary, One of the selling points of MAIM is that it Greece.’ Finding boundaries – places where draws on an art school culture and ethos and innovation can spring up – isn’t a problem. so ‘frees up’ ideas. Over the two years of the course, MAIM students are thrown into Jamie came to Central Saint Martins as an ‘a whole bunch of different projects’, finding associate lecturer with a background in new ways of engaging with the processes of aesthetics and political philosophy. Clearly, innovation. It’s a very different curriculum when it comes to reaping the benefits of from the usual business school seminars. mixing and matching disciplines, he practises what he preaches.
Jamie and colleagues realised this pointed to new opportunities. ‘People with business backgrounds want to understand the language of design. Creative people increasingly want and need to understand the business discourses in which they can work.’ MAIM could help fill that gap.
And, he says, ‘When I meet old colleagues from my PhD days and they’re running a philosophy department at wherever, I think: Oh, no – I’m so glad I’m here.’
www.mauricecitron.co.uk
MA Innovation Management course leader Jamie Brassett was in conversation with Robert Hanks. Robert Hanks is an associate lecturer at CSM and a freelance writer and critic, whose work has appeared most recently in Eye magazine, the New York Times Book Review and the London Review of Books. To find out more about MA Innovation Management visit www.csm.arts.ac.uk/courses/ innovation-management Diana Smith’s Escape into Archway © Rowan Durrant / The London Sock Exchange
Mathilde Jensen’s Ludvig – Looking Through the Wood
Korean Innovation Workshop. © Simon Bolton
London Design festival 14
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CSM projects and people drew appreciative crowds this autumn BEN IS CHAIRMAN OF BOARD
BRITAIN CAN STILL MAKE IT
Jonathan also had a leading role in 100% Futures, an unmissable exhibition within the 100% Design event for emerging talent from around the world.
It was a busy and fruitful festival for BA Product Design graduate Jonathan Krawczuk. The ‘Britain Can Still Make It’ exhibition curated by the Telegraph Magazine and Liberty Together with Caroline Sipos (BA Product provided a further showcase for Jonathan’s Design, now studying MA Innovation work. Management), Jonathan took first prize in the Peroni Blue Ribbon Design Awards in The exhibition takes its inspiration from the collaboration with Alessi for ‘Olive Tree’, iconic ‘Britain Can Make It’ show at the a stainless steel sculpture holding 50 olives V&A in 1946 when the nation was seeking in homage to Italian food culture and the new design heroes to light the way. enduring excellence of Italian brands. www.designedmade.co.uk
MA Industrial Design course director Ben Hughes, in the guise of Claystation, drew the crowds at 100% Design with a project to decorate and build a chair from paper. Visitors to the four-day interactive event were invited to personalise Claystation’s small paper chairs as part of a creative competition, the winner receiving a full-scale version or ‘one piece chair’.
Claystation invited guests to draw on chairs exploring the theory that play supports creative thought
Devised by the Design Transformation Group (DTG ), Claystation uses theories of play to support creative thought, encouraging active participation in the design process through modelling, animation and drawing.
ECLECTCOLLECT STEPS OUT
PAPERSELF CUTS A DASH
Newly launched design collective ECLECTCOLLECT debuted its exclusive black limited edition ‘Dark Nights’ range at this year’s festival.
The festival’s 100% Design exhibition saw the launch of Chunwei Liao’s PAPERSELF , a new venture employing the laser cutting and paper technology already used by the CSM graduate’s OADDX brand (MA Design: Furniture, 2008).
A creative collaboration between independent multidisciplinary designers Annette Bugansky, MA Design: Ceramics, 2005; Lok Ming Fung, BA (Honours) Ceramic Design, 2007; and Visuallyod, BA (Honours) Ceramic Design, 2007. ECLECTCOLLECT focuses on great design that takes a contemporary approach to craft without compromising craftsmanship.
Eclectcollect’s show at London Design Festival
PAPERSELF opens up advanced paper cutting techniques and technologies to other designers looking to create beautiful products and take them to market. Early projects include exquisite eyelashes for women by designer Ting yu Wang.
www.paperself.com www.oaddx.com
The collective also presented the Pop-Up Shop showcasing talented designers from a variety of disciplines including fashion, furniture, photography and ceramics. www.eclectcollect.com www.lokmingfung.co.uk Paperself ’s intricate paper cutting designs
Britain can still make it
The iBum by KithKin scans an image of your bum when you sit on it!
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST KithKin, the creative cooperative founded in 2007 by five CSM graduates, brought its Working Title newspaper project to this year’s festival as part of 100% Design. Working Title delivers commentary and critiques at the world’s biggest design festivals using contributors from a wide range of creative backgrounds. These specialist writers and industry insiders share a single goal – to present wonderful things seriously.
