Aesthetica Issue 76

Aesthetica

THE ART & CULTURE MAGAZINE

www.aestheticamagazine.com

Issue 76 April / May 2017

VISIONARY FRAMEWORKS

GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY

CULTURAL DISCOVERIES

Diffusion festival takes revolution as the concept for its next edition

Reforming urbanity through unique approaches to sustainable structure

Implementing new ethical fashion initiatives through African designs

Photo London reaffirms its legacy as a powerhouse for photography

UK £4.95 Europe €9.99 USA $13.49

SOCIETAL PROVOCATION

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Welcome Editor’s Note

On the Cover Sally / Emily’s compositions demonstrate a unique vision, taking inspiration from geometric shapes and modernism. Patterns, textures and intersecting structures are prevalent – each bright image is reflective of the 21st century metropolis whilst providing a visual glimpse of Japanese culture. www.sallyemily.com. (p. 120).

Cover Image: Photographer: Sally Ann & Emily May.

I’ve been consumed with the news. Following the plight of the US with an autocrat as president, Brexit and the realisation of how much big data is influencing society and shifting trends, it makes 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World seem all too relevant. It’s a stark new reality and one that I feel is carving out how this century will operate. We all fear World War III, some say it’s already happening online – but I’m not sure about that. The notion of post-truth is seeming more likely every day. Generally, I’m a positive, upbeat and resilient person, but it is a troubling time. These worries are also playing out in today’s artwork. Artists have always held a mirror up to society and right now is the moment to look.

Inside this issue, we look at gender and identity politics through Girl on Girl: Art and Photography in the age of the Female Gaze, which features 40 female photographers who have all grown up in the age of the selfie and considers how they are exploring self-image and the impact this is having on contemporary art. Featured photographers include Juno Calypso and Isabel Wenzel amongst others. A key question asked is how does the female gaze change when being shot by a woman? We also unpick the fashion of South Africa through the lens of a developing infrastructure, cultural heritage and ethically sourced couture. New designers are making waves in a country which traditionally isn’t known for its fashion; what does this mean for other non-fashion capitals? Diffusion photography festival returns to Cardiff with the theme of revolution this year, and it couldn’t be a better time to survey this topic. We also look at three of our favourite architects for 2017 who are responding in innovative ways to the world in which we live.

In photography Feridun Akgüngör merges digital and reality to create reflective pieces whilst Thomas Wrede plays with perceptions, Hideaki Hamada continues the conversation around identity and nonconformity, Stuart Allen captures the beauty in the ordinary and Sally Ann & Emily May’s compositions reveal fleeting moments. Finally, Martin Boyce offers the Last Words from his latest show.

Cherie Federico

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Art 24 Societal Provocation 2017’s Diffusion Festival at Ffotogallery, Cardiff, looks at the repercussions of worldwide revolts through an unprecedented photographic display.

30 Idealised Composition Thomas Wrede reproduces various topographies, juxtaposing simulation with reality and creating the colossal through the use of miniature forms.

42 Cultural Discoveries Photo London reaffirms its status as a powerhouse for international galleries to showcase the medium through an unmissable programme of exhibitions.

56 Collective Responsibility Pioneers from the African Designer Programme raise awareness about how contemporary fashion is being produced, marketed and sold worldwide.

60 Vibrant Equilibrium New Zealand-born Laura Allard-Fleischl depicts a sense of elegance through tonal sequences which utilise unexpected angles and textural contrasts.

70 Modern Perceptions Laurence King publishes an anthology of women photographers that addresses the very notions of portraiture and the judgements that it encourages.

76 Formal Oppositions Hideaki Hamada’s series Going Against The Grain comments on non-conformity through a group of uniformed figures that defy a sense of order.

88 Urban Symmetry Bradford-based Stuart Allen accentuates the idea of an alienating metropolis through bright, popcoloured and geometrically balanced pieces.

98 Visionary Frameworks We compile a list of our top three architects who seek to reconfigure our understanding of urban life through new approaches to sustainability.

104 Redefined Environments Feridun Akgüngör’s Minimal Pure series combines architectural forms and bright expanses of sky to create dynamic, simplistic and utopian vignettes.

114 Aesthetica Art Prize Shortlisted artists from the 2017 exhibition offer a wide range of practices and themes including globalisation and the contemporary condition.

120 Sculptural Intersection Sally Ann and Emily May Gunawan’s White Tokyo series combines the modern, bold and clean lines of Japanese architecture with unique styling.

Film

Music 133 Poignant Social Commentary The Oscar-nominated I Am Not Your Negro offers James Baldwin’s experience as a black man who was forced to grow up in segregated America.

136 Refabricating Inspiration Meadowlark’s EP Nocturnes features previously released singles that been reworked through a chiaroscuro style of live string quartet and piano.

Performance

Last Words

137 Politicised Statements Noga Erez’s new album Off The Radar responds to issues such as poverty and strife, whilst also taking aim at widespread violence against women.

140 Radical Expression Darren Johnston’s Zero Point combines science, spirituality and energy to bring together a larger commentary on human existence at the Barbican.

162 Martin Boyce Tanya Bonakdar Gallery’s, New York, showcase of Sleeping Chimneys. Dead Stars. demonstrates the artist’s interest in layering conceptual landscapes.

Aesthetica Magazine is trade marked worldwide. © Aesthetica Magazine Ltd 2017.

The Aesthetica Team: Editor: Cherie Federico Editorial Assistant: Kate Simpson Digital Content Officer: Selina Oakes Staff Writer: David Martin

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

132 Innovative Cinematography The BAFTA shorts have encouraged critical shifts in consciousness about today’s economic, racial climate, from the refugee crisis to consumption.

ISSN 1743-2715.

All work is copyrighted to the author or artist.

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

Advertising Coordinator: Jeremy Appleyard Marketing Coordinator: Alexandra Beresford Artists’ Directory Coordinator: Katherine Smira

Artists’ Directory Enquiries: Katherine Smira (0044) (0)844 568 2001 directory@aestheticamagazine.com

Published by Cherie Federico and Dale Donley.

Aesthetica Magazine PO Box 371, York, YO23 1WL, UK (0044) (0)844 568 2001 Newstrade Distribution: Warners Group Publications plc.

Gallery & Specialist Distribution: Central Books.

Printed by Warners Midlands plc.

Production Director: Dale Donley Designer: Rob Cheung Administrator: Cassandra Weston Administrative Assistant: Patrick Webster Technical Administrator: Alex Tobin Festival Assistant: Eleanor Turner Project Worker: Sophie Lake Intern: Lucy Sara-Kelly Contributors: Bryony Byrne, Niamh Coghlan, Colin Herd, Chloe Hodge, Regina Papachlimitzou, Charlotte R.A., Beth Webb.

Reviewers: Matilda Bathurst, Ruby Beesley, Kyle Bryony, Kim Connerton, Tony Earnshaw, Anna Feintuck, Rubén Cervantes Garrido, Erik Martiny, Daniel Potts, Paul Risker, Matt Swain.

Subscriptions: subscriptions@aestheticamagazine.com (0044) (0)844 568 2001 General Enquiries: info@aestheticamagazine.com Press Releases: pr@aestheticamagazine.com

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Cornelia Parker, Neither From Nor Towards, 1992. Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. © the artist.

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The Hierarchy of Materialism [RE]CONSTRUCT Foundational assumptions about the permanence and materiality of structures are called into question in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s latest exhibition. It considers the boundaries between sculpture and the built environment, a fertile ground for artistic inquiry, and one which forces us to actively think about the constructions in which much of daily life takes place. [Re]construct, presented in the 18th century Chapel space of the YSP near Wakefield, demonstrates the myriad ways in which artists have incorporated the materials and designs of architecture, through works which have been selected by the curators from the Arts Council Collection.

Viewers are able to discover bricks made of wax, wall plugs crafted from onyx, reassembled ruins and bodies painted to look like stone. Other objects disappear into the fabric of the building, creating unsettling effects. Positioned centrally within the Chapel’s nave, Cornelia Parker’s signature suspended piece Neither From Nor Towards is made from weathered bricks reclaimed from a row of houses destroyed when they slipped into the sea on the south-east coast due to erosion. This natural process of decomposition continued as the bricks were further pounded and shaped by the action of the waves. The bricks are reassembled to form the simplified box-house shape of a child’s drawing, complete with pitched roof. Hinting at the previous life of the material, the sculpture becomes a type of resurrection or ghost of its former self.

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Work No.135 by Martin Creed, meanwhile, grows like an “Viewers are able to organic mass from the Chapel wall, finished in the same discover bricks made material and painted white so that it appears simultaneously of wax, wall plugs at home and incongruous. By interrupting the viewer’s crafted from onyx, expectations, it suggests an animate life within the static walls. reassembled ruins In A hole in a bag of nerves, Alex Chinneck invokes the idea and bodies painted to of transience through the use of wax bricks: where one would look like stone. Other expect the tough, durable materials needed for building, objects disappear there is instead an entirely malleable substance that into the fabric of the changes state even from the heat of touch. Emphasising its building, creating unsuitability for construction, a circle at the centre of the wall unsettling effects.” has been melted, resulting in cascades of wax. Like Parker’s brick house, it captures a moment that is frozen in time.

Susan Collis’s Untitled (Rawl Plugs) confounds expectation by masquerading as a set of everyday wall fixings that appear to have been abandoned, possibly after a picture or shelf has been removed. In fact, these seemingly mundane and inexpensive objects have been carefully crafted from semi-precious stone. This invites the audience to consider the hierarchy of materials and encourages them to look at and analyse the surrounding environment with greater care.

Also featuring in the YSP’s selection at the Chapel are Yorkshire Sculpture Park. works by Claire Barclay, Anya Gallaccio, Lucy Gunning, 1 April - 25 June.

Sonya Hanney and Adam Dade, Denis Masi, Alex Pain, Nina Saunders, Emily Speed, John Wood and Paul Harrison. www.ysp.co.uk

Interdisciplinary Exploration ARCHITECTURE AS METAPHOR location, the former border between the East and the West.

“Material forms Also displayed is work by Phyllida Barlow (b. 1944), who have been seized later this year will represent the UK at the 2017 Venice upon by artists as Biennale. Her signature style, creating complex installations physical expressions of sculptural forms, is defined by a vocabulary of everyday of cultural, social construction materials such as plywood, cement and paint. and political change, Other exhibiting practitioners include Italy’s Maurizio and they reveal Anzeri, who creates architectural interventions by sewing the psychological, directly into found vintage photographs, the contrast historical and suggesting a dimension where history and future converge. political forces which Rob Voerman’s art depicts fictional communities occupying drive the developing a post-apocalyptic dystopia, whether in remote locations urban landscape.” or existing cityscapes. Wolfgang Schlegel, meanwhile, exhibits fragments of concrete stairways, rusted railings and scaffolding, the hidden wonders of everyday construction.

The full line-up of artists taking part ranges from longestablished names to those in mid-career, and includes Rachel Whiteread, Dieter Roth, Fabian Peake, Arturo Di Stefano, Lucy Gunning, Prue Waller, Ulrich Jansen and Terry Smith, as well as sculptor and co-curator Steve Johnson.

The late Tony Carter is also included, an influential figure and mentor to many of the other exhibitors. As well as his Griffin Gallery, London. own artistic career, Carter spent 16 years as Principal of Until 21 April. the City & Guilds Art School. Several of his sculptures are displayed by kind permission of his widow, Wendy Smith. www.griffingallery.co.uk

Rob Voerman, Unité, 2014. Archival pigment print. Courtesy of Upstream Gallery.

The interplay between art and architecture is reciprocal and intrinsic to the history of both disciplines. Whether through striking public collaborations that stretch limits and conventions, or the allure of structures as subjects for photography, film, painting or sculpture, the topic is vast.

Co-curators at Griffin Gallery Steve Johnson and Becca Pelly-Fry have chosen to address this harmonious relationship through a group exhibition of 30 artists at the London venue, whose varied approaches sketch out the possibilities afforded by interdisciplinary collaboration and mutual inspiration. The title of the show reflects the influence of architectural imagery on contemporary art – both the way in which material forms have been seized upon by artists as physical expressions of cultural, social and political change, and how they reveal the psychological, historical and political forces which drive the developing urban landscape.

One of the major names featured is Turner Prize winner Richard Deacon (b. 1949), who has recently collaborated with Serbian sculptor Mrdjan Bajic (b. 1957) on designing a snake-like bridge in Kalemegdan Park in Belgrade, Serbia.

The duo, who represented Wales and Serbia respectively at the 2007 Venice Biennale, showcase some never-beforeseen designs exclusively for the Griffin Gallery. The bridge, which runs from the Kalemegdan Fortress, adds a new landmark structure to the city at an important and charged

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Roger Mayne, Park Hill Estate, Sheffield, 1961. © Roger Mayne / Mary Evans Picture Library. Courtesy of the Mary Evans Picture Library.

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Post-Conflict Documentation ROGER MAYNE Self-taught photographer Roger Mayne (1929-2014) spent his early career following an individual path, rather than being associated with any particular aesthetic school. Moving to London in 1954, he worked for a range of magazines and newspapers and for the BBC, moving in diverse circles and meeting painters, sculptors, artists and writers of the day, all of whom informed and enlivened his developing style and involved him in contemporary discourse about the direction of the art form. A notable early influence was the St Ives scene of Terry Frost, Roger Hilton and Patrick Heron, which had an enduring impact on his life and work, encouraging Mayne to experiment with large prints and installation-based exhibitions, at a time when there was little or no precedent within photography, and helped to shift the discipline to a position within the wider arts. He used many figures within the St Ives group as his subject matter during the 1950s.

It was in the late 1950s that Mayne struck upon the project and the style that would come to define him in the public eye – his studies of the street life of Southam Street in London.

The area, on the fringes of now-prosperous Notting Hill, which he documented between 1956 and 1961, was largely demolished in 1969 to make way for the Trellick Tower.

Novelist Colin MacInnes asked Mayne to contribute the cover shot for Absolute Beginners (1959), also set in the area, and the images were to reach a new audience in the 1990s

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when Morrissey used them as record cover artwork and stage “Mayne’s black and backdrops. Mayne’s black and white pictures capture the white pictures capture deprivation and squalor of post-war inner-city Britain and the the deprivation of lively street life, notably the gangs of children seen running post-war innerwild and playing amidst the hustle and bustle. West Indians city Britain and and Teddy Boys rub shoulders on the street, capturing the the lively street themes of migration and burgeoning youth culture. One life. West Indians of the slum children was the future Labour politician Alan and Teddy Boys Johnson, who would go on to serve as UK Home Secretary. rub shoulders on the The Photographers’ Gallery presents the first major London street, capturing the exhibition of Mayne’s work since 1999, and, aside from themes of migration the Southam Street series, it features less well-known work and youth culture.” from outside the capital. These include images from the artist’s young adulthood spent in Leeds. The early pictures of street life here chart the beginnings of Mayne’s gradual move towards realism. Also presented are later works which continue to present the lives of ordinary working people with empathy and dignity. The urban landscape is put under the lens, alongside the residents of Sheffield’s Park Hill flats in commissions from 1961 to 1965, and the lives of workers at the Raleigh Cycles factory in Nottingham (1964). The Photographers’ Restaged for the first time since 1964 is The British at Leisure. Gallery, London.

Commissioned by architect Theo Crosby for the Milan Until 11 June.

Triennale, it features 310 colour images projected onto five screens and a commissioned jazz score by Johnny Scott. thephotographersgallery.org.uk

Investigation through Archive THE FUTURE REMAINS spectacle in front of an audience of 100,000. The historical “The sequence of images on show at Calvert 22 reveal some of the Palace’s political and social interiors and surroundings in the aftermath of the events. upheavals which The highlight of the programme is the first UK solo show unfolded throughout of work by prominent Moscow Conceptualist Dmitri Prigov that turbulent year (1940-2007). Under the title Theatre of Revolutionary Action, have been endlessly the exhibition, from 12 October to 17 December, takes mythologised and Prigov’s view of performance as art as its key note to draw contested, with some together his genre-defying works under the idea of theatre. questioning their very Prigov was a dissident for much of the Soviet era, his vast status of ‘revolution.’” output of poetry being published unofficially as Samizdat, and he was even briefly arrested and institutionalised in a psychiatric hospital by the KGB after a street performance for handing out poetry to passers-by. His art began to receive official recognition in the then USSR from 1987, and ranges across drawing, installation, video work, poetry (some inscribed on tin cans) and plays. It has been described by critics as possessing a new sense of sincerity, as opposed to the sense of the absurd adopted in much late-Soviet art.

Russian director Yuri Muravitsky presents a new version of Prigov’s Revolt, which speaks directly to the themes of The Calvert 22 Foundation, Future Remains. Somewhere between a play, performance London. and interactive artwork, Revolt addresses the malaise of the Until 17 December.

1980s, when the fervour of 1917 had lost any meaning, and the terror inevitably inherent in revolutionary transformation. www.calvert22.org

Archival image of the Winter Palace. © The State Hermitage Museum. Photo: Yuri Molodkovets.

In the centenary year of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the “ten days that shook the world”, the Calvert 22 Foundation, London, which is dedicated to promoting the culture of Russia and Eastern Europe, teams up with St Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum as its major partner for The Future Remains. They present a season of events which reflects upon the continuing impacts of this major turning point in history.

The sequence of political and social upheavals which unfolded throughout that turbulent year have been endlessly mythologised and contested, with some questioning their very status as a “revolution.” The exhibition takes an interdisciplinary approach, with events and discussions addressing the many interpretations of the uprising and its ongoing impacts for the modern world. Other collaborators are European University at St Petersburg and UCL SSEES. The State Hermitage Museum opens up its photographic archives to reveal its own role in unfolding history. As the Winter Palace, former residence of the Tsar and subsequently the headquarters of Kerensky’s Provisional Government after the fall of the Tsar in the Revolution of February 1917, it became the centre of events the following October, when a Bolshevik insurrection seized the palace and toppled the government. The actual storming of the Winter Palace was largely bloodless, though, in an act of public performance art as propaganda, it was restaged in 1920 as a myth-making

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David Hepher, Camberwell Flats by Night, 1983. © David Hepher, Courtesy of Flowers Gallery London and New York.

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Aesthetics of Degeneration DAVID HEPHER Many artistic practitioners have returned to one single focus regeneration at present. The Surrey-born artist’s fascination “Though Hepher or location as a leitmotif that runs throughout their career. with high-rises, however, began with another Brutalist land- considers the role of But only for David Hepher (b. 1935) have the high-rise mark, the Park Hill Flats in Sheffield – structures now being the artist as being one blocks of South London provided the sole material for more renovated into a fashionable address in a new vogue for of bearing witness, than 40 years of work. Though he considers the role of the urban living. Hepher’s family moved to the South Yorkshire rather than taking up artist as being one of bearing witness, rather than taking up city in the 1950s, when his clergyman father became a vicar any kind of didactic any kind of didactic stance on the subject, it is inevitable that there, and he watched the construction of the megalithic stance on the subject, it is inevitable that the passage of history and the shifting of critical currents in blocks on the site of slum clearances (1957-1961).

Flowers Gallery’s major retrospective sees the blocks of the the passage of history the world of contemporary art brings changing modes of interpretation and understanding to the constant, moving Aylesbury estate refracted through modes that shift between brings changing modes it on from being a celebration of utopian modernism to futuristic and nostalgic, utopian and entropic. The London of interpretation.” show coincides with the UK launch of a new monograph by mourning a failed vision of yesterday’s future.

