Aesthetica Issue 87

Aesthetica

THE ART & CULTURE MAGAZINE

www.aestheticamagazine.com

Issue 87 February / March 2019

SEMINAL CONSTRUCTION

RESISTING STEREOTYPES

A SOCIAL CONTRIBUTION

Eamonn Doyle creates a visual map of Dublin through isolated imagery

Commemorating the impact of the Bauhaus through worldwide events

A Lagos-based fashion brand seeks to redefine our perception of gender

Architizer calls upon the public to highlight the year’s best buildings

UK £5.95 Europe €11.95 USA $15.49

RHYTHMS FROM THE CITY

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Welcome Editor’s Note

On the Cover Matias Alonso Revelli's work is awash with blues and oranges, documenting moments in the day that are never completely alike, whilst experimenting with pixellation and layering, moving the viewer into hallucinatory states. The images ruminate around open blue skylines.

Instagram: @matialonsor (p. 114).

Cover Image: Lucero. © Matias Alonso Revelli.

I saw a world population clock the other day. It exceeded seven billion and the counter was moving up and up, each second. It’s hard to imagine so many people, and it’s even harder to think of the clock stopping. What does this mean for the future? The impact that the human population has on the environment is overwhelming and action is needed to make positive change. What role does technology play in this and how can it help to create a brighter world? Society has been affected by the increase in devices and I believe as humans we are part of an evolutionary moment right now. Our lives have been accelerated and it’s important to take stock of what this means for generations to come.

Inside this issue, we look at how Architizer is questioning the definition of what makes a successful building through collaborative practice, ecological impact and sustainability. Given that more people live in cities than rural areas globally, we need to access the importance that architecture plays in supporting social interaction. Lagos-based label Orange Culture is leading in creating fashion that disrupts gender roles but is also using sustainable production methods. It is empowering people in positive ways by reinvesting in their local community – driving the Nigerian fashion industry forward. Made in Dublin

by Eamonn Doyle revisits Baudelaire’s flâneur through the ambiguity of the modern-day city. Finally, we celebrate 100 years of Bauhaus through a round-up of key events taking place worldwide, which are surveying the centenary of this art and design movement, and how its legacy is still felt today.

In photography we present a range of practitioners – William Bunce, Uwe Langmann, Bethany Murray, François Aubret, Henri Prestes and May Parlar – who are using concept and style to create works which move between fine art, architecture, documentary and fashion. Matias Alonso Revelli, this issue’s cover photographer, questions the definition of an image, asking, is it all just pixels? Finally, Martin Parr’s Only Human opens at the National Portrait Gallery and the curator, Sabina Jaskot-Gill, gives us the last words.

Cherie Federico

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Art 20 Regular Features This edition covers shows at The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Melbourne Design Week; and Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, amongst others.

28 Rhythms from the City Eamonn Doyle’s latest monograph explores the Dublin landscape, depicting a sense of isolation, anonymity and musicality through its inhabitants.

34 Sculptural Arrangements William Bunce experiments with composition and visual cohesion, placing inanimate objects at an intersection between playfulness and restraint.

44 Drifting through Time The dreamy works of May Parlar centre around mysterious characters that remain shrouded by overgrown gardens and billowing white sheets.

56 Seminal Construction Institutions from across the globe come together to mark the centenary of the Bauhaus, charting its lasting legacy and timeless, minimal aesthetics.

62 Frozen Landforms Winter is a photographic series by Uwe Langmann that depicts sweeping winter topographies; blank terrains have little by way of human interruption.

72 Balanced Perspective François Aubret’s ambition is to surprise and elate the viewer – indicating both beauty and humour within seemingly mundane, everyday locations.

82 A Social Contribution Architizer calls upon the public to award the year’s best buildings, commending structures that have demonstrated wider ecological responsibility.

88 Desolate Environments The Perfect Darkness is an ongoing collection by Portuguese cinematographer and photographer Henri Prestes, shot in misty, secluded villages.

98 Physical Encounters Bethany Murray’s images present physicality as a language; limbs wrap around tables, windows and seats as if to further connect with interior planes.

108 Resisting Stereotypes Lagos-based Orange Culture attempts to rewrite the history of fashion and culture, calling gender roles into question through androgynous pieces.

114 Delicate Observation Utilising postproduction such as pixellation and layering, Matias Alonso Revelli documents moments in the day that are never truly alike.

Exhibitions

Film

Music

130 Gallery Reviews Including: Jeu de Paume, Paris; Somerset House, London; Hirshhorn, Washington; HackelBury Fine Art, London; Tate Liverpool and Westlicht, Vienna.

134 Poetic Physicality Camille Vidal-Naquet's latest, Sauvage, is a bold, intimate feature that explores the protagonists' bodies as sites of introspection and experience.

136 Electronic Counterparts Bayonne's latest album, entitled Drastic Measures, is available from City Slang – anthems thickly layered with a myriad of recording techniques.

Books

Artists’ Directory

Last Words

138 Spatial Narratives Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta celebrates three decades of Scandinavian innovation with a sleek new publication titled Collective Intuition.

152 Inside This Issue The featured practitioners utilise many contrasts such as light and dark, interior and exterior, past and present – playing with viewer perception.

162 Martin Parr at NPG London Sabina Jaskot-Gill, curator at the National Portrait Gallery, discusses themes of British identity within Martin Parr's seminal exhibition: Only Human.

Aesthetica Magazine is trade marked worldwide. © Aesthetica Magazine Ltd 2019.

The Aesthetica Team: Editor: Cherie Federico Assistant Editor: Kate Simpson Digital Assistant: Eleanor Sutherland Staff Writer: David Martin

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

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: Hannah Skidmore Artists’ Directory Coordinator: Katherine Smira

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Installation view of Diminishing Elation by Geronimo presented by Hub Furniture and Hub General Store as part of the 2018 Melbourne Design Week. Photo: Eugene Hyland.

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Celebrating Ingenuity MELBOURNE DESIGN WEEK “How can design shape the future?” This is the thought leading the discussion at this year’s Melbourne Design Week (MDW). The international event is both an annual celebration and a practical demonstration of how a vibrant creative culture can function as a catalyst for business and technological developments. As society enters an unprecedented period of urbanisation, digitisation and population growth, both design and architecture hold a huge amount of potential for larger positive transformation, offering new ideas at the intersection of industry, politics, history, science, ecology and psychology, amongst others.

Thus, innovation – of everyday objects or the built landscape – has the power to reshape the way we live, particularly at a time when the environmental impact of consumer culture is becoming ever more pressing. However, it also raises poignant questions about ethics and aesthetics: how do we balance the creation of something new, whilst ensuring that it contributes to society in a meaningful and responsible way? How can we produce items that are at once beautiful but also functional? How can we be working collaboratively to change the trajectory of the planet?

These wide-ranging themes have encouraged the featured practitioners to situate their work in a context of historical and cultural awareness, reaching into the past to map where we’re heading together. Though these dialogues are far-

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reaching, the overarching question is: if design can shape “ Innovation – of the future, is it the best possible one, and for whom? everyday objects or A 10-day programme is presented by the National the built landscape Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, this spring, sparking critical – has the power to debate across the city and beyond. Providing answers reshape the way we to these provocative issues, the event invites visionaries live, particularly from all over the world to put their practice on show and at a time when connect with the general public. Demonstrating the kind of the environmental global reach and energy that MDW commands, last year’s impact of consumer programme included a skyline filled with thousands of culture is becoming colourful, biodegradable balloons courtesy of GERONIMO, ever more pressing.”

(Jihan Zencirli) – in the featured image. The LA-based artist has since been championed by Oprah Magazine and by Gywneth Paltrow on her Goop.com lifestyle blog.

Taking place at various venues across the region, MDW is an opportunity for practitioners to reflect upon their process – both individually and as part of a group. They are encouraged to share ideas about the future of sustainable solutions, whilst considering how they can improve their techniques in the light of today’s consumer demands. The event also provides a key component of the city’s drive to be seen as the leading hub for design and the arts within Various venues Australia. As such, it offers a number of exhibitions, talks, 14-24 March tours, panels and industry events, centred around creative development and idea generation in the 21st century. www.ngv.vic.gov.au

Transformative Landmarks ARCHITECTURE EFFECTS

Didier Faustino, A Home Is Not a Hole, 2016 Courtesy the artist and Michel Rein; Galeria Filomena Soares; Parque Galería,© Didier Fiúza Faustino, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2018.

Just over two decades ago, on the cusp of a new millennium, and technological circumstances of the museum’s opening. “The Airlock section The current state of architecture is addressed in the main offers a point of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened its doors as an institution making pioneering use of digital technologies. Today – Garden area, a vibrant open-plan gallery of life-sized works, departure themed in an age of development barely imaginable in the 1990s which features the premiere of three major projects. El Otro around the year – the museum pushes boundaries once again. The institution, by Mexican designer Frida Escobedo demonstrates a preoc- of the museum’s which was designed by Frank Gehry, takes stock of how ar- cupation with time in a social context, comprising fragments inauguration – a chitecture, art and narrative have been transformed over the from the original glass façade of a building from Mexico City. turning point for intervening years, and how a distinctly 21st century mode The piece reveals layers of material memory, looking at the the emergence of of culture is now reaching maturity. The resulting exhibition hidden archaeology of urban history. A Tent without a Signal, a new digital and from New York-based firm MOS, is a “psychomanteum” – a media culture.” asks: what makes architecture more than just building?

This theme is investigated across three threads – Airlock, place for contemplation. The futuristic, fluorescent material Garden and Bubble – creating an environment in which both is woven with metallic fibres to create a Faraday Cage, blockthe material and virtual, the ancient and futuristic are con- ing out mobile and data signals, reclaiming room for introstantly in flux, emphasising the hyperconnectivity of our spection. The potential of spaces to facilitate a deeper conpresent moment. Contributors include Nina Canell, Frida Es- nection to the self is also seen in New York-based partnership cobedo, Mikel Eskauriaza, Didier Faustino, Frank Gehry, An- Leong Leong’s Float Tank 01 – a tilted, individual capsule dreas Gursky, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Oliver Laric, Nikki S. made of steel and insulation foam, reinventing the bath as a Lee, Leong Leong, MOS, MAIO Architects, Nemesis and more. structure for reprogramming body and mind.

Finally, Bubble is the virtual dimension of the exhibition, The Airlock section offers an important point of departure themed around the year of the museum’s inauguration in an online collection of media accessible via a smartphone 1997 – a turning point for the emergence of a digitised and app or the museum website which facilitates multiple read- Guggenheim media-centric culture. It was the year artificial intelligence ings. Expanding the show beyond physical dimensions, the Museum Bilbao first beat a world chess champion, and the first robotic rover artwork demonstrates – particularly in juxtaposition with Until 29 April explored another planet. With these poignant moments in the world captured in Airlock – the sheer pace of cultural time, a vast range of archival objects recreate the political change of which Architecture Effects takes stock. guggenheim-bilbao.eus

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Martine Franck, Swimming Pool Designed by Alain Capeilleres, Le Brusc, Var, France 1976. © Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos, Courtesy of Peter Fetterman Gallery.

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Reconstructive Methods TOUJOURS PARIS As European culture attempted to come to terms with the true to authentic, documentarian modes of working, whilst “Spanning decades aftermath of two world wars, many artists turned their focus to deliberately creating a sense of nostalgia. This is explained and multiple everyday life, seeking out moments that revealed a unifying by one of the best-known figures of the movement, Robert practitioners, each of commonality – hints of beauty in the seemingly banal. Once Doisneau (1912-1994), who once stated: “I don’t photo- the pieces expresses a desire to stay such creative surge was in French Humanist photography. graph life as it is, but life as I would like it to be.”

The extensive collection includes pieces by significant true to authentic Initially emerging in Paris during times of conflict, and often taking the metropolis as its subject, the movement became figures in history, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson (1904-2004), documentarian modes a strong influence on cinema and literature – particularly and Martine Franck (1938-2012), tracing the course of the of working, whilst as the city reasserted itself as a magnet for the world’s movement and its abiding influence through these visionary deliberately creating imaginations. All the featured compositions explore the a sense of nostalgia.” freethinkers following the dark years of Nazi occupation.

As a collective, the artists’ principles were built upon boundaries between realism and poetic licensing – from universal dignity, equality and tolerance, echoing the the nocturnal wanderings of Brassaï (1899-1984), to the changing political and philosophical discourse across the emphasis of Cartier-Bresson or Willy Ronis on spontaneity globe. This marriage of ideals is perhaps best exemplified and capturing the “decisive moment.” The journey continues in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as it right through to the subtle artifice of Doisneau’s famous Le references Jean-Paul Sartre in 1946: “existentialism is a Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville (The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville) (1950). humanism.” Through this open-minded mode of thinking, This instantly recognisable picture documents figures who the individual realises that their freedom is based on being are, in fact, young lovers. What audiences may not know is that the work was staged, in entirety, to exaggerate the responsible for the whole of society, not just themselves.

Peter Fetterman Gallery, Santa Monica, takes these ideas as romantic sensibility of the scenario. As such, the exhibition inspiration for its latest exhibition, Toujours Paris, which draws not only transports the viewer back to mid-20th century Paris, Peter Fetterman Gallery, upon some of the most significant figures in 20th century but is a deliberate and timely presentation that reasserts the Santa Monica European image-making. As a whole, the show identifies a spirit of humanism. As a whole, this intriguing presentation Until 23 February common aspirational thread. Spanning decades and multi- depicts the belief in enlightened values and the desire to www.peterfetterman.com ple practitioners, each of the pieces expresses a desire to stay maintain dignity, even in the face of post-war destruction.

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Momentous Creativity DEUTSCHE BÖRSE PHOTOGRAPHY FOUNDATION PRIZE 2019

Roseann on the way to Manhattan Beach, New York, 1978. © Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos. The Photographers’ Gallery’s Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2019 will be on show from 8 March 2019, with winner announced on 16 May 2019.

The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation rewards the example drawn from a series of incidental encounters with “The award has most significant contribution made to photography in a group of girls from her neighbourhood in Little Italy. The unveiled its shortlist Europe over the last 12 months, offering a generous sum of Kurdistan installation, meanwhile, incorporates images into with those who have found new ways £30,000. Reaching its 22nd edition, the prize has unveiled its an archival process with the wider Kurdish community.

Meanwhile, a radical approach to archive materials is at to engage with the shortlist with those who have found new ways to engage with the world around them. This year’s four nominees are Laia the heart of RAF – No Evidence by Messmer (b. 1964). The world around them, Abril, Susan Meiselas, Arwed Messmer and Mark Ruwedel, RAF in question is the Red Army Faction or Baader-Meinhof experimenting with Group, a far-left terrorist organisation active in Germany from innovative techniques artists who tackle social injustices and human rights issues.

Abril (b. 1986) is nominated for On Abortion (Dewi Lewis 1970 onwards. Messmer compiles investigative and forensic whilst addressing the Publishing). The first chapter of a long-term project, A History evidence, pulling the threads of surveillance and questioning past as a means to of Misogyny, it presents a timeline of women’s access to clin- the place of documentary in shaping our cultural conscious- illuminate the present.” ics and treatments. Globally, many women are still forced to ness. He notes: “I am not interested in using photos to illusresort to illegal or risky methods, leading to approximately trate the past. Instead, they are the theme of my work.”

The traces left upon the landscape are also the central sub47,000 deaths each year. Abril presents a meticulously researched collection of visual, audio and textual evidence, ex- ject for Ruwedel (b. 1955) nominated for Artist and Society.

Dating between 1995 and 2012, the featured pieces merge posing the many stigmas that persist around female health.

Meiselas (b. 1948) is perhaps best known for reportage concept with documentary, expressing the influence of land images from conflict zones in Central America, notably the art on abandoned railways, nuclear testing sites and empty Nicaraguan revolution of 1978-1979, but for this award she desert homes, all echoing historic process for image-making.