Each festival day at Working Title begins with a blank page. As content is collected and received from contributors in the field, the newspaper takes shape on the spot and on the day, without falling back on press release copy. www.kith-kin.co.uk
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Music and art seem to be popular choices among our staff. Here Colin Buttimer lets us dip into his back catalogue COVER STORY
The Journal of Popular Noise
Various – Warp 20
Jean Baudrillard – Le Xerox et l’Infini
Lydia Lunch, Suicide – Frankie Teardrop
Various – Until Human Voices Wake Us And We Drown
Kraftwerk – Autobahn (UK version)
Scorch Trio – Brolt!
Miles Davis – Agharta
Fennesz – Black Sea
Various – Chain Reaction
Tristan Perich – 1-Bit Music
Data 70 – Space Loops, Volume One
Albert Ayler – Holy Ghost
Mordant Music – Dead Air
Richard Skelton – Sustain Release
Blir – Blir
FM3 – Buddha Machine
Charley Patton – Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues
Jan Garbarek – Paths, Prints
OMD – Dazzle Ships
My love of album covers began when my dad brought home a copy of Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. I was eight years old and before I heard the synthesizer approximation of cars racing from right to left I was fascinated by the visual power of the album cover with its white motorway symbol on a stark blue background. The little details fascinated me too – the op art Vertigo logo, the German lyrics and the letter forms of the title, which seemed impatient to take off on their own journeys. Times have changed and the talk is of the end of physical media for music. As with all such developments, the reaction is exaggerated and there’s a growing niche market for vinyl and deluxe editions of new and classic albums. Now I can carry a sizeable fraction of my music collection on my iPhone and visit Spotify on the move. But I still enjoy playing records at home. I began publishing Hard Format with a friend two and a half years ago. It’s a website where we celebrate our love of brilliant record sleeve design. Our weekly posts cover everything from Revenant’s magnificent Charley Patton retrospective to artist one-offs. We even feature an iPhone music app. We’re always looking for guest posts and recommendations, so please get in touch through the site if you’d like to contribute. When my dad got rid of most of his records recently, I worried that Autobahn had gone with them. To my great relief he’d kept it and he passed it on to me. Dog-eared and patched with tape, it’s a treasured heirloom. You’ll find it featured on the website between Harry Smith and Scott Walker. Colin Buttimer is the college’s web co-ordinator. He’s always happy to talk website development. Or album covers … www.hardformat.org
To share your private collection contact editor@csm.arts.ac.uk
Research 18
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New textiles arise from bold collaborations between craft and technology, design and science, real and virtual, East and West
A new exhibition that looks to the future of the textiles industry visits brave new worlds on fantastic voyages of exploration and discovery
Nomadic Wonderland by Eunsuk Hur
Crowds waiting to get into the opening in Guangzhou
WARP FACTOR 09 In a climate of innovation and collaboration, the future of textiles has never looked so exciting, writes Anne Smith, Dean of School of Fashion and Textiles. Warp Factor 09, which opened in Tokyo on 13 October, celebrates the innovation and future thinking of textiles researchers and designers from Central Saint Martins. In presenting the textiles of tomorrow, the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue explore potential solutions to aspects of some of the key agendas facing us all, such as health and wellbeing, sustainability, conservation and visualisation, and the rewriting and re-branding of craft traditions. In the best CSM spirit of innovation and risk-taking, all the work on show proposes new territories in pieces and projects born of curiosity, exploration and discovery.
Carol Collet’s pop up lace table
Guest of honour Professor Jimmy Choo, Mr Sato and Anne Smith, Dean of Fashion and Textiles
Warp Factor 09 partners include Tokyo Design Centre, Japan; The International Creative Art and Design Academy and International Creative Consultancy and Training Ltd, Guangzhou and Here, recent textiles research pieces appear Hong Kong; Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art alongside works that embody traditional (showed 29 October until 1 November), China; and Japanese cultural references and centuriesUAL Ventures Ltd, University of the Arts London old traditions or processes to create a (Central Saint Martins’ Lethaby Gallery from 18 contemporary vision of the future of textiles. November to 16 December 2009). New textiles arise from bold collaborations between craft and technology, design and science, real and virtual, East and West.
For more information visit www.warpfactor09.com
London: A visual essay by Caroline Till photography by Simon Ward
Floor designs by Linda Florence
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Judy Lindsay, head of CSM’s Museum and Study Collection, opens a window on one of our best-kept secrets
sustainability
November’s UAL-wide Green Festival highlighted our commitment to tackling sustainability issues wherever we find them. Here’s a roundup of some recent or ongoing projects at CSM and beyond RAISING OUR GREEN GAME Raising our game – that was the aim of concerted efforts throughout November to build awareness of, and involvement in, our sustainability strategy.