Indeed, for much this time, a single South London estate critic, author and documentary filmmaker Ben Lewis, Grain has been his primary focus. The giant grey slab blocks of Of Concrete. It presents Hepher’s oeuvre as a “British realist the Aylesbury Estate in Walworth, some 14 storeys high, response to modernism”, and suggests his adoption of the were built between 1963 and 1977, close to where the Brit- tower block as a theme is a way of bringing a “readymade” elish painter lives and works. The area’s reputation deteriorated ement into the practice of painting. He charts a prolific career over the decades due to social problems, and physical prob- from the 1950s to the present day, tracing a path that begins lems with the buildings. It was the location which Tony Blair in an era highly suspicious of figurative painting, through to chose as being emblematic of Thatcherite urban decay for the recent re-evaluation of post-war British art. Lewis aligns his first speech as Prime Minister in 1997. Hepher can be the work with the critical discourses surrounding the “end seen as a part of a generation of artists who grew up with of painting” and with conceptual and minimalist strategies Flowers Gallery, London. the utopian ambitions of post-war modernism and lived to throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Containing more than Until 13 May. mourn their passing in their mature work. The estate is still 250 colour illustrations, it is the largest book to have been home to some 7,500 people, though it is undergoing a major published on Hepher’s extensive and individual practice. www.flowersgallery.com

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New Geographical Horizons AUTOPHOTO of holidays on the Riviera and strolls along the promenade. “The motor vehicle By contrast, Lee Friedlander (b. 1934) works primarily was not only a in black and white to consider the “social landscape” of new object for the an urban world that has been shaped by an automobile photographer’s lens to culture. Mainly employing Leica hand-held 35mm cameras, study but brought with the American practitioner captures the look of modern life it a transformation through his images of store-front reflections, and structures of the landscapes framed by fences and barriers, as well as posters and signs. through which it A completely different approach is represented by Brazilian travelled – the distinct artist Rosângela Rennó (b. 1962), who primarily appropriates, architecture and transforms and re-contextualises existing archival images of geometry of roadways.” everyday events, and finds novel and politically charged ways to present them, often shifting the emphasis of the images onto marginalised figures and groups within them.

Combining Eastern and Western traditions, multi-award winning Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921-2012), first began to learn photography when his Japanese-American family was interned following Pearl Harbor, in a prison camp in Colorado. He spent his subsequent career fascinated by structures and by the street life of Chicago and Tokyo.

Fondation Cartier’s exhibition includes a series of car models that cast a fresh eye on the history of design, created Fondation Cartier, Paris. specifically for the show by French artist Alain Bublex. These 20 April - 24 September. are accompanied by a catalogue offering an alternative history of automobile design, essays and artist interviews. www.fondationcartier.com

Vanessa Leissring, Swing Netherlands, 2008. From the series Petrol Stations. C-Print, 40cm x 60cm. Courtesy of the artist. © Vanessa Leissring.

Fondation Cartier, Paris, once again focuses its attention on the world of cars, 30 years after the groundbreaking exhibition Hommage à Ferrari put the legendary Italian motor marque centre stage and addressed the problems of presenting masterpieces of racing design in a static format.

Autophoto addresses the many ways in which the development of the car has reconfigured the world of photography. The motor vehicle was not only a new object for the photographer’s lens to study but brought with it a transformation of the landscapes through which it travelled – the distinct architecture and geometry of roadways, and a whole new approach to urbanisation and the nature of the modern city, alongside a new culture of freedom. It extended the geographical horizons of everyday life in a way that was accessible to many, and, through speeding up travel dramatically, altered our relationship to space and time.

It created a new perspective on the world, of a landscape smoothly scrolling past the observer’s moving vehicle.

The show offers a look in the rear-view mirror at the age of the car from its earliest days to the present, bringing together 400 works by 80 artists. On display are images of racing vehicles by Jacques Henri Lartigue (1921-2012), whose well-known photographs of the wealthier classes of French society included popular sporting events such the French Grand Prix, creating a vision of a carefree inter-war era

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art 1. Ted Soqui, The Riots of 1992 in Los Angeles, 1992. 2. Mark Shaw, Model wearing Balenciaga orange coat as I. Magnin buyers inspect a dinner outfit in the background, Paris, 1954. Detail. 3. Patrick Pound, Damaged, 2008-2017. Detail. Courtesy of Station, Melbourne, Stills Gallery, Sydney, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington and Melanie Roger Gallery, Auckland. 4. Postcommodity, A Very Long Line, 2016. Film still. Courtesy of the artists. 5. Edward Barber, Embrace the Base, 1982. 30,000 women link hands, completely surrounding the nine mile perimeter fence at RAF/USAF Greenham Common, Berkshire.

10 to See RECOMMENDED EXHIBITIONS THIS SEASON

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On 3 March 1991, a highspeed chase ended with the videotaped beating of black taxi driver Rodney King by police officers who were acquitted by a largely white jury, sparking riots across Los Angeles in which 55 people died. CAAM’s No Justice, No Peace: LA 1992 looks back, 25 years on, to consider the complex history underlying the riots, from the Great Migration of the 1940s to the Watts Rebellion of 1965.

The designs of Cristóbal Balenciaga and his influence upon modern fashion are celebrated in the year that marks the centenary of the opening of his first fashion house. Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion, featuring over 100 garments and 20 hats, focuses in unique and unprecedented detail on the 1950s and 1960s, arguably one of the designer’s most creative periods, ensuring his title as the master of haute couture.

No Justice, No Peace: LA 1992

CAAM, Los Angeles Until 27 August www.caamuseum.org

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Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion

V&A, London 27 May - 18 February www.vam.ac.uk

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Patrick Pound

NGV Melbourne Until 30 July www.ngv.vic.gov.au

An avid collector, New Zealand-born, Melbournebased artist Pound is fascinated by the categorisation and ordering of objects. For the irreverently titled Patrick Pound: The Great Exhibition, photographs, objects and curios sourced from the internet and charity shops will be organised alongside artworks from the NGV, and placed in unexpected contexts to form what the practitioner describes as “museums of things”, which reveal surprising connections.

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Whitney Biennial

Whitney Museum, New York Until 11 June www.whitney.org

The first Biennial to be held in the Whitney’s new building, the latest edition takes the idea of the self as its theme – the forces that form it and the place of the individual in a turbulent society. A programme of 63 participating artists, whose works will fill two of the four main gallery floors and numerous other spaces, has been selected from disciplines including painting, installation, film and video, and video game design.

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People Power: Fighting For Peace

IWM London Until 28 August www.iwm.org.uk

The 100th anniversary of the First World War offers a chance to consider a century of the anti-war movement that rose to prominence following the carnage. From a handwritten poem by Siegfried Sassoon to original designs for the “peace symbol” which became an emblem of 1960s counterculture, from Vietnam to Iraq, this event tells the stories of anti-war protest through paintings, literature, posters, banners and music.

6. Nari Ward, We the People, 2011. Shoelaces, 96 in x 324 in. In collaboration with the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Photo: Will Brown. 7. Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #21, 1977. Gelatin silver print, 20.3 cm x 25.4 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York. 8. Hideyuki Nakayama, O House, 2009. © Mitsutaka Kitamura. 9. Heather Hart, Eastern Oracle, 2012. Installation, Brooklyn Museum. Photo: © Rebecca Reeve. 10. Alec Soth, Two Towels, 2005. From the series Niagara.

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Nari Ward

ICA, Boston 26 April - 4 September www.icaboston.org

Jamaican-born Nari Ward engages with specific sites to create spectacular artwork from unlikely objects.

Sun Splashed features 43 works whose materials range from soda pop bottles to shoelaces and shopping carts, and which cross the genres of sculpture, collage, photography, video, installation and performance. Ward’s approach captures the makeshift qualities of everyday life and themes including citizenship and migration.

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From Selfie to Self-Expression

Saatchi Gallery, London Until 30 May www.saatchigallery.com

From the Old Masters to the present day “selfie”, the self-portrait can be revealing and profound, yet is often derided for inanity and vanity. This exhibition celebrates the past and present of the art form, with work from figures as diverse as Kutluğ Ataman, Tracey Emin, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Cindy Sherman and Velázquez.

Displayed alongside are selfies that have become icons of the digital era.

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The Japanese House

Barbican, London, Until 25 June www.barbican.org.uk

In the wake of World War II, the devastation of Tokyo and other cities in Japan brought an urgent need for new housing, and the family home quickly became the foremost site for architectural experimentation and debate. Since then, Japanese designers have consistently proposed innovative solutions to changing lifestyles. Barbican’s show is the first major UK exhibition of this post-war domestic architecture.

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David Smith / Heather Hart

Storm King Art Center, New York 13 May - 12 November www.stormking.org

David Smith: The White Sculptures is the first show to fully consider the practitioner’s use of the colour white. The collected works here unite the entire Primo Piano series, as well as a selection of Smith’s earliest constructions from white coral. Running alongside, as part of the Outlooks series, Heather Hart installs an interactive, sculptural rooftop environment, enlivened by discussions and events.

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Alec Soth

FOMU, Antwerp Until 4 June www.fotomuseum.be

US-born Alex Soth is a fine artist, photographer, blogger, educator and self-publisher who explores the many different forms that photography can take and creates equally diverse forms of encounter with his audiences, often by conducting live workshops from a Winnebago motorhome.

Gathered Leaves brings together four pivotal series: Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), Niagara (2006), Broken Manual (2010) and Songbook (2014).

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Societal Provocation Diffusion THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL TAKES REVOLUTION AS ITS CENTRAL THEME, UTILISING THE MEDIUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY TO DOCUMENT THE REPERCUSSIONS OF GLOBAL REVOLTS.

Since its inception in 2013, Diffusion, a biennial festival of around them. As Bertolt Brecht expressed it: ‘Art is not a international photography taking place at multiple venues mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.’”

The outlook offered by the festival is broad, international in the city of Cardiff, has proven to be one of the most exciting showcases for photography in Europe. More than an and diverse, but the programme also presents photography art event, it is a social forum, using photography to initiate from Wales, a country which has always had a long and rich conversations around pressing social and political issues, history of protest and insurrection, from the Merthyr Rising and with remarkable prescience. In 2013 the festival asked in 1831 and the Newport Rising by Chartist sympathisers in the question “Where Are We Now?” and in particular looked at 1839 to the Miners’ Strike in the 1980s. Welsh artist David the role photography and digital media have in articulating Garner engages with this history of dissent and direct action. contemporary experience and identity in a New Europe. For As Drake remarks: “Garner imbues it with a contemporary the 2015 theme, Looking for America, Ffotogallery Director resonance that seems to reflect the anger and betrayal that David Drake chose images which examined how, in the post- led to the 2016 ‘Leave’ vote in England and Wales.”

For this event, Garner has developed new ideas looking 9/11 world of economic recession, the vaunted American dream, the belief that life will get better, and that progress at the legacy of Nye Bevan, inspired by an archival is inevitable if we obey the rules and work hard, had been photograph depicting Bevan rubbing his eyes, as if weeping at the dismantling of the National Health Service, whose replaced by a hard and bitter truth.

The 2017 event continues a longstanding exploration of establishment he spearheaded. In Respond, the practitioner social and political themes with its focus on Revolution. As offers two contemporary works that link the Chartist Drake comments: “I have been actively seeking work that movement with the current austerity climate in South shows how revolutionary change requires a challenge to the Wales. In one of these, an ornate chandelier, a symbol of established order, acts of protest and rebellion, insurgency, decadence associated with opulent lifestyles, is constructed risk and experimentation, new ideas and ideologies.” Given from 576 coins with a monetary value of a mere £11.52. the new global political context, the theme seems especially Each coin has been hand stamped with words in Welsh and relevant today, and the urgency is not lost on the festival’s English relating them to the media’s vocabulary of austerity.

Whilst many of the featured exhibitions investigate director. “These are turbulent and uncertain times. I am interested in how photography, and art more generally, revolutionary movements in contemporary life, the event can disrupt audience perceptions and offer a potentially also focuses on counter-culture movements of the 20th transformative vision for society, as artists seek new ways to century. One such show focuses on the contributions of see, represent and understand the world rapidly changing John “Hoppy” Hopkins, as Drake explains: “Between 1960

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kennnardphillipps, In Humanity, 2016. © kennnardphillipps.

“Digital technology has dramatically changed ordinary people’s relationship with photography in that on a daily basis we now consume and process a vast quantity of imagebased information on our computers, phones and other devices.”

Previous Page: kennardphillipps, Christina’s World.

Detail. Commissioned by Greenpeace. © kennardphillipps.

Left: Manuel Bougot, Chandigarh, High Court, Le Corbusier. © Manuel Bougot.

and 1966, Hopkins captured the vibrancy of discontent and understand what’s happening in the world through visual the emerging counter-culture in Britain, which was expressed means. The piece is made as a critical tool that connects to through activism, poetic expression and art.” This exhibition international movements for social and political change.” In brings together a selection of unseen images from the State of the Nations, which has been specially commissioned photographer’s own archive alongside others included in the for Diffusion 2017, resistance to the status quo is embedded very few public exhibitions of his work to date. Captured here in the deconstruction of news images and narratives built is the historic poetry convention at The Royal Albert Hall in from everyday materials, photomontage and text. The artists 1965, as well as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr’s first have extended this critique into the contemporary political visits to London, Committee of 100 and CND marches, and environment, as Drake explains: “kennardphillipps dig into the surface of words and images to visualise the connection images of anti-racist and pro-Civil Rights demonstrations.

Vanley Burke, as Drake remarks, is “often described as between the oppressed majority and the political and the ‘Godfather of Black British Photography’, whereby financial elites of the everyday, remixing earlier pieces and his iconic images have captured the evolving cultural creating new artwork that addresses contemporary issues landscape, social change, and stimulated debate in the relating to Trump, Brexit and the refugee and migrant crisis.”

Photography as an art form, has been strongly linked to a United Kingdom over the past four decades.” Burke’s oeuvre represents possibly the largest photographic record of the sense of upheaval. This is because of both the technological Caribbean Diaspora in Britain, and he continues to connect and the creative possibilities it affords, and also its histories through his substantial archive, housed at the accessibility. This revolutionary quality of photography Library of Birmingham. He played a key role in documenting is continually evolving, as Drake highlights: “Digital protest in 1970s and 1980s Birmingham, including Anti- technology has dramatically changed ordinary people’s Nazi League demonstrations and the Handsworth uprising. relationship with photography in that on a daily basis we He also photographed Sharpeville demonstrations in South now consume and process a vast quantity of image-based information on our computers, televisions, mobile phones Africa in the 1990s, as the Apartheid system crumbled.

Recent echoes of mass counter-culture movements are and other devices.” Laís Pontes questions the construction woven throughout the contributions from kennardphillipps, a of identity in the digital age, as well as the role social media collaboration between Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps, who and its characters play in this construction. In the same way have been working together since 2002 to produce art in that she uses a camera and performance, Pontes utilises response to the invasion of Iraq. Drake highlights that this virtual platforms like Facebook and Instagram as tools in idea stretches beyond the display space: “It is made for the the process of creation, giving viewers the opportunity to street, the gallery, the web, newspapers and magazines, and take over the role of artist, which allows the piece to shift in aims to engage audiences in a direct manner and help them meaning during a collaborative process. This is an invitation

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Vanley Burke, Anti-National Front demonstrators in the Bull Ring, Birmingham. © Vanley Burke.

for onlookers to experience, interact and develop a critical view of the effect that social media has on identity.

This exhibition, Drake suggests, focuses on some of the ongoing revolutionary possibilities of photography: “In examining how fictional and real narratives collide on social media platforms, Pontes’ work explores issues of gender fluidity and how personal and other data is captured, analysed and used in art and society – both for good and for less benign purposes such as surveillance or data mining.”

If Pontes’ aesthetic is of the technological age, this festival as a whole also locates social change in relation to modernist aesthetics and architecture, for example, in French photographer Manuel Bougot’s Chandigarh: Portrait of a City. Chandigarh was one of the early planned cities in post-independence India and is internationally known for its innovative architecture and urban design. The master plan was prepared by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier.

Chandigarh is regarded as one of the most progressive cities of the world in terms of architecture, cultural growth and modernisation. Bougot investigates how Le Corbusier’s philosophy and approach was realised in this unique city.

For Drake, this particular aspect of the festival highlights photography’s revolutionary impact on the built environment: “Since its invention in the 19th century, photography has always done more than simply capture the shapes and spatial forms of buildings and skylines. The medium transformed how new developments were conceived by architects and how they were received by the public. Architecture in the 20th century relied on photography to communicate its modernist and post-modernist practices within a utopian view of the emerging “new world.” The last century saw a change in

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architecture and the built environment across the developed Right: Bougot, parts of the globe, realised through the dramatic expansion Manuel Chandigarh, High Court, Le Corbusier. © Manuel Bougot. of towns and cities; the expansion of new technologies; the creation of suburbia and new towns; a transformation in road, rail and air travel; post-war reconstruction of cities and the need for social housing in response to population growth.”

The centenary this year of the Russian Revolution, of course informs Diffusion in both thematic and direct ways.

Photography was an essential part of how the events of 1917 were documented and awareness was spread, but its formal possibilities also engendered some of the most innovative and revolutionary art practices of the 20th century.

Photography and, by extension, film were used not simply as propaganda and to document revolutionary change but also to create new forms of artistic expression. “Many of the featured artists, including kennardphillipps, Paolo Ciregia, George Blair and Danila Tkachenko, directly reference Soviet styles of photomontage, Constructivism and Suprematism.”

In addition to the curated programme, there is also a special exhibition, Zeitgeist, which takes the temperature of contemporary photography and its relation to protest and revolution. As Drake remarks: “Our news feeds have latterly Words been dominated by Brexit, Trumpism, globalisation, climate Colin Herd change, poverty, religious intolerance, the migrant and refugee crisis, diversity, nationalism, border control, hate crime, gentrification, and community division. For all the Diffusion: Cardiff technological socio-economic progress made, we live in a International Festival world blighted by inequality, war and political upheaval.” of Photography.

The powerful and politically engaged images featured 1-31 May . throughout Diffusion highlight ways in which art can stimulate the conversations that engender social change. www.diffusionfestival.org

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art

Idealised Construction Thomas Wrede

German artist Thomas Wrede (b. 1963) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Münster from 1986 to 1992 and is now a professor of photography and new media at the University of Fine Arts Essen. Influenced by how nature is presented within today’s media, Real Landscapes (2004-2016) reproduces various topographies, traversing the lines between simulation and reality and manufacturing the colossal through the miniature. Wrede uses commonplace objects for the staging of the images: toy cars, classic houses and pine trees taken from a model train kit are placed on North Sea beaches, in coal dumps, on garbage heaps and piles of rubble. As a consequence, the compositions simultaneously depict a sense of the monumental and the idyllic, reduced to an existence dependent upon the lens of the camera. The sheer expanse of the environment is thrown into largescale perspective through sparsely spread signs of civilisation. www.thomas-wrede.de.

Thomas Wrede, House over the Dunes, 2007.

Detail. 95cm x 120cm / 120cm x 150cm.

From the series Real Landscapes.

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Thomas Wrede, In the Tertiary Valley, 2008. 95cm x 120cm / 140cm x 180cm. From the series Real Landscapes.