Pulling the artists together is a sense of belonging and The Photographers’ is nominated for the retrospective exhibition Meditations, presented at the Jeu de Paume, Paris. Covering the 1970s to the social introspection. As Brett Rogers, Gallery Director, states: Gallery, London present day, her work addresses ethnic and religious conflicts “Each year those selected uniquely expand the capabilities of 8 March - 2 June and the sex industry, through seminal, provocative images. the medium. The 2019 shortlist continues this legacy.” The One of the featured works from Prince Street Girls – Roseann winner is announced on 16 May at The Photographers’ Gal- www.thephotographers on the way to Manhattan Beach, see below – is a compelling lery, London, before touring to Eschborn / Frankfurt. gallery.org.uk

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Untitled (Prologue II), The Stranger‘s Notebook, 2016. © Dawit L. Petros. Courtesy Tiwani Contemporary and The Walther Collection.

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Intertwining Narratives RECENT HISTORIES Until the last decade of the 20th century, image-making in involved, whose origins range from Cameroon to Kenya, “The sheer physical relation to Africa was largely seen – in Europe – through the Ethiopia and Ivory Coast. Rather than attempting to define scale and cultural light of travel and ethnographic photography, mostly from a prescriptive concept of what makes their work distinctly diversity of the western perspectives. However, Nigerian art critic and curator “Afrikaans,” however, the images are allowed to speak for continent can be seen Okwui Enwezor has played an important role in the eman- themselves, through their overlapping motifs and powerful in the number of cipation of contemporary African art, having hosted one of themes. In this way, the show ranges not only in space but in practitioners involved, the first retrospectives at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, time, from the pioneering figure of Goldblatt to the youngest whose origins range New York: In / Sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Pre- featured photographer, Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990), who from Cameroon to Kenya, Ethiopia sent (1996). Enwezor has, since then, been heavily involved finished her training in Johannesburg as recently as 2011.

One key subject is how artists relate to the power and scale and Ivory Coast. in The Walther Collection, New York / Neu-Ulm, which joins forces with Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, this spring for Recent of the landscape, expressing how it has come to embody the Histories – a detailed survey of diverse voices traversing past impacts of colonialism, war and industrialisation. Pieces by and present, providing their own impression of the continent. Em’kal Eyongakpa, Délio Jasse, Mame-Diarra Niang and MiThe exhibition introduces new pieces alongside several chael Tsegaye, for example, collectively address the impacts generations of well-known practitioners – including David of social, economic and political developments on not only Goldblatt (1930-2018), who, as the initiator of the Market nature, but on public spaces and contemporary architecture Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, was a mentor figure to – key locations which shape daily life and a wider sense of many of the featured artists. Goldblatt, in turn, has had a identity. Elsewhere in the show, stories of migration and diaslong association with Huis Marseille, becoming a strong in- pora become more personal, notably from artists who travel fluence on its collection and being involved in a number of extensively such as Mimi Cherono Ng’ok, or those who live permanently outside the continent, such as Mame-Diarra seminal shows such as Apartheid & After (2014).

Recent Histories’ title refers to the complex stories included Niang and Dawit L. Petros. What connects all voices across Huis Marseille, Amsterdam in the presentation. Though there is a strong contingent from the images is the notion that Africa is a state of mind, a per- Until 3 March South Africa, the sheer physical scale and cultural diversity vasive influence that endures – for both the artwork and the of the continent can be seen in the number of practitioners viewer – long after it has been left behind. www.huismarseille.nl

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Defining Citizenship IN TRANSIT

Gohar Dashti, from the series Stateless. From the exhibition In Transit. © Gohar Dashti.

In Transit is a necessary exhibition to see this season. It Spain’s Galicia region to the UK, seeking better economic “Communicating a focuses on the “limbo-like experience of living between opportunities. Tanya Habjouqa – the founder of the first all- sense of purgatory different cultures,” telling the “stories of immigrants who female photography collective in the Middle East – is also and boredom, the traverse no man’s land, existing between home and hope.” featured in the show’s stellar presentation. With interests impacting images SF Camerawork, San Francisco, through the vision of Curator including the representation of otherness, dispossession and express each of Peggy Sue Amison (Artistic Director for East-Wing, a platform human rights, the award-winning journalist and educator the inhabitants as someone who for photography in Doha, Qatar), explores humanity’s contributes expressive images filled with sensitivity.

Lastly, Gohar Dashti has spent the last 13 years combining is ‘tolerated’ but complex and wandering search for stability, providing a rich interests in anthropology and sociology. Having studied at not accepted into tapestry of perspectives from across the world.

This culminates in photography, performance and film- the Fine Art University in Tehran, she has since been awarded the community.” making from five practitioners based in Germany, Jordan, several scholarships and residences across the globe, exLebanon, Iran and the UK. The first is Stefanie Zofia Schulz, hibiting at the V&A, London; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; whose eye-opening series, Duldung / Toleration, documents Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and Nathe residents living in Germany’s largest collective housing tional Gallery of Art, Washington DC. She has been widely estate for asylum seekers. Communicating a sense of purga- lauded for her affective pieces that place the viewer in isotory, the images express each of the inhabitants as someone lated environments – as an on-looker for humans left behind.

The Stateless series, included at SF Camerwork this season, who is “tolerated” but not accepted into the community; they are not allowed to stay, nor are they able to go elsewhere centres around a strange place with no identity, filled with safely. In a similar vein, George Awde – an artist born in anonymous individuals hoping for a better life. Through Boston of Lebanese origin – draws on nationality and sexu- dusty planes and groups of abandoned people, the powerful compositions reflect upon the global effects of conflict, SF Camerawork, ality, focusing on people living on the margins of Beirut.

Daniel Castro Garcia has revisited many of Europe’s political strife and terrorism. Huddled together, and with San Francisco refugee hotspots since 2015, telling the stories of displaced strewn belongings, the characters grip each other in an act of Until 15 March individuals through the lens. His book, Foreigner: Migration desperation. Ultimately, Dashti asks the powerful question: into Europe, was inspired by his parents, who moved from “where will migrants be welcomed with open arms?” www.sfcamerawork.org

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1. Werner Bischof, Girls, St. Moritz, Schweiz, 1948. © Werner Bischof Estate / Magnum Photos. 2. Bill Viola, Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall), 2005. Video/sound installation.

Performer: John Hay. Courtesy Bill Viola Studio. Photo: Kira Perov. 3. Daria Martin, Tonight the World, 2018. Anamorphic 16mm film transferred to HD, 13 minutes. © Daria Martin, Courtesy Maureen Paley Gallery, London. 4. Peluquería, 1979 © Ouka Leele. 5. Peter Kennedy, Neon Light Installations, 1970-2002. Neon, composition board and synthetic polymer paint, 235cm x 1192.2cm x 8.6cm. Purchased 2004, Collection of Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney. © Peter Kennedy. Image: National Gallery Singapore.

10 to See RECOMMENDED EXHIBITIONS THIS SEASON

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Winter in Swiss Photography

Paracelsus Forum, St Moritz Until 21 February

www.bildhalle.ch Zurich’s Bildhalle gallery presents a group exhibition featuring classical and contemporary works in Swiss photography on the subject of winter. The show includes a number of vintage prints

by Albert Steiner, Werner Bischof, Sabine Weiss and Douglas Mandry. Dramatic topographies are reduced to clean, white planes, as the featured artists explore worlds blanketed by heavy planes of snow.

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www.royalacademy.org.uk When video artist Bill Viola (b. 1951) encountered a collection of drawings by Renaissance master Michelangelo, a connection was made between the two individuals. Both practitioners, though born centuries apart, use the body to convey both physical and spiritual states. In Life Death Rebirth, two radically different mediums are placed in contrast to reveal common themes of transcendence, the sacred and the emotional.

www.barbican.org.uk Daria Martin’s (b. 1973) solo commission Tonight the World is part of the Barbican’s 2019 season Life Rewired, a series considering what it means to be human in an age of radical technological transformation. Martin combines film and computer gaming technology to create a dream-like environment in which visitors can explore the vivid memories of her grandmother, an artist who fled from the Holocaust.

www.foam.org Food photography has become a staple of social media platforms such as Instagram in recent years, making the dining experience public and hyper-real.

However, images relating to food have a rich history, from the visual arts to scientific images and photojournalism. What we eat can represent an identity, offering information about economic circumstances, religious beliefs and daily routines.

Feast for the Eyes reveals the many meanings of a meal.

Bill Viola / Michelangelo

Royal Academy, London Until 31 March

Tonight the World

Barbican Centre, London Until 7 April

Feast for the Eyes

Foam, Amsterdam Until 3 March

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Minimalism

National Gallery Singapore Until 14 April

www.nationalgallery.sg Subtitled Space. Light.

Object, this first major minimalist exhibition in southeast Asia looks back over the emergence of an influential movement and its continuing legacies from the 1950s to the presentday. It considers the history of Asian philosophies such as Zen Buddhism, as well as the incurring interest in both absence and presence as juxtaposing concepts.

More than 150 pieces come together in this survey.

6. Don McCullin, Near Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, 1961. Tate Purchased 2012. Courtesy of the artist. 7. Richard Misrach, Orange grove, Brownsville, Texas / Campo de naranjas, Brownsville, Texas, 2015. © Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York; and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles. 8. Viviane Sassen, Fellow Vlei. © Vivianne Sassen, courtesy of the artist. 9. Jack Lueders-Booth, from the series Women Prisoners, MCI Framingham (Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Framingham), 1978–85. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston. 10. Max Pinckers, She Will Use the Birds, from the series The Fourth Wall, 2012 © 2012. Max Pinckers.

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Don McCullin

Tate Britain, London 5 February - 6 May

www.tate.org.uk One of Britain’s best-known war photographers – who has reported from places including Vietnam, Northern Ireland, and recently the Syrian conflict – Sir Don McCullin is the focus of Tate’s latest exhibition. This retrospective comprises scenes of working-class life in the East End of London and the industrial north of England, as well as landscapes from around his Somerset home.

The pictures are accompanied by McCullin’s brutally honest commentaries.

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www.pier24.org Often considered as an “alternative national anthem,” Woody Guthrie’s 1940 folk song This Land Is Your Land combines a panoramic vista of the USA. At Pier 24, a diverse selection of established and emerging photographers express the complexities of the country.

Featuring: Dawoud Bey, Guillermo Galindo, Jim Goldberg, An-My Lê, Richard Misrach, Paolo Pellegrin, Daniel Postaer, Bryan Schutmaat, Alec Soth, Brian Ulrich and Donovan Wylie.

www.nrw-forum.de As part of the programme of events surrounding the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus – the design school which was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919 – NRW Forum Dusseldorf examines the impact of the school upon 20th century photography, bringing key pieces into dialogue with present-day artists. Figures such as László Moholy-Nagy and Lucia Moholy feature alongside the likes of Viviane Sassen and Wolfgang Tillmans.

This Land

Pier 24, San Francisco Until 31 March

Bauhaus and Photography

NRW Forum Düsseldorf Until 10 March

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Prison Nation

Aperture Gallery, New York 7 February - 8 March

www.aperture.org At a moment when 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the USA, 3.8 million people are on probation, and 870,000 former prisoners are on parole, how can images tell the story of mass imprisonment when those behind the bars don’t have control over their own representation? Aperture’s inspiring exhibition creates a visual record of a national crisis with pieces from Lucas Foglia, Emily Kinni, Jesse Krimes and 10 others.

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25 Years!

Fotomuseum Winterthur Until 10 February

www.fotomuseum.ch To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Fotomuseum Winterthur, the gallery has invited partners, friends and colleagues to choose their favourite works from the collection. The displayed photographs create a compelling archive. Including: Lewis Baltz, Luigi Ghirri, Nan Goldin, Paul Graham, Roni Horn, Sherrie Levine, Gordon Matta-Clark, Max Pinckers, Pipilotti Rist, Alec Soth, Joel Sternfeld, Christopher Williams and Bruno Zhu.

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Rhythms from the City Made in Dublin EAMONN DOYLE HAS QUICKLY MOVED FROM MUSIC PRODUCER AND DJ TO STREET PHOTOGRAPHER, DOCUMENTING DUBLIN'S INHABITANTS THROUGH AN ANONYMOUS LENS.

Eamonn Doyle (b. 1969) has walked up and down O’Connell of the entire run of 750 books. Michael Hoppen, the photogStreet – the longest thoroughfare in Dublin – for most of raphy collector and gallery owner in Chelsea, London, got his life. He would often take the route to get to work, as in touch to ask Doyle if he might like gallery representation. the founder of the Dublin Electronic Arts Festival and both Within two years, Doyle was at the forefront of a solo show as the Dead Elvis and D1 independent record labels. Flick to part of the prestigious Rencontres d’Arles festival.

This timeline of events can largely be drawn to these en2019: Thames & Hudson publishes a major monograph of Doyle’s images, entitled Made in Dublin. A rhythmic, pulsing dorsements; however, the simplicity of the images has transcollection, the book produces a map of the urban landscape fixed a myriad of viewers, and is what continues to appeal to through three bodies of work – i, ON and End. – bouncing contemporary audiences across the globe. As Parr’s Flickr between its inhabitants and translating the over-bearing post continues: “These hunched street walkers of Dublin express so much character, yet we never see their faces. It’s so background hum into bold, visual compositions.

So where did the journey begin? Having graduated with powerful. The directness is brilliant.” Creating a concise and a photography diploma in 1991, Doyle barely touched a distilled image is often the end result of many hours honing camera for more than 20 years, instead accruing major acclaim and perfecting an artistic process, with a lot of time spent as a producer, DJ and music manager. The Irish Times notably searching for, and understanding, the exact way one intends stated that D1 was “one of the most important chapters in Irish to capture a nebulous thing. With that in mind, Doyle’s apmusic history.” Following this, Doyle began to lose interest proach was wholly inspired by great literary icons.

No discussion of Irish literature can be complete without in the industry in an age of heavy postproduction and preprepared tracks. Instead, he steadily became enamoured by reference to James Joyce (1882-1941). However, Joyce's the daily routines of his elderly neighbours – strangers who influence extends far beyond this; he is also the first name to passed his front door on their way to the city centre to collect be recalled when thinking about the “flâneur” – the aimless wanderer, a term to be considered in Doyle’s provocations a paper, pensions or daily provisions as a ritual habit.

Circa 2008, Doyle dug out a camera and began to cap- of the landscape. As The Guardian’s Sean O’ Hagan writes ture them – without showing anyone the results – until self- in the book’s introduction: “The poet Patrick Kavanagh publishing the early iterations of his first collection, i. He then believed that the parochial was universal, that all human life posted two limited edition copies: one to Alec Soth, the other was contained in the small, rural Irish parish he grew up in. to Martin Parr. On April 1 2014, Parr circulated the book James Joyce adhered in his own way to the same principle. through his Flickr account, pronouncing it “the best street Having fled Ireland for a long exile in Europe, he evoked the photobook in a decade.” Within a fortnight, he had sold out atmosphere, people and places of his native Dublin, with an

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Eamonn Doyle, Parnell Street, 2017. Photograph © 2019 Eamonn Doyle.

“It’s a sympathetic series, capturing both the strength and the fragility of all citizens as a picture of the world around us – mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who are easy to ignore when ploughing one’s own way through a busy urban setting.”

Previous Page: Eamonn Doyle, Parnell Street, 2016.

Photograph © 2019 Eamonn Doyle.

Left: Eamonn Doyle, Orange, from the series End, 2015. Photograph © 2019 Eamonn Doyle.

By the time the Arles exhibition rolled around, Doyle had almost forensic eye for minute geographical detail.”

However, it was Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), the absurdist followed up with two further bodies of street documentation: and avant-garde playwright, who truly influenced Doyle; i ON and End. Seen together, the three bodies of work was directly inspired by the short production Not I. “I was interrelate to communicate a striking portrait of a modern and obsessed with Beckett when I started taking these photos. multicultural urban Ireland. Beyond that, they demonstrate He understands Dublin, but he strips away the context of his an artist adept at creating from the flux of the street the characters. I started taking images that pare everything back.” extraordinary within the ordinary, tying Doyle’s interests in The first work that communicated this methodology was literature, and background in electronic music and altogether of a solitary woman covered by an ornate head-scarf and representing the rhythms of life. “The city’s concrete, brick, powder-purple coat, shot close-up and from behind, with her tarmac, dirt and dust are as much characters as the people. face hidden from view. “The older face is such a loaded cliché These factors are certainly musical beats and textures within in this type of image-making,” Doyle noted. “With Beckett’s the score of the whole city, including a huge element of writing, it’s not what’s said that’s intriguing, but what’s not. I repetition, but a repetition of individual characters.”