Soner Ozenc shade
Joyce Clissold, a fabric designer, graduated from the Central School in 1927 and later went on to manage Footprints, a company hand printing fabrics for a high end clothing range
BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM The Museum and Study Collection is one of CSM ’s best-kept secrets. The collection has over 10,000 objects and 5,000 books and periodicals covering all CSM ’s subjects and processes from ceramics, jewellery, fashion and textiles to photographs, graphic design, prints and paintings. The college’s amazing history is recorded and preserved in archives dating back more than a century. We’re really keen for more students and staff to use the collections and are happy to organise either structured sessions for year groups or one-to-ones for people who just want to have a rummage.
Through workshops, exhibitions, screenings and discussions, UAL ’s Green Festival offered students and staff at all our colleges a chance to showcase existing work that addresses sustainability, to consider sustainability in a social and historical context, and to debate future challenges.
Bill Gibb graduated from St. Martins in 1966 and is credited with inventing the hippy look
In 2009 our Sustainability Group has made real progress in tackling a wide range of energy and environmental issues by monitoring utility usage, commissioning an audit of buildings and energy management, and looking at the implications of our foreign travel. Recycling, procurement and travel to work are among other areas of focus.
Edward Johnston was one of the first staff to be employed at the Central School, design a typeface for the London Underground in 1916
If you visit our web space you’ll find about half our holdings on a searchable online database. If you spot something you’d like to come and see just drop me a line to arrange an appointment or stick your head around the office door. You’ll find us on the first floor bridge at Southampton Row.
Throughout 2009 /10 the Museum and Study Collection will be working with the UAL Centre for Drawing on Mapping the Move, an exciting project which aims to capture the essence and history of the college’s present buildings with drawings by staff, students and alumni. The drawings will be published in an online gallery and the originals archived for posterity by the Museum. Visit www.csm.arts.ac.uk/mappingthemove to find out more.
On 11 January 2010 we open our anniversary exhibition When Central Met St Martins. We’ll be telling the story of the merger of the You can email Judy Lindsay at Central School with St Martins College museum.collection@csm.arts.ac.uk of Art in 1989 and showcasing some of the To find out more about the Museum and Study best college work of the last two decades. Collection visit www.csm.arts.ac.uk/museum As well as looking back, the show will look ahead to our new home at King’s Cross in 2011.
We’re really keen for more students and staff to use the collections
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CURB YOUR CONSUMPTION Central Saint Martins MA Design Studies student Katie Hart hopes to make people rethink their buying decisions in order to tackle over-consumption in the developed world. Consumers are buying too much, suggests Katie. And it’s cheap fashion they spend most on. Katie’s MA work aims to encourage people to buy green – and to buy less. You can catch up with Katie’s project at an exhibition by MA Design Studies students at T2, The Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, from 4 to 8 December (see What’s On, p30). www.curbyourconsumption.co.uk Katie Hart investigates over consumption in fashion
Water Amnesty is just one of the UAL -backed initiatives that make a difference. By cutting water consumption in higher education environments, the project generates funds for providing safe drinking water in the developing world. Currently under consideration is a UAL computer shutdown trial designed to cut the proportion of machines (20% and counting) left on overnight.
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MAKING LUXURY SUSTAINABLE Gucci Group is sponsoring a new research scholarship at Central Saint Martins which explores the potential of new technologies to meet the challenge of sustainability in the luxury goods sector of the future. The first Gucci Group PhD Scholarship aims to bring blue-sky thinking to the question of what tomorrow’s luxury might look like. Gucci Group’s belief that cutting-edge design and material innovation can help ensure the future for luxury brands takes due account of environmental concerns. Hosted by Central Saint Martins, the new PhD has support from the Textile Futures Research Group (TFRG ), a unit within the University of the Arts London that links with industry and commerce to improve the interface between science and design.
REDUCE, RECYCLE, REINVENT CSM fashion graduate James Hillman snapped up the coveted Levi’s prize at the Mittelmoda International Fashion Awards finals in Gorizia, Italy, in September.
The special prize recognises the collection that combines design and craftsmanship with a new take on sustainability. A jury led by Mittelmoda President Matteo Marzotto, and President of Levi Strauss Europe Armin Broger, was impressed by James’ contemporary designs, which drew their inspiration from the iconic misfit
HENRIETTA KEEPS IT SCOTTISH CSM alumna and EFF Fashion Innovation Award winner Henrietta Ludgate was one of 21 designers featured at an Estethica event in November asking ‘Is Sustainability in Fashion?’.
Henrietta’s luxury womenswear label, which has new showrooms in Covent Garden, sets out to preserve and promote exemplary British craftsmanship. All garments are made in the designer’s native Scotland using fabrics sourced from local mills.