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Thomas Wrede, Above the Valley, 2009. 95cm x 129cm / 170cm x 210cm. From the series Real Landscapes.

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Thomas Wrede, Football Pitch, 2008. 95cm x 120cm / 140cm x 180cm. From the series Real Landscapes.

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Thomas Wrede, The Luminous Screen, 2015. 95cm x 130cm / 140cm x 190cm. From the series Real Landscapes.

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Thomas Wrede, Fred & Red’s Café, 2015. 95cm x 120cm / 170cm x 220cm. From the series Real Landscapes.

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art

Cultural Discoveries Photo London

Created in 2015, Photo London was intended to befit the capital’s cultural status.

Now in its third year, the event has become a powerhouse for international galleries to showcase the revolution of an ever-expanding medium. This year, Aesthetica has chosen from a diverse selection of photographers to provide a glimpse into the truly inspiring developments that are taking place throughout the industry, spearheading a new generation of experimenters who are capturing the world in unprecedented ways. From digital to analogue, each image instils a sense of innovation, documenting an everyday that is richly steeped in narrative and identity. As one of the largest events of the year of its kind, Photo London also promises to host an unmissable programme of events, including individual exhibitions from their 2017 Master of Photography, Taryn Simon, as well as Juergen Teller and William Klein. For tickets, visit: www.photolondon.org.

Cesare Fabbri, The Flying Carpet, 2017.

From the photobook The Flying Carpet. © Cesare Fabbri. Courtesy of MACK.

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Mark Power, Ingoldmells, 2006. From the series Destroying the Laboratory for the Sake of the Experiment. Š Mark Power / Magnum Photos.

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Martin Essl, Le Château Rouge No 18, 2014. From the series Le Château Rouge. © Martin Essl. Courtesy of Galerie Esther Woerdehoff.

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Tod Papageorge, Untitled, New York, 1966-67. Š Tod Papageorge. Courtesy of Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne.

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Toshio Shibata, Okawa Village, Tosa County, Kochi Prefecture, 2007. © Toshio Shibata. Courtesy of IBASHO.

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Willy Spiller, Accident, New York, 1977-1984. © Willy Spiller. Courtesy of BILDHALLE.

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Collective Responsibility Ethical Fashion Initiative DESIGNERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA ARE LOOKING AT NEW WAYS TO INNOVATE AND CREATE AWARENESS ABOUT THE COUNTRY’S BURGEONING FASHION INDUSTRY.

South Africa is swiftly becoming a focus for fashion aficionados, with designers garnering international recognition. Thula Sindi, David Tlale and SELFI are amongst the more well-known names of the global and domestic stage. However, alongside these established brands are some young emerging talents that are breaking into the international market through the support of groups such as the Ethical Fashion Initiative (EFI), a flagship programme of the World Trade Organization and the United Nations.

The aim of the aforementioned group is, as Communications Assistant Maryjo Cartier states: “To promote local fashion encouraging ‘Made in Africa’ manufacturing with artisans, and support the growth of small enterprises. Through exposure, designers gain a unique opportunity to showcase their work and understand the expectations and quality standards of the industry as well as knowledge of how it works as a whole (from putting together catwalk shows to the requirements of retailers). Through connections created by the EFI, brands like Sindiso Khumalo and MaXhosa by Laduma have secured new retail outlets and media coverage.”

Practitioners who have particularly benefited from EFI’s African Designer Programme include Lukhanyo Mdingi and Adriaan Kuiters of the AKJP Collective. Due to their involvement with the EFI, both names were recently approached as the subject of fashion documentaries by Brooklyn-based studio Noir Tribe – a company that has been nominated for numerous awards and screened at festivals including the Miami Fashion Film Festival, the London Fashion Film Festival, the Istanbul Fashion Film Festival and

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the Australian International Fashion Film Festival. The short films, part of a series called Ethetics (a title that combines ethics and aesthetics), were the brainchild of Amber Moelter and Luis Barreto Carrillo, a collaboration that was born through the wide-spread connections of the EFI, which in turn has a strong history of marrying fashion and cinema. As Simone Cipriani, founder and director, says: “It is more vital than ever to create awareness amongst the general public of the social issues behind the surface of fashion.”

The idea for Ethetics can be traced back to Moelter, who explains: “I reached out to the EFI shortly before travelling to Cape Town for the Mercedes-Benz Bokeh South Africa Fashion Film Festival where we were showing a documentary and a fashion film. Maryjo Cartier at EFI introduced me to Keith Henning at AKJP and Lukhanyo Mdingi, who were all very enthusiastic about working together on a hybrid documentary / fashion film. We sent the finished piece to the EFI and officially announced our partnership.”

The motivation fuelling the films snowballed after this initial green light. Moelter notes: “We learned that the effects of fast fashion hit the designers hard, so to compete, they focus on social responsibility and quality in their production.

Henning brought his seamstresses into town to work out of his studio, which allowed them to collaborate with other clients, providing a more sustainable lifestyle for themselves and their children. He also expressed the importance of having long-term responsibility for his local team and considering them in the choices that he makes, such as relocation.”

Noir Tribe’s work is rooted in this growing movement of

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Macrame Collection. Photographer: Travys Owen. Art Director & Stylist: Gabrielle Kannemeyer. Model: Daniel Phahlamohlake.

“There is a ‘new understanding’ that the seemingly high quality of fast fashion is seducing customers and when the actual quality quickly deteriorates, they just go out and buy another one.”

Previous Page: Macrame Collection.

Photographer: Travys Owen.

Art Director & Stylist: Gabrielle Kannemeyer.

Model: Daniel Phahlamohlake.

Left: Photographer: Anika Molnár.

Model: London Knight at Fusion Models Styling: Nicole Danielle.

Hair and Make-up: Jacqueline D’Nielle.

Assistant: Clive Myburgh. © Georgette Magazine.

communal and environmental consciousness, with their films propagating “a harmony of products that cause the least damage to the planet as possible whilst still giving the consumer satisfaction.” Moelter and Carrillo hope that their contributions can “initiate conversations about ethical fashion by exploring ecological benefits and a variety of ways to implement them, such as reducing the water footprint and using natural dyes and organic fibres, and introducing processes to eliminate textile waste like recycling, upcycling, closing the loop, zero waste and cradle to cradle.”

Compared to the “dog-eat-dog fashion industry in New York”, what the filmmakers found through their extensive interviews was: “the importance of a collective. Mdingi recently told us: ‘We, as a label, have now reached a stage where it goes far beyond focusing on our in-house production but we are eager to find out the background of the raw materials that are being sourced and the manufacturing history. Being a part of this larger infrastructure has made that possible.’”

Moelter also expands upon the inspiration behind the project: not only do Noir Tribe demonstrate a sense of group morals, but a conscious move away from the westernised idea of disposable garments. “In Henning’s experience, there is a ‘new understanding’ that the seemingly high quality of fast fashion is seducing customers and when the actual material quickly deteriorates, they just go out and buy another one.

And in turn, Mdingi emphasises how buying local supports the economy and empowers the arts.”

The EFI’s far-reaching network stretches to Haiti, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali, Kenya, Ethiopia, the West Bank and Cambodia, which demonstrates a shift in consumer trends away from established centres, as more and more people

are integrating sustainable practices into their daily lives.

Using a monitoring tool called RISE (Respect, Invest, Sustain, Empower), the impact of producing fashion is fully traced by the supply chain. The tool communicates the added value brought about by artisanal production. The information is furthered by RISEMAP, an online platform which showcases the complexity of a product’s journey through photos and videos. Any garment that has the RISE label has a QR code that guides the reader to data and stories, and charts the item from inception to its final production.

The outcomes are ultimately manifested through the mentoring and guidance of the African Designer Programme in which creatives are given the opportunity to showcase their collections at top fashion weeks. But whether this necessarily translates into a global boost to the designer’s career, or just a one-off, needs to be more closely tracked. Kuiters (from the AKJP) says that their participation in the Generation Africa show at Pitti Uomo 2016 in Florence, an opportunity offered through the EFI, had a direct impact on their output as they were forced to produce a collection in a limited amount of time. Though a much-needed morale boost, breaking into the European market proved more difficult due to more known fashion houses and brands taking precedence.

The AKJP Collective tends to outsource everything to near-by craftsmen, rather than make products in-house at the studio, encouraging participants to move forward together rather than as individuals. Funding in South Africa is distributed through umbrella groups, so financially it makes sense. This is in stark contrast to the über-competitive fashion industry in the previously mentioned fast-paced and competitive capitals of New York, Milan and Paris, where

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Macrame Collection. Photographer: Travys Owen. Art Director & Stylist: Gabrielle Kannemeyer. Model: Daniel Phahlamohlake.

there is a much more cut-throat environment. This landscape of rivalry often means that a lot of emphasis is placed on, and money is pushed towards, marketing budgets and multinational advertising campaigns, rather than used to invest in higher quality fabrics and production, helping social causes at a grassroots level and paying a fair living wage.

Mdingi also shares this perspective, noting that the less established infrastructure of support in South Africa means that designers need to assist one another as a matter of necessity. Their situation is due to not just politics but a lack of textiles, skilled labourers and machinery. This makes it difficult to experiment and use different techniques. Having a local customer helps empower smaller businesses that produce the raw materials needed to thrive and flourish.

Though new technology has enabled young visionaries to operate internationally, it hasn’t necessarily translated to the manufacturing level. Again, this is something that needs to be and is being addressed through the efforts of the EFI. Kuiters says: “Luxury fashion is a very new concept in Africa,” and ultimately it is incredibly difficult to compete with cities that have stronger economies and distribution channels.

Added to that is the matter of producing clothes that can sell both domestically and internationally. Cape Town doesn’t really have a winter like cities in the northern hemisphere, so a delicate balance is required to produce cold-weather garments that are appropriate for global export.

MERGE ZA, a travelling showroom, presented the ideas of Mdingi as well as four other South African designers – Rich Mnisi, SELFI, Wanda Lephoto and Young & Lazy to London Fashion Week in September 2016, bringing South African fashion design and concepts to a much wider audience.

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Increasingly, brands will have to look outwards for promotion on the international stage – and this goes beyond merely the support of famous faces like Michelle Obama (who wore Nigerian designer Maki Oh on her Africa tour in 2013).

South Africa is the main shopping destination for subSaharan nations, and larger cities such as Cape Town have what you’d expect on a typical high street. This means that there is no real retail outlet for many of these burgeoning studios, which makes it difficult for consumers to support local practitioners as they don’t know where to buy the garments. However, Mdingi argues optimistically: “We have the power to do anything and everything that we want; it’s important for us to realise that we are living in a globalised world. It’s up to us to use our networks in the best possible way to create these opportunities.”

The wider influence of the fashion industry – model agencies, stylists, make-up artists, the media, events and private boutiques – is increasingly being fostered in Africa.

Elle South Africa magazine’s Rising Star competition (in which Mdingi was a 2013 finalist) means that the immediate press is identifying and promoting this area of growth.

Integral to such development must be a recognition of the impact on the communities, promoted by tools such as Ethical Fashion Initiative’s RISE, and with nine of the world’s 20 fastest-growing economies being African, it is important that consumers and designers do not lose track of the significance of safe working conditions, a fair living wage, and the importance of understanding the source of the raw materials they use in manufacturing. As Noir Tribe dares its viewers: “Let’s prove that ethical fashion isn’t a cause to donate to, but is full of stylish brands worth investing in.”

Right: Macrame Collection.

Photographer: Travys Owen.

Art Director & Stylist: Gabrielle Kannemeyer.

Model: Daniel Phahlamohlake.

Words Niamh Coghlan

ethicalfashioninitiative.org

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art

Vibrant Equilibrium Laura Allard-Fleischl

New Zealand-born Laura Allard-Fleischl (b. 1990) currently lives in London, where she works as a digital freelancer whilst shooting film for publications including i-D, Hunger, Wonderland, Elle, Vice and Badlands777, as well as a number of brands locally and internationally. Images from both the Seaside Siren and Between Planets series combine elements of fashion and fine art photography, striking up an intriguing balance between organic forms. The models are interspersed within a number of textural geographies that provide cathartic and visually arresting juxtapositions. Sunlit cliffs become rough backdrops that further accentuate elements of bold, earthy styling, whilst the deep warmth of grassy moors emphasises crisp blue skylines and fabrics. The sequences demonstrate awareness of tonal relief, evoking an undeniable elegance in the youthful figures whilst utilising unexpected angles to create a contemporary edge. www.allard-fleischl.com.

Photographer: Laura Allard-Fleischl.

Stylist: Alice Burnfield.

Hair and Makeup: Alice Oliver.

Model: Emma Laird @ Models 1 for Wonderland.

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Photographer: Laura Allard-Fleischl. Stylist: Immy Wilson. Model: Renee Wilkins Foster @ Clyne for Badlands777.

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Photographer: Laura Allard-Fleischl. Stylist: Immy Wilson. Model: Renee Wilkins Foster @ Clyne for Badlands777.

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Photographer: Laura Allard-Fleischl. Stylist: Alice Burnfield. Hair and Makeup: Alice Oliver. Model: Emma Laird @ Models 1 for Wonderland.

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Photographer: Laura Allard-Fleischl. Stylist: Immy Wilson. Model: Renee Wilkins Foster @ Clyne for Badlands777.

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Photographer: Laura Allard-Fleischl. Stylist: Alice Burnfield. Hair and Makeup: Alice Oliver. Model: Emma Laird @ Models 1 for Wonderland.

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Photographer: Laura Allard-Fleischl. Stylist: Alice Burnfield. Hair and Makeup: Alice Oliver. Model: Emma Laird @ Models 1 for Wonderland.

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Photographer: Laura Allard-Fleischl. Stylist: Immy Wilson. Model: Renee Wilkins Foster @ Clyne for Badlands777.

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Photographer: Laura Allard-Fleischl. Stylist: Alice Burnfield. Hair and Makeup: Alice Oliver. Model: Emma Laird @ Models 1 for Wonderland.

art

Modern Perceptions Girl on Girl CHARLOTTE JANSEN’S ANTHOLOGY OF WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS INVESTIGATES THE VERY NOTION OF PORTRAITURE AND ASSUMED PERCEPTIONS IN THE 21st CENTURY.

“Everything that women do is eventually fetishised in some in depth at the diverse positions of women all over the world way because we are still living in a patriarchy,” explains through documentation by, for and in defence of the gender.

British Sri Lankan author Charlotte Jansen: “The media of the Over three years, Jansen interviewed 40 practitioners from moment is no different in how it deals with image-making – 17 different countries; she had collected people’s names the fact that women are now photographing each other more through her work as a writer, editor and curator for a decade. than ever is being sensationalised, and therefore understood Whittling the list down was a difficult task, and whilst some might think that there is some kind of cohesion to be found as something vain, or commercial and of fleeting interest.”

In recent years there have been successful protests against between the selected contributors, either through thematic the way that the media represents the female form. In content or political sentiment, this is far from the truth.

As she affirms: “The contributors are not all feminists and 2015 there was the famous petition against Protein World’s advert “Are You Beach Body Ready?” featuring a bikini-clad, they don’t all talk about the concept of femininity. The tanned and toned model pasted across the walls of the message we usually get from the media is that this is the London underground, which led to mayor Sadiq Khan’s only thing that women artists want to talk about. I wanted banning of body-shaming on the tube, and Page Three is to show that that’s not the case at all, and that many long gone. Still, images of women for public consumption women are frustrated by that interpretation. What connects predominantly present the demure and petite or the polished them is that they choose to document women – it is the and sexualised, with the appearance of the face and body one simple thing they have in common. The book is an inevitably receiving more attention than the intelligence, attempt to see what the outcome of the link is, how it might affect us and how we perceive the female figure in real life.” creativity or professional achievements of the individual.

These forms of imagery conform to the popular definition Whilst political upheaval is shifting social strata in dramatic of the “male gaze”, which has been held responsible for and unprecedented ways, this isn’t necessarily the reason objectification for centuries. Where this type of voyeurism why the text was put together. Girl on Girl is not an agenda to has become synonymous with exploitation, the “female give voices to underrepresented women, nor is it a text which gaze”, meanwhile, might conjure ideas of celebration or exists to demonstrate a specific ideal. It is a manifesto for the empowerment – yet these themselves are more clichés which technological age – a vital example of self-reflection. Where an increasing number of people are taking and uploading can diminish the complexities of what it is to be a woman.

Rather than fight the male gaze with a series of overblown, pictures of themselves to an ever-expanding universe of data, stereotypically addressed images, Jansen’s new book Girl on and the camera has become a readily accessible medium, a Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze looks widespread sense of anxiety is emerging, one which is filled

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Juno Calypso, Reconstituted Meat Slices, 2013. Courtesy of the artist.

“Rather than fight the male gaze with a series of overblown, stereotypically addressed images, Jansen’s book looks in depth at the diverse positions of women all over the world through documentation by, for and in defence of the gender.”

Previous Page: Isabelle Wenzel, Red, Yellow, Blue, 2015.

Detail. Courtesy of the artist.

Left: Isabelle Wenzel, Strips 6.1.1, 2015.

Detail. Courtesy of the artist.

haunting stills from the rooms of a Pennsylvania Love Hotel. with new and complex forms of judgement and speculation.

Calypso, a 27-year-old London-based artist, has been So why put together a text like this, and why now? Jansen explains: “I got into a fight on Twitter about feminist selfies inhabiting an alter-ego named Joyce since 2011; in 2015 and how they are used online, and I realised I had a lot of she took Joyce on a honeymoon to the USA, explaining prejudice about the images women make of themselves and that “my first thought was that I’d be out of my mind to go others. It made me want to investigate the social effects in a all that way to take some pictures, but after failing to find more meaningful way.” The idea grew into a larger venture, anything similar in Europe I knew I’d be even crazier not to one which sought to question the very notion of perception go.” Prepared for a solid week of 24-hour shooting amidst and provide an antithesis for the voyeur – instead offering a lurid props such as a pink heart-shaped bath and a curved wall of infinity mirrors, Calypso packed a suitcase of wigs, celebration of the contemporary creative practitioner.

The volume as a whole is not to be taken as a guidebook, or body paint and wedding lingerie and told the hotel she an argument for the responsibilities that practitioners have was a travel writer. She adds that “eager for a good review, towards their artwork. “I think women artists should have the they handed me keys to every room in the resort. I exploited freedom to express whatever they want to and not have to them all, and so we find a character, or an array of imaginary explain it – just as men have been able to do,” states Jansen, figures, in solitary moments of preparation and anticipation.”

The resulting series, The Honeymoon, is humorous yet who also negates any sense of collective motive or political agenda to address certain topics. The works are not thickly strikingly accurate in communicating emotions around layered with political intent, even if the artists might have female sexuality. Joyce finds moments of fulfilment in these kinds of intentions on a personal level. When asked performing, appreciating and investigating her own figure; about the sense of responsibility artists might have to tackle elsewhere she appears crest-fallen in space purpose-built for a commercialisation of romance; and at other times she current issues, Jansen offers: “Not any more than we all do.”

This dynamic contribution from publisher Laurence King is seemingly exhausted by the expectations of her chosen should be seen as an experiment – one which takes the reader environment. The themes exist as a rich tapestry, much like on a journey through visual and mental stimulation. The the experiences of women as a population: “The Honeymoon diverse and beautifully presented images range dramatically, is about so many things: fantasy, fulfillment, loneliness, love from Tonje Bøe Birkeland’s crisply detailed shots across and the social expectations that women are subjected to.”