Niall Sweeney expands upon the notion in the new wondered whether you can apply that to photography?”

With that, Doyle begin to craft a unique style, being as monograph: “Made in Dublin is the city as cinema, just close as possible to subjects without disturbing them, stand- as revealed itself in real time through the lens of Doyle, ing on his toes to capture them from above. This can be seen restating the intertwined looping dramas, its light and in the featured compositions – bright orange jumpers, polka texture, psyche and the movements of its people, as they dot shirts, bold yellow coats and the edges of skirts provid- unfold and pass through. It is about the shapes and beats ing limited information about their wearers. The intention was that they, that we, unconsciously go through together as one. to capture each passer-by unposed, unaware and uncommu- The photographs have been made over a short period, in the nicative – smoking a cigarette or crossing the road, enacting same place and in no particular order, with thematic patterns a routine or hurrying home. “If they noticed what I was doing, and subjects emerging as the work grows exponentially.”

Commenting upon the evolution of the series from start I’d stop straightaway,” he says. “I wanted them oblivious.”

Doyle also wanted his subjects in isolation, with no other to finish, Doyle notes: “With my first book (i) most of the present figures. He would focus on the elderly and, often, people seemed to be in some state of stasis with no sense the impoverished, as well people from different ethnicities. of movement around them. The work was preoccupied It’s a sympathetic series, capturing both the strength and the with figures consumed by introspection. The dramas in the fragility of all citizens as a picture of the world around us – following book (ON ) are far more environmental. They are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who are easy to ignore contextualised a lot more against the backdrop of the city.”

Like his literary influences Doyle has also become a notable when ploughing one’s own way through a busy urban setting.

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Eamonn Doyle, Thread, 2015. Photograph © 2019 Eamonn Doyle.

penman of the streets – with a camera as his medium, rather than the written word. “There’s going to be an inevitable sense of the flâneur with any kind of street photography,” Doyle says, when asked about this. “Beckett and Joyce were both doing two very different things with their texts and using language in very different ways. I can relate to both and feel like replicating both in visual terms depending on my mood.”

In sharp contrast, however, is the fact that both literary icons were exiled from Ireland – and wrote primarily in Paris.

The ability to express, through words, the sense of a place without being physically in it is something that, at this point in time, evades photography. But, tantalisingly, that may change and may hint at a possible future evolution of Doyle’s artistic process. “It will be fascinating to see what happens as technology allows for total discretion with camera implants, total recall and whichever much more highly developed version of Google Street View is coming down the line,” he says.

Although Doyle will undoubtedly get a new rush of interest in his street photography with the Thames & Hudson publication, he has recently – for complex and personal reasons – withdrawn from the urban environment. On the exact same day that Parr made that fated endorsement, Doyle learned his mother, Kathryn, was diagnosed with cancer. She died in March 2017, after a five-year-long battle.

“But she never managed to escape the grief of losing her son,” Doyle says. Sorting through her possessions, he found piles of notebooks that had been hidden from the family. His mother, he realised, had written countless letters to Doyle’s brother, Ciarán, who, in 1999, had died at the age of 33.

“There were thousands of them,” he says. “She’d written a letter to him every day. They were like private prayers.”

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The death of his mother, whom he cared for privately, as he became internationally known, hit him hard. The realisation, in addition, that he had never properly allowed himself to grieve for Ciarán, came as a double shock. Doyle was, at the time, exploring a series on the west coast of Ireland, focusing on the kinship between traditional Gaelic song and north African music – a lineage developed over ancient trading lines. The work, by his own admission, wasn’t coming together.

Kathryn, as a figure, a muse and a constant emotional icon in Doyle's mind, provided another point of departure away from the coast. As a result, he created his most recent series, K. A dramatic development from the metropolitan trilogy, it centres on a female figure wreathed in a Gaelic veil, a garment used for mourning. Doyle revisited locations and captured – at first light and dusk – the figure situated in many of the bucolic places he visited on holiday when he was a child. It’s a devastatingly powerful series, which, after its premiere at Paris Photo in 2018, looks set for involvement in many festivals and exhibition spaces over the next year.

Further to this, Doyle will have his first solo exhibition at RHA Gallery, Dublin, and will present a video installation at Photo London with Michael Hoppen Gallery (16-19 May). He will also be honoured with a retrospective at Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, this September, proof of his widespread acclaim.

Crossing cities and continents across 2019, Doyle is a key visual icon for the 21st century, and one to watch for the future. He is an artist who demonstrates the empathic and deeply human qualities of photography in an age of disconnect – a rare skill that should be celebrated. Where and what he does next is anyone’s guess, but one thing’s for sure: wherever he wanders next, it will be worth following.

Right: Eamonn Doyle, Marlborough Street, 2017. Photograph © 2019 Eamonn Doyle.

Words Tom Seymour

Made in Dublin is published 7 March courtesy of Thames & Hudson. www.thamesandhudson.com www.eamonndoyle.com

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Sculptural Arrangements William Bunce

William Bunce (b. 1987) is a still-life photographer and director working across editorial and advertising. His numerous collaborative series experiment with narrative and visual cohesion, arranging inanimate objects at an intersection between playfulness and restraint. Skyshapes presents three distinct colour schemes, inspired by the main time lapses within the day – morning, noon and night. Bunce and set designer Lisa Jahovic translate elements from the natural world into clean, aesthetically pleasing images that present a myriad of possibilities. Just as the sun sets differently everyday, so too are the models re-arranged in a unique and intriguing fashion each time. Also featured in the following pages are works from the Paper series – a collection made with set designer Alice Rigby. Blockcolour platforms bend to the whim of geometric design. www.willbunce.com.

William Bunce. Image from the series Skyshapes.

Set Design and Art Direction: Lisa Jahovic.

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William Bunce. Image from the series Paper. Set Design: Alice Rigby. Special thanks to Stilletto for retouching.

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William Bunce. Image from the series Paper. Set Design: Alice Rigby. Special thanks to Stilletto for retouching.

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William Bunce. Image from the series Skyshapes. Set Design and Art Direction: Lisa Jahovic.

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William Bunce. Image from the series Skyshapes. Set Design and Art Direction: Lisa Jahovic.

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William Bunce. Image from the series Paper. Set Design: Alice Rigby. Special thanks to Stilletto for retouching.

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William Bunce. Image from the series Paper. Set Design: Alice Rigby. Special thanks to Stilletto for retouching.

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William Bunce. Image from the series Skyshapes. Set Design and Art Direction: Lisa Jahovic.

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William Bunce. Image from the series Skyshapes. Set Design and Art Direction: Lisa Jahovic.

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Drifting through Time May Parlar

New York-based May Parlar (b. 1981) is a photography and video artist creating visual narratives that centre around the notion of belonging. With a background in architecture and sustainable design – and having moved between 30 countries in the last 10 years – Parlar has since become interested in examining the human condition in relation to surrounding landscapes. Each image translates the contrasting experiences of being and performing within gravity-defying realities and ambiguous timeframes. The works instil a sense of the uncanny in the viewer; characters wander through realities as nomads rather than citizens.

Balloons are suspended mid-air; ethereal desert planes host static figures that are swathed by bleach-white sheets; overgrown gardens swallow characters in mid-conversation. Parlar has been shortlisted for the 2019 Aesthetica Art Prize, with images on display at York Art Gallery, 8 March - 14 July. www.mayparlar.com | www.aestheticamagazine.com/art-prize.

May Parlar, Turkey, 2018.

Photography Assistant: Tahir Ayparlar.

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May Parlar, Turkey, 2017.

Photography Assistant: Tahir Ayparlar.

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May Parlar, Cambodia, 2018.

Photography Assistant: Derin Cubukcuoglu.

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May Parlar, Turkey, 2018.

Photography Assistant: Nihal Durgun.

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May Parlar, Spain, 2018.

Photography Assistant: Malte Voss.

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May Parlar, Turkey, 2017.

Photography Assistant: Segah Sak.

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Seminal Construction Bauhaus 100 BAUHAUS IS CELEBRATED THIS YEAR; AT ITS CENTENARY, THE SCHOOL CONTINUES TO ASSERT ITS LEGACY WITH CLASSIC AESTHETICS AND COLLABORATIVE SENSIBILITIES.

“Together let us desire, conceive and create the new structure design objects or minimalist sculptures, the mind almost of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture immediately draws a connection to inspirational Bauhaus and painting in one unity,” remarked Walter Gropius (1883- alumni including Marcel Breuer (1902-1981), Wassily 1969) in the 1919 Programme of the State Bauhaus in Kandinsky (1866-1944) and Gerhard Marcks (1889-1981).

Weimar. This early declaration revealed the ethos of the However, rather than focusing on the group’s thoroughly internationally acclaimed school for decades to come. For documented history, it is perhaps more apt to highlight at Gropius, and the throngs of artists, architects and designers this time – just as the world begins its celebration of the who flocked to the institute, cooperation and creativity centenary – Bauhaus’ contemporary relevance. This year is worked hand in hand. Makers of all disciplines shared indeed an essential time to revisit the cutting-edge output of the notion that only by collaborating, sharing ideas and this timeless group, and it is important to discuss why it has embracing the technological advancements of the day, come so far in our minds as a movement of great significance.

Amongst the writers turning their attention to the institute would innovation be possible, and in extension, would they carve a place for visual arts in a world becoming increasingly on the occasion of its 100th anniversary is Alan Powers, an defined by its technological achievements in manufacturing. authority on 20th century art and design and a Professor It goes without saying that the school’s legacy has had at New York University in London and the London School an indefinite impact on cultural production at large; its of Architecture. His soon-to-publish book, Bauhaus Goes widespread influence can clearly be seen within the work of West (28 February, Thames & Hudson), addresses just how numerous modern-day practitioners, with notable names far-reaching the ideas of the German school have spread including Wolfgang Tillmans, Viviane Sassen and Thomas through culture. In this comprehensive, weighty compendium, Ruff (all of whom can be seen in Bauhaus and the Photograph: Powers traces the emigration of the minimalist ideology from New Visions of Contemporary Art at NRW-Forum, Düsseldorf, Weimar to Britain in the 1920s, 1930s and onwards. Through open until 10 March. Turn to page 23 to find out more.) Its these pages, he contends that everything from the group’s aesthetics further extends to the household, with countless values to its design practices – and even its name – greatly reinventions of the designs circulating around contemporary impacted the communities of the west. One excerpt reads: homes. The Barcelona Chair (1929) by Ludwig Mies van “‘The best thing Gropius did was to invent the name,’ said der Rohe (1886-1969) and Lilly Reich (1885-1947) is one Mies van der Rohe. Even Gropius might not have understood such example – featured in the following pages – a piece in 1919 how accessible this unique brief neologism would internationally recognised for its “less is more” mentality. be to non-German speakers, compared to the long-winded Indeed, when one encounters sleek home furnishings, chic compound nouns that denoted the rival schools.”

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Courtesy of Knoll.

“It goes without saying that the school’s legacy has had an indefinite impact on cultural production at large; its widespread influence can clearly be seen within the work of numerous modern-day practitioners.”

Previous Page & Left: Barcelona® Chair, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Courtesy of Knoll.

The author continues to explain that, through exhibitions, the centenary events know no bounds. Traversing film, phopublications and a number of visits to England from Gropius, tography, literature, sculpture, installation and design, the Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) – that took wide-ranging programme is a fitting representation of the place shortly after the school had closed due to mounting institution through diversity. To borrow the words of the Conpressure from the Nazis – that the UK was introduced to the structivist sculptor, theorist and lecturer Naum Gabo (1890sensibilities of the movement’s iconic design. In re-examining 1977): “I consider morals and aesthetics one and the same, the relationship with Britain, Powers re-writes a chapter in the for they cover only one impulse – to bring our life and all country’s history, asserting that the Bauhaus gave way to our actions into a satisfactory relationship with the events of global innovation, beyond its prominence in Germany. This the world as our consciousness wants it to be.”

In Germany alone, these varied celebrations include included the introduction of arts education for children by Marion Richardson (1892-1946) and the London County Original Bauhaus at Berlinische Galerie, running 6 September Council – challenging the pre-existing postulation that the to 27 January 2020), Experiments in Light and Movement at LWL Museum of Art and Culture, Munster (until 3 March) and 1920s were a period of creative stagnation in the UK. It comes as no surprise that Powers’s book finds itself in 100 Years of Bauhaus: One Million a series of performances in good company this year. It’s Nice That ’s A / W 2018 edition Berlin by Uli Aigner (b. 1965), which includes the tracking of of Printed Pages, for example, dedicates three covers in red, one million porcelain vessels over the course of her lifetime, yellow and blue text, displaying 42 of nearly 600 glyphs looking at their global reach as symbols of the everyday. that German designer Sascha Lobe and his team have The objective of this series is to connect people from all walks created for the Bauhaus Archiv. Further afield, and into of life, located in all corners of the world through a humble the throes of institutions worldwide, the centenary is being material, that she explains, can be made from the earth by marked with a deluge of exhibitions, performances and talks. any one of its inhabitants. Also taking place this year is the V&A, London, for example, is hosting a 10-week course next instalment of the Triennale der Moderne in the cities focusing on the diaspora that followed the school’s closure of Weimar, Dessau and Berlin. This insightful programme and the ways in which it is ingrained in society, down to the investigates the modern-day significance of UNESCO World text screens on our smartphones (running until 27 March). Heritage sites that are affiliated with the school.

Other countries are, of course, joining in the commemoThese are accompanied as well by the production of limitededition pieces, and even the release of a film from Opendox, rations. A solo exhibition highlighting the textiles of Anni directed by Alysa Nahmias. The New Bauhaus re-examines Albers recently closed at Tate Modern in London, and a widethe colossal impact Moholy-Nagy had on Chicago – all ranging retrospective featuring objects by 60 Bauhaus practitioners opens this February at the Museum Boijmans van aimed at further unravelling the narrative of the movement.

Multi-disciplinary, and connecting past, present and future, Beuningen in Rotterdam; netherlands ⇄ bauhaus: Pioneers

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Courtesy of Knoll.

of a new world runs 9 February - 26 May. Seminal exhibitions were also hosted earlier this year in New Delhi, Lagos and São Paulo, including three Bauhaus Imaginista shows. In Chicago, the Goethe Institut recently mounted the show A Little Piece of Bauhaus which featured the disorienting and engrossing neon-light installations of Berlin-born sculptor Monika Wulfers, heavily inspired by Oscar Schlemmer (1888-1943) and his acclaimed Triadic Ballet (1922).

In addition to the galleries and publications unpacking the endeavours of the wider Bauhaus circle, it is also necessary to highlight the existence of a market that exists today for the designs, especially given that the globalised desire for minimal aesthetics – in many industries – is booming. With an eye toward the future and a thoroughly progressive outlook, the institute was also one of the first in art history to declare equality amongst genders, fostering the work of its pioneering female members such as Anni Albers (18991994) and Gunta Stölzl (1897-1983). The school was indeed ahead of its time. It is no wonder, then, that connoisseurs of this generation still look to the movement for inspiration – and it enters seamlessly into people’s homes to this day.

Home-furnishing purveyor Knoll is one such brand helping to do this. With the tagline “Modern Always,” the company has issued an entire line of legacy décor that truly reflects the intuitive projects from the era. Included in its many offerings is a re-issue of van der Rohe’s tantalisingly curvilinear Brno and MR chairs – his seemingly gravity-defying barstools that were originally produced in collaboration with Phillip Johnson (1906-2005) for the now-iconic Four Seasons Restaurant at the Seagram Building in New York. The American architect forecasted the timelessness of the project

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when he stated: “If there really is no new way to be found, we are not afraid to stick with the old one that we found.”