BioCuture project, Gucci Group PhD Scholarship
www.jameshillman.blogspot.com James Hillman wins Mittelmoda International Fashion Award
Funded by the Audi Design Foundation, MetaboliCity supports grass roots growing initiatives using innovative technologies developed by the design team at Loop.pH. These include vertical grow-kits for use indoors and out, with or without soil.
© Rachel Wingfield
Each MetaboliCity ‘Grow-Lab’ becomes an experimental design studio with onsite testing and training over several months and regular participant feedback.
After one year, more than 100 projects seeded across east London are starting to talk to one another and to share knowledge and resources. Future MetaboliCity developments include a mushroom farm and new greenhouse concept on a housing estate, and further Grow-Labs within Islington in partnership with Capital Growth and the ‘Edible Islington’ scheme. Following a successful showing at the London Design Festival, plans are also taking shape for a New York Grow-Lab as part of the Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in May 2010.
CHERISH YOUR WARDROBE
WHEN THE WIND BLOWS
HOW TO STAY E-BRIEFED …
CSM Innovation has hosted a sustainability seminar focusing on ‘slow’ fashion and the idea that clothes, especially luxury garments, are precious things.
CSM School of Art’s Andrew Watson has launched a project that uses photography to assess the impact of wind farms on our landscape. The research project includes an environmental impact audit.
For more sustainability events and initiatives, visit: http://intranet.arts.ac.uk/sustainability
November’s ‘Cherish Your Wardrobe’ event, chaired by Caryn Franklin, alumnus of CSM, featured special guest speakers including Frederik Willems, design head at Gieves & Hawkes.
www.henriettaludgate.com
The award-winning jeans use a limited amount of top-stitching on unwashed denim to limit their environmental impact. Tops are made from segments of pre-owned T-shirts dyed with used tea bags.
CSM research fellow Rachel Wingfield’s major project looking at novel ways to grow food in the city is entering a new phase.
These include Suzanne Lee’s BioCouture, a visionary project uniting fashion and textile design with bio and nanotechnologies. BioCouture grows clothing materials from bacterial cellulose cultured in a solution of green tea.
Henrietta Ludgate, Estethica © Kyle Stevenson
James created ‘all-American’ designs in signature white, blue and red. ‘I wanted to address the Reduce, Recycle, Reinvent brief,’ he says, ‘without forgetting the Levi’s brand story and its workwear heritage.’
METABOLICITY – ONE YEAR ON
Supported by TFRG , the Gucci PhD scholar at Central Saint Martins will join an elite community of specialist researchers and practitioners with internationally recognised expertise and experience of groundbreaking projects in the field.
www.tfrg.org.uk www.biocouture.co.uk
characters portrayed by photographer Richard Avedon in his famous ‘In The American West’ series.
By looking more closely at the carbon footprint of materials and processes used in art projects generally, Andrew also hopes to put sustainability at the centre of curriculum developments within the school.
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While Drusilla Beyfus makes a portrait in words, Janet Lance Hughes paints her portrait in oils
‘For me,’ Janet says, ‘gathering information depends on memory, measurement, sketching and chatting with the subject. The process of information gathering and taking rough photographs usually happens in an hour. Each part is an aide-memoire – nothing works on its own. The emotional exchange with the sitter is all-important. My biggest faculty is my memory.’ Nevertheless, Janet’s paintings are generally measured to scale with calipers, the sitter’s face scrutinised and marked off in detail. Stephen Jones for one believes she has got him right. ‘I love having my head in the clouds,’ he says of the context of swirling cloudlike forms. He especially likes the cool take of being depicted hatless – without, as he puts it with joke seriousness, ‘his oeuvre’. He also comments on his pink cheeks – true to life, regrettably, due to his high blood pressure. ‘I’m concerned my doctor might see the portrait and remind me to keep taking the pills.’ I invited another Lance Hughes subject to comment on his portrait. Sir James Dyson finds his likeness contains an interesting link
Janet Lance-Hughes in her studio in South West London
Each portrait tells the story of a life. What the sitters choose to wear, the way they present themselves, the background, the tonality of the painting – all contribute to the narrative. And although the viewer is persuaded that the subject is caught in a naturalistic pose, there’s a cartoon-like quality to the figures. Any extension of the narrative includes the artist – in this case Janet Lance Hughes. In July 2007 Janet decided to forsake her post of 15 years as fashion pathway tutor at Central Saint Martins ‘to be a painter who is experimenting with portraits’, as she puts it. Her background is relevant. She graduated at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, then studied fashion and textiles at Manchester Polytechnic. Janet’s current subjects are contemporaries at large in the world of British arts and
industry, many of whom have or have had connections with Central Saint Martins. Among her sitters are Sir Terence Conran, designer, restaurateur, retailer; Sebastian Conran, brand strategist; Sir James Dyson, industrial designer; Biba founder Barbara Hulanicki; Stephen Jones, milliner; Dylan Jones, editor of Condé Nast’s GQ; Wendy Dagworthy, RCA Head of School of Fashion and former BA Fashion course director at CSM , and Natalie Gibson, former CSM fashion print pathway tutor. And the writer. London fashion designers who have sat for her include Matthew Williamson, Gareth Pugh, Giles Deacon and David Kappo. Now in progress are likenesses of Simon Callow, Geraldine James and Theo Fennell. Hussein Chalayan, Sarah Mower, John Galliano, Sir Peter Blake and Sir Anthony Caro have also consented to sit.