The series has been likened to that of Cindy Sherman: Greenland, Mongolia, Bhutan and the mountains of Norway to Iiu Susiraja’s comedic and satirical self-portraits in which a “Women dressing up and taking pictures of themselves is a teacup is balanced on one breast, and from Isabelle Wenzel’s historical, global practice [so] why is there only room for one documented performances, which reduce the clothed body artist to be doing this?” Indeed, several of the contributors to a colourful sculpture, to Juno Calypso’s sexualised yet use their body as the material of their practice; however,

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Phebe Schmidt, Hermetically Sealed, 2013. Courtesy of the artist.

like a painter using oils to create a portrait, they are not the subject. Where Calypso is her own medium, and Joyce forms the content of the collection, German practitioner Isabelle Wenzel works with her own figure because she “was stressed by the idea of the photographer as someone who goes out and explores the world. I didn’t want to explore the world.”

Although it may not often be spoken about as such, photography is a social practice – involving casting models, corresponding, and shooting together for hours – and there is also the model’s own expectation to take into account. This social interruption, Wenzel notes, had become disruptive to her career and so in 2011 the artist decided to work entirely by herself, liberating her to capture contorted bodies in strange settings, as the discomfort is all her own. As Jansen affirms: “She simply uses herself because it allows her the most control over the image and the most freedom, at the same time.” The pieces are entirely about physicality, rather than the individual, supported by the fact that a face is never presented. “I’m not interested in feminism,” Wenzel states.

As previously mentioned, this is a common statement amongst those involved in Girl on Girl, and in fact the catalyst for the whole publication lies in avoiding the charged word, even though it appears printed across a pair of powder-pink cotton knickers. The offending item appears in an image taken by Israeli-born, US-based Mayan Toledano, and the wearer is a topless young woman, who lies face down on her marshmallow-pink bedsheets, a flawless bare back dappled with glittery rainbows, butterflies and shooting stars.

Jansen admits that this image initially “made me angry” yet through her anger came the recognition that she, like many of us, were subjected to a – very quickly assumed – negative

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response. As we are so used to looking at images of the Right: Isabelle Wenzel, Field Studies 1, 2014. female form which are enployed to sell products, brands Detail.

Courtesy of the artist. and lifestyles, and are constructed to cause anxiety and envy, our understanding of how to take a feminist portrait is confused and deeply contentious: is the gender specificity of the image created in its conception or the way it is received?

As Toledano’s saccharine shots of 21st century teens – spurred by contemporary girl-power and accessorised with scrunchies and lollipops – prove, the feminine can indeed be feminist. The practitioner explains that her images are in fact a reaction against her experience of fashion school, where she was expected to reject “girly playfulness in order to be taken seriously” – as if “girly” is the antithesis of powerful, determined or strong. Toledano produces images for the clothing brand Me and You, and for 45,000 followers on Instagram, breaking free from what femininity is perceived to be – “the one-tone female that is usually represented in mass media” – instead allowing women to “love themselves, to be sexual, hormonal, vulnerable. Any form of exposure is empowering as long as the creator considers it to be.”

After prompting the project three years earlier, Toledano has made it into the book, with Jansen explaining: “she came Words to see the knickers as the beginning of an imperfect but very Chloe Hodge important process of emancipation.” This text, too, is the beginning of a movement to address the bias toward male artists, writers, filmmakers, and to further the gender balance Girl on Girl: Art and of the names on the bookends. As Jansen notes, whilst Photography in the Age there may in fact be little difference between how genders of the Female Gaze. photograph each other, women “have the right to self- Published by Laurence King. objectify and to exploit without critique, just as men have been allowed to do since the earliest forms of expression.” www.laurenceking.com

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art

Formal Oppositions Hideaki Hamada

Whilst Hyogo-born Hideaki Hamada’s (b. 1977) has an expansive practice encompassing portraiture, lifestyle, travel and documentary, an attention to human nature creates stylistic cohesion across all genres. Building up an intimate relationship between individuals and their surroundings, Hamada creates a softly lit landscape – a conceptual playground for its inhabitants. Going Against The Grain is the best example of this, depicting four uniformed figures who haunt open fields and concrete staircases in dynamic anonymity and seeming unison broken only by one outlier who walks in a different direction or faces another way.

Commenting on globalisation and conformity, this poignant series is both delicate and revolutionary. As well as exhibiting in both Asia and Europe, the Osaka-based photographer has been published in Kinfolk, Frame and The Big Issue Taiwan, amongst others. Hamada was also named Official Photographer at the 2013 Setouchi Triennale. www.hideakihamada.com.

Hideaki Hamada, Going Against The Grain, 2014.

Photo essay for Kinfolk magazine.

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Hideaki Hamada, Going Against The Grain, 2014. Photo essay for Kinfolk magazine.

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Hideaki Hamada, Going Against The Grain, 2014. Photo essay for Kinfolk magazine.

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Hideaki Hamada, Going Against The Grain, 2014. Photo essay for Kinfolk magazine.

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Hideaki Hamada, Going Against The Grain, 2014. Photo essay for Kinfolk magazine.

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Hideaki Hamada, Going Against The Grain, 2014. Photo essay for Kinfolk magazine.

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Hideaki Hamada, Going Against The Grain, 2014. Photo essay for Kinfolk magazine.

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Hideaki Hamada, Going Against The Grain, 2014. Photo essay for Kinfolk magazine.

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art

Urban Symmetry Stuart Allen

Although not schooled in photography or art, Stuart Allen (b. 1960) is driven by a passion to travel the world, taking a camera to document the streets of cities, offering the viewer an insight into unseen urban environments. The featured images date from 2014 to 2016 across a myriad of locations including San Antonio, Denver, Indianapolis, Panama, Leeds and Bristol, charting the primary coloured windows and iron frames of anonymous buildings in undetermined metropolises. The series holds a sense of cohesion – following a steady flow of geometric balance and intense shades of red, blue and yellow, Allen ties different cities together as a universal sequence of snapshots. Devoid of a perceivable identity, each pop-coloured composition gives an impression of a building, rather than a whole idea. In this way, the Bradford-based photographer unites countries across time and space to present a keyhole vision of globalisation and symmetrical development. www.stu-artphoto.com.

Stuart Allen, San Antonio, 2016.

From the series Texas Colours. Detail.

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Stuart Allen, Denver, 2016.

From the series Colorado Windows. Detail.

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Stuart Allen, Station 7, Indianapolis, 2016.

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Stuart Allen, Blue and Grey, Leeds, UK, 2014.

Detail.

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Stuart Allen, Blue with red stripe, Leeds, UK, 2014.

Detail.

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Stuart Allen, Broomfield, 2016.

From the series Colorado Windows.

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Stuart Allen, Boulder, 2016.

From the series Colorado Windows.

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Stuart Allen, Red Frame, Leeds, UK, 2014.

Detail.

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Stuart Allen, Six Windows, Panama, 2014.

Detail.

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art

Visionary Frameworks Innovative Architecture THREE TOP ARCHITECTURAL FIRMS – BIG, MVRDV AND HERZOG & DE MEURON – ARE RECONFIGURING OUR APPROACHES TO URBAN LIFE AND SUSTAINABILITY.

“At its best, architecture expresses the longing of the inhabitants it accommodates,” Bjarke Ingels of BIG postulates, adding that “it is the art and science of designing and building the framework for the life we want to live.” For Jacob Van Rijs, co-founder of MVRDV, “the real test is the test of time,” which is why “sustainability needs to come into the conversation” if buildings are to withstand the future. Herzog & de Meuron’s work has included high-profile regeneration projects, including converting the old Bankside power plant in London into the now-iconic Tate Modern. These three firms are driving innovation through vastly different approaches, yet their vision of how the urban landscape can evolve is fuelled by a shared passion to rethink the built environment in terms of a more ecologically friendly ultimate outcome.

BIG aims to expand the role of construction in order to “tackle the important issues we face today.” The group have created numerous buildings that capture the essence of this approach, demonstrating the ways that economic living and hedonism can successfully coexist, as well as how caring for the environment enhances rather than reduces people’s enjoyment of metropolitan life. The ability to continually evolve is situated at the heart of the firm’s work: “As life evolves,” Ingels explains, “so should our cities and buildings.

It is our responsibility to make sure we change with the city.”

The urban environment is not a separate entity from the population that resides in it but, on the contrary, tightly intertwined with it. Highlighting the role of human agency and how it feeds into building design is essential in BIG’s “general philosophy of inclusion”: designing projects that

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not only invite people in but actually necessitate their participation from the get-go projects that can only achieve their final form thanks to that very participation.

The firm’s Superkilen, an urban landscape park situated in “the most ethnically diverse neighbourhood in Denmark” was developed by inviting citizens to put forward objects they felt were representative of their home countries, thereby creating “a vehicle with a sense of ownership and participation”, a project that loudly and clearly presented a counter-argument to the “petrified image of Denmark as a homogenous culture.” Their 2016 Serpentine Pavilion is akin to an architectural version of the Möbius strip, both 2D and 3D, inside and outside. Ingels explains: “The unzipping of the wall turns the line into a surface, transforming the wall into a space” creating a “complex three-dimensional environment that can be explored and experienced in a variety of ways.”

The Pavilion shows how a simple idea can bloom into an incredible feat of complexity, a work that is at the same time playful, philosophical and stylish. Simultaneously, the commission exemplifies the human element – buildings are there to be interactive and people should be considered.

Human participation is only one side of the coin: “bringing the public realm into the building” by way of maximising opportunities for social interaction is the other side. BIG’s award-winning residential project 8 House is another manifestation of the blurring of the line between outside and inside. In the case of 8 House, the firm wanted a large urban habitat of 475 dwellings to incorporate “the typology of the townhouse with the small garden and all the social interaction

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Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein, Germany. © Vitra, 2017.

“We have to adapt the built environment to future needs and adopt models for the development of sustainable cities by adding layers of interpretation in order to evaluate each other and create a better future.”

Previous Page: Serpentine Pavilion, London, UK, 2016.

Client: Serpentine Galleries.

Architect: BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group.

Photo: Iwan Baan.

Left: Vm Houses, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2005.

Client: Høpfner A/s and Dansk Olie Kompagni A/s.

Architect: BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group.

Photo: Peter Boel.

that happens when people have a little piece of their private the best use of renewable energy in a world of dwindling life happening in the semi-open.” The outside world seeps resources and booming population. It also ensures a more into the private home, whilst domestic life spills out into creative use of the existing landscape to control the everthe neighborhood. This blurring of boundaries effectively expanding tendencies of a city, using “the remains for urban creates a benign no-man’s-land full of opportunity, allowing development, abandoned railways and overpasses can be for moments of “spontaneous interaction” – so limited in transformed into green parks, as with the High Line in New contemporary urban living – to keep occurring, creating a York and our soon-to-be-realised Skygarden in Seoul.”

Sustainability is at the crux of MVRDV’s practice, and meant friendlier, relaxed social situation.

Turning to MVRDV, whose “research-led, collaborative and that their vision bloomed “into something remarkable” when multi-disciplinary working methodology,” according to co- they approached one of these remains, Frøsilo: two disused founder Van Rijs, pulls together different strands of expertise 42m grain silos in Copenhagen, transformed into “bold to “create effective design solutions.” Their ground-breaking and highly visible residences” on the Brygge islands. The Dutch Pavilion at the 2000 World Expo encapsulated the fundamental idea of repurposing extant industrial relics, of firm’s vision of how to “critically think about how we use lack “adopting what already exists to make it more efficient”, has of space in the future”, by embracing “vertical growth instead been a driving force since the founding of the firm in 1993.

Herzog & de Meuron’s VitraHaus fuses two recurring of continuously trying to reclaim land lost due to rising sea levels.” The company’s ethos is driven by the concept themes throughout the image of the archetypal house of architecture as a mechanism through which to replicate and stacked volumes, creating a new arrangement that natural systems, so in a sense it’s not surprising that MVRDV appears simultaneously chaotic and stylish. It shares the managed to stack “an oak forest, ersatz concrete, sand to interpenetration of inside and outside so pronounced in filter water and windmills on the roof to generate enough BIG’s 8 House and MVRDV’s Frøsilo silos. As the flagship energy and power for the entire structure.” In the Pavilion, we store of the Vitra Home Collection, VitraHaus encapsulates see a microcosm of responsible design, cleverly realised in the company’s understanding of the home as an everchanging collection, always responding to the dwellers’ lives. a single structure that makes the most of the vertical space.

Undoubtedly, innovation is crucial when it comes to For Van Rijs, it isn’t solely about our responsibility to the planet and future generations but equally about our own architecture, both as a factor propelling the discipline quality of life as urban dwellers: “Cities that are greener forward and as an indispensible element of each individual encourage more social interaction between users,” he asserts, project. All three firms highlighted here are, each in their which in turn “can make a sprawling urban area feel more own way, indisputable pioneers, not only in their ethos and intimate by creating micro-community relations within urban overall approach but also in the projects they undertake.

Ingels understands progression as an awareness of the centres.” A green approach necessitates an understanding of

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Gemini Residences Frøsilo, Islands Brygge, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2001-2005. Client: NCC, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Architect: MVRDV, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Co-Architect: Jensen + Jørgensen + Wohlfeldt Arkitekter A/S, Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo: Rob ‘t Hart.

fact that “yesterday’s answers might be the answers to a more humanistic model for sports combined with culturaldifferent question than the one that is being asked today”, leisure functions”; Echoing the successful High Line in New which necessitates a constant “reframing of the question” at York, the firm’s project in Seoul will turn a 938m-long disused the heart of each endeavour. For BIG, this translates into an overpass into a public garden. Each project they undertake is enthusiasm to immerse themselves into the specifics of the unique but each is propelled by the same ethos of user- and project at hand: they examine an exhaustive list of parameters, context-specific work, which takes into account that, as Van including “the city, the landscape, the climate, the immediate Rijs explains, “good buildings will last longer than people, environment”, using their observations and analysis to and future generations should be able to use them.”

Herzog & de Meuron’s projects for 2017 include Tai Kwun, guide themselves towards the most fitting solution. Their global reach means BIG have a deep appreciation of the fact “a high-profile conservation project” that aims to “revitalise that “each culture or country does things differently”, and the historic Central Police Station Compound in the centre of Hong Kong”. The project weaves together past and future: therefore they understand that local context is paramount.

For BIG, behavioural change is driven by knowledge, and multiple heritage buildings and open spaces are currently this is evident in their soon-to-be-completed Amager Waste- being restored for “adaptive reuse” whilst two new buildings to-Energy Plant in Copenhagen, which “will release a steam have been added, the façades of which – designed by Herzog ring for every ton of CO2 emitted by the plant”. Making & de Meuron – have been inspired “from the granite walls the turn towards energy efficiency clear and tangible by surrounding the historic landmark.” This tandem approach reconfiguring “environmental sustainability from an abstract of restoring the old for a future use and inspiring the new objective into a feature of the city’s skyline” will remind the from the fabric of a past topography exemplifies the need dweller how their own refuse is being turned into an energy to reuse and recycle, to take a creative approach to a world of dwindling resources by salvaging elements from our past source and how their choices affect their environment.

MVRDV’s think tank, The Why Factory, drives change by and transforming and carrying them forward into the future.

Van Rijs sums up the necessary evolution of architecture developing solutions for a range of identified issues: they’re hoping their vision will be shared by their peers as well as as a discipline of the future: “We have to adapt the built urban planners, and used as a cornerstone on which “to environment to future needs and adopt models for the achieve and work on the ideal city, the city of the future.” development of sustainable cities by adding layers of Specific projects for 2017 are diverse in terms of both interpretation, past and present layers overlapping, in location and use: locally, a project for Museum Boijmans Van order to evaluate each other and create a better future.” BIG, Beuningen, Rotterdam, will see collection stores turned into MVRDV and Herzog & de Meuron are some of the brightest exhibition spaces; further afield, in Shenzhen, China, they’re minds driving this evolution forward, ensuring our cities will constructing the Xili Sport centre, a project exemplifying “a realise our dreams and withstand the test of time.

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Right: 8 House, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2009.

Client: St. Frederikslund Holding.

Architect: BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group.

Photo: Jens Lindhe.

Words Regina Papachlimitzou

www.big.dk www.mvrdv.nl www.herzogdemeuron.com

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art

Redefined Environments Feridun Akgüngör

In Minimal Pure, Turkish digital artist and art director Feridun Akgüngör (b. 1984) combines architectural forms and bright expanses of sky to create dynamic, utopian vignettes. White concrete planes and glass windows invade masses of blue and green, which, devoid of a visible landscape, evoke a detached world where the only signs of life come from a single potted plant or a distant flock of birds. Utilising technology through staged images, the series makes a case for the contemporary artist, and indeed the globalised planet on which we live. Artifice is celebrated for its boundless potential, where the imagination can transform the ordinary into a new projection of the Anthropocene. Taking parts of buildings, Akgüngör deconstructs their original contexts and rebuilds a new landscape through postproductive methods. The result is a visually stimulating set of works that shifts perspective and encourages the viewer to re-interpret urbanity. www.behance.net/elmomaclroy.

Feridun Akgüngör, Wall.

From the series Minimal Pure.

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Feridun Akgüngör, Roof. From the series Minimal Pure.

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Feridun AkgĂźngĂśr, Air Port. From the series Minimal Pure.

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Feridun AkgĂźngĂśr, Vogue. From the series Minimal Pure.

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Feridun AkgĂźngĂśr, Office. From the series Minimal Pure.

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Feridun AkgĂźngĂśr, Home. From the series Minimal Pure.

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Feridun AkgĂźngĂśr, Build. From the series Minimal Pure.

Aesthetica Art Prize A platform for innovation and creativity, the Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition invites audiences to engage with captivating projects from some of today’s leading artists, both established and emerging. From individual narratives to global concerns, the artworks comment on contemporary culture and explore themes such as alienation in the digital age, the intersection between private and public spaces, sensory experiences and the transient nature of life in the 21st century.

As the boundaries between the public and the private begin to merge into blurred depictions of reality, contemporary art is the mechanism that enables us to respond to a renewed understanding of living. The 2017 presentation features the work of 17 shortlisted artists who hail from diverse locations such as Australia, Brazil, Germany, Austria, Canada, the USA and the UK. Utilising a range of media, they work within the categories of Photographic & Digital Art; Painting, Drawing & Mixed Media; Three Dimensional Design & Sculpture and Video, Installation & Performance.

The Prize is delivered in partnership with Hiscox, York St John University, York Museums Trust, Spectrum, Winsor & Newton, Prestel, Hepworth, V&A, Glasgow School of Art, IKON and Royal College of Art. www.aestheticamagazine.com/artprize.

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Julio Bittencourt, Plethora – Tokyo Subway, 2015-2016 www.juliobittencourt.com

Julio Bittencourt was born in Brazil and grew up in both São Paulo and New York. For the past 12 years, his practice has been dedicated to the interpretation of relationships between people and their immediate environment. He is influenced by these disparate roots and through them a sense of unity emerges. Plethora, as a series that spans locations and cultures, depicts global overpopulation, documenting seven countries where this phenomenon is particularly relevant.

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Jasmina Cibic, Tear Down and Rebuild, 2015 www.jasminacibic.org

Jasmina Cibic employs a range of media and theatrical tactics in order to redefine a specific ideological construct, such as art and architecture. Tear Down and Rebuild was shot in the former Palace of the Federation in Belgrade. The script presents four characters – a nation builder, a pragmatist, a conservationist and an artist-architect who become a reflection of figurative deliberation, a rhetoric that endorses demolition and re-design as a process in the creation of new nation-states.