Knoll’s other best-selling pieces include Breuer’s beguiling Wassily chairs, which were influenced by the frame of a bicycle, and inspired in part by constructivist theories of the Netherlands-based De Stijl movement, popularised by painters Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931). Those seeking to add such classic, popular products to their home can also look to Tecnolumen, the world’s only authorised manufacturer of Wilhelm Wagenfeld’s (1900-1990) table lamp, and the CooperHewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, which offers a chess set conceived by Josef Hartwig (1880-1955) [eschewing traditional pawns and bishops, the shape of each piece evokes the way it moves across the board].

The appetite of consumers, makers, readers and museumgoers for Bauhaus-inspired content and creations further supports the notion that there is still much to be learned from these 20th century trailblazers. The emulation of their collaborative and thoroughly modern spirit is both warranted and necessary, and 2019 is filled to the brim with inspiring events that bring the planet together in a celebration of classic forms, insightful structures and collective ideas.

Here, again, Walter Gropius’ 1919 words serve as a poignant reminder that by accepting that makers in all fields – and perhaps even all of humankind – are more alike than they are different, real progress can be made. “In rare moments of inspiration, transcending the consciousness of his will, the grace of heaven may cause his work to blossom into art. But proficiency in a craft is essential to every artist. Therein lays the prime source of creative imagination.”

Right: Barcelona® Chair, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Courtesy of Knoll.

Words Stephanie Strasnick

www.bauhaus100.com www.knolleurope.com

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Frozen Landforms Uwe Langmann

Winter is a photographic series by German artist Uwe Langmann (b. 1985) that depicts sweeping topographies blanketed by clean, white expanses of snow. The works are a perfect example of form complementing subject matter. The undulating heaps of snow are captured with little other details, perpetuating the idea of coldness through blank, isolated locations. Langmann masterfully captures the land as it is submerged by the supremacy of nature; manmade icons fall victim to the powerful mounds of ice. Sheds, fences and poles protrude from the clean lines of the ground with little indication of life. Profoundly satisfying, the images invite viewers to marvel at the simplicity, devoid of intrusion from a digital, globalised world. Langmann has won many awards, most notably being named Photographer of the Year at One Eyeland Awards. He is also longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2019. www.uwelangmann.com | www.aestheticamagazine.com/art-prize.

White Island, 2012. Š Uwe Langmann.

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Silent, 2016. © Uwe Langmann.

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Ad Infinity, 2011. © Uwe Langmann.

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A Forest, 2018. © Uwe Langmann.

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Threshold, 2017. © Uwe Langmann.

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Winter 026, 2017. © Uwe Langmann.

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Winter 016, 2013. © Uwe Langmann.

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Ponder, 2017. © Uwe Langmann.

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Winter 005, 2016. © Uwe Langmann.

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Balanced Perspective François Aubret

François Aubret (b. 1986) is a French photographer currently living in Los Angeles.

His practice revolves around the creation of "graphic encounters" – a series of clean, colourful works that document the hidden geometries of urban civilisation.

Each piece juxtaposes manmade structures with nature – concrete and painted buildings provide bold, textural relief in contrast with compressed skylines. Aubret’s aspiration is to surprise and elate the viewer – indicating both beauty and humour in homogenised landscapes and revealing order and symmetry within seemingly mundane locations. He has been featured in many publications such as Phroom and Noice, and has exhibited at MNML at Galerie Minimal, Berlin, as well as the 2018 edition of PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai. He has also been longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2019. www.francoisaubret.com | www.aestheticamagazine.com/art-prize.

François Aubret, Staple, 2017.

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Franรงois Aubret, Stall, 2017.

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Franรงois Aubret, Lot, 2018. Photograph represented by Galerie Minimal (Berlin, Germany).

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Franรงois Aubret, Palm, 2018. Photograph represented by Brownie (Shanghai, China).

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Franรงois Aubret, Babylon, 2018.

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Franรงois Aubret, Lisbon 02, 2018.

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Franรงois Aubret, Nantes 03, 2018.

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Franรงois Aubret, Score, 2018. Photograph represented by Brownie (Shanghai, China).

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Franรงois Aubret, Block, 2017. Photograph represented by Galerie Minimal (Berlin, Germany).

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A Social Contribution The World’s Best Architecture ARCHITIZER CALLS UPON THE GENERAL PUBLIC TO DEFINE WHAT MAKES A SUCCESSFUL BUILDING – COLLABORATIVE PRACTICES, ECOLOGICAL CONSIDERATION AND SOCIAL APPEAL.

“The best architecture may be crafted from concrete, glass, functional forms. In essence, the structures included affect wood and stone,” writes Managing Editor of Architizer, Paul human beings on multiple levels, contributing to the wider Keskeys, “but when it all comes together, it amounts to so narrative of the landscape whilst we move through it together.

The sheer magnitude of architecture as a practice – the much more: it is a social condenser, an atmospheric cauldron, a visual delight. It is a spirit lifter, an educator, a calming in- space it occupies, both physically and theoretically – lends fluence, and, maybe, a home.” Keskeys’ meditation on the itself to a competition of this design, and it’s one to follow value of, and need for, innovative modern structures serves for years to come. Buildings are, indeed, experienced by the as the introduction to his latest title, The World’s Best Archi- many, not the few, and should therefore be critiqued and tecture, released by Phaidon. This appropriately titled com- contemplated in a manner reflective of this fact. Through pendium shares a selection of more than 130 imaginative asking individuals which buildings resonate most with them, projects which have been chosen by readers as 2018’s most the results encompass a wider assortment of practitioners superlative and exciting new builds. He continues: “Architects than in other competitions. Ranging from Patrick Schweitzer shape every space where people spend their lives,” reads & Associés’ red-roofed Faculty of Architecture and Design in the online description for the yearly poll, “so we created the Rwanda to a mountain-side performing arts space by METAProject – offering spectacular views of snow-covered slopes A+Awards to remind the world of how important this is.”

In honouring the structures that mean the most to – the publication's images and texts reveal the properties consumers – rather than relying on critics and leading that earnestly make a building the best it can be.

Keskeys states: “Whilst the projects in this book are incredindustry organisations – Architizer is bending an ear to those who arguably should matter most in this field: the public. ibly diverse – both in terms of geography and typology – “The programme’s aim is not to produce more starchitects,” they share traits which elevate them from being simply good writes Keskeys. Instead, the honorees “illustrate the essential to being truly exceptional.” Through these pages, it becomes ingredients of amazing buildings, defined not by the ‘inner evident that chief amongst the winning factors is a structure’s circle,’ but by everyone who uses and participates in the materiality. Beside the dozens honoured is Rojkind Arquicreation of the built environment.” Whilst few featured tectos’ sand-coloured Foro Boca Concert Hall, an imposing selections are built for public use, they impact those around and magnificent homage to concrete. Situated in the small them both directly and indirectly: they permanently alter the Mexican city of Boca del Río, this stately, beachfront space aesthetics of a skyline; take centre-stage on a daily commute; mirrors the craggy surface of the nearby seawall.

Also of note in the materials category is Zeitz MOCAA, motivate tourism, bringing new populations to remote cities; and inspire passersby through a culmination of beautiful, another formidable concrete design, this time produced

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Martin’s Lane Winery, Kelowna, BC, Canada. Olson Kundig, 2016, Jury Winner. Image: Nic Lehoux (page 16).

“In honouring the structures that mean the most to consumers – rather than relying on critics and leading industry organisations – Architizer is bending an ear to those who arguably should matter most in this field: the public.”

Previous Page: Stage of Forest, Jilin, China. META Project, 2017, Popular Choice Winner.

Image: Schran Image (page 72).

Left: Carrara House, Lagos, Portugal.

Mario Martins Atelier, 2017, Popular Choice Winner. Image: Fernando Guerra / FG+SG (page 149)

by Heatherwick Studio. Located in Cape Town, this former silo houses Africa’s first major museum to be devoted to contemporary art from the continent and its diaspora. The practitioners called upon a network of thick tubes to support the institution, removing elements of the old silos that no longer serve the space aesthetically or functionally. Steven Holl Architects should also be mentioned here for their Maggie’s Centre in Barts, London. This three-storey former town home is a support centre for individuals and families affected by cancer. Described by Holl’s firm as “a vessel within a vessel,” this luminous, translucent-polycarbonate construction emanates a soft, white glow that is reassuring to both its inhabitants and neighbours. The structure provides a destination, serving its functional purpose whilst responding to the emotions of its visitors intuitively and sensitively.

Other categories consider the intelligent, and in some respects, essential, ways in which buildings respond to and work with the natural world. As global environmental concerns pertaining to climate change continue to mount, architecture’s role in offering a brighter ecological future has become crucial. Listed as an eco-friendly standout is Plano Humano Arquitectos’ Capela De Nossa Senhora de Fátima in the municipality of Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal. This lean-to of the future is situated within the National Scout’s Activities Camp and offers panoramic views of the surrounding natural landscape. With open access at both ends of the tent-like structure, the space is illuminated by the morning sunrise, which fills the chapel with luminous colour and rich, ethereal ambiance. Evening and winter light brings in cooler tones that accentuate the tranquillity of the construction, providing synergy between nature and manmade construction.

Meanwhile in Milan, Zaha Hadid’s massive CityLife Shopping District tows the line between a sprawling urban oasis and a monumental green space, playing host to a number of homes, office spaces, piazzas, shops, a cinema, a school and a 42-acre park. Towering above the city’s Tre Torri, this LEED gold-certified complex comprises, internally, a twisting labyrinth of engineered-bamboo flooring, as well as ceilings and columns that introduce elements of the organic world into this cosmopolitan shopping centre.

Alongside the other environmentally considerate structures favoured is the Fleinvær Refugium in Norway. This Arctic Circle artist’s retreat was conceived by TYIN Tegnestue Architects and Rintala Egertsson, and is home to a suite of modest yet mindful Kebony-wood cabins that embrace the rugged topography outside. Each of the projects is dedicated to a specific pursuit: there are sleeping houses, a sauna and studio, and a creative-idea space designed to inspire its guests. Readers have also gravitated towards the terrain-mimicking Martin’s Lane Winery in Kelowna, British Columbia. At once simple and savvy, the building was envisioned by the Seattle-based firm Olson Kundig. Its blueprints draw many parallels between the winemaking process and the regional geography, celebrating the fickle yet beloved grape that is cultivated here: the Pinot Noir. Built on a hill, the angles of this construction allow for sweeping views of nearby Okanagan Lake and for the painstaking gravity-flow production of Pinot Noir wine – known, for its capriciousness, as the Heartbreak Grape – to take place.

Voters in this poll also applaud social components – smart structures that foster collaboration and community building.

In an age of increasing disconnect and political uncertainty

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Capela de Nossa Senhora de Fátima, Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal. Plano Humano Arquitectos, 2018, Jury and Popular Choice Winner. Image: João Morgado (page 74).

across Europe, it’s not hard to see why. ZAV Architects of Tehran employs cutting-edge sandbag construction to forge a much-needed gathering place, known as the Rong Cultural Center, on Hormoz Island in Iran. The designers involved describe it as such: “Rong is an urban space that people can walk on. It has harmony with the island’s geomorphology and is iconic at the same time.” In a similar vein, Matthew Mazzotta – a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University – conceived a camouflaged storefront that morphs, as if by magic, into a stage and seating area for local theatrical productions.

Located in Lyons, Nebraska, this whimsical structure was named the 2018 Project of the Year by Deezen.

One overarching theme – not explicitly enumerated in the text but that encompasses many of the listed entries – is imagination. The buildings that uplift and inspire voters are those that share a deep and wondrous sense of playfulness.

The imaginative project selected by participants in this year’s competition is the ultra-photogenic Tianjin Binhai Library by the Netherlands-based practice MVRDV. Instagrammers the world over will recognise this 362,740 square-foot flexible cultural facility in China’s Binhai district, which features a radiant spherical auditorium and a beguiling suite of floorto-ceiling bookcases. Images of this camera-ready creation have been shared across social media widely for the past year – a search of the location hashtag yields thousands of posts highlighting the facility’s extraordinary height, its unusual, undulating form and otherworldly scale.

The popularity of MVRDV’s Tianjin hub speaks to the extraordinary ability that architecture has to connect and excite people across the globe via photography, literature and social media – further developing tourism through digital

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platforms and online identities. Those who can’t make the Right: Refugium, Fleinvær, pilgrimage to this Binhai literary gem – or other blockbusters Fleinvær Norway. TYIN tegnestue Architects and Rintala Eggertsson Architects, like BIG’s candy-coloured LEGO House in Billund, Denmark, 2017, Popular Choice Winner. or Sanjay Puri’s shapely and futuristic Mathura city hostel, Image: Kathrine Sørgård (page 217). known as The Street – have an awareness of and interest in contemporary constructions thanks to these practitioners’ unusual and outside-the-box approach. Technology enables those interested in the subject to have virtual exposure to buildings, thus making the opinions and reactions of the general public even more timely and appropriate. The best places, as demonstrated in this book, do not merely arouse one to look up, snap a photo, and post it to Instagram, or to simply pass by without inspiring thoughts or questions – they invigorate, amuse and connect people from all walks of life. Accessibility, it seems, is high on the list.

The very existence of the Architizer awards and this related publication points to the notion that what makes an individual structure compelling is also what makes design, as a practice, deeply exciting: it’s for everyone to experience, enjoy and contemplate. Successful buildings, like those highlighted within the pages of this title, not only consider the needs of a specific client, but also the needs of humanity – the diverse Words communities, neighbours and passersby who engage with Stephanie Strasnick the material both directly and indirectly. The planet’s future inhabitants will also reap the benefits of forward-thinking, energy-saving, eco-conscious and sustainable design, and Architizer: The World's those voting in this year’s poll understand this. Looking Best Architecture is ahead is, therefore, on the agenda. Keskeys’ introduction published 8 February again offers an apt summation of why each structure merits courtesy of Phaidon. a place in the canon: “It is the power of good architecture [that makes us] perform ordinary tasks exceptionally well.” www.phaidon.com

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Desolate Environments Henri Prestes

The Perfect Darkness is an ongoing series by Portuguese cinematographer and photographer Henri Prestes (b. 1989), shot in secluded and isolated villages surrounded by dense fog, heavy rain and snow. The collection highlights moments of melancholy; deep black and aquamarine palettes cut across the compositions, with small glimpses of humanity emerging from the corners. Large shadows take precedence in the viewer’s eyeline; tree trunks, hooded porches and empty roads are set within unfolding stories. Audiences become part of short, filmic instances, invited to fill the gaps inbetween. What remains are eerie vignettes that frame the everyday with a veil of tension. Prestes’ images communicate a wider feeling of desolation and anticipation. Hazy skies, obscured floodlights and ominous doorways lure onlookers into a psychological playground, waiting for what comes next. www.henriprestesp.com.

Henri Prestes. Image from the series Perfect Darkness. Courtesy of the artist.

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Henri Prestes. Image from the series Perfect Darkness. Courtesy of the artist.

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Henri Prestes. Image from the series Perfect Darkness. Courtesy of the artist.

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Henri Prestes. Image from the series Perfect Darkness. Courtesy of the artist.

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Henri Prestes. Image from the series Perfect Darkness. Courtesy of the artist.

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art

Physical Encounters Bethany Murray

Though originally trained in Performance and Dance at Dartington College of Arts, Devon, Bethany Murray (b. 1971) began her foray into the creative industries through painting. Both of these disciplines are seen in the featured photographs. Through changing environments, the compositions explore the female body and its larger place in constructing identity. Murray’s images present physicality as a language; each scene is deeply somatic, with limbs wrapping round the interiors of tables, windows and seats as if to connect with the materials on a deeper level. The artist uses her own body to move around interior spaces with fluidity and intimacy – decoding a sense of self through everyday surroundings. Experience, in this way, is built around sensory stimuli, where a house can be a projection of personhood – an anchor point for understanding our place within the world. www.bethanymurray.co.uk.