David Kappo, Giles Deacon, James Dyson and Drusilla Beyfus
with the Victorian tradition of industrial portrait painting. ‘But it’s a much more relaxed and contemporary interpretation, which I like. The decision to paint me standing side-on parallels the upright vacuum cleaner in the picture. Having everything in profile makes me think of technical drawings. As well as nurturing a tradition of portrait painting, Central Saint Martins has produced some lasting collaborations – it’s where I met my wife, Deirdre.’
Explaining the background to her change of interests, Janet says: ‘The photograph is taking over the world. Most of us get to know prominent people through the camera. How fabulous it would be if one could sit down and paint them all.’ Lance Hughes works in oils and acrylic and has taken to mixing her own paints. Her students had a big influence on her decision. She began to find her interest in them as individuals – in their roots, ideas and family history – was gradually taking over her absorption in teaching.
It was the Lance Hughes approach that overcame Dylan Jones’ reluctance to sit for a portrait. ‘I was interested in the project – and the artist who asked me to sit. I was also immensely flattered to be included in the selection of alumni to be painted.’
She says: ‘Student work is very much a combination of you and that student. As a teacher, you find you supply a huge amount of the components.’ Portrait painting, she decided, would put to different creative use her lifelong habit of observation. Barbara Hulanicki, Stephen Jones and Dylan Jones
Artist and sitter had a minor tussle over the proportions of Jones’ head, which he deemed ‘too small’ in relation to his body mass. But
as the artist measures with calipers, that was that! Jones is shown in his office with GQ artwork – including an illustration for the magazine by Peter Blake – in the background. ‘I’ve seen several of the finished pictures,’ Dylan Jones says, ‘and I think they’re great.’ We hope to include portraits by Janet Lance Hughes in the opening celebrations marking our move to the Granary Building at King’s Cross. Drusilla Beyfus was a senior lecturer on our Fashion Communication with Promotion pathway for 19 years. A former features editor at Vogue, she contributes regularly to the Telegraph Magazine and continues to work closely with CSM on special projects.
Best of the books 26
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One hundred YEARS OF MENSWEAR by Cally Blackman
BRITISH FASHION DESIGNERS by Hywel Davies
In a richly comprehensive collection of images and commentary, the CSM associate lecturer in Fashion History and Theory and BA Criticism, Communication and Curation chronicles the revolution in menswear over the last 100 years. The book’s twelve themed chapters cover lifestyle areas including ‘Worker & Soldier’, ‘Player’, ‘Rebel’ and ‘Culture Clubber’.
Rare photographs and illustrations reveal the elegant tailoring of Savile Row and the tougher khaki and denim of the uniform and workplace before charting the exuberant march of style and colour as the century progresses. Packed with images of Hollywood icons, influential artists, rock legends and pop stars, the book explores the evolution of menswear from ‘practical’ to ‘peacock’. The impact of Pierre Cardin, Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren and other designers is contrasted with the street fashion of the 1960s, punk and the clubbing scene. Cally Blackman discusses the significance of the suit and its numerous revivals, the impact of menswear on the female wardrobe, the influence on style of gay sensibility, and the role of the media in shaping trends. Her previous publications include Costume: From 1500 to the Present Day (2003), The 20s and 30s: Flappers and Vamps (2000), and 100 Years of Fashion Illustration (2007).
The BA Fashion Communication with Promotion pathway tutor at Central Saint Martins celebrates fashion talent from across the UK, focusing on British designers whose influence has had a global resonance since 2000. By challenging preconceived ideas, these creatives have carried British fashion, and the idea of British fashion, to new international heights.
Their messages and aesthetic vary widely, but their aim is the same – to define their own fashion language and to present original ideas to a contemporary market. Hywel Davies speaks to the hierarchy of Britain’s fashion talents, asking what being British means and how it influences their work. While fashion capital London argues its unique position as a dynamic hub, the author highlights some of the challenges of working in the UK. Featured designers include Alexander McQueen, Christopher Kane, John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, Stephen Jones, Preen, Stella McCartney, Paul Smith, Matthew Williamson, Hussein Chalayan, Giles Deacon, Eley Kishimoto and Boudicca. Hywel Davies is the author of Modern Menswear and 100 New Fashion Designers.