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Webb-Ellis, Parlor Walls, 2016 www.webb-ellis.org

The audio-visual installation, Parlor Walls, takes Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 as a starting point through which to comment on the collective feeling of alienation in the digital age. Made up of documentary, performance and online videos gleaned over two years, Parlor Walls oscillates between the mythological and the everyday. It is an enquiry into abstract concepts such as loneliness, desire, memory and touch, all of which are more prevalent in the 21st century Anthropocene period.

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Alinka Echeverría, Anthem, 2011 www.alinkaecheverria.com

On 9 July 2011, the Republic of South Sudan gained independence, becoming the world’s newest nation. In the weeks leading up to this, Alinka Echeverría photographed the transformation from rebel movement to self-determination. She asked: how do we become a society? In the process, she proactively countered a specific portrayal of a continent, which historically has been depicted as a site of “otherness.” By collaborating with her subjects, she challenges viewers to see the individual.

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Lesley Hilling, El Barrio, 2016 www.lesleyhilling.co.uk

The architectural layering of buildings and cities inspires Lesley Hilling. In the collages, floorboards, driftwood and furniture have been reworked into new forms. The pieces refer to the metropolis and its historic and cultural strata; the worn wood and faded paint evoke other narratives. Eroded lacquer and greying timber remind us that people once used the original objects on a day-to-day basis. They have now been repurposed within a larger network of connections which nevertheless hark back to the past.

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Stephen Johnston, Limes in Jar, 2016 www.stephen-johnston.co.uk

Stephen Johnston’s recent paintings have focused on reinterpreting still life: food slowly decaying in glass jars, burnt bottles and a bowl full of roadkill offer a plethora of emotional responses. These vivid images reveal how the artist sees all still life as an inherent comment on death. The Old Masters also made this social commentary through Vanitas, often setting up luxurious scenes garnished with riches and foods. These materialistic icons were undermined by a sense of fleeting momentariness.

Interested in presenting subject matter in an unfamiliar way, Johnston deconstructs objects from their recognisable connotations and builds new relationships with the meanings they once held.

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Stanza, The Nemesis Machine, 2016 www.stanza.co.uk

Recurring themes throughout Stanza’s career have included surveillance culture and the impossible notion of privacy in the city. As a result of this interest, Stanza has been intrigued by the patterns society leaves behind as well as by real-time networked events which are sourced for their data. The Nemesis Machine monitors the fluctuating information of the world around us, using information from across the internet. This includes observation by means of custom-made sensors, networked cameras and computers. Beautiful maps of data are translated into large-scale installations.

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Dylan Martinez, Untitled, 2016 www.dylanmartinezglass.com

Sight has the greatest effect on our understanding of the world – what we see is crucial to how we comprehend our surroundings on both a physical and emotional level. Dylan Martinez’s curiosity is driven by the fact that he is red-green colour-blind. Having a deficit in the sensation of colour is an alternative way of seeing the world. Inspired by trompe l’oeil, Untitled is realised entirely from hot sculpted glass, depicted as bags of water. The trapped movement of the rising bubbles convinces the eye that sculptures are just as they seem. What is fascinating is that our desires often override our perception of reality and you believe what you think is visible as the truth.

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Jerzy Goliszewski, Golem, 2015 www.jerzygoliszewski.com

Golem is a structure that is like an emblem, incorporating the words “emet” (“truth”) and “met” (“dead”).

In Modern Hebrew, the term is often used pejoratively for “stupid” and “helpless.” Golem relates to Jewish folklore, which tells the story of a figure that grew stronger and with this power he lost the ability to distinguish between friend and foe, or good and bad. Thus, this character started to hurt the people that he was created to protect. The installation is constructed out of 102 white aluminium frames. Each front bar is painted red on the inner surface facing the wall, which creates a halo effect. The colour is unable to exist without being encased in the white metal frame, demonstrating codependency.

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Adam Niklewicz, Rigorous, 2016 www.adamniklewicz.com

Adam Niklewicz’s work has been described as poetic and surreal, as well as humorous. The public is encouraged to believe that reality can be sanitised and made predictable. The artist subverts that illusion, which is a phenomenon that we see now through social media and digital culture. Rigorous encases a pair of boxing gloves within glass jars, offering a multitude of interpretations. The vestibules transform the function of these found items that already have a defined meaning, however, this presentation suggests that the new, static setting could indicate globalised themes such as restriction and displacement, or act as a satirical reading of recognisable objects.

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Emmanuelle Moureaux, I am Here, 2016 www.emmanuellemoureaux.com

Emmanuelle Moureaux’s exploration of colour began in 1995, during her first visit to Tokyo. In response to the experience, she came up with a design concept, “shikiri”, which means “to divide space using colours.” She transforms colour into three-dimensional objects rather than using it as a finishing touch applied onto surfaces. To express “shikiri”, she began the 100 colors installation series, using 100 shades each time. 18,000 repeated cut-outs of figures are viewed, evoking a sense of obscurity. The overflowing effects offer not just a bright installation but also one stratified by feelings of isolation and anonymity, which is prevalent in 21st century life through urban living and omnipresence of the internet.

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Judith Jones, Rendezvous, 2016 www.judithjonesphoto.com

Images from Judith Jones’s Twilight series create a dialogue between the outside and inside, commenting on the contrasts between private and public spaces. Each composition considers exclusion and isolation, fear and uncertainty. The “blue hour” of twilight takes us through the transition between day and night, maintaining an uncanny sense of unease. The border between the two states is intangible, but subtle nuances exist in incandescent glows and shifting colours. Documenting this fragile time, the work presents a filmic space which plays with emotional states such as fear and trust.

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breadedEscalope, Shadowplay, 2015 www.breadedescalope.com

Shadowplay is the result of the artists’ experimentation with a void: through an interaction with darkness the collective discovered that shadows can be manipulated to become an emotionally affecting clock. The object could be an ambient light, but the viewer becomes an essential component in the installation; when they touch the centre of the ring, the lights dim and the work evolves through interaction, becoming a clock. Two shadows are cast as clock hands and through movement attendees can reconstruct the linear dimension of time, even though it can never be controlled.

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Maryam Tafakory, Absent Wound, 2017 www.maryamtafakory.com

In Absent Wound, a “Zoorkhaneh” (“house of strength”) presents the contrast between two opposing ideas. The physical strength of wrestling is brought into proximity with a female protagonist facing her emergent womanhood at the advent of her menstrual cycle. The relationship between the personal, social and textual contradict and negate each other, subverting stereotypes and gender-specific roles.

Maryam Tafakory’s semi-autobiographical videos are a fractured narrative that subtly negotiates fact and fiction, reiterating the impossibility of a critical and objective distance.

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The experience of time is not constant – it flexes to the specific nature of our passage through space.

How the Stars Stand is a study of the standardisation of time across planetary systems, re-calibrating “performative-time” to reflect local mean solar time on Mars – effecting a 2.7 percent lengthening of each “performative-day.” To ascertain the consequences of this, a palindromic cycle is enacted, allowing one’s experience of “time” to drift completely out of sync and then return to synchronicity – taking 37 days / 36 Martian “sols” to complete, which questions our perceptions of the 24 hour clock.

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Adam Basanta, Curtain (white), 2016 www.adambasanta.com

Adam Basanta tests the potential of readymade commercial technologies as instruments of personal or mass communication. Curtain (white) considers the ubiquitous white earbud headphone, an everyday device that creates an interior environment in which one can retreat from the external world. Within this personalised bubble, the headphones function as a visual and evident “do not disturb” sign. The work plays on this notion by producing a three-metre-long “curtain” which sections the space, both visually and sonically, with white noise, asking viewers to question how and what they hear.

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Toby Dye, The Corridor, 2016 www.tobydye.com

The Corridor is a love letter to the work of Stanley Kubrick. Toby Dye wanted to make a film installation which envelopes audiences, who are immersed within a camera zoom that never ends. The piece is viewed from inside a square room in which all four walls are filled with the same never-ending tracking shot, travelling down an identical corridor, but on each wall, we see different characters journeying along their own, never-ending narrative. Their stories bleed into and merge between one another to form a disorientating tale of control, violence and the doomed cycle of power.

Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition: York Art Gallery, 26 May - 10 September 2017. www.aestheticamagazine.com/artprize | www.yorkartgallery.org.uk

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art

Sculptural Intersection Sally / Emily

Jakarta-based photography duo Sally / Emily comprises sisters Sally Ann (b. 1994) and Emily May Gunawan (b. 1991). They have travelled worldwide for commercial and editorial shoots and have become well-known for a consistently feminine and colourful aesthetic. Featured in the following pages are images from the White Tokyo series, combining the clean, minimalist lines of Japanese architecture with contemporary styling. Each composition demonstrates a unique vision, taking inspiration from geometric shapes and modernism. Patterns, textures and intersecting structures are prevalent – each bright, spatially stimulating image is reflective of the 21st century metropolis whilst providing a visual glimpse of Japanese culture. The pair’s work has been featured in Grazia Indonesia, Marie Claire Indonesia: Young Rising Stars and NYLON, and their credits include Adidas and Yamaha. www.sallyemily.com.

Photographer: Sally Ann & Emily May. Stylist: Kosei Matsuda.

Styling Assistant: Taira Minami.

Makeup: Yuka Hirata.

Makeup Assistant: Azu. Hair Stylist: Miki Sayuda.

Model: Saki @Image.

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Photographer: Sally Ann & Emily May. Stylist: Kosei Matsuda. Styling Assistant: Taira Minami. Makeup: Yuka Hirata. Makeup Assistant: Azu. Hair Stylist: Miki Sayuda. Model: Saki @Image.

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Photographer: Sally Ann & Emily May. Stylist: Kosei Matsuda. Styling Assistant: Taira Minami. Makeup: Yuka Hirata. Makeup Assistant: Azu. Hair Stylist: Miki Sayuda. Model: Saki @Image.

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Photographer: Sally Ann & Emily May. Stylist: Kosei Matsuda. Styling Assistant: Taira Minami. Makeup: Yuka Hirata. Makeup Assistant: Azu. Hair Stylist: Miki Sayuda. Model: Saki @Image.

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Photographer: Sally Ann & Emily May. Stylist: Kosei Matsuda. Styling Assistant: Taira Minami. Makeup: Yuka Hirata. Makeup Assistant: Azu. Hair Stylist: Miki Sayuda. Model: Saki @Image.

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Photographer: Sally Ann & Emily May. Stylist: Kosei Matsuda. Styling Assistant: Taira Minami. Makeup: Yuka Hirata. Makeup Assistant: Azu. Hair Stylist: Miki Sayuda. Model: Saki @Image.

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1. Robert Heinecken, Two Women - T, 1987. © The Robert Heinecken Trust. Courtesy of Cherry and Martin, LA. 2. Peter Campus, Kiva, 1971. Closed-circuit video installation.

3. Lewis Baltz, Piazza Pugliese, from Generic Night Cities, 1992. Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

exhibition reviews

Double Take SKARSTEDT GALLERY, LONDON 7 MARCH - 22 APRIL

Peter Campus: Video Ergo Sum JEU DE PAUME, PARIS 14 FEBRUARY - 28 MAY

Lewis Baltz FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE, MADRID 9 FEBRUARY - 4 JUNE

Bringing together works from the 1960s to the present day, Double Take explores the appropriation of commercial imagery, questioning the media’s role in constructing identities through an age of mechanical reproduction. Richard Prince, the world’s foremost copyright-denier, takes a starring role with Cowboys and Cigarettes.

These, along with Barbara Kruger’s feminist photograph-text composites, are interspersed with a new wave of artists, such as Roe Ethridge, Anne Collier and Hank Willis Thomas, whose task is made more problematic by the fact that in the age of social media, we’re all appropriating now.

Although Double Take is not chronological, there are noticeable distinctions between generations of practitioners. Whilst the moiré pattern of Richard Prince’s Four Women with Hats celebrates its status as a constant reproduction and questions its own legitimacy as a work of art, younger generations explore more complex issues concerning creative expression, commerce and our expectations of both. Steven Shearer’s Guys, a massive jumble of imagery, is a refreshing but disorientating break from an exhibition (and a medium) that is usually dominated by the female form, and Willis Thomas’s I depend on me, showing a bejewelled hand dipping between a woman’s legs, takes its title from its source material and also from a lyric of Destiny’s Child’s Independent Woman, illustrating the increasingly muddled relationship between advertising, high art, pornography, consumerism and popular culture. In creating these juxtapositions, Double Take adeptly illustrates today’s complicated media relations.

Video Ergo Sum retraces Peter Campus’s career Madrid’s Fundación Mapfre proposes a complete from his early days as a video artist to a more retrospective of American photographer Lewis recent movement into films and photographs. Baltz (1945-2014). As one of the 10 participants Whilst the initial pieces did indeed make use of in the famous New Topographics exhibition at interactive procedures, the entirety of his oeuvre George Eastman House in 1975, Baltz was a is made for viewing by both adults and children. pioneer of conceptual photography. If there was Kiva (1971), for example, crosses video art with one idea that defined his entire career, it was the Alexander Calder’s concept of the mobile: the reconsideration of landscape as an artistic subject. sculpture dangles two freely moving mirrors in Stripped of any romantic traces, he presented front of a camera placed on top of a screen which nature as a man-made product, which has been makes the gallery-goer appear and disappear at modelled on the basis of economic interests. random. Optical Sockets (1972-1973) projects Through the series of images he dedicated to the images from four cameras onto the same different areas of his native United States – from spot creating a cubist representation of the The Prototype Works (1967-1976) to Candlestick viewer. In Interface (1972), the audience see Point (1987-1989) – Baltz gave an objective view themselves reflected twice on a transparent of urban development and consumer society. panel, once in black and white and once in Sharpness was essential. Be it residential areas colour. Anamnesis (1973) toys entertainingly under construction or newly built factories, the with time, giving viewers a double display of their pieces are always as clear as facts. Despite the images. The viewer is flanked by the person that intended objectivity, many of the photographs they were a few seconds ago: the temporal gap arouse a sense of melancholy found in abandoned is closed only if the onlooker stays entirely still. and impersonal areas of cities and suburbs.

The most stirring video by far takes Andy The last creative period saw the eruption of Warhol’s concept of the filmed portrait to new media. Though still focusing on urbanism murkier depths. Head of a Man with Death on His as a reflection of power, Baltz became aware Mind (1977-1978) achieves a disturbing level of of the importance of spectacle in late-modern iconicity thanks to the actor’s haunting expression societies. Perhaps most characteristic of these new and the use of textured dark, earthy, shading. interests are the three enormous and unsettling Campus’s recent “videographies” are “time- mural pieces (two of them present at Fundación pictures” of his native Long Island. Aspects of the Mapfre), where a trademark objectivity gives way landscape are transformed into semi-abstract to a mash of images that perfectly exemplify the digital tableaux. A Wave (2009) becomes a chaos of mass-media society. Through these and maze of pointillist cubes, whilst Barn at North other late pieces, a prestigious career continued to Fork (2010) is a pixel-pastel video-painting. challenge the limits that separate art from politics.

Ruby Beesley

Erik Martiny

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Rubén Cervantes Garrido

4. Mark Wallinger, Sleeper, 2004. Film still. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

5. Liz Deschenes, Gallery 4.1.1, 2015. Pigment prints on acrylic. 6. Rodney Graham,Paddler, Mouth of the Seymour, 2012-13. © Rodney Graham. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Mark Wallinger

Serialities

FRUITMARKET GALLERY, DUNDEE CONTEMPORARY ARTS 4 MARCH - 4 JUNE

HAUSER & WIRTH, NEW YORK 15 FEBRUARY - 8 APRIL

It’s appropriate that an exhibition so concerned with identity and reflection should be split across two venues, like the base pair in the double helix of of DNA. The core of these two simultaneous Mark Wallinger exhibitions is a series of human-size id Paintings (2016), made using parts of the artist’s body in simultaneous, symmetrical movement.

Sensual and playful, the works are an artist’s version of the childhood game “snow angels”, an ode to the act of imprint. They also recall experiments like Rorschach Tests, mysterious blots that threaten or promise to reveal intimate truths about us. At each gallery, the id Paintings are shown alongside a selection of other works, such as Ego (2016) at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, which is a picture-sharing version of Michelangelo’s God and Adam, locked in a Neil Diamond moment, “hand touching hand.” In Wallinger’s piece, the two hands are the artist’s own, captured on a smartphone. Adam (2003), is a found poem constructed from an index of the first lines of poems beginning with “I” from Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, combining a kind of archival zeal with a fervent assertion of individual identity.

At Dundee Contemporary Arts, Time and Relative Dimensions in Space (2001) features a mirrored police phone box, reflecting its surroundings and seeming to disappear almost in the moment of its perception. This thoughtfully curated take on contemporary identity is a reminder, like the secret information traces that are locked in our hair for millions of years, that this most playful and self-reflective of artists has been appearing and disappearing before our eyes for years.

Serialities explores repetition, investigating the At first glance, there’s a lot of Rodney Graham in ways in which artists supply linear and non- his work, or a lot of versions of him. The actor, philinear narratives. Central to the show is the work of losopher, painter, filmmaker and photographer is German portrait and documentary photographer a constant presence, appearing in sumptuously August Sander. More than 600 photographs precise stagings in the guise of a painter-decoraform a veritable encyclopaedia of the artist’s tor, a sous chef on a cigarette break, a lighthouse fellow citizens, divided into subsets of sociologi- keeper, a post-war passer-by pausing to read the cal categories. One such division is displayed in newspapers in the window of a boarded-up shop.

Serialities – People Who Came To My Door.

As the playful title of this new exhibition at the The other artists included are too numerous to BALTIC suggests, this is all of course a kaleidobe examined individually, with the likes of Sol scopic sequence of illusion and fabrication, and LeWitt and Liz Deschenes bringing in audiences part of the thrill is its sheer theatricality, coupled from afar. Notably, however, are pieces from Bernd with the dazzling range of artistic and literary and Hilla Becher, which capture the character of references that saturate his art. industrial buildings. The duplicated images are A highlight of the show is the monumental Four not an iteration of form but content – physical Seasons, a sequence of lightboxes, including repetition is built into the small and large- Paddler, Mouth of the Seymour (2012-2013), a scale constructions. The rigorous employment triptych in which the artist stares hauntingly from of pattern is also found in Zoe Leonard’s wall his canoe against a lush autumnal backdrop of installation, Natural Bridge. Regulated by close a sturdy rusted bridge – the edge of the canoe proximity and geometrically equal spacing, 731 just nudged across the third frame. It’s hard not postcards depict a rock formation, varying slightly to read it as a work about excess, endeavour and each time to create a visual meta-narrative. ageing; all tropes of the work that seem to border Overall, Hauser & Wirth’s latest display inves- the autobiographical, confessional or lyric. tigates the effects of recurrence on a number of Similarly, in Actor / Director 1954 (2012-2013), levels, finding common ground between a variety Graham poses in 18th century period costume of practitioners. Highlighting the echoes across in a faux-palatial garden, filming a bicorne hat diverse artworks enables the viewer to develop a on a stone bench, with an expression that’s best sense of direct appreciation – one that recognises summed up as stern and morose. Superbly witty a building or a composition as something more and wry, achingly bittersweet and somehow than just the sum of its parts. In this way, Serialities philosophical, one starts to wonder if the show’s echoes 20th century linguistic and scientific pre- title is a ceci n’est pas un pipe-esque double bind. occupations, rendering meta-structures beautiful Perhaps the work is self-portraiture after all – a through an introspected attention to detail. vision into the creative process of introspection.