Bethany Murray, Interior 1 (Red series), Cumbria. LightJet photograph, 2005.

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Bethany Murray, Interior III (Blue series).

LightJet photograph, 2005.

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Bethany Murray, Holy Wood – Big Sur. LightJet photograph, 2015.

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Bethany Murray, Eucalyptus III, (Querencia series), Uruguay. LightJet photograph, 2011.

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Bethany Murray, Interior II (Red series), LightJet photograph, 2005.

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Bethany Murray, Interior III (Red series), LightJet photograph, 2005.

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Bethany Murray, Holy Wood – Santa Ana, Los Angeles. LightJet photograph, 2015.

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Bethany Murray, Eucalyptus I (Querencia series), Uruguay. LightJet photograph, 2011.

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Bethany Murray, Interior II, (Blue series).

LightJet photograph, 2005.

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art

Resisting Stereotypes Orange Culture LAGOS-BASED FASHION BRAND ORANGE CULTURE IS SWIFTLY REDEFINING THE ROLE OF GENDER IN CLOTHING, WITH COLOURFUL, TIMELESS PIECES THAT DEFY CATEGORISATION.

Established in 2011, Orange Culture (OC) – founded there has, for some part, been much less experimentation

by Adebayo Oke-Lawal – subverts and challenges wider with colours, forms, shapes and lines, and indeed, who is gender expectations, based on the belief that these cultural wearing it. Through his designs, Oke-Lawal wants to change associations serve no purpose in personal expression. “The that – and the motivation to do so goes back much farther idea that a colour or type of clothing affects masculinity than any recent developments in the industry. made me want to spark new conversations,” Oke-Lawal ex- “I used to write as a teenager,” Oke-Lawal explains of the plains of OC’s ethos – a belief that manifests in thoughtfully brand name and its incurring goals, “I wrote an article called rendered garments that strike a teetering balance between The Orange Boy, which was about being a different type of traditional male and female codes. Instead, they offer some- boy growing up in a society where hyper-masculinity was thing entirely refreshing. “I think that’s what androgyny being celebrated. It was a published article and people wrote to me saying they were inspired to be orange boys and girls does,” he continues, “it questions unhealthy stereotypes.”

Make no mistake: Oke-Lawal and OC are not riding the and to stand for their individuality. So when I founded the cresting wave of genderless fashion that has recently company, I wanted it to be a commemoration of the idea entered into the lexicon of industry buzzwords. For the past that difference is something to be proud of – I envisaged a few years, there have been multiple trends and movements welcoming world, rather than ones which ostracises people.”

The androgynous collections the OC team produce each towards an open-minded and more diverse fashion industry.

H&M and Zara launched unisex lines in 2017; Stefano season do their part to expand on this ethos of acceptance.

Pilati, former Creative Director of Ermenegildo Zegna The goal is to dissolve the strands of hyper and toxic and Yves Saint Laurent introduced the Random Identities masculinity that Oke-Lawal sees in Nigeria. “It has had quite collection that same year; even Celine Dion is behind a a destructive impact on society,” he notes of the current unisex clothing line for children, launched in 2018. But political climate, where homosexuality is still punishable by mass market interpretations can be heavy-handed or miss law and the pressure to conform to traditional gender roles the point entirely, save for a few thoughtful interpretations. is still acutely felt, even by the free-thinking creatives that Even Vogue US was forced to apologise when a cover story flock to Lagos. “OC, over the past eight years, has driven that featuring Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid – a cis heterosexual conversation and has helped people think about it,” he says.

Of course, that dialogue has many voices. Oke-Lawal is couple wearing matching men’s suits under the title Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik Are Part of a New Generation part of a rising tide of artists that are pointing their energies Embracing Gender Fluidity – failed to express the concept in the direction of the country’s ingrained prejudice in its entirety. When it comes to contemporary menswear, and unbalanced gender divide. Most famously, this is

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Courtesy of Daniel Obasi and Orange Culture.

“'The idea that a colour or type of clothing affects masculinity made me want to spark new conversations,' Oke-Lawal explains of OC’s ethos – a belief that manifests in thoughtfully rendered garments.”

Previous Page: Courtesy of Travys Owen and Orange Culture.

Left: Courtesy of Willy Verse and Orange Culture.

exemplified by renowned writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of We Should All Be Feminists (2014). Adichie’s work pokes holes in the country’s dominant political rhetoric: that boys should be strong and unflinching, whilst women, in turn, subservient. She writes: “We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. It is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside it. We teach them to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability … to mask their true selves because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak – a hard man.”

In a similar vein, Lagos-based magazine A Nasty Boy tackles the issue by channeling resistance through its editorial. Under the tagline “Examining Queerness in Nigeria,” the publication weaves together the intersections of beauty and trauma along the road to self-acceptance in a more expansive culture. This takes the form of firstperson essays, as well as thoughtful photos and films that document growing up within a country that hasn’t always accepted difference. A recent photoessay by Terna Iwar entitled No Place to Call Home recounts growing up in Nigeria as gender fluid: “Boys who dress outside their gender are turned into caricatures in the media. They are taunted for wearing dresses and makeup. Back here, choice is only an idea that a lot of us strive for, and once different from the norm, such a person becomes a victim of a society like ours that does not leave room for others to thrive.”

The commemoration of these figures, alongside the refusal of the culture Adichie describes – the insistence on strength, on shutting down emotions, on gritting one’s teeth in the face of all pain – is the future Oke-Lawal and OC are working towards. “My brand is dedicated to creating clothes

that combat and connect audiences to the beauty of my Nigerian background.” Questioning and, eventually, rewriting the country’s legacy through fashion, OC’s collections are telling a wider story about acceptance and celebrating individuality – provoking new narratives through the lens of clean lines, colourful materials and enigmatic garments.

Though design may have always been an end goal, Oke-Lawal’s upbringing chartered a varied course before founding the label. “I loved watching my mum and sisters dress up,” he recounts of his childhood in Lagos, “I’d sketch on everything in school. The times when I felt happiest was when I was expressing myself through fashion.” His career then started as a peripatetic intern, trying his hand at producing concerts and shows, volunteering for a number of designers until finding his footing through magazines.

Following one particularly inspiring placement, Oke-Lawal became the fashion editor at WOW, a local lifestyle and entertainment publication. He went on to hold the position for two years, a timeframe in which he honed his skills of visual storytelling, gaining knowledge about the industry just as he had begun – through the printed page.

By 2011, Oke-Lawal had saved up enough money to launch his own company. The first collection was shown on the runway of Lagos Fashion Week that year in a presentation he states as “highly controversial.” Despite the pushback from conservative detractors, the designer marched forward with clothes that unapologetically celebrated the fluidity of gender through bold, expressive garments. And the rest, so far, is history: OC has approached each season with an unconventional and widely imaginative mindset.

The resulting lines resist classification. Collared shirts, for

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Courtesy of Travys Owen and Orange Culture.

example, are cut long, falling on the border between a dress and traditional men’s shirting. Trousers are laced up in the front like corsets, creating a body-hugging look only shielded by a long tucked in shirt. Waists are cinched with long kimono-style ribbons; frills ring necklines and hems.

Where traditional men’s tailoring favours sleek and flat cuts worn close to the body, OC puffs up with joyous volumes, like on a cap-sleeved top with a mock-neck collar from the Spring/Summer 2018 collection, which also features delicately tailored crop tops and pussy-bow shirts.

Materials, too, sit outside the typical remit of menswear.

Glossy-finished pyjama-style suiting glistens in sunlight; sheer overcoats are layered over boldly printed skirts and tops; iridescent crepe fabrics highlight an expert mix of texture and colour. The collection in the featured images comprises loosely woven crochet jumpers and skirts, ostensibly modest cover-ups that allow slivers of skin to peek through. Velvet is heavily used, a fabric that channels glamour for any of its wearers through its addictive sheen.

OC also plumbs deeply from a rich history of textile production. Oke-Lawal works in the brightly coloured woven fabrics typical to Nigeria. Each season he returns to these elements as a key part of the company's identity. He states: “I work with both Aso Oke and Adire.” Aso Oke, which hails from the Yoruba culture in the west, is a hand loomed cloth that typically features tinted patterns; Adire, originally from the south-western region, is an indigo-based material that utilises tie-dying techniques. Using traditional textiles not only adds bold aesthetic elements that connect OC to a sense of heritage, but supports the local manufacturing industry, an integral part of the process. “We have communities that focus on building these fabrics from scratch.”

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So how does the company sow old and new together? How does it combine tradition and innovation; conformity and change? “I produce in Lagos specifically because I want to be a part of empowering the industry here and providing employment for people within our society. It’s important to contribute to the economy,” Oke-Lawal states. Training programmes are also provided for tailors and seamstresses that work for the company, built on the idea that progression should be ingrained within every cog of the machine. In doing so, the brand shines brightly as a deeply human, intuitive and ethical initiative. “Lagos is a part of who I am and the culture that has influenced my brand. It is important for me to contribute back to the growth of my industry.”

Though many of the stereotypes are yet to be usurped – OC is a connective strand between the past, present and future: an aspirational voice looking towards creating real change from the ground up, from the land outwards.

It doesn’t stop there; OC has made waves beyond Nigeria. The collections are journeying far and wide as a representation of new perspectives and pioneering practices.

Though Oke-Lawal still shows each season at Lagos Fashion & Design Week, the international recognition has been vast: shortlisted for the LVMH prize; showing at London Fashion Week; stops at Pitti Uomo in Florence; nomination for the Woolmark Prize; the first Nigerian brand to be stocked in Selfridges; inclusion in Forbes 30 under 30 list. Despite the accolades and continued growth of the clothing line abroad, however, Oke-Lawal still perceives OC as a movement. “[We are] pushing for a space where diversity can be celebrated,” he concludes, “with open-mindedness even in reference to the way men think and connect with each other. It’s a movement to think outside the box about emotion.”

Right: Courtesy of Travys Owen and Orange Culture.

Words Laura May Todd

orangeculture.com.ng

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Delicate Observation Matias Alonso Revelli

Based in BahĂ­a Blanca, Argentina, Matias Alonso Revelli (b. 1993) was first inspired by photography when he picked up a camera back in 2011. Revelli was reinvigorated by the potential of the lens to create and produce, connecting to audiences in the digital age. He wanted to capture the world and hold a mirror up to its natural beauty.

Platforms such as Instagram became a virtual gallery space for sharing the images with the public; to date he has over 44,000 followers. Revelli's works are awash with blues and oranges, documenting moments in the day that are never completely alike, whilst experimenting with pixellation and layering, moving the viewer into hallucinatory states. The sensitive compositions ruminate around open spaces and billowing cloud formations. Characters are dispersed into skylines and fields, exposed to the elements and immersed in a panorama of colour and light. www.instagram.com/matialonsor.

Image: El Chalten, Argentina. Š Matias Alonso Revelli.

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Left: Escape. Š Matias Alonso Revelli.

Right: Lucero. Š Matias Alonso Revelli.

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Left: Lucero. Š Matias Alonso Revelli.

Right: Iguazu Falls, Argentina. Š Matias Alonso Revelli.

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Left: Monte Hermoso, Argentina. Š Matias Alonso Revelli.

Right: Lucero. Š Matias Alonso Revelli.

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Left: Lucero. © Matias Alonso Revelli.

Right: Blue Sky. © Matias Alonso Revelli.

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Aesthetica Art Prize 2019 We are living in a time of globalisation, expansion and media saturation. There have been considerable shifts in civilisation in the Information Age – we now communicate with each other instantly, yet with an alarming level of disconnect. The 18 works shortlisted for this year's prize reflect these universal notions, through sculpture, installation, artists' film, photography and painting. Each piece is on display at York Art Gallery from 8 March to 14 July. Find out more: www.aestheticamagazine.com/art-prize.

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Sim Chi Yin, Most people were silent, 2017 www.chiyinsim.com

Most people were silent, commissioned by the Nobel Peace Prize, pairs two landscapes. From the north peak of Mount Paektu – an active volcanic mountain dividing North Korea and China – audiences look into North Korea, which has conducted six nuclear tests since 2006. The Cascade Mountains in Washington State, USA, were the water source for the Hanford B Reactor, which manufactured the plutonium used in the world’s first nuclear test, and the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945.

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Noriyuki Suzuki, Oh my ( ), 2017 www.noriyukisuzuki.com

Oh my ( ) is an installation that calls out "god" in 48 languages, using a complex Twitter database. The machine monitors the Twitter feed in real time. When a tweet includes the word "god" (in any of the 48 languages), speakers simultaneously sound the incurring phrase “oh my (god)” in the appropriate language. For Suzuki, the problem is that god is intangible and has no common form in nature, so the term has not been easily shared between different cultures. This work calls that notion into question.

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Alec Von Bargen, Under The Blue Skies of Agok, 2017 www.alecvonbargen.com

Alec Von Bargen is a social anthropologist of sorts, capturing aesthetic moments that resonate with their wider historical, political and social contexts. The series Under the Blue Skies of Agok was taken in South Sudan, the newest country on earth. Internally displaced people and nomads in Agok deal with health care exclusion, endemic / epidemic, famine and armed conflict. At night, victims and patients sleep in makeshift clinics under the synthetic blue skies of their mosquito netting.

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Teppei Yamada, Apart and/or Together, 2017 www.teppeiyamada.com

Apart and/or Together is an attempt to visualise the mercurial, volatile process of cultural homogenisation. It was born from a study that constructs and deconstructs contemporary society. The work consists of 10 different heartbeats, which are reminders of the real human lives rendered invisible in discussions around national identity, ethnic difference, citizenship, multiculturalism, migration and refugees.

The goal is to understand each other by what we have in common, rather than what we don't.

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Nicolas Bernier, Structures Infinies (), 2017 - present www.nicolasbernier.com

Whilst investigating photography, moving images, design, dance, theatre, visual art and technology, sound is at the centre of Nicolas Bernier’s practice. Over the last decade, his approach has mainly been aimed to give tangibility to sound by creating performances and installations interfacing sound composition with visual art, design, light, movement and scenography. These mirror structures are reflecting the outside world until they are set in motion to unveil a moving and infinite inside world.

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Mark Bloomfield, Conform No1, 2017 www.electrobloom.com

Conform No1 is an experimental object which invites the observer’s participation. Made using a combination of advanced 3D printing techniques and traditional hand skills, the form is both flexible and fluid. The linking system and base structure make the object appear simple, but through physical interaction its form reveals infinite variations. Drawing inspiration from textiles and engineering, this sculptural object changes its shape with each new interaction, encouraging play, observation and feedback.

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Maryam Tafakory, I have Sinned a Rapturous Sin, 2018 www.maryamtafakory.com

Having lived both within and outside of an Islamic identity, Maryam Tafakory was always confused with the contradictory images of womanhood – how they are portrayed through religion. Bringing together fragments of Forugh Farrokhzad's poem Sin, as well as images of a male carder preparing cotton for a mattress, this film is set against religious clerics instructing women to suppress their sexual desires. Incorporating a fragmentary “I” through first-person narrative, a sense of self unfolds in a shifting series of gestures and bodies. Tafakory offers a collage of visual and textual materials that, at times, contradict each other. The spoken and written elements are in perpetual conflict, undoing and rewriting one another.

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Rebecca Reeve, Through Looking, 2014 - present www.rebeccareeve.com

Rebecca Reeve's Through Looking uses grid-like forms as a means to capture, arrange and organise the landscape. Offering a personalised view of national park areas in the USA, the photographs introduce blinds as an almost democratic character within the composition, marking scenery through equal units of space and shrouding the viewer with a limited view. An interdisciplinary approach to image-making, the collection combines digital photography with painting; each blind was created en plein air in response to the location. The works offer a renewed perspective of our wider place within the world, evoking a mirror-like awareness of how interior and exterior landscapes are increasingly separated.

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Sebastian Kite, Horizons, 2018 www.sebastiankite.com

Horizons is the first in a series of installations and sculptures exploring light, kinetics and performance.