RENAISSANCE SECRETS Recipes & Formulas by Dr Jo Wheeler
This fascinating look at the closely guarded world of Renaissance lotions and potions opens a window on the V&A’s new Medieval & Renaissance galleries. The term ‘secret’ was used throughout the Renaissance era to describe a recipe or formula. Thousands of ‘books of secrets’ – compilations of recipes claiming to reveal trade secrets and occult knowledge – were printed.
From recipes for plague amulets and aphrodisiacs to formulas for lip balm and paint pigment, this book uncovers the clandestine world of Renaissance trade secrets and explains why certain recipes were guarded jealously while others were collected for a popular readership. New and extensive research offers intriguing insights into the use of obscure, exotic or toxic ingredients and revisits now unfamiliar or arcane techniques. Each recipe is linked to real objects in the V&A’s outstanding collections. Strikingly designed and beautifully illustrated, Renaissance Secrets illuminates the murkier details of a golden age. Dr Jo Wheeler is Head of International Development at Central Saint Martins. This is his first book.
DOGS IN VOGUE: A CENTURY OF CANINE CHIC
‘You can come from an arts background or even a club background. The acceptance of people coming from different areas is much stronger in London’ —Giles Deacon, British Fashion Designers
FOALE & TUFFIN The Sixties. A Decade in Fashion by Iain R Webb
The quirky and youthful clothing designs of Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin, along with their trailblazing boutique off Carnaby Street, secured them a place in the history of 1960s and early 1970s fashion.
by Judith Watt
Since 1909, dogs have had a role to play in the story of Vogue, as companions to leaders of style and society or devoted pets of royalty, artists and celebrities. Dogs in Vogue brings together for the first time over 250 images from the journal’s archive, charting a century of fashion in dogs and celebrating canine companionship. The result is a wonderful, unique expression of our relationship with man’s – and woman’s – best friend. Beyond the realm of a mere domestic pet, in Vogue dogs are accessories and accessorised – objects of desire, often with their own pages.
The illustrations featured in the book reflect the changing fashions and ideals of a nation, and celebrate dazzling photographs by Cecil Beaton, Lee Miller, Helmut Newton, Snowdon, David Bailey, Mario Testino and others. Dogs in Vogue have inspired articles by writers such as Dorothy Parker and Lesley Blanch, and satire by Fish, Pierre Brissaud and Charles Martin. Dogs have also been committed to the page by some of Vogue’s most famous artists, from Eduardo Benito and Christian Bérard to Eric and René Bouët-Willaumez. This lavish and affectionate volume defines an age of canine chic, featuring dogs in their own right and dogs with their equally elegant human accessories. Judith Watt is a fashion historian, writer and consultant. Visiting lecturer in the history of dress at Central Saint Martins and contributor to British Vogue, she is editor of The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century Fashion Writing and author of Ossie Clark: 1965–1974, Men and Dogs, and Women and Dogs.
FASHION TRIBES CHINA edited by Kevin Tallon
Over the past 50 years, street fashion has grown in importance as an influential sociocultural movement, its roots traceable to before the Second World War in embryonic underground forms. The ‘open door’ policy in China in the late 1970s saw the birth of ‘China Cool’, with a changing social and economic climate inside China that has had a direct impact on the nation’s youth.
Created by the Trends think-tank at Central Saint Martins, this lively profile of the fashion tribes of the young Chinese – who today make up one tenth of the world’s population – showcases five key tribes in China. The pace at which China has caught up with western lifestyle is breathtaking. China’s youth has embraced, assimilated and adapted western cultural values and aesthetics in no time. Confident on the streets of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Chinese youth is beginning to rediscover its own heritage and to mix it with western creative language, delivering a fresh and unique style that could soon challenge the West and Japan for top spot on the global street. Kevin Tallon is a CSM Fashion Design Menswear graduate and visiting tutor in fashion design. He also works on fashion direction and trends projects at the college’s Design Laboratory.
INSTALLING EXHIBITIONS – A PRACTICAL GUIDE by Pete Smithson
This practical guide for anyone exhibiting or displaying their own or another’s work – be they students, artists, makers or craftspeople – is the essential guide to putting up a show or exhibition.
With an emphasis on installation as part of the process of work, the book contains everything you need to know to set your work up successfully for display. Packed with advice, diagrams and helpful information in areas from risk assessment, health & safety and preparing the space to transporting and placing the work – 2D, 3D or audio-visual – this is the ideal reference accompaniment to any creative toolkit. Pete Smithson is a fine art technical manager at Central Saint Martins.
INSECTISSIMO by Holly Skeet with illustrations by Chris Brown
Illustrator, print maker and CSM fashion menswear lecturer Chris Brown brings his special touch to a new book for children, printing linocuts directly from the blocks.