Colin Herd

Daniel Potts

Rodney Graham: That’s Not Me BALTIC, GATESHEAD 17 MARCH - 11 JUNE

Colin Herd

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Richard John Seymour, Consumed, 2014.

film

Innovative Cinematography BAFTA 2017 SHORT FILM TOUR

“Richard John Seymour’s sprawling short film documents Chinese industries and the many faces of mass consumption.

Part-documentary, part-fiction, it moves from mines and gaping quarries to dark factories and shipyards.”

Words Beth Webb

BAFTA Shorts 2017 www.bafta.org

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Whereas the 2017 BAFTA ceremony was surprisingly light on political outbursts after Meryl Streep’s rousing speech at the Golden Globes, its selection of nominated short films raised all manner of questions about today’s political, social-economic and racial climate, from the refugee crises to surviving in one of the most dangerous slums in the world.

Home, the winner of Best Short Film was made by director Daniel Mulloy – a filmmaker well versed in conflict having travelled to many areas of migration during his career – to help raise awareness of the refugee crisis and Britain’s dehumanisation of its victims. Starring BAFTA-winner Jack O’Connell and Holliday Grainger, Home reverses the situation and follows a young white British family who have been compelled to flee their home and now live in a warzone.

It’s a tough watch as the atrocities of war come thick and fast – sexual assault, relentless gunfire and appalling conditions.

Mulloy uses his experiences with refugees in Kosovo to construct this bleak alternative reality, where the victims could be friends, neighbours or relatives of the audience.

The same familiarity is felt in Andrea Harkin’s The Party, a bittersweet drama about a group of young men and women holding a secret get-together whilst “The Troubles” have taken over their small town. It’s a sombre example of young people caught in the crossfire of a violent war, and although the play is set in the 1970s, Harkin does well to make the

party seem as if it could be transferred to any time or place.

There’s drinking and flirting, bad jokes and talk of the future.

The politics are left outside, providing a brief pocket of fun for the group before the realities of war catch up with them.

Distancing himself from the familiar entirely, Richard John Seymour’s sprawling, beautifully photographed short film Consumed documents Chinese industries and the many faces of mass consumption. Part-documentary, part-fiction, it moves from mines and gaping quarries to dark factories and shipyards, guided by a single factory worker who narrates.

“I feel good about the worth of my work,” he says with pride.

“My hands are my living.” Although the landscapes appear alien, their products are things that we use daily. An older worker wears a Santa hat whilst he works, and the narrator explains that Western holidays are some of their busiest times, whilst girls in tracksuits tinker with computer parts.

Selected by Tate Collective as one of 10 emerging talents under 26 in the UK, Seymour has built his reputation on documenting the process of mass production. In the project Yiwu Commodity City, a series of garish candy-coloured photographs capture the largest small commodity wholesale market in the world. His rhythmic storytelling and stunning cinematography give a fresh sense of perspective for a Western consumer. To watch Consumed is to marvel at the unlikely beauty of man turning resources into new materials.

Poignant Social Commentary I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO

Spider Martin, Two Minute Warning, 1965. Courtesy of Altitude Film Entertainment.

To watch I Am Not Your Negro, a robust, illuminating just illustrate what was being said but that also carries value. “This Oscardocumentary based on James Baldwin’s unfinished memoir Something that you can watch without the text and yet will nominated adaptation Remember This House is to marvel at the accomplishments still have meaning. It’s symbolic and provokes strong emo- documents Baldwin’s tion. We were permanently trying to build a narrative that can experiences as a black of both the subject himself and the filmmaker, Raoul Peck. man growing up in A decade in the making, this Oscar-nominated adaptation touch you from a different level every time it is viewed.”

Guiding Baldwin’s story is the barely recognisable voice segregated America documents Baldwin’s experiences as a black man growing up in segregated America and the friends that he lost along the of Samuel L. Jackson, giving one of his best performances and the friends that way, namely Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and Medgar in years. “I didn’t want anyone to mimic Baldwin,” says Peck. he lost along the way, Evers. It also captures Peck’s adoration of Baldwin. To sit with “It’s more about how you catch the soul of Baldwin, how you namely Malcolm X, him is to absorb this first hand, as he explains discovering can catch the emotion in the text and how you render it. The Martin Luther King Baldwin’s writing as a teenager. “A friend gave me a copy of only real direction that I gave the protagonist was that it was Jr and Medgar Evers.” one of his novels whilst I was in high school, and I found not a voiceover. I don’t want any distance between Jackson that I kept coming back to him over the years in search of and the text. Anything that came out of his mouth needed to answers,” he explains. “Baldwin was one of the first people be real and felt.” The result was a deeply personal, charged to write about what it’s like to be a black person in the world.” deliverance, which, paired with Peck’s intricate use of footage, It was his dedication to Baldwin’s work that stopped Peck gives as authentic and rounded an experience of Baldwin as from using talking heads or re-enactments in his film, instead you could hope for. And yet Peck doesn’t stop there, drawing reworking Remember This House into a theatrical narrative Baldwin’s words from the past into the current day, where Words and peppering it with footage of Baldwin speaking in public, they remain as powerful and as painfully true as ever. Peck’s Beth Webb archive shots of the films and images that he’d experienced unspoken thoughts melt into Baldwin’s, most evidently in the closing music, Kendrick Lamar’s The Blacker The Berry. first-hand and contemporary footage of black lives today.

“I wanted Lamar because I like him as an artist. He’s doing I Am Not Your Negro It was a lengthy process built from the ground up, but the result is something wholly unique, thanks to this unorthodox something similar to what Baldwin was,” Peck says of the Altitude Film Distribution approach. “My team and I had to invent a new process of Grammy-winning rapper. “For me, ending the film with his filming,” says Peck. “The trick was to find footage that doesn’t music was completing the circle to the generation of today.” www.altitudefilment.com

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Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition A presentation of selected works from contemporary artists

25 - 26 May 2017 York St John University, York, YO31 7EX

Network / Debate / Engage / Question / Review

26 May - 10 September 2017 York Art Gallery, York, YO1 7EW (Daily 10am – 5pm) www.aestheticamagazine.com/artprize www.yorkartgallery.org.uk

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Meet the Uk’s Leading Art Organisations, publications & Curators

Book Tickets Image: Judith Jones, Rendezvous.

www.aestheticamagazine.com/symposium

Image: breadedEscalope, Shadowplay.

film reviews Graduation Cristian Mungiu Curzon Artificial Eye

Remembering the Man Nickolas Bird, Eleanor Sharpe Peccadillo Pictures

LoveTrue Alma Har’el Dogwoof

Centred on the fatherdaughter relationship of 49-year old doctor Romeo and young high school student Eliza, Graduation explores the mundanity of existence in Transylvania. Directed by Cristian Mungiu, the film values the organic above all else: it serves up an unedited sequence of events that, despite this, is perhaps even more organised than real life.

After Eliza is sexually assaulted by a stranger, the close rapport she has with her father becomes distant. Determined that the chain of events will not impede his daughter’s ability to pass her finals and obtain a scholarship to study at Cambridge, Romeo desperately tries to help Eliza.

But, what appears to be the supportive act of a father soon turns out to be a way of remedying his own failures. As Romeo approaches his 50s, he begins to question his life’s worth. His marriage dissipates, his mistress withdraws and his daughter grows into an independent woman. The principles of honour and honesty once valued by the protagonist fade, right up until the moment that Eliza graduates and becomes a decider of fate.

A paean to adoration, burgeoning sexuality and devotion unto (and beyond) death, Bird and Sharpe’s documentary recalls the deep and abiding love that developed between two young Catholic men in 1970s Australia.

Posturing “poofters” were anathema to the knuckle-dragging machismo of Neanderthal Australians; seemingly it was a taboo too far. But the schoolboy romance of Tim Conigrave and John Caleo would evolve to transcend cheap jibes.

During their lives these two young men were at the centre of an international explosion of gay confidence and the fight for rights and recognition. Theirs was a battle fought on a small stage with themselves as the leading characters.

Equally uplifting and heartbreakingly poignant, Remembering the Man emerges from the shadow of the era of AIDS to rank alongside classics such as And the Band Played On. The film wears its heart unapologetically on its sleeve and it also dares its audience to love these two handsome, smart, charming lads. It’s impossible not to.

In a time of mass anxiety, and societal upheaval, LoveTrue provides the antithesis. Both visually stimulating and poetically brilliant, this unique documentary travels around the globe to uncover stories from the 21st century public about love, life, alienation and aspiration.

Although categorised as a documentary, the feature is just as much an artists’ film. Moving from Alaska to Hawaii to New York, its unnamed participants invite us into their lives, speaking unashamedly and logically about their present situation, using the past as an indicator of decision. Weaving fact, opinion and memory, the three disparate narratives presented reflect on life as a visceral journey full of cause and effect.

Nature and nurture are prevalent as both visual and performative elements; the aurora borealis, the New York skyline, the Alaskan mountains and a neon-lit strip club are amongst the vibrant backdrops for the interviews presented here in which love and, by extension, human nature is not chosen but something that is painfully, beautifully, optimistically and helplessly learnt.

Selina Oakes

Tony Earnshaw

Kate Simpson

Toni Erdmann

Real Boy

A United Kingdom

Maren Ade Soda Pictures

Shaleece Haas Peccadillo Pictures

Amma Asante Pathé

The serious undertones of Maren Ade’s dry Germanic comedy echo Peter Ustinov’s sentiment: “Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.” This tonal disguise forms part of Ines Conradi’s (Sandra Hüller) relationship with her own playful joker of a father Winfried (Peter Simonischek), who, in order to reconnect with his daughter, creates an alter-ego that is inescapably “a funny way of being serious.”

Ade’s film is a study of how we as individuals change, adapt and assimilate ourselves in order to form a type of culture, something which is symbolised here by Winifred’s playful attitude versus the cruder sexual games that Ines plays with Tim (Trystan Pütter) – acts that mirror her own consumption by the corporate world. Ines, meanwhile, is a character who looks at – quite literally – stripping back layers to enable her to reconnect with a forgotten prior sense of self.

Maren Ade’s film is already a celebrated festival and critical darling. Whether it will haunt her future films and characters with expectation is a question to be kicked down the proverbial “street.”

While awareness of the transgender community has progressed extensively in recent years, Shaleece Haas’ documentary, Real Boy, illustrates the private battle that remains for the families involved through Bennett Wallace’s story. Introduced at the age of nineteen, Ben is recovering from an adolescence plagued by selfharm and drug abuse and has just begun taking testosterone. Over three years the film follows his transition through his relationships with his transgender friends Dylan and Joe, their families and, most poignantly, his mother Suzy.

The chronology is not always clear but the lighthanded touch of Haas and Editor Andrew Gersh creates an important distinction whereby Real Boy documents, rather than tells, Ben’s story. A budding musician, Ben’s music plays a minor role but provides a poignant insight into his journey, especially at the film’s closing scene showing that his and Suzy’s relationship has found its new groove. This film provides heart-warming insight into the continuous battle for understanding undergone by the trans community.

Perhaps previously bestknown for the 18th century drama Belle (2013), Amma Asante returns in 2017 to direct the biographical romance, A United Kingdom. Telling the true story of the marriage between Sir Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) and Ruth Williams Khama (Rosamund Pike), Asante brings the racial and political prejudices of the 1940s to the surface in an affecting, globally relevant feature.

The viewer follows Khama, the heir to the throne of Bechuanaland, as he travels to London to study.

Set against the emotionally charged backdrop of post-war Britain, the narrative proceeds to document a blossoming love affair across cultures.

The romance ultimately creates tension between nations, as well as the notion of public and the private, and the British government begin to state their concerns about the relationship due to the perceived instability of Southern Africa.

After premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, the feature has since accrued widespread critical acclaim, and in a year of unprecedented upheaval, Asante offers a cathartic biopic.

Paul Risker

Ruby Beesley

Kate Simpson

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Photo: Courtesy of Sonic PR.

music

Refabricating Inspiration MEADOWLARK

Meadowlark are Kate McGill and Dan Broadley, a Bristol- melancholic quality, one that’s intentionally heightened on “We’re hugely based electronic-pop duo. Their latest release, Nocturnes, is the EP. Where does that vein of feeling spring from? “We’re positive people, but an EP of “late night reworks” – stripped versions of previously hugely positive people, but songwriting is where we can voice songwriting is where released singles coloured chiaroscuro-style with a live string our deepest thoughts and fears. It just isn’t natural for us to we can voice our quartet and grand pianos. Repackaging previous releases in write happy songs; we don’t have it in us. We both connect to deepest thoughts and this way is an unusual move for a fledgling band, especially music on such an emotional level and it’s helped us through fears. It just isn’t one that’s yet to release a debut proper. “We wanted people really tough times. We’re big thinkers. If you sit and chat with natural for us to write to hear the other side of the coin,” offers vocalist McGill by us, it’s likely that we’ll go deep pretty quickly. We like to get happy songs; we don’t have it in us. Music way of explanation. “When we write and demo together, our to the heart of things; it’s the same with our music.”

Completing Nocturnes’ four-song track list of reworked has helped us through songs are in their rawest form – just piano or just guitar. We take them to a producer and we collaborate, make really cool originals is a Sugababes cover – About You Now – a “guilty really tough times.” pieces of electronic art and market them nicely for everyone. pop pleasure”. Why cover a song they feel guilty about But the acoustic versions are where the magic is, in our eyes.” enjoying? As the critic Chuck Klosterman has pointed out, The twosome, who lifted their name from neo-folk lovelies the idea of a “guilty pleasure” – especially in pop culture Fleet Foxes, met in their original hometown of Plymouth. But – is both elitist and redundant. “It was meant more tongue-init’s their adopted manor that remains a source of inspiration, cheek really,” says McGill. “We connected and came together says McGill. “We’ve both lived here for about five years on music like Bon Iver, Sigur Ros and Fleet Foxes. It wasn’t now. To be honest, we’re obsessed with the place. Whenever until we both got drunk one night that we realised we both we drive back, we’re both filled with a sense of peace and love noughties pop songs. About You Now was one of those.”

The duo are recent recipients of the Momentum Music Fund. happiness. There’s something about the people and the culture, it’s always buzzing with creativity. It’s always been How do they plan to use their new-found gains? “It’s actually Words known for its electronic scene, and with the amazing artists going towards our whole single-campaign post-debut album, Charlotte R-A which should be out at the end of this year. Funds like this that have come out of Bristol, it’s hard not to be inspired.”

Their sound – a downtempo space-filled wash of are really important in helping keep artists and their music Teenage Engineering synths and earnest melodies – has a thriving, so we feel really lucky to have that support.” www.meadowlarkofficial.com

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Politicised Statements NOGA EREZ

Photo: Tonje Thilesen.

Noga Erez is chilling in her Tel Aviv recording studio. What that it can be something more international and universal.” “Sometimes, I wish I As a singer and emcee, Erez is cool, composed and crunked. still had the accent; I can she see from where she’s sitting? “My laptop screen.

Behind that, another. My view is usually screens. That sounds Lyrically, she approximates protest traditions – lead single find it beautiful and awful.” The Israeli artist, who makes vivid, beat-driven elec- While You Shoot is a response to poverty and social strife, unique. I make music tronic music that wouldn’t be out of place on Ninja Tune or whilst Pity takes aim at sexual assault and violence against that doesn’t refer to Young Turks, grew up in the city but is currently quartered women – but couches her bars in non-specifics, a style she’s my origin because just outside of it, hidden away in a small, quiet village. “I like described as “processing” rather than “protesting.” Why the I love the fact that to keep myself separated from what’s happening there, to ex- hesitancy to nail her colours to any particular mast? “Because it can be something perience it as if I’m a tourist. This city is a microcosm. It’s very we are all about being musicians right now and expressing more international our artistry, more than anything else. But I do believe that and universal.” small, but contains everything, like any major metropolis.”

The music scene in Tel Aviv is diverse, she says, a after this album [cycle] is over, our writing and perspective hodgepodge of influences that explains why her own sound will change and evolve. I can easily see future songs is “kind of all over the place.” Her touchstones are both becoming more a response rather than observation.”

The “we” is a reference to her co-writer, composer and native – “I grew up on Kavereth, Matti Caspi, Zohar Argov and Chava Alberstein, but my modern influences are Balkan Beat producer Ori Rousso. The pair met when Erez was searching Box, Loco Hot and everything the label Raw Tapes releases” for an Ableton tutor. As a duo, Erez says, they find value – and foreign: Björk; Flying Lotus; Frank Ocean. It’s the latter in both their affinities and their disparities. “We really that are evident on her debut, Off The Radar, with its sharp, enjoy agreeing and disagreeing. There›s always a good slick, urban bass sound. Beyond her accent, a casual listener discussion going on between us in the studio. We fully would be hard-pressed to pin down Erez’s geographical respect each other, and we’ve found that our communication, origins. “[I’ve been] singing in English for years and imitating in all aspects, is a cosmic one.” Whilst the hype around her Words [English language] singers”, she says. “If it weren’t for that, I continues to accumulate, Erez is holding down an irregular Charlotte R-A would probably sound much more Israeli. Sometimes, I wish day job, teaching music. “It’s singing mostly, but lately some I still had the accent; I find it beautiful and unique. I make production work as well. Teaching is really one of the best music that doesn’t refer to my origin because I love the fact ways to learn, and I am so lucky to be able to do that.” www.nogaerez.com

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music reviews Pick A Piper

Sorority Noise

David Douglas

Distance Tin Angel Records

You’re Not As_ As You Think Big Scary Monsters

Spectators of the Universe Atomnation

Pick A Piper is the collaborative dreamchild of Toronto-based Brad Weber. Charting the lines between the organic and the synthetic, his newest record, Distance, is softly produced, and filled with metallic accompaniments, among the soothing vocals and chromatic loops.

The fast-paced Geographically Opposed is a xylophonic wonder, with soaring lyrics reverberating against low frequency synths.

Further And Further features silvery feminine guest vocals that whisper ethereally over a plodding bass line; contrasting parts juxtapose each other addictively, creating a transportive environment.

Instrumental tracks Nikko and January Feels Lost provide tonal relief in the form of pure electronica.

The former is a clanging, club-like contribution, whilst the latter feels like an explosion of sensory Mardi-Gras, shimmying drum parts and sweeping undertones of brass. Listening to the entirety of the album from start to finish is a diverse journey for the senses, a rich, technological tapestry. Fans of post-productive sound design, this is definitely one for you. www.pickapiper.bandcamp.com.

Rife with the honest, open pangs of death and longing, as well as the feelings of confusion, anger and hope that haunt the human psyche, American emo band Sorority Noise return in full force with their third album – a journey into their hearts and minds.

A sense of vulnerability flows throughout the 10-track compilation, moving its listeners from shout-out sorrowfulness to laid-back, beat-driven melodies. Introductory tracks are the spirited but mournful No Halo and A Portrait Of, both of which see singer / guitarist Cameron Boucher bare his soul through frank lyrics. Disappeared contemplates the struggles of mental health, whilst First Letter from St. Sean and Second Letter from St. Julien consider bereavement.