As an immersive installation, the work investigates our perception of time, sound and colour; its spectrum and the formation of white light. In Horizons, two horizontal beams of light – consisting of opposing complementary colours – travel autonomously in opposing vertical directions. Driven by four stepper motors, the lights align to produce an artificial white horizon line in the space. A simulation of reality, the colour of the room shifts in constant flux, subservient to the behaviour of the machine.

Standing afar, an ethereal atmosphere is produced – a transcendental state evoking place and memory.

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Ludivine Large-Bessette, Drop Out Bodies, 2017 www.ludivinelargebessette.com

Viewers are confronted with the role of the body in social interactions, as well as the contemporary environment. Drop Out Bodies uses the melodramatic codes of cinema, the painful sensation of a resisting body, and the play that emerges from absurd situations. A monotonous silence envelops a group of men and women who are each standing still in front of their houses. They fall, one by one, in a random pattern. Their collapses are clearly irrevocable. The movement of the performers from immobility to choreographed descents is a contemporary reinterpretation of the macabre dance of the Middle Ages.

The film questions the fatality of the human body, as well as individual and collective responsibilities.

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May Parlar, Collective Solitude, 2018 www.mayparlar.com

Concepts of the self, female identity, belonging and alienation are recurrent themes in May Parlar’s work, which employs performative photography and video art. The images – through their impromptu nature – tap into the unconscious, often juxtaposing serene and ephemeral settings to create a visual narrative that is both playful and poetic. Collective Solitude is a series of self-portraits created with this innovative visual language, experimenting with the contrasting and uncanny elements of belonging and alienation, real and unreal, settled and the nomadic. Images from this surreal series were made across multiple countries including Cambodia, Greece, Turkey, Germany, Spain and the USA.

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Christiane Zschommler, Beyond Orwell series, 2018 www.christianezschommler.co.uk

In the early 1980s, Zschommler's grandmother smuggled 1984, forbidden in the GDR, in her underwear through Check Point Charlie. Real life in East Germany mirrored the worst paranoid excesses set out in Orwell’s book. In today's world, spying on the private lives of citizens by government agencies and commercial organisations is increasing in scale at an alarming rate, although Facebook, Amazon and Google are not viewed with the same sinister motives as the Stasi. This project focuses on her experiences under totalitarianism, photographing objects using her own Stasi file 1214/87. She is concerned with the structural aspects of retrieved data, developing them into more abstract formations.

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Daniel Mullen, 37-67, 2019 www.danielmullen.info

Painting is a means to figuratively communicate abstract concepts. Mullen is driven by the sense that abstract art does not reproduce a perceived outward reality but instead is a transference of that which lies beyond our visual comprehension. It’s an artistic form – if one follows Kandinsky's take – that is the result of an inner necessity. Mullen has created a bold, colourful series in collaboration with his partner, Lucy Cordes Engelman, who has a luminous, complex filter through which she experiences time. Reflecting upon this form of synesthesia, each corresponding numerical symbol has a colour associated with it. The featured work, 37-67 is a visual representation of this phenomenon.

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María Molina Peiró, One Year Life Strata, 2018 www.mariamolinapeiro.com

The increasingly blurred boundaries between material and digital realities are explored through María Molina Peiró’s work. Her films and installations often unfold the layers that connect humans, technology and nature. Over the course of one year, she carried a wearable camera, taking a photo every 30 seconds. One Year Life Strata proposes a visual metaphor for the act of forgetting. It transforms digital images into what will likely remain: the geological record. The project mines the data from strata and invites viewers to investigate one year of the artist's life through an AI vision system which doesn’t care about personal memories, favouring the patterns and numbers they contain as traces of history.

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Jenn Nkiru, Rebirth is Necessary, 2017 www.jennnkiru.com

Jenn Nkiru is an artist and director from Peckham, London. Her wide-ranging credits include short films for the BFI, Condé Nast, Channel 4 and Tate, as well as a documentary series for Redbull and a campaign for Rankin. Rebirth is Necessary is a dreamlike piece centred on the magic of Blackness in a realm where time and space are altered. Past, present and future are re-ordered, offering something that is both visceral and soulful. The soundtrack features James Baldwin, Sun Ra, Chance The Rapper, Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment, Rotary Connection, Pharaoh Sanders and Shafiq Husayn. It also includes quoted material from Alice Coltrane, Audre Lorde, Kwame Nkrumah and Sun Ra.

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Giulio Di Sturco, Aerotropolis, The Way We Will Live Next, 2012-2017 www.giuliodisturco.com

How will the world look and feel in the future? Di Sturco's practice explores this overarching theme through works that are at once documentarian, highly poetic and unsettling meditations, reflecting on new and hybrid forms of architecture, technology, societies and identities. An aerotropolis is an urban location whose layout, infrastructure and economy are centred around an airport, which boosts business and development in the surrounding areas. These global hubs have been an experiment for society: they have created new kinds of livelihoods and will shape urban development in the 21st century as much as highways did in the 20th century, railroads in the 19th century and seaports in the 18th century.

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Yunhan Liu, Horizon, 2018 www.yunhanliu.net

Yunhan Liu’s practice is based on the interactive dialogue between audiences and their environment.

It is driven by an understanding of the self, perception and origin. She utilises reconstructed forms of nature to evoke sensory experiences and a greater spiritual awareness. By manipulating natural phenomena, her work encourages viewers to question their relationship with the digital age. In Horizon, the sun is used as a model through which to explore the immediate sublime experience that is depicted by simulacra. The entire piece represents a view of the sunset in the open-sphere, which reflects the surrounding environment in order to generate a new sensation of sunset below the horizon.

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Jane and Louise Wilson, Suspended Island, 2018 www.303gallery.com/artists/jane-and-louise-wilson

Jane and Louise Wilson are interested in what happens when the geography of a location takes on a porous identity. They use film, photography and sculpture to create atmospheric installations that investigate the overlooked side of the human experience, often through sites of historic importance – some of which are now abandoned. Their work probes collective anxieties, memories and phobias. With Suspended Island, they explore the kinetic relationship between the Houses of Parliament, Trinity House in Newcastle, and the now abandoned coastal fortifications on Governors Island off the coast of Manhattan. The piece discusses the perception of an island at this particular time, during Brexit negotiations.

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exhibition reviews

1Pulse

RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER

In the beginning, there was a pulse. The fundamental fact that a society so obsessed with control and automation depends on the involuntary spasms of muscle tissue goes to the heart of a series of large-scale installations by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at Hirshhorn this year. Built around the vital signs of attending participants, the exhibition is deeply immersive and concept-based, asking viewers to consider the sounds of their bodies as part of a larger machine. The idea came to him when his wife was pregnant with fraternal twins in 2006. Lozano-Hemmer listened simultaneously to the male and female embryos’ heartbeats with different ultrasound machines and, sure enough, each one was unique.

That same year, Lozano-Hemmer created the first work from the resulting series, in which visitors hold sensors that transmit their heartbeat to a lightbulb that flickers to its rhythm with amplified sound, along with 210 other light-

bulbs hanging from the ceiling in a large, darkened room.

For a brief moment, the entire room is lit to the pace of the individual – quickly for a frenetic child, slowly for a trained athlete. “The flashing lights are disorienting. It’s not necessarily pleasant,” Lozano-Hemmer stated at the preview of the show. However, it does encourage us to think.

Each of the three installations follows this unsettling and process-based methodology, offering a unique kinetic and audiovisual experience. Pulse Index, for example, displays the fingerprints and heart rates of the last 3,911 users across a large projection filling the gallery. Each new participant thus erases the data of the last one in the sequence.

Pulse Tank, in contrast, is a game of light and shadow not unlike Plato’s cave. When visitors use various sensors placed around three illuminated tanks, the resulting ripples across the water’s surface are projected on the wall.

Words Olivia Hampton

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC 1 November - 28 April www.hirshhorn.si.edu

2English as a Second Language HANNA MOON AND JOYCE NG

Asian-born, London-based Hanna Moon and Joyce Ng respond to life in a globalised and interconnected world. Exploring the feeling of being “lost in translation” in a foreign city – their works, currently on display at Somerset House, London – visually articulate the experience of navigating multiple languages and spaces. By melding cultural signifiers, set design and styling, Moon and Ng offer a distinct interdisciplinary take on western aesthetics and ideals. In this way, the practitioners question notions of “otherness,” repositioning fashion photography as an agent for change.

The show – comprising new pieces commissioned for the gallery – expands across three bold and unconventional rooms designed by creative practice Studio Veronica Ditting. Offering a surprising and immersive viewing experience which encapsulates the mood of the series, audiences are invited into an imaginative world. First encountered is

Moon’s Heejin and Moffy, a collection which plays with the House’s neoclassical architecture. Captured at night, the images depict two muses – Moffy, from London, and Heejin, from South Korea – as they take over the space.

Props and environments are also vital to Ng’s compositions, which feature street-casted models – in this case residents and visitors to the institution. Inspired by the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West – which chronicles the pilgrimage of a Buddhist monk – the body of work invites participants to become characters within a wider, fragmented narrative. Highlighting Moon and Ng’s varied approaches, English as a Second Language also looks into the duo’s archive, featuring visuals from publications such as Dazed and i-D. Fresh and inspiring, the featured images celebrate global perspectives – offering a new take on an established genre, asking what it can do next.

Words Eleanor Sutherland

Somerset House, London 25 January - 28 April www.somersethouse.org.uk

3News from Nowhere

MOON KYUNGWON AND JEON JOONHO

Moon and Jeon’s ongoing film series News From Nowhere questions its own value. As its core, it highlights the importance of artistic expression: what creativity, rather than cataloguing, offers history. El Fin del Mundo (2012), for example, tells stories from either side of an apocalypse.

Two characters in alternate time frames collect artefacts as a means to make sense of the world. For them, art is the true language of personal identity, a conclusion kept from cliché by each character’s determined intent to collect and create order in a chaotic world. The clinical sterility of the future visually contrasts with the scattered detritus of a crumbling near-present, whilst multiple threads connect the two protagonists across the displayed screens.

These strands continue to surface in Anomaly Strolls (2018). Sites of tension – fixed between renewal and preservation – the post-industrial cities of Liverpool and

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Seoul become fertile landscapes for the characters. Within a twisted scrap metal frame, viewers watch a trolley roam the streets, seemingly without destination for its varied contents.

The underlying theme: history as posterity. These were objects of value once – now they are the stories society is willing to abandon. These acts are a nod to El Fin del Mundo: one day, the everyday elements that surround us will have a new significance, and, in turn, a new sense of narrative.

“My future will reflect a new world,” reads the drain cover Moon and Jeon have installed outside in the floor of the Albert Dock. Its placement is a challenge for audiences to pay attention and find stories to be told. As a whole, News from Nowhere believes in the power of art to record for generations to come. Moon and Jeon guide their viewers towards contemplation of how the contents that make up our surrounding world may tell the truth to the future.

Words Julia Johnson

Tate Liverpool 23 November - 17 March www.tate.org.uk

1a. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Pulse Index, 2008 in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Pulse at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, 2018. Photo: Cathy Carver. 1b. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Pulse Room, 2006 in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Pseudomatismos, MUAC Museum, Mexico City, Mexico, 2015. Photo: Oliver Santana. 2. Hanna Moon, River for Boom Boom, re-edition issue 2, 2015. Š Hanna Moon. 3. Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho, El Fin del Mundo (The End of the World), 2012. 2 channel HD video installation with sound, 13 min 35 sec. Courtesy of the artists and Gallery Hyundai.

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4a. Oli Kellett (b. 1983), Cross Road Blues (Peachtree St, Atlanta), 2017. Archival Pigment Print. © Oli Kellett / Courtesy HackelBury Fine Art, London 4b. Oli Kellett (b. 1983), Cross Road Blues (Figueroa St, LA), 2016. Archival Pigment Print. © Oli Kellett / Courtesy HackelBury Fine Art, London. 5. Nan Goldin, Nan and Brian in bed, New York City, 1983. © Nan Goldin. 6. Luigi Ghirri, Brest, 1972. CSAC, Università di Parma © Estate Luigi Ghirri.

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4Cross Road Blues OLI KELLETT

Light has often been a point of departure for artists. It changes everything; it can conceal or reveal subjects to the viewer and dramatise surroundings. In 2016, just before the American election, Oli Kellett travelled to Los Angeles and observed a nation standing at a crossroads. Simultaneously, he got the idea for his most recent – and ongoing – project, travelling to different cities in the USA and capturing people as they stand at regulated stop-and-go junctions.

Getting up early in the morning, Kellett’s process includes walking around each location, figuring out the daylight hours, finding potential shooting locations. Working only at dawn or dusk – due to the dramatic qualities that the sun casts on the urban environment – he captures the days in rise or fall with minimal intrusion. The setup of his equipment – a digital camera triggered by a shutter release – allows full observation of the environment and its people,

varying from short- or long-range shots immersed in the golden glow of buildings and pedestrian crossings.

These powerful images take the stage at HackelBury Fine Art, London, this season. In one of the displayed pieces, a girl in shorts – standing at the crossroad at Grand Avenue (Chicago, 2017) – glances to the opposite side of the street where Kellett was waiting with the lens. In contrast, a man, wearing earphones, pauses at Van Buren Street (Phoenix, 2017), not even noticing the figure of the photographer.

Each composition provides a larger impression of cities as a whole – conjuring notions of journeys in a state of flux.

Light and intuition charge each of the works with visual flair and a meaningful disposition. The exhibition places the viewer inbetween choice and chance, daily life and a sense of dramatism. It urges them to reflect upon a society that has been waiting and is now ready to move ahead.

Words Lisa Moravec

HackelBury Fine Art, London 16 November - 23 February www.hackelbury.co.uk

5Model Arbus Goldin

THREE FEMALE PHOTOGRAPHERS

Model Arbus Goldin pays homage to eclectic works from three of the most defining female entrepreneurs of American photography. Starting with Vienna-born Lisette Model (1901-1983), Westlicht, Vienna, displays works which draw upon a vast oeuvre of street photography. Depicting moments of both luxury and poverty, the selected pieces create a visual bridge between differing stories, uniting the figures through a striking sense of proximity. Each of the photographs – like most of her most famous works – were shot in the early 1940s, polarising the concept of beauty being connected to class, looking beyond the individual and considering wider social structures at play.

One of Model’s most famous students – Diane Arbus (1923-1971) – further expanded the relationship towards the unseen, recording the flaws and masquerades of humanity with sensitivity and grace. In a grey square box

display – perhaps inspired by the artist’s early series A box of ten photographs – the visitor is invited to view images that sit on the margins of society, drawing upon the grotesque and the unfamiliar. Arbus’ works are centred around the reveal as a wider and more climactic artistic process.

Ultimately, the show culminates with the colourful and jumbled hanging prints by Nan Goldin (b. 1953). This might be one of the most notable parts of the exhibit: delving into New York’s subcultures and LGBTQ+ communities in the 1970s and 1980s. The images are a welcome presentation, offering intimate moments from bathrooms, bars and bedrooms, showcasing emotions of fear, obsession and addiction. The show is both breathtaking and liberating – one which leaves visitors wanting to see more of the characters like Jimmy Paulette, Taboo! or indeed, Goldin herself, who is cast intimately in the featured image on the previous page.

Words Julius Pristauz

Westlicht, Vienna 6 December - 24 March www.westlicht.com

6 The Map and the Territory LUIGI GHIRRI

Born in the town of Scandiano, Luigi Ghirri (b. 1943) took up photography at the age of 27, with a sensibility shaped by literature and art history, as well as a group of creatives that surrounded him in Italy. Now, 76 years later, Jeu de Paume, Paris, hosts the artist’s first major retrospective outside his native country, following on from Museo Reina Sofia, comprising 14 different series on which he worked (simultaneously, in many cases) throughout the 1970s.

Modesty presides over Ghirri’s entire output, both in subject matter and technique. He embraced colour photography at a time when it was still largely disparaged by wider artistic circles. Ghirri found inspiration in the surrounding landscape – rarely working outside the Emilia Reomagna region – looking to the commonplace, everyday activities and iconography of middle-class Italians in the 1970s. The resulting images communicate

eloquence through objectiveness, avoiding sentimentalism or explicit social commentary, instead preferring a sense of disconnect – asserting distance through the lens.