The third story in the Paw Prints series, Insectissimo is written by children’s author Holly Skeet, designed by Webb & Webb, and printed by Hand & Eye. Previous tales in the series are Paw Prints and Circus Minimus. Chris Brown’s illustration clients include The Folio Society, the Guardian, the New Yorker, the New York Times and Carluccio’s. His work has been exhibited at the Michael Parkin Gallery, English Eccentrics, the V&A, the Royal Academy and at St Jude’s Gallery, which represents him.
Two feisty, bolshie girls with a can-do attitude found themselves at the centre of the legendary ’60s scene that had London at its heart. David Bailey was photographing their clothes, Cathy MacGowan was wearing them on Ready, Steady, Go!, and the designers themselves were jetting around America as part of the Youthquake tour. More than forty years on, Iain R Webb explores their ability to capture and set trends, examines their expert craftsmanship, and discusses the good fortune that gave them fashion fame in one of the most captivating decades of the 20th century.
Drawing on detailed interviews with Foale and Tuffin and access to their personal archives, plus contributions from a host of art and fashion luminaries including Jean Shrimpton, Terence Conran, Barbara Hulanicki, Mary Quant, Janet Street-Porter and Manolo Blahnik, the author sheds new light on an era of unprecedented change in fashion and commerce and paints an enthralling picture of the times. Iain R Webb is a leading fashion journalist whose work appears in newspapers and magazines internationally. His books include Bill Gibb: Fashion and Fantasy (2008). He is a visiting professor and alumnus of CSM.
‘Judith Watt absolutely adores dogs and has produced an absolutely adorable and beautiful book about them’ —Jilly Cooper, Dogs in Vogue
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Continuing our anniversary series, alumna and senior research fellow Jenny Tillotson looks back St Martin’s was somewhere exotic I’d read about in I-D while I was growing up in Cambridge. In 1985 I did the foundation at St Martins and spent my nights clubbing at Taboo with Boy George and Matthew Glamorre, wearing fluorescent clothes and listening to acid house, before joining the BA Fashion ‘sandwich’ degree.
The ‘WONDER’ rabbits
I think it was the music scene that got me into fashion. I liked high-energy disco, punk and goth. I was also into the rave scene in a big way. This was the era of illegal raves, of pioneering acid house clubs in Amsterdam and London. The summer of love in 1988 was key. We ditched our suits. I lived in pink platforms and day-glo raving gear. I studied Fashion Communication with Promotion in a tiny room in the fashion school overlooking Greek Street, but spent most of my time in Dave’s coffee bar in the Charing Cross Road building – the coolest place for fashion, fine art and graphic design students to hang out – and drinking at the Cambridge pub in Soho. There was a really exciting buzz at St Martins. We had some great tutors – Felicity Green, Iain R Webb, Sally Brampton and Lee Widdows, who was appointed our pathway tutor in 1989.
Jenni Thompspon, Claire Corrigan, David Kappo, Tony Purcell in the Cambridge pub 1989
Scentsory Design by Jenny Tillotson
Jenny Tillotson with Mattew Glamorre at taboo 1986
The WONDER Teaparty with CSM FCP students 1991
In 1989 the colleges merged. Jane Rapley became Dean of CSM Fashion & Textiles (I have vague memories of canary yellow legwarmers). I did work placements at BMG Records (Simon Cowell was A&R consultant), Stephen Jones and Elle, in between further acid house raving and meeting my husband, who worked for Thierry Mugler, in Japan. My husband introduced me to science fiction and my ‘science fashion’ story began. From the start, Japan has been a big influence on my life, work and research.
Around this time I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Back then there was little support at college for students with mental health issues. However, the illness shaped my career and I swapped fashion styling for research into wearable sensory systems for wellbeing. Health & safety was a rather vague notion in those days. We smoked in the studios and I had live rabbits at my degree show! The big stars – Alexander McQueen, Giles Deacon, Hussein Chalayan – were there, graduating after me.
CSM has been a major part of me for nearly 25 years and I’m now a senior research fellow. My final degree project in 1991 was a pointer to my current research practice. I created a multi-sensory book with microchips called ‘WONDER ’.
Jane Rapley has been central to the success of my research career. I told Jane about my diagnosis in 2003 by accident at an appraisal (and regretted it immediately!). But this was a major turning point for me. I had never talked about my diagnosis professionally before, and it liberated my work and
improved my wellbeing. Before 2003 I was I’m now commercialising my research with ‘stuck’ in the sense I found it hard to manage the help of UAL Ventures. I’m back in work and mental health together. Cambridge having come full circle. I’m establishing a spinout company, Sensory FCP itself was also a key to my research. Design & Technology Ltd, at Cambridge When ‘communicating’ became a problem University, with plans for a Science Fashion for me thanks to my illness, I put sensory Lab®. design (and scent in particular) at the centre of my studies because they open up new I still read I-D and I still wear bright clothes. pathways and systems of communication. I don’t go to raves, but I still love disco and house, and I’m still doing projects for Lee CSM has helped me manage my illness Widdows! throughout a long journey. I’m now developing design-led wearable technologies Jenny Tillotson is Senior Research Fellow in Fashion that promote wellbeing through ‘controllable Textile Design, specialising in Scentsory Design ®, at Central Saint Martins fragrance and targeted delivery’ and have shown my work at Warp Factor 09 in Japan and China (currently at the Lethaby Gallery).