An emotional road trip, the album investigates the deeper parts of the human soul through raw, inward reflections that are also universal. Still, through their raucous defiance, Sorority Noise remind listeners that we are resilient beings. A nostalgic crackling of acoustics in New Room, ends on a poignant note. www.sororitynoise.com.

With a previous career in video direction, David Douglas moved his attention to music in 2012 and, more specifically, to producing electronica worthy of the rapidly progressing digital age. His first EP, Royal Horticultural Society (2012), and first album, Moon Observations (2014), paved the way for stylistic development, all leading up to the current venture, Spectators of the Universe.

Both albums contain a visual element in their titles. Without a narrative, the songs invite the viewer into a space where sounds are textures, and bobbing synths and syncopated drums allow the mind to wander into a futuristic trance.

Fleeting harmonies and shimmering drum beats float across each other, taking on an interstellar tone. This is no surprise; the artist takes his name from the 18th century naturalist and astrologer, and has undoubtedly mirrored his namesake’s exploration and sense of wonder throughout his musical ventures. Highlight tracks here include Highway of Love and Pastel Dreams. www.soundcloud.com/daviddouglasmusic.

Kate Simpson

Selina Oakes

Kate Simpson

Goose

The Black Angels

H.Grimace

What You Need Safari Records

Death Song Partisan Records

Self Architect Opposite Number

After extensive touring, Belgian electronic stalwarts Goose arrive in a hail of wispy synths and typically hipster-infused lackadaisical tones for their fourth studio album. Powerhousing their way in the murky valley between rock and bleepy pop, the Flemish quartet have made an unfortunately unremarkable record, dotted with a smattering of well-written musical interludes.

Lyrically it’s not the most complex body of work, and thus the album is strongest when it is at its most instrumental, like on Nightfall, where a retro drum machine is succinctly well punched against the haze of an urgent synthesiser. The similarly instrumental closer Forever is a dramatic, albeit short, masterpiece almost slotted in as an afterthought. The conversely vocal-led A-Hasounding Where Are We Now is the record’s bright spark, feeling like it could fit comfortably into the 1980s nostalgia of the Stranger Things soundtrack.

Elsewhere, however, the sheen is less polished.

So Long feels hackneyed with strained and discordant vocals, and, like a number of the songs on What You Need, forced. www.goosemusic.com.

Hailing from Texas, The Black Angels have amassed a significant following, seeing them through four studio albums prior to 2017’s Death Song. The fivesome have spearheaded a revival in psych-rock, founding the Levitation festival and pulling crowds into their illusory rabbit hole.

Written during the recent US election cycle, Death Song’s glassy, distorted tracks are, in the band’s words, “part-protest, part emotional catharsis in a climate dominated by division, anxiety and unease.” Indeed, the colossal opening track Currency sets a melancholy precedent, fuelled by slow, heavy strumming and an earthy and defiant chorus line: “One day, it’ll all be over.

I can see currency, how it always sanctions us.”

Further down the line, the emotionally weighty Half Believing is just as successful – a minimalist and delectably drizzly affair. The record takes a turn two-thirds in; I Dreamt is groove-filled and incandescent – a psych anthem meant for the festival stage. This is a well-produced, radical piece of work, ending with the monumentally dreamy Life Song. www.theblackangels.com.

London-based, postpunk four-piece H. Grimace unleash debut album Self Architect, recorded with longstanding engineer and friend Rory Attwell and mixed by both Attwell and Ben Greenberg, formerly of The Men. Full of promise and eager determination, tracks such as Thoroughbred and lead single Land/Body have a commercial radio-friendly verve imbued with unrelenting vocal and melodic hooks that will undoubtedly translate perfectly into H.Grimace’s upcoming live shows. Similarly, Jockey burns feverishly, soaring with vocal inflections and colliding guitar patterns from vocalist / guitarist Hannah Gledhill and guitarist Marcus Browne.

The album isn’t simply about frenzied postpunk energy though. The foursome explore a more considered and artistic side on 2.1 Woman, which sets spoken word vocals from poet Vivienne Griffin against chiming guitar. Whilst operating in a slightly over-saturated genre, the band has managed to find a luminous originality, both visually and aurally, that is a sign of even greater things to come. www.h-grimace.bandcamp.com.

Kyle Bryony

Kate Simpson

Matt Swain

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performance

Radical Expression Zero Point DARREN JOHNSTON’S MONUMENTAL NEW SHOW INVESTIGATES SPIRITUALITY, SCIENCE AND ENERGY AS A PART OF A LARGER COMMENTARY ON HUMAN EXISTENCE.

The work of British choreographer and multi-disciplinary traditional temple.” He describes it as a place that has both artist Darren Johnston is rooted in technology and “chaos and order.” The use of this phrasing is significant: these experimentation. However, it has also long been informed are the two principles of entropy in Zero Point, a production

by Eastern ritual practices – the ancient and the spiritual. in which different sources of energy are fused together.

The term “zero point” is used in Buddhism to express Johnston explains: “The idea of ritual has been present in my work for a while; I always see it as ritualistic performance something similar to the desired state of empty consciousness in a sense, which has opened up a lot of investigation into – the moment between inhalation and exhalation. It’s also Eastern culture.” These explorations have taken many used in physics: “In quantum physics it’s based on the forms, including an individual journey into meditation and idea of energy in a resting stage.” There are clear parallels a residency in Kochi, Japan, to research ideas around rebirth. here between the spiritual and the scientific: both express a Whilst undertaking this residency, Johnston immersed similar concept through the use of different semantics. Both himself into the circulated ideas of reincarnation, joining the pare down to a molecular, organic level, considering life as Shikoku Henro, a pilgrimage to 88 temples that celebrate something that can be paced. It makes sense then that this sacred spaces, and also ignited a fascination with Buddhist might offer up something interesting to a choreographer.

Some of the influences that Johnston drew upon for this architecture. Amidst such spiritual settings, he remained committed to creating a piece that utilised technology: “I new venture include the practices of Tai Chi and Qigong, both wanted the piece to have a contemporary feel but I wanted movement-based disciplines focused on breath and finding it to have this very classical, spiritual foundation. A lot of clarity. He explains that “In Qigong and Tai Chi there is a the challenges for me were how to explore these sacred, sense of controlling energy to power movement. I liked this ceremonial ideas but with a technological output.” However, idea because it started connecting to the quantum physics the two aspects are not necessarily counter-intuitive. The notion of stillness. I think the movements became the core combination of the sacred with the modern is, in itself, foundations for the production.” This concept extends beyond simple physical application in Johnston’s piece: the evocative of Japan and Japanese culture on a larger scale.

Johnston agrees: “That paradox is really apparent use of light and sound also adhere to ground-state forms.

Johnston worked with pioneering Canadian musician when you enter the country, especially Tokyo. It’s such a thriving metropolis of sound and stimulation and it’s so Tim Hecker to create the audio design: “With this piece in technologically advanced, but then at the heart of that you particular, the sound became quite an important conceptual only have to walk down certain districts and turn around exploration. Since the basis for the work was Zen, minimalism certain corners, enter a gate and you’re in a very old, and the idea of nothingness, I wanted to eradicate any

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Left: Darren Johnston, Zero Point. Photo: Taisuke Tsurui.

Right: Darren Johnston, Zero Point. Photo: Peter Langman.

Previous Page: Darren Johnston, Zero Point. Photo: Darren Johnston.

unnecessary music.” Hecker is known for collaborating with really big, physical structures, preferring to create the “I wanted to explore artists to incorporate sound in a more abstract way and, set through lighting and haze. Hence, the introduction of the idea of a cycle. I indeed, Johnston wanted to avoid the more “obvious, literal, digitalised lights automatically finds the “space between wanted to aesthetically emotional connotations of music.” Of Hecker’s music, he forms, cutting lines and shapes through space so they look show progressing into the future on says: “It has almost a physicality about it because of the low- like physical architecture but are actually virtual.”

Such transformation of the physical into the virtual is a key the stage – a human end frequency, the bass frequency; it really gets inside your body and it is an undeniable way to stimulate dancers. It’s component of the performance: for Johnston, Zero Point is being transformed “reinterpreting ceremonial spaces through technology.” This into the mechanical almost like it is powering their movements.”

The sound is simultaneously poignant and minimal. extends even to the “sacred” space of the human body, which became almost a Johnson talks about “clearing away everything to the bare Johnston manipulates with illumination. Through innovative metaphor for that.” nothing.” He mentions the Japanese word ma (間) (also) – use of motion-sensing technology, the team was able to the idea, mostly in design and architecture, of space between “track the movement of the dancer on stage through the form. “In music, ma is almost as if the silence that surrounds isolation of light.” This then led to a realisation that “working scores. For me, it is as important as the sound.” As the root of with animation and certain other techniques we could actually transform the dancers. We could take a figure from a meditation, “there’s a kind of bliss in that emptiness.”

“Space between form” is a phrase that could just as easily pure, organic state and, using certain images, make it look as be applied to the concept of zero point, minimalism or even if it was becoming digital.” Not only is this work an aesthetic geometric gesture in the movements of the human body. representation of the relationship between the organic and The concept is infused throughout the piece, not only in the man-made that is explored in the piece, it also acts as a the musical structure, but in the construction of the set as device or metaphor for the inherent spirituality invoked.

Johnston says: “I wanted to explore the idea of a cycle, past well. Beams of light are forged in straight lines around the fluctuating forms of bodies – the darkness between the steps present and future – the future of reincarnation, taking us Words is as crucial as the accentuated gestures. Cycles of breath, beyond the now. I wanted to aesthetically show progressing Bryony Byrne shapes, consciousness and technology all come back to into the future on the stage – a human being transformed into the mechanical became almost a metaphor for that.” It’s each other, in a movement that is much like rebirth.

For the set design, Johnston was inspired by the temples even possible that the point between these two dichotomies Darren Johnston, he saw on the pilgrimage: “I was looking at the essence of comprises a zero point of its own – maybe the point Johnston Zero Point, religious architecture, which became about symmetry and describes as “a really magic moment, where a dancer does Barbican, London. stripping back unnecessary elements.” Johnston transports transform, and from the audience perspective kind of looks 25-27 May. this meditative architecture to the stage through innovative like they become holographic.” The cycle of science and lighting techniques. He explains that he “wanted to avoid spirituality is completed and begun again. It is a rebirth. www.barbican.org.uk

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theatre

Live On Stage 5 RECOMMENDED PRODUCTIONS THIS SEASON

1

Lifeboat

West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, 2-13 May. Written by Nicola McCartney and directed by Gill Robertson.

An extraordinary World War II drama, which is based on a gripping true story of courage, survival and enduring friendship. In 1940 The City of Benares set sail from Liverpool for Canada. On board were 90 evacuees who were escaping the relentless bombing and dangers of war-torn Britain. But four days into the crossing, the ship was torpedoed and sank. Only 11 of the evacuees survived. Two 15-year-old girls spent 19 terrifying hours in the water clinging to an upturned lifeboat. They willed each other to survive the ordeal. Lifeboat tells their story. Box Office: +44 (0) 113 213 7700. www.wyp.org.uk.

2

Girl in the Machine Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 3-22 April.

Written by Stef Smith and directed by Orla O’Loughlin.

Polly and Owen have nailed it. Both in successful careers and wildly in love, they feel ready to take on the world. But when a mysterious new technology, promising a break from the daily grind, creeps into everyone’s phones, their world is turned upside down. As the line between physical and digital rapidly dissipates, and the population begins to rebel, Polly and Owen are forced to question whether their definitions of reality and freedom are the same. Girl in the Machine is a timely exploration of the impact of technology in a world that’s falling apart. Box Office: +44 (0) 131 228 1404. www.traverse.co.uk.

3

20B Camden People’s Theatre, London, 11-12 April.

Created and presented by Jane English.

A play which unearths the stories of a demolished building on a council estate in East London. In an attempt to relocate her sense of home, Jane goes on a mission to find and reconnect with her former neighbours, to document their memories, and make a record of the community which was scattered by regeneration. Part autobiography, part oral history, 20B is a moving exploration of what home and community mean. With warmth and humour, Jane uncovers the narratives of the city, from post-war slum clearance to Olympic-era gentrification. Box Office: +44 (0) 207 419 4841. www.cptheatre.co.uk.

4

The Millenial Malcontent Tarragon Theatre, Toronto, Canada, Until 9 April.

Written by Erin Shields, directed by Peter Hinton.

Moxy is married and seething, fed up with the constraints of domesticity, and longing for some action.

Meanwhile, her long-suffering husband Johnny has decided that enough is enough and contemplates an affair with Faith, a secret admirer. Add to the mix a vain YouTube star, his Québécois cousin, a lesbian party girl, a PhD student and a music blogger and the stage is set for a raucous exploration of the social posing, sexual frankness and emotional minefields of the Millennial generation, loosely adapted from The Provoked Wife by Sir John Vanbrugh. Box Office: +1 416 531 1827. www.tarragontheatre.com.

5

The Dog/The Cat Belvoir St. Theatre, Sydney, Australia, 13 April - 7 May. Written by Brendan Cowell and Lally Katz. Directed by Ralph Myers.

A double bill exploring the trials and tribulations of relationships – with both humans and animals. This hilarious and innovative pair of plays returns to Belvoir St. Theatre after becoming a sleeper hit in 2015.

The Dog is Brendan Cowell’s not-so-flattering portrait of the tricky line between mateship and romance, and of the appetite of Jack Russells for the most disgusting things they can find. It is complemented

by Lally Katz’s The Cat, a fable of the perils of co-owning a feline with your ex, and the things that a cat would say if he was allowed to speak his mind. Box Office: +61 (2) 9699 3444. www.belvoir.com.au.

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book reviews 100 Great Street Photographs

Chandigarh Revealed

Co-Art: Artists on Creative Collaboration

David Gibson Prestel

Shaun Fynn Princeton Architectural Press

This stunning collection showcases a wide range of street photographers from across the world. With each double page dedicated to just one practitioner, the images are given a justifiable amount of space and attention, whilst Gibson’s commentary offers further insights.

Many of the artists have previously only been published on digital platforms, and as such, their inclusion in this book allows their work a physical grounding in art history and a permanence which can not be offered through the internet. The images are truly astounding, ranging from the surreal to the painterly and Gibson’s editorial attention to the photographers and the work that they are creating only elevates their relevance.

There’s something intensely heartfelt about this collection. It lacks pretension yet remains rooted in art history, even when often casting an askance glance towards it or offering surreal, altered echoes of the familiar. The spontaneity and humanity of the “street” medium lends the photographs a real vitality that can be felt in every page of this lovely book. A real treat.

Over six decades since legendary architect Le Corbusier was commissioned to design a new capital for the state of Punjab, Chandigarh stands as a thriving centre of urbanism, and a vibrant manifestation of its creator’s post-colonial spirit and modernist vision.

Simultaneously one of Le Corbusier’s “most fully realised” plans, and a testament to the ways in which Indian culture and society have subsequently appropriated and imprinted themselves onto the architect’s buildings and plans, Chandigarh occupies a fascinating space at the crossroads between architectural vision and the socioeconomic realities of everyday life.

Combining detailed plans and contextualising information with a wealth of viscerally engaging yet strangely haunting photography, Fynn opens a door into what it’s like to live in present-day Chandigarh – a UNESCO World Heritage Site that retains a sense of mystery. Fynn captures moments of pride as well as flashes of decay.

The text also includes invaluable insight in an interview with one of Le Corbusier’s original team.

Collaboration is an integral part of being creative, and yet art history often seems to convince us that the act of “making” must be understood as an individual pursuit of selfexpression. Co-Art celebrates the exponential growth of duos and groups over the last 50 years.

Beginning with a chronological survey from the first “isms” of the early 20th century and the birth of worldwide collectives and British conceptual groups, the text leads its readers into a series of profiles and conversations with 25 international collectives. With a total of eight pages dedicated to each case study, it delves into the ethos and motivations which underlie numerous groups.

The famous and less familiar sit side by side: Guerrilla Girls, Assemble, Elmgreen & Dragset, Eva & Franco Mattes, Jane and Louise Wilson, SUPERFLEX, and Los Carpinteros all highlight the value and importance of working together.

Epitomised in the closing chapter, What the world can learn from co-art, this guide leaves readers with an augmented understanding of how creatives, and others, can cultivate collectively.

Bryony Byrne

Regina Papachlimitzou

Selina Oakes

The Designer’s Dictionary of Colour

Graphic: 500 Designs that Matter

Nick Cave: Until

Sean Adams Abrams

Phaidon Editors Phaidon

The Designer’s Dictionary of Colour is the poet’s answer to Pantone reference books.

The fact that “butter” is the first reference on the contents page gives a sense of what to expect: Sean Adams’s approach, though functional, is also about a form of chromatic storytelling.

As well as being a tool to help designers choose their palette, the text is primarily a guide to the cultural, historical and social implications of colours, inviting a more nuanced approach to the application of the spectrum as part of a design.

Rather than following the conventional formula of primary, secondary and tertiary colours, the book is grouped more intuitively according to warm, cool, neutral and speciality hues. As well as emphasising the cultural contexts of different shades (purple, for instance, is associated here with Elizabeth Taylor’s eyeshadow) the volume makes claims for subjective existences as the artist Joseph Albers knew when he said: “My red is not now, nor will it ever be, the same as yours.”

For a practising designer, the book will be both liberating and frustrating in equal measure.

This text showcases 500 iconic pieces of graphic design. The selection and, in particular, the double page pairings, are very pleasing: early on in the book, for example, the album cover for Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (1997), with its overlapping circles, sits alongside John Venn’s eponymous diagram (1880). Throughout the book all of the designs, chosen by Phaidon’s editorial team alongside designers and critics, are well placed.

It is a shame, however, that the book does not provide more information about each of the designs. Although the reader is given brief notes it would be interesting to know more about these graphics, many of which are, by their nature, so commonplace they are easily taken for granted.

As the introduction states, they are designed to be communicative as well as aesthetically pleasing. Nonetheless, their history does not necessarily speak for itself and so this seems a missed opportunity: the choices themselves are so well thought out that we can assume the team involved would have had some expert insights.

Coinciding with the blockbuster exhibition at MASS MoCA that runs until August this year, Prestel’s Nick Cave: Until provides a vital vision into the limitless imagination of the American sculptor, dancer and performance artist. With forewords from curators at the Massachusetts-based gallery, as well as from Carriageworks, Sydney, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, and vibrant introductions that draw upon a life-long dedication to creative expression, this text promises to enrich its readers with a wealth of information and critical engagement.

Paying homage to the installations of Until, Beaded Cliff Wall and Hy-Dyve amongst others, the images capture the artist’s colourful spirit. This is mirrored throughout the design, with the found objects and suspended beads of these sensory tapestries complemented by rainbow fonts.

Digging deeper into the texts, just like digging deeper into the immersive environments, provides a wealth of cultural and political contexts, addressing topical issues and demonstrating the significance of this pioneering 21st century figure.

Matilda Bathurst

Anna Feintuck

Kate Simpson

Ellen Mara De Wachter Phaidon

Denise Markonish Prestel

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Subscribe & Save 30% Digital £16.99 UK £26.95 Europe £33.50 Rest of World £35.50

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iPad

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9:45 AM

artists’ directory

Waiting for the Rebuild, 2017. 84cm x 59cm.

JuDiTH CORDEAuX | www.cordeaux.nz

Angela Wakefield’s urban landscapes depict the vibrant metropolis of New York and are collected internationally.