Throughout all displayed pieces, there is a permanent interest in the ever-diminishing boundaries between reality and fiction. The show considers how the camera has affected the way we see the world, and indeed, how it has shaped our understanding of our world. Ghirri once stated: “Photomontage already exists: it’s called the real world.”

Images of an amusement park in Rimini, for example, are full of scaled-down reproductions of famous monuments – alluding to a contemporary disregard for visual and historical hierarchy. In another image, featured here, translucent glass separates the viewer from the human subject – the orange poking through the veil as if it was a warning sign – an emblem of disassociation in today's age.

Words Rubén Cervantes Garrido

Jeu de Paume, Paris 12 February - 2 June www.jeudepaume.org

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Credit: Peccadillo Pictures.

film

Poetic Physicality SAUVAGE Two important scenes in Camille Vidal-Naquet’s tender convinced that if the room was empty it would make people debut Sauvage are set in a doctor’s surgery. The first opens feel more awkward. To me, there was nothing weird about it. on a light note, tongue-in-cheek, with Félix Maritaud’s hustler So we all stayed, and we got used to nudity very quickly.”

Léo playing the patient in a role-play scenario. The second Those playing hustlers also embarked on a rigorous chois heavier, sweet yet devastating, and was shot on the first reography programme under Vidal-Naquet’s meticulous day of filming. It shows Léo with a real doctor this time, un- instruction: “I wanted the film to have a poetic approach. The dergoing tests in hopes of relieving some of the chronic pain actors needed to understand that their bodies were pieces of that he experiences as a homeless man and drug addict. The art, and a tool that they were comfortable with.”

Citing Agnès Varda’s Vagabond (1985) as a key influence, woman’s kind touch is overwhelming to the patient.

“I remember Felix being shy because it was his first day, but Vidal-Naquet praises the film's progressive lens, but notes a if anything, I think it helped the scene,” says Vidal-Naquet, key difference between it and his own work: “With Vagabond, who recorded his own doctor performing a fake consultation the central character is fighting for freedom – she has a puron Maritaud before shooting the scene. “You’ll notice that the pose,” he says. “You learn where she comes from; she was a shots also follow this sensibility; the camera doesn’t move a secretary and hated her job. She didn’t like the social system lot.” This self-awareness on set is understandable. It’s an am- and so decided that nobody was going to give her orders. In bitious first feature for the writer-director and the first major Sauvage, the protagonist has no purpose whatsoever.”

Léo is the embodiment of Vidal-Naquet’s extensive work role for Maritaud, who is perhaps best known for his small with Aux captifs la libération, a charity that helps homeless part in Robin Campillo’s Palme d'Or nominated 120 BPM. Following the quotidian life of a gauche and lonely street- people from all backgrounds living in Paris. An ambitious worker, Sauvage, though rarely violent onscreen, is far from initiative, the organisation helps those living on the margins what many would consider safe. Bodies are laid bare in the of society due to various unforeseen circumstances. In spite name of sexual exploration, though Vidal-Naquet prefers of the harsh conditions of his life however, the director is adato emphasise the curve of a belly or the length of an inner mant that his leading role isn’t sympathetic in the slightest. thigh over more explicit shots. “We wanted the whole crew to “It’s a luxury to be able to question your life and he doesn’t be present on the set for those scenes,” he explains. “I was have that. We suffer for him, but he does not.”

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“Maritaud's selfawareness on set is understandable.

It's an ambitious first feature for the writer-director and the first major role for the actor, who is best known abroad for his small part in Robin Campillo's 120 BPM.”

Words Beth Webb

Peccadillo Pictures www.peccapics.com

Character Developments AN IMPOSSIBLE LOVE too,” she says when Chantal asks the questions that we’re “Whatever simple all wondering. Philippe is a more complicated character to dialogue is exchanged champion, as he must remain affable in spite of a slippery in this heady phase and violent disposition. Schneider plays him with devastating of the relationship assurance; even his facial features – furrowed brows and thick is a mix of awe lips – are at once condescending and wholly present. and respect, lulling Inevitably something big has to happen in order to tip both the audience the boat. Angot’s body of work is often known to be con- and Rachel into a troversial, but the dark developments of her writing explore sense of harmony the characters’ complexities, rather than sensationalising the and warmth.” more disturbing moments between them. Corsini captures the blow and the ripples that it causes, not just in the immediate aftermath but in the years that follow, through a respectful gaze, and Efira and actresses Estelle Lescure and Jehnny Beth – who play teenage and adult Chantal – respectfully embody the trauma with crushing authenticity.

In the interim between the fresh blossoms of romance and the film’s bitter reveal, the story could be tightened to bring its runtime down from a sprawling two hours. It might do well to throw its weight behind the emotional evolution of Rachel Words and Chantal’s relationship instead of indulging Philippe’s Beth Webb toxicity, but hang on through the prolonged heartbreak to find a final chapter wrought and captivating, handled by three actresses skilled in showing what it means to survive. A Curzon Artificial Eye compelling and well-rounded dramatic feature. www.curzonartificialeye.com

Curzon Artificial Eye 2019. Image © Stephanie Branchu, Chaz Productions.

Director Catherine Corsini translates Christine Angot’s 2015 novel into the simple premise of young, indulgent love that, over a 50-year lifespan, loses its glossy finish under a torrent of prejudice, misogyny and manipulation. Beginning at a local dance, An Impossible Love starts innocently enough, allowing the romance between Virginie Efira’s wholesome office clerk Rachel and Niels Schneider’s tawny translator Philippe to unfurl across sun-bleached meadows and in the shadows that fall on intimate, tangled bed sheets.

Whatever simple dialogue is exchanged in this heady phase of the relationship is a mix of awe and respect, lulling both the audience and Rachel into a sense of harmony and warmth, enveloped by Grégoire Hetzel’s tumbling score.

But when Philippe begins to ruthlessly critique Rachel in the same measured tone that he uses to compliment the “true power” of her body, the character’s devastation is silent yet tangible, absorbing blows with muted resignation.

Efira is truly the film’s making, with a passive and porous demeanour not once mistaken for indifference, rather a vast well of sadness. However, Rachel is not a weak character.

When she falls pregnant and Philippe inevitably fails to care, the focus shifts onto her daughter, Chantal. Closeness is born out of absence, even in the times of upheaval when he returns. In these times, she fulfils physical needs and desires through his advances. “I’m not just a mother, I’m a woman

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Image: © Jackie Lee Young.

music

Electronic Counterparts BAYONNE Roger Sellers was born and raised in Austin, Texas, and still I used a recording of a squeaky oven door at my parents’ “His latest lives there now, where he produces music under the electronic house. At the time, I was trying to get a scary movie-style collection is thick pop pseudonym, Bayonne. Moving into the release of a new sound, but after I modified it, using pitch-shifting and delay, it with layers, though album, Sellers reflects upon how the city – or at least, the ended up being more like a dolphin or some kind of sea crea- Sellers’ lightness patch he inhabited previously – has helped to shape the ture. It really brings that song to life somehow. Emotionally, of touch renders starry, densely layered loop-pedal pop of Primitives, the its one of my favourite parts of the album. Another sample them into subtle 2016 Mom + Pop Music debut. “My old neighbourhood that sticks out is at the beginning of I Know. It was a field re- skeins, frequently definitely influenced me. It was a loud place, with ice cream cording of some street drummers playing on buckets. After indistinguishable from their original trucks going by at two in the morning, and parties all night. adding some delay, it ended up sounding like a ship.”

Drastic Measures feels dreamy, a reverberating wash of provenance.”

My neighbour had a ton of chickens that would cluck into the night. I sometimes wonder if the density and layering in my multi-tracked falsetto vocals and twinkling major-chord melodies, so it’s somewhat surprising to learn that the album current work is a product of bypassing that outside noise.”

Sellers’s affinity for inventive, bricolage soundscapes is is a meditation on the struggles of touring. “The title refers to a life-long pursuit. As a teen, he’d tinker with experimental the huge amount of risk involved with pursuing art. It can be keyboard set-ups, attempting to multitrack on an old kara- physically tormenting; you can lose touch with your home oke machine. He studied classical piano as a child and music life. There’s a wear-and-tear process on mind and body.”

No doubt, touring can be gruelling. Between gigs, there’s a theory in college, but found academia suffocating. He toured Austin as a folk singer for a while, under his given name, but as blur of hotel rooms and a cramped budget for cross-country the loop pedal took a more prominent role, the stripped-back travel. Diet, exercise and any semblance of normal, working style morphed into something shimmering and leviathan – a hours evaporate. But it’s also a huge privilege, one that many Words young working artists aspire to. Are the pleasures of travelling Charlotte R-A blend of organic and electronic, laced with found samples.

His latest collection – Drastic Measures, available from City – the freedom and adventure – also touched on in this new Slang on 22 February – is thick with layers, though Sellers’s work? Definitely, says Sellers. “It’s very much about the bitlightness of touch renders them into subtle skeins, frequently tersweet nature of the road. I know how lucky I am to travel to City Slang indistinguishable from their original provenance. “On Enders so many amazing places and to share my music with others.” www.bayonnemusic.com

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Playful Experimentation ELDER ISLAND all merges together in the end,” says Sargent.

“Elder Island’s The fitting title refers to a real-life assemblage of proto- inspiration was varied: type-style models the trio handcrafted to accompany the on one the trio tried record. Altogether, the work has an analogue, museum- to simulate the falling piece feel – clean lines, muted, neutral colours, retro aesthet- and rise of the sun; ics. Amongst the set of instruments are pieces that might be another, lyrically, is radios, keyboards, amps. "They’re not just dummies, either, based on a French they're working pieces with lights, switches and doors." novel; and one or “It was an interdisciplinary project,” explains Sargent, “one two are loosely based that applied all our individual skills. Dave studied design on people the band and is incredibly adept at making and fixing things, I have a know or have met.” fine art background and until recently worked making props for Aardman Animations and Luke studied documentary photography, and is still a practising artist. Between us, we had all bases covered. We made the items with old retro hi-fi sets in mind and with more than a nod to Dieter Rams’ work with Braun in the 1960s.” So, looking ahead, what function will these varied skills serve post-album release, in February? Stage props, perhaps? Tour privileges? Will they go with them on the journey to gigs? “We’ve actually been talking Words about that recently,” says Sargent. “We’d love to take them Charlotte R-A with us to display on tour, but we take up so much room on stage with all our gear already it’d be a tight squeeze. Will have to think of a clever way around it … I’m plugging for a Rough Trade Records dangerous hanging mobile; we’ll have to see.” www.elderisland.com

Image: © Hamish Trevis.

Elder Island is a Bristol-based trio that makes soulful, electronic music that lead singer Katy Sargent once described as “organic dance” – a sound that sets them in the same, creative orbit as the likes of Little Dragon, Floating Points and Bonobo. The threesome met during art-based degrees, explains Sargent. “Luke [Thornton] and Dave [Havard] were childhood friends. They had been in bands together before heading off to university. I met Dave in halls.

We were brought together through records he lent to my friend Rich. I had to track down where all the choice vinyl was appearing from. Luke would come over and visit and we’d go out dancing – it’s where our love for music blossomed.”

Their debut album, The Omnitone Collection, was written in Thornton’s basement, and finished at Bristol’s The Playpen.

“It really is true to its name,” says Sargent. “There was a lot of gear set up. If we had a strange sound in mind, say a Chinese harp, or even a marxophone like at the end of I Fold You, it was available to us – anything was possible.”

The release’s theme “is, evasively, a collection. Each song has its own independence, but we designed them to be components of one larger whole. Our sound and production ties it all together.” Elder Island’s inspiration was varied: on one the trio tried to simulate the falling and rise of the sun; another, lyrically, is based on a French novel; and one or two are loosely based on people the band know or have met. “It

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Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, 2008, Oslo, Norway. Image credit: Jens Passoth (pages 34-35).

books

Spatial Narratives SNØHETTA: COLLECTIVE INTUITION Ahead of its 30th anniversary, Norwegian architectural groundwork for the articulation of space,” says Snøhetta. “The book highlights firm Snøhetta celebrates three decades of Scandinavian “Not only do they locate the human body in relation to the the democratic power of architecture innovation with its new publication, Collective Intuition, which work, they also pinpoint the us in relation to the world.”

Narrative becomes a tool through which to navigate struc- through a selection features 24 of its most celebrated projects including the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the Oslo Opera House, featured tures, and according to Snøhetta’s founders, this operates of buildings and both linguistically and experientially. “A very large part of anecdotes that above as a glassy, minimalist masterpiece on water.

With interviews by the esteemed art curator Hans-Ulrich what we do is to foster an intellectual process when you enter showcase the firm’s Obrist (Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries) and the prac- a place,” Dykers reveals. The Oslo Opera House (2008), for interdisciplinary tice’s co-founders Kjetil Trædal Thorsen and Craig Edward- example, is based on the Norwegian law “allemannsretten,” and narrative Dykers, as well as extracts of conversations with journalist meaning “the right to roam.” Subsequently, the roof and its approach to design.”

Gaute Brochmann, the book highlights the wider democratic lobby are accessible to the public 24/7. Inside are two rooms power of architecture through a selection of buildings and located in between the building’s three theatres, intended anecdotes that showcase the firm’s interdisciplinary and to serve as a social space where people can mingle. Elsenarrative approach to design. “Rather than analyse the pro- where, large windows give the roaming public access to the jects, we hope to depict them as lived – that is, as imagined production areas, meaning everyone is welcome. Meanwhile, and inhabited,” says Snøhetta. Each selection does, indeed, a large part of creating “lived environments” happens postcompletion. “We could not have anticipated, for example, embody the land, and does to beautifully and effectively.

A central part of this comes from a holistic understanding that people would choose to ski down the sloping roof of the of our built environment as a visual journey. “Language Opera House or that it would become Oslo’s most popular becomes a framework and a design tool for transforming destination for the practice of tai chi,” they explain.

Words The democratic quality of Snøhetta’s ethos is then twofold – Gunseli Yalcinkaya visions into real life,” explains the studio. Here, the lived experience – understood through the use of pronouns both in its mode of creation, but also in its future as dictated by like he, she and they, and prepositions like on, in and its inhabitants. “We encourage thinking about design as an act through – becomes a key signifier in how our bodies react of opening up the possibilities of a place by offering prompts Phaidon to a given place. “The environments we imagine lay essential and cues, to influence but not force the choices people make." www.phaidon.com

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Playful Manufacture BUBBLETECTURE

NAWA, Zieta Prozessdesign Studio, Wrocław, Poland, 2017. Image credit: Prozessdesign (pages 270-271).

The bubble is officially back in fashion with an effervescent produced model of living. With Frank Lloyd Wright and the “The deceptively simple new publication by Phaidon and New York-based architect 1956 prototype for an inflatable village made of vinyl-coated appeal of inflatable Sharon Francis. Foaming with over 200 projects from the nylon fabric at its (unlikely) helm, the movement – known objects has long been 1960s to the present-day, this intriguing new book explores as the second wave of utopian architecture – gave birth to seen across the cultural the often playful yet functional uses of pneumatic structures, a new generation of young, radical designers who wanted to spectrum, from the and, contrary to popular belief, it’s not just bouncy castles burst the bubble of conventionality surrounding mid-century candy-coloured blowand swelling animals. Synonymous with the low stakes joy construction. With plastic becoming widely available, it was up chairs of 1960s pop of children’s parties and fun-splash swimming pools, the de- the perfect medium from which to build a fresh perspective furniture to the more ceptively simple appeal of inflatable objects has long been for the future. Buildings like Haus-Rucker-Co’s Gelbes Herz recent Baby Trump seen across the cultural spectrum, from the candy-coloured (1968), a brightly-coloured space capsule centred around a hot-air balloon.” blow-up chairs of 1960s pop furniture to the more recent small chamber with a double mattress, offered a refreshing "Baby Trump" hot-air balloon that flew over London’s Palace alternative to Le Corbusier’s concrete vision. "It was intended as a critique of static architecture," Francis tells us. of Westminster to protest the arrival of the US president.