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Our regular roundup of events, happenings and the new free lunchtime lectures at Central Saint Martins
private view Kai-Yin Lo
Thursday 22 October 2009 Lunchtime Lecture @ Central Saint Martins Internationally acclaimed Jewellery Designer / Recipient of the World’s Outstanding Chinese Designer 2008
Yuko Yamaguchi with BA (Honours) Product Design Students © Xiaofan Yu
Hello Kitty 35th Anniversary Event
Andy Warhol
Morrissey by Kevin Cummins
Applied Imagination banner
1 December 2009 Cochrane Theatre, 7 pm
4 – 6 December 2009 T2, The Old Truman Brewery, 91 Brick Lane, 11 am – 6 pm
Rock ’n’ Roll Art
Legendary Manchester-born photographer Kevin Cummins joins Paul Morley and guests to explore Manchester’s unique place in the history of modern music. (Kevin’s exhibition runs at The Window Gallery until 9 December.)
Applied Imagination: Bringing Method to Madness
The culmination of research exploring and challenging today’s social and creative paradigms, this exhibition by MA Design Studies graduates at Central Saint Martins offers a chance to discover evolving futures and enhanced worlds. Sponsored by Belvedere Vodka.
15 February 2010 Central Saint Martins@Kings Place, Kings Place, 7pm
The Painting of Modern Life
Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff explores a pivotal development in late 20th century art – a new approach to painting, pioneered by figures such as Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Richard Hamilton and Vija Celmins, in which artists made explicit use of photographic source materials.
Towering Inferno by Rut Blees Luxemburg
2 December 2009
CSM Innovation, Procter Street, 2 pm
Lunchtime Lecture: Osamu Tezuka – God of Manga
Japan expert Helen McCarthy takes a lunchtime look at the man who changed the face of Japanese culture forever via comics and animations that include Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion.
Friday 30 October 2009 Lunchtime Lecture @ Central Saint Martins Image from, ‘Fruit, edible, inedible, incredible’, Rob Kesseler, Wolfgang Stuppy, Papadakis Publisher, London
3 March 2010 CSM Professorial Platform 2010, Cochrane Theatre, 6.30 pm
Lusciousness – Flora and the Crafted Image in a Digital Environment
Professor Rob Kesseler discusses the development of digital imaging in science – an advance as swift as it is impressive. In a climate where new developments enhance the visual spectacle, retaining a trace of the artist’s hand is a challenge. This lecture draws on Professor Kesseler’s responses to colour, ornament and representations of the plant world in work located at the intersection between art, design and craft.
1 March 2010 Central Saint Martins@the British Library, British Library Conference Centre, 6.30 –8 .30 pm
Osamu Tezuka the God of Manga
Nigel Coates
25 January 2010 Cochrane Theatre, 6.30 pm
Nigel Coates
One of Britain’s most consistently original thinkers in the fields of architecture, interiors and product design discusses a life and parallel careers in teaching, design practice and artistically driven, internationally recognised work.
Photography and the Changing City
London has been a dramatic subject since photography’s dawn. This celebration of urban imagery features work and commentary by photographer Paul Halliday; Rut Blees Luxemburg, whose pictures of London have become celebrated album covers for The Streets and Bloc Party; Mark Power of Magnum Photos; and Mike Seaborne, Senior Curator of the Museum of London’s Historic Photographs Collection.
Kai-Yin Lo & BA (Honours) Jewellery Design © Dave Edwards
Sir Antony Caro, Jane Rapley, Mark Dunhill and Lynette Brooks © Sophie Fowler
Barry Flanagan Reception Monday 21 September 2009 The Foyer @ Southampton Row
Ruth Eisenhart, Amal Ghosh, Gay Hutchings Clegg
John Cairns, Stephen Carter and Kate Love
Cecil Collins Fools & Angels Private View Tuesday 29 September 2009 Lethaby Gallery
‘Beyond Biba’ @ Central Saint Martins Monday 26 October 2009 For programme information and ticket details visit www.csm.arts.ac.uk Michael Chaitow, Charlotte Sorapure and Said Dai
Sarah Mower, Barbara Hulanicki, Stephen Jones © Charles Fox
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