Angela Wakefield | www.angelawakefield.co.uk

Jeffrey Luque Jeffrey Luque’s Girl with Flowers combines realist portraiture with extravagant detail. The series is on display from 19 May at CoRK Arts District in Jacksonville, Florida.

www.jeffreyluqueart.com

To be included in the Artists’ Directory contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or katherine@aestheticamagazine.com. directory@aestheticamagazine.com.

JEAn DAvis

www.jeanzart.com

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artists’ directory

AnAsTAsiA sCHipAnOvA Anastasia Schipanova represents a new generation of emerging Russian artists whose style has evolved beyond abstraction, expressionism and symbolism, focusing on the immaterial world of energy. By refining a painting technique through an experimentation with different colour schemes and shapes, Schipanova depicts the intangible impulse of place, emotion and nature.

www.schipanova.com

Hyun Kim

www.hyunkim.net

yugE ZHOu

Jane Gottlieb’s dynamic images transcend the norms of both reality and colour.

Yuge Zhou is a Chinese born, Chicago-based artist whose video and installation works portray ‘urban dispositions’ and explore the complex interactions between humans and their environment.

Jane gottlieb | www.janegottlieb.com

www.yugezhou.com

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BEDDRu Italian self-taught painter Beddru embraces

gARy plummER

which are applied via reverse painting technique.

Gary Plummer is an Irish artist currently based near the Rocky Mountains in Canada. His work is inspired by his love of the outdoors with a focus is on forms and colours that interest him to create mixed media and collage art. He has exhibited in galleries and been published internationally.

www.beddru.com

www.garyplummerfineart.com

yEOWOOn Kim

Jasper Udink ten Cate

Yeowoon Kim is currently working with mobile art. She presents a new diagram of an image unrestrained from the conventional artificial control, alluding to imperfection, while symbolically suggesting a pixel, the minimum unit of an image, through the reinterpretation of it.

Award-winning artist Jasper Udink ten Cate is also known as Creative Chef. Combining his work as a chef and as an artist, he specialises in food, tableware design, paintings and graphics. Part of his practice includes creating art pieces with the help of his dining guests; in these performance pieces he captures the energy of the moment.

www.yeowoonkim.com

www.creativechef.co

experimentation with non-traditional materials, such as thick, superposed Plexiglas panels. He

describes his figurative subjects as “unconformably” represented through ink-based mixed media,

To be included in the Artists’ Directory contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or katherine@aestheticamagazine.com. directory@aestheticamagazine.com.

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artists’ directory

Agne Kisonaite Agne Kisonaite, who usually uses the pseudonym AgneArt, creates art objects using outdated or used goods. Her latest aesthetically pleasing yet shocking work, Diabetes, is made of used insulin pens. In this ongoing project she attempts to bring attention to the enormous growth of worldwide cases of the disease. www.agneart.com/projects Instagram: @agneart

Alberto Repetti Alberto Repetti is an Italian artist whose work is a continuous research into encounters between the real and the imaginary. Through varied materials and experiences, he develops a unique and unrepeatable result. His work is on view at Cass Business School in London until August 2017. www.albertorepetti.com Instagram: @albertorepetti

Image: av_361, 2017. Acrylic on linen, 46cm x 38cm.

Alex Voinea Alex Voinea’s Shock Value series captures individual universes through the fluidity of materials.

Fading backgrounds create depth, embracing a “hyperrealist abstraction” where every splash of colour is identified in high definition. He aims to transport viewers through vibrant and imaginative works. www.alexvoinea.com

Amy Benzie Amy Benzie’s work explores the relationship between art and science by creating otherworldly vessels from a detailed vision of the so called ‘ugly’ such as viruses and bacteria. These ceramic and glass structures with a strange aliveness ask us to consider our relationship with nature as artists and as scientists. www.amybenzie.weebly.com Instagram: @amy_benzie

Image: Cross the Line, 2015.

Mixed media on canvas 60cm x 80cm.

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Image: Progression.

Acrylic on canvas, 36in x 36in.

Alice Rich Alice Rich, based in Vancouver, Canada, has a vision of landscape painting, one that articulates the conflicting beauty of our altered environment. Clean, precise lines cut through loose, emotive colours, segmenting the natural world into bands of sea, earth and sky; exploring tensions, which exist, between the natural and manmade. www.alice-rich.com alice@alice-rich.com

Anna Cortada The artwork of Anna Cortada is filled with elements of nature, and images that suggest flowers, vegetables, monsters and masks. In 2013, she started the Social Fashion Monster project at Felicidad Duce, the Fashion School of LCI Barcelona, and she has also participated in numerous exhibitions in London and Catalonia. facebook.com/SocialFashionMonster

Bärbel Ricklefs-Bahr Bärbel Ricklefs-Bahr lives in Northern Germany. Her abstract paintings have a balanced harmonious diversity, with a bold colour composition and figurative elements. The pieces evolve through a combination of spontaneous experimentation along with experience and knowledge about the effect of techniques and materials. www.ricklefs-bahr.de

Basma Ashworth UK-based Basma Ashworth is a painter and textile artist whose process includes layering colours and marks, drawing inspiration from the surrounding landscape as well as personal experiences.

Her work features in collections by interior designers and architects, and can be seen at the Scarlet and Bedruthan hotels in Cornwall and Combe Grove Manor in Bath. www.basmaashworth.com

Bernadette Doolan Irish artist Bernadette Doolan explores the fragility of identity in the context of childhood.

Working in painting and sculpture, she approaches topics of social conscience with sensitivity and respect to explore the intangible notion of truth. Doolan acknowledges vulnerability whilst not apportioning blame. www.bernadettedoolan.com Instagram: @bernadettedoolanartist

Charlotte Bernays Charlotte Bernays takes her obsession with energy and mass, configuration and reconfiguration, from three, into two dimensions.

Calligraphic paintings in Chinese ink depict great flocks of birds.

Marks are made through the expressive channeling of her own movement through the brush, reflecting her passion for dance.

Image: There’s Always a Way. Acrylic on canvas,120cm x 120cm.

www.charlottebernays.co.uk

Chris Holden Chris Holden is an activist artist engaging with current issues of today: the war on terror, and environmental and social issues.

His work is mainly inspired by campaigning organisations, alternative media and investigative journalism, which highlights the censorship and misinformation surrounding these issues.

Image: Wi-Fi Damages DNA & Proteins in the Body.

Claudia Pombo Brazilian-Dutch painter Claudia Pombo shows an adapted view of nature and human situations. A different form of her creative expression is seen in her illustrations of Amazonian mythology, mostly inspired by the recollections of Claude Lévi-Strauss. www.clpombo.wordpress.com clpombo.art@gmail.com

www.activistartist-chrisholden.com

Cristina Ulander UK-based Cristina Ulander takes inspiration from the natural world, seeking ways to express the beauty of nature. Her latest series depicts panoramic, moody skyscapes of atmospheric storms in the distance, menacing and dark, painted on a large scale in oils on aluminium and Perspex.

David Handley As a fashion photographer, David Handley primarily works with children. His most recent project, Best Friends Forever, is a view into an unadulterated and unrestricted mindset. It explores the relationship between a boy and a penguin, who may just happen to be real or fictional.

www.cristinaulander.co.uk

eramanagement.com/david-handley

Eric Wiles Northern California artist Eric Wiles combines fine art and landscape photography to reveal dynamic images of natural beauty and manmade objects. His contemporary approach has propelled his work to exhibition at the Musée du Louvre, and he was recently nominated for the prestigious 10th annual International Color Awards. www.ew-photo.com Instagram: @eric.wiles.photo

To be included in the Artists’ Directory contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com.

Gabriella Kosa Visiting the extremes, the spontaneous and planned, the concrete and abstract, using a mixture of random strokes and carefully painted geometric shapes, the London-based artist Gabriella Kosa aims for balance and harmony.

In her paintings she explores the connection between civilisation and nature, and the symbolic messages that nature conveys. www.gkosa-art.com

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Jeanne Fries Jeanne Fries is a Canadian sculptor, painter and new media artist. Her work is concerned with the physical and non-physical expression of power dynamics in contemporary society. She believes in the necessity of art as a means of political activism and social commentary.

Jenny Bennett Whangarei, New Zealand-based Jenny Bennett graduated with an MA in anthropology from Otago and Auckland universities. Having shown artworks in London, Italy and the USA, she is currently preparing a new series exploring flora, new colours and abstraction for the London Biennale.

www.Jfries.org

www.jennybennett.com jenny@jennybennett.com

Judith Grassi Judith Grassi’s practice is based upon creating vibrant and dynamic works. She paints richly coloured canvasses which portray the form, colour, texture and scale of nature.

The Flower series features closerange images on dark backgrounds which emphasise the energy and strength of the subjects.

Julijana Ravbar Julijana Ravbar is an abstract artist based in Slovenia. She is best known for creating modern textured paintings using balanced colour palettes and intricate patterning, evoking curiosity and connection.

www.judithgrassi.co.uk

Image: Blue Daydream, 2017.

Acrylic painting, 150cm x 100cm.

www.artfinder.com/katrinaavotina Instagram: @katrinaavotina

Image: Corner of My World.

Lee Campbell London-based Lee Campbell uses traditional oil techniques to depict varied subject matter. Combining a sense of mysticism and scientific methods, he generates different emotions and suggests hidden dimensions within the familiar.

Having participated in a number of residencies in laboratories, churches, and boatyards, Campbell currently works on an island in the Thames. www.leecampbell.co.uk

Image: The Body of Myth, 2015. Part of the ErtleKetterer Collection. Oil on canvas, 100cm x 100cm.

Magda Krawcewicz Hamburg-based Magda Krawcewicz explores the figural form though her paintings, drawings and sculpture. Collector Rik Reinking says of her work: “She is fascinated by the realm which appears through the tension hovering between ‘whole’ and ‘dissolved’ bodies, thereby describing the space which surrounds this body.” www.seemagda.com Instagram: @seemagda

Image: Amaryllis Bud. Acrylic on canvas

Katrina Avotina Katrina Avotina has been painting professionally more than 20 years.

Currently based in Leeds, she works with acrylic colours. She says: “I wish to spread beauty in the world and to bring happiness to people through my paintings.

I hope that all those who view my works feel the love I portray.”

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Image: triptych Primavera, 2017.

Oil on canvas, three panels, each is 90cm x 90cm.

artists’ directory

www.art-ravbar.eu Instagram: @julijana_ravbar_art www.artfinder.com/julijana-ravbar

Malcolm Litson Malcolm Litson’s practice includes projection, painting, music and the moving image. He has exhibited and performed in galleries and venues around the world as an artist and musician. Recent projects include performances at Shangri-la, Glastonbury Festival and exhibiting paintings at the Lebenson Gallery, Paris. www.malcolmlitson.com www.soundcloud.com/bitvert

Mally Elbaz Almandine Mally Elbaz Almandine paints small pieces that are woven into a whole, representing a lifetime, one that consists of numerous childhood experiences and memories. Some of the forms are deliberately ambiguous, whilst others are clearly revealed. The viewer is exposed to the encrypted forms and coloured layers.

Margaretha Gubernale Margaretha Gubernale is an international artist who has been creating work for more than 30 years. Mainly using oils on canvas, her pictures take inspiration from nature and philosophy. www.margarethagubernale.org Image: Building Material, 2017.

Oil on canvas, 60cm x 60cm.

www.almandineart.com

Max Lawrence White Max Lawrence White is an Australia-based painter. White’s practice is centred on colour and its inexhaustible combinations, readings and meanings. He aims to present an unconventional experience and a challenge to how the viewer perceives colour.

Meng Zhou Meng Zhou is of a generation that formed its beliefs during a period of shifting social and economic circumstances. Engaged in the process of artistic creation, the contested notion of metamorphosis and the becoming of oneself within a social environment, Zhou maintains a sensibility described as: “Being incubated and oppressed at the same time.” www.meng-zhou.com

www.maxlawrencewhite.com

Mhairi Ballantyne Through painting and sculpture, Mhairi Ballantyne brings together a variety of unusual materials and processes. A poetic narrative runs through the work, yet there is also a resistance and dialogue between the elements which asks questions concerning origins.

Neil T Wittmann Neil T Wittmann’s works utilise the medium of photography, translating portraits through collage and layering. Drawing Down The Moon, for example, represents the pagan ritual of empowerment through the depiction of a goddess amongst an ethereal landscape.

www.mhairiballantyne.co.uk

www.NTW.me.uk

Image: Lagoon Series I. 1520mm x 1220mm.

Nikos Lamprinos The aim of Nikos Lamprinos’ art is to encourage the viewer to ask profound questions about relationships and the meaning of life. Lamprinos creates paintings from memory, inviting a myriad of interpretations.

Ole Marius Joergensen Ole Marius Joergensen is a fine art photographer with a background in film. Taking Alfred Hitchcock’s “icy and remote” women as inspiration, his Icy Blondes series raises questions of identity against the landscapes, dreams and mysteries of his Norwegian home and identity.

www.nikoslamprinos.com Image: Temple, 2016.

Oil on canvas, 137cm x 137cm x 2cm.

To be included in the Artists’ Directory contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com.

www.olemariusphotography.com Instagram: @olemariusphotography

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artists’ directory

Pablo Rosero Pablo Resero’s multidisciplinary work reflects a constant search to understand the hidden face of nature through transforming inanimate objects into something more complex. This encompasses graphic work, light sculptures, projections and videos, including the Pulses installation series and a collection of paintings entitled Women & Lines. www.pablorosero.com

Paul Corfield UK-based Paul Corfield makes highly-detailed oil paintings that are a static representation of complex computational designs. These are computerbased, parametric form-finding experiments that offer an abstracted style of painting that reflects the 21st century. www.pseudorealism.com Instagram: @paul_corfield_ pseudo_realism

Image: Wannabe, 2016.

Acrylic and mixed media on paper, 65cm x 50cm.

Robert van Bolderick Robert van Bolderick gives life to his artworks by creating dreamlike and vibrant scenarios that evoke traces of the real and the metaphorical on the canvas. Newspaper clippings and fragments of images emerge with difficulty from the complex circuit of transversal meanings, blocked and trapped by the intense and enveloping chromaticism. www.vanbolderick.se robert@vanbolderick.se

Shaikha Alnuaimi Emirati-born Shaikha Alnuaimi is an architectural engineer and artist. Her recent Instagram series combines minimalist illustration and constructivist design, referencing pop culture. The pieces utilise clarity and simplicity whilst provoking a sense of the surreal.

Sheau Ming Song Sheau Ming Song has a PhD from LICA at Lancaster University, UK. His artwork demonstrates the essential issues of two-dimensional representation and documents the visual possibilities of painting materials. He has shown at Art Taipei 2015, Gwangju Biennale 2015 in South Korea, Art15 London, ART.FAIR Cologne 2014 and the-solo-project 2013 in Basel. www.sms1967.com

www.instagram.com/smalnuaimi

Image: Clare–Voyance, The Imaginal Stage, 2017.

Digital photograph.

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Sahil Lodha Sahil Lodha graduated with a photography degree from the University of the Arts London and was recently shortlisted in the British Journal of Photography for The Portrait of Britain. Working extensively using analogue methods, his interest lies within portraiture and fashion, as well as the interaction of art and culture within a globalised world. www.sahillodha.co.uk

Sherry Erskine Motivated by mythmaking and Jungian concepts, Sherry Erskine’s work examines fragmented states of consciousness through collaboration and lens-based media. By juxtaposing fragments of images or creating theatrical spaces that allude to myths of self, journey or home, she invites viewers to consider dream states at multiple levels – the personal or collective. www.sherryerskine.com

Image: Land Unreached, 2017. Oil, charcoal and acrylic on Belgian Linen™, 54cm x 200cm.

Simon Kim Seoul-based Simon Kim majored in Visual Communication Design for a BA degree and Illustration for his masters at Kingston University in London. The piece shown here is titled Luminous Bloom. www.simonz1987.net Instagram: @simonz1987

Stephen Spiller Stephen Spiller’s work addresses political, social and cultural issues. He explains his political work with these words: “I am anxious, frightened, disgusted and pissed off. What about you?”

Stjepko Mamic Artist, world traveller and captain Stjepko Mamic has spent much of his life at sea, and it is from this perspective that he creates his paintings. Inspired by the depth and width of open water, his work represents his connection with the natural world.

www.stephenspiller.com

www.raguza.net Instagram: @stjepkomamic

Tao Xian Tao Xian graduated from the School of Fine Art (oil painting department) at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (BFA) in 2013 and Parsons School of Design, New York (MFA) in 2016. She currently lives and works in New York. Her works have been frequently exhibited in China, Japan and the USA. www.tao-xian.net Instagram: @tao_xian_peggy

Toni Harrower A contemporary painter from northeast Scotland, Toni Harrower utilises repetition as a creative method, layering geometric shapes to form a grid-like structure. As the paint gains depth and weight, gravity and a lack of control come into play, causing the paint to fall away. The result implies the notion of the mind – and life – falling apart. www.toniharrower.co.uk Instagram: @toni_harrower_painting

Image: Construct, 1/10, 2017.

Tim Allen Construct is a series of detailed aerial landscape photographs by Tim Allen considering aspects of globalised industry by focusing on the patterns, form, structure and organisation of production and distribution. As atomisation becomes more prevalent in logistical tasks, Allen presents a snapshot of what our landscape before it begins to change again. www.timallenphoto.net

Tony Steele Tony Steele uses analytical strategies to translate random data into visual topography. Landmap 1 is a “blueprint” of Glastonbury, Avebury and Stonehenge, creating a vesica – an intersection of two circles. In doing so, Steele’s work identifies with similarity as opposed to difference, evoking cohesion in the landscape. www.tonysteeleart.com

Willow Stacey Willow Stacey explores the ideas of maternal instinct, femininity, and sexuality from her own personal relationships. Using the simplicity of a single bodily element, her works evoke ideas about the purification and reduction of forms, questioning the values that are associated: do their identities remain or do they become inanimate objects. www.willowstacey.com Instagram: @willow.stacey

To be included in the Artists’ Directory contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com.

Xenia Gazi Xenia Gazi is a Dubai-based artist and curator, inspired by culture, architecture and calligraphy, as well as the patterns and symmetry of Islimi designs from the orient, Persia and the Arab world. Her art is her own story of One Thousand and One Nights, where the West meets the East and mystique and beauty challenge each other as an interplay between emotion and symbolism. www.xeniagazi.com

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Martin Boyce, A River in the Trees, 2009. Cement fondue, plywood, paraffin coated crepe paper, powder coated aluminium, steel chain and electrical components. Dimensions variable.

Installation view, No Reflections: Scotland and Venice, Palazzo Pisani, Venice Biennale, 2009. Photo: Gilmar Ribeiro. Courtesy of the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich.

last words

Martin Boyce Artist

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This image is from No Reflections  at the 2009 Venice Biennale. When I first came across this empty 15th century palazzo, I imagined it as an abandoned garden. At the entrance was a large hall so the room became a dried-out pool complete with stepping stones. The paper autumn leaves replaced the shimmering surface of the water whilst absent reflections found their forms in inverted tree-like chandeliers: one landscape shipwrecked inside another. There is a similar sense of overlaying in the forthcoming exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. I think of my sculptures as decommissioned satellites, endlessly orbiting a home too distant to return to, dreaming of new landscapes in which to settle. Martin Boyce, 3 May - 10 June, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York. www.tanyabonakdargallery.com.

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