But the publication also shows us how transient projects can The collection begins with a whistle-stop tour of the history of balloon-made design, beginning with the "golden age" of spark joy – in the words of one anonymous commentator, air transport, steered by the iconic cigar-shaped Zeppelin “there’s no angry way to say ‘bubbles.’” This is perhaps best in 1893. Later instances demonstrate uses in warfare, most embodied by Quasar Khanh and the Apollo and Satellite amusingly between 1944 and 1945 when American troops No. 13 chairs. Made of retro-futuristic shapes and translucent, enlisted a phantom fleet of inflatable tanks and aeroplanes PVC bodies, Khanh’s playful items are products of their epoch, across Europe to impersonate other allied units and scare exuding both youthfulness and fun. The items are made for Words enemy troops into retreating. “Innovative, revolutionary and mass production: they are cheap, cheerful and accessible. Gunseli Yalcinkaya often avant-garde, the featured structures are imbued with Perhaps what is most important when reading Phaidon’s collection, though, is to recognise the power of inflatables political, cultural or social significance,” Francis explains.

One example is a movement in the 1960s that aimed to to incite change in people's perceptions, bursting through Phaidon redefine the built environment by offering a low-cost, mass- existing frameworks or simply making readers smile. www.phaidon.com

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film reviews

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1985 YEN TAN

Set during the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis, 1985 revolves around Christmas for one family in Texas, whose eldest son Adrian (Cory Michael Smith) is home for the first time in a long while. Concealing from both his parents (Michael Chiklis and Virginia Madsen) and younger brother (Aidan Langford) that his life in New York is falling apart, he confides in friend Carly (Jamie Chung), looking to make the most of a final visit home.

Beneath the sharply defined monochrome image, 1985 is a deeply moving piece of filmmaking. The director underpins the overriding sense of drama with an effective juxtaposition – the calm, still aesthetics contrast the turbulent, yet concealed, undercurrents of the characters’ experiences. Yet these emotions are neither black nor white – gradually the film reveals that the parents have a deeper knowledge than viewers are permitted

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Words Paul Risker

Peccadillo Pictures www.peccapics.com

Monsters and Men REINALDO MARCUS GREEN

Writer-director Reinaldo Marcus Green makes his feature debut with this daring look at racially charged America.

Following films like Fruitvale Station, Detroit, The Hate U Give and BlacKkKlansman, Monsters and Men hardly scores points for originality, but it is another dignified and strongly voiced addition to the ever-growing collection of works that examine contemporary police brutality.

Green’s work takes inspiration from the 2014 death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, at the hands of an officer. In the feature, a similar incident plays out near the outset, almost off-camera but captured on a mobile phone by young parent Manny Ortega (Hamilton star Anthony Ramos). He is arguing with the police in a Brooklyn suburb when a gun goes off and Big D is killed.

Exploring the fallout after Manny posts the footage on YouTube, Green then hands the narrative baton to

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to know. Underneath, the reality of the situation is bold, undistilled and inherently colourful. Their sense of angst is simultaneously shared and silent, just as our empathy grows for Adrian and the surrounding characters in his affecting, deeply compelling and taut story.

Yen’s skillset as a storyteller is to reflect on the broader spectrum of the human experience – nature versus nurture, the individuality of the mind and what touches us emotionally and intellectually throughout our lives.

The film is also undeniably about control and loss within the familial dynamic, as well as the conflict of sexuality and religion within these parameters. Ultimately the film is a contemplative and highly charged feature with an introspective and original narrative – with multiple layers of psychological understanding, this is one that sticks with audiences through both its light and dark moments.

Officer Dennis Williams (John David Washington, seen in BlacKkKlansman), a local black cop who, in the film’s taut opening scene, is pulled over by a white policeman whilst he’s out of uniform. The conflicted Williams must consider whether he wants to testify against the fellow officer responsible for the shooting, a decision laced with difficulty. Amidst middle-class dinner-party debates about the rights of police officers in such split-second situations, we move onto the fate of Zyrick (Kelvin Harrison Jr), a young high school student who risks a baseball scholarship when he protests the police actions.

It’s a risky strategy from Green, and not wholly satisfying, though fine editing by Justin Chan and Scott Cummings reduces the abruptness of these handovers. Green digs in to elicit fine performances from his cast in what is more of a nuanced character study than an angry polemic.

Words James Mottram

Altitude Film www.altitudefilment.com

The Price of Everything NATHANIEL KAHN

A searing documentary, The Price of Everything – at a basic level – looks at how contemporary art fits into our consumerist society. Merging the passions of collectors, dealers and auctioneers who put numbers on seemingly priceless pieces, Nathaniel Kahn’s gaze centres on this intersection between creativity and money.

However, the film takes a complex and meticulous path – provoking audiences to re-consider their ideas about everything that can be bought and sold.

Following the growth of the art market in recent history, the juxtaposition of business and creativity intimately mirrors the growing wealth / income gap. Taking the metaphor further, the closed-off apartments housing art are inevitably a reminder of the privilege of wealth.

Kahn is likely to evoke strong idealistic feelings in audiences as he exposes the inner-workings of the

market, but, choosing the non-adversarial approach, he avoids a righteous stance against the private acquisition of art. This allows a more considered and effective discussion and, indeed, makes the film more intriguing.

Ultimately The Price of Everything not only holds a mirror to our economic and social realities, but to ourselves. The question it asks the viewer is whether one can reason with their idealism? A stark and initially provocative sentiment is offered by Sotheby’s Chairman and Executive Vice President Amy Cappellazzo, who describes museums holding concealed pieces as “cemeteries." She does not discount the value of galleries as a whole, but highlights the importance of private collections, ensuring that pieces are always in sight. This is the question Kahn asks us: can we recognise the difficulties in public exhibition, and how this relates to wider recognition?

Words Paul Risker

Dogwoof www.dogwoof.com

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music reviews

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Hatching The Egg MERELY

Kristina Florell is a classically trained musician who has been performing as “Merely” since 2012. Hatching The Egg, Florell’s third album, trades in her signature electropop for a folk-inspired adventure. Just like the video for single Crazy Heart illustrates, this new work takes the plunge into a fantasy world brimming with magic.

From the off, opener Vixen’s Scream establishes the slow, ethereal mood of the record. Like Björk, Florell manipulates her voice in a way that puts texture and mood above lyricism or witty wordplay. This makes it easy to zone out into the floaty, other-worldly feeling of the sounds.

Even when the lyrics do drift back, they are given greater depth. For instance, when the lull in Crazy Heart reveals the deeply personal refrain: “I have always been fragile / With a lot of anger.” Hatching The Egg’s paired back production keeps focus firmly on each track’s melodies,

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which are occasionally lifted with flashes of bare, twitchy percussion. For instance, The Magic Shrine has just hints of chords, not-quite-there instrumentation and reverbheavy vocals. It’s so light it threatens to float away.

What’s also disorientating about the music is that it feels simultaneously nostalgic and futuristic. There are notes of new-age folk stars like Enya mixed with artificial synths and glitch samples that evoke the far reaches of the post-internet world. Sunset Beach starts as a quiet cinematic reverie worthy of The Lord of the Rings but builds to the hyper-speed hedonism of a Y2K rave beat. Grimes would be an obvious comparison, but as these eight tracks unfold, they evoke an organic, mystical quality that sets Merely apart as a newcomer on the scene. She captures the unknowable and the untamed, whilst distinctly drawing upon the dystopia of the digital age.

Words Grace Caffyn

YEAR0001 facebook.com/merelyuniverse

Late Teens PRESS CLUB

Fuzzy, distorted vocals and big angry riffs lace this incredible, emboldening and commanding record from Melbourne’s Press Club. There is so much raw intensity in this piece of work, it somehow manages to capture the emotional teenage angst of 1980s rock, and at the same time be undeniably punk. There are obvious femaleled band comparisons – a muddied up Paramore, or perhaps an energised, amphetamine-spiked Yeah Yeah Yeahs – but in all honesty, the band has succeeded in carving out a unique and fire-some album, whilst ticking every box you would want from a genre of this kind.

Yes, a lot of the glue is due to lead singer Natalie Foster’s infectious and tormented singing, matched with lyrics that demand repeated rewinds. But something has to be said for the relentless production, tight drumming and about 100 guitar riffs on each track. The mid-

point refrain of Side B lets the musicians shine on this instrumental breather, and it is moments like this that show how much the band understands space. There isn’t too much of anything, and a sense of balance precedes from the record straight into our ears as listeners.

The title track Late Teens is rousing with the right fluctuation of solo vocals and tempo switches to make audiences clench their fists and walk faster. Suburbia hits early in the 11 tracker, and sets pace for the longing and energy that follows. Meanwhile, the noisy closer Stay Low feels like a coming of age ode to lost love and broken promises. With Late Teens, Press Club have built an undeniably robust and almost theatrical album. The word “solid” doesn’t do it justice; the whole record is a rare sighting of the listen-all-the-way-through-and-hitrepeat masterpieces that the industry sorely needs.

Words Kyle Bryony

Hassle Records www.pressclubmusic.com

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Highway Hypnosis SNEAKS

Sneaks is the solo project of Washington, DC-based musician Eva Moolchan. Raised in Silver Springs, Maryland, Moolchan played in bands during her teenage years but gradually shifted focus towards solo work, citing early 1980s band Pylon as a significant influence. A hybrid of post-punk and hip hop, Sneaks’ style is open to interpretation, but there are echoes of Nirvana and M.I.A. Having completed a European tour that began with soundtracking the Lemaire Spring-Summer 2019 runway show during Paris Fashion Week, Highway Hypnosis arrives at the perfect time. Produced by Carlos Hernandez, Tony Seltzer and Moolchan, the album features songs peppered with samples and vocal effects which all clock in at under three minutes in length. It is a palette honed across previous albums Gymnastics (2016) and It’s a Myth (2017) but here there is a renewed sense of self-assurance.

The title track, with its insistent whispered chant, is the perfect opener. Spectacularly brief at just 01:56, it nonetheless represents the push and pull between vocals, bass and rhythm – perhaps the most distinctive feature.

The exuberant The Way it Goes is buoyed by idiosyncratic vocals and sugar sweet beats whilst Hong Kong To Amsterdam deploys extravagant flourishes of electronica.

Less commercial but no less engaging is Ecstasy, with its elementary beats and restricted melody, Addis featuring irregular vocal patterns and Holy Cow Never Saw A Girl Like Her, a raw sojourn that provides a welcome contrast.

At its core, Highway Hypnosis possesses an almost 1980s DNA yet still retains a shimmering focus on the present and the future. Throughout, it has a uniquely distinctive charm – the brevity of each track proves that the simple things are, truly, the most beautiful things.

Words Matt Swain

Merge Records sneaks.bandcamp.com

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book reviews

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In Character ANJA NIEMI

Wearing suede boots, a pastel fringed jacket and a synthetic wig, Norwegian photographer Anja Niemi straddles a spotted pony against the backdrop of Monument Valley. The image is taken from the series, She Could Have Been A Cowboy, in which she narrates the story of a woman’s yearning to be something she is not. A new monograph by Thames & Hudson is the first retrospective of Niemi’s work, charting her fascination with dressing up as characters who are disconnected from their realities. Focusing on key series that have defined her career, the publication contextualises Niemi’s practice with an interview and essay by Max Houghton.

When viewed in sequence, the images could be mistaken for movie stills, melancholic mise-en-scenes evocative of anticipatory cinematic pauses. In the beguiling Do Not Disturb series, for example, she drapes herself alluringly

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Words Verity Seward

Thames & Hudson www.thamesandhudson.com

Scene ALEX MAJOLI

The world of Alex Majoli’s (b. 1971) Scene exists within darkness, transforming personal and political moments into visually arresting tableaux, seemingly bathed in moonlight. Spanning eight years and traversing Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, the body of work – published by MACK Books – documents humanitarian crises, social demonstrations and everyday experiences. Meticulously captured over long periods and illuminated by a flash much stronger than daylight, an extensive, handson image-making process plunges each mise-en-scène into an eternal night. The results are striking; jet-black backdrops heighten the powerful, innate subject matter.

A concern for authenticity defines the collection. Evoking a sense of theatre which taps into the very essence of photography, the series recalls a time-honoured quote from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It : “All the world’s

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across the furniture of different hotel rooms; the colour palette and bizarre compositions are borrowed from the otherworldly surrealism of David Lynch. Meanwhile, in Starlets and Darlene & Me, mannequin-like pairs of receptionists, showgirls and socialites express the conflicted self, reminiscent of Hitchcock. Houghton’s analysis relates the prickly feeling innate in Niemi’s work back to Freud’s writing on the uncanny and the superego.

In the interview, Niemi explains a resistance for the compositions to be described as self-portraiture. Whilst the artist’s presence is integral to each picture, she adopts shifting guises to ask questions about identity, womanhood and humanity, far removed from subjectivity. Layered in costumes salvaged from second-hand shops, the body constructs an ethereal shell for each persona, blurring the lines between character and storyteller.

a stage. And all the men and women merely players.”

How much of life is a performance? And how does an artist’s presence mediate the image? The publication considers these questions both visually and conceptually, presenting the breadth of human experience.

Accompanied by insightful essays from David Campany and Corinne Rondeau, the book offers new perspectives on the documentary genre. Revealing that which is hidden whilst acknowledging the role of the camera, Majoli’s work asks timely questions about artifice and theatricality. In an era of fake news and alternative facts, it offers intriguing dialogues about the nature of the image in the 21st century, and what it means to us. Evocative and intimate, Scene investigates the drama of representation, demonstrating how the modes of depiction can affect a wider understanding of people and place.

Words Eleanor Sutherland

MACK Books www.mackbooks.co.uk

Body: The Photography Book NATHALIE HERSCHDORFER

The body is the site for constant delicate negotiations.

As object, subject, as something looked at by others and something through which to see others, it is a housing for the self and the icon for many contemporary issues.

Nathalie Herschdorfer is justifiably optimistic in this visually stimulating book; images of “perfect” bodies may proliferate, but, as readers, we are led on a path that celebrates the diversity of our physical identities.

Providing a survey of how the body has been represented in the ages of photography, Thames & Hudson’s book is organised under often unexpected themes like Alter Ego and Mutations. Its idea of what constitutes the physical self is equally bold: it depicts ultrasounds and blood vessels as well as nude portraits.

In history, the visual representation of life, decay and death has yielded some of the most affective images.

Featured works gesture to all three at once, like Yurie Nagashima’s 2001 Self-Portrait (feet on bathroom tiles dotted with menstrual blood) and Elinor Carucci’s 1998 I hold Eran’s wounded hand (a tender close-up of a stitched finger). Since the body is also our means to express identity, Herschdorfer asks whether current technologies encourage individuals to construct a character purely for others. The inclusion of Kim Kardashian’s mirror selfies alongside Bettina Rheims’ 2017 photos of FEMEN activists implies the complexity of the answer: our appearance is indeed a self-performance, but the politics of this are endlessly changing. Overall, Herschdorfer reminds us that image-making can ask many things, both psychological and existential. However, in visualising both biology and sociology, the publication ultimately speaks about the vulnerabilities that make us human.

Words Sarah Jilani

Thames & Hudson www.thamesandhudson.com

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artists’ directory

SALOMÉ-CHARLOTTE CAMORS EUGENE GROBLER Eugene Grobler is a portrait photographer based in London. His self-reflective images express a sensibility for the human condition – with both mood and lighting contributing to their openness and vulnerability. Grobler won the Portrait category for the British Photography Awards in 2017.

www.eugenegrobler.com I Instagram: @eugene_grobler_photo

NICOLAS VIONNET Having studied at the Academy of Art and Design in Basel, as well as the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Nicolas Vionnet’s sculptural works play with perspective and space – referencing everyday processes and materials.

The piece shown here is entitled Full of Hot Air.

France-based contemporary artist Salomé-Charlotte Camors questions our individual responsibility for environmental and social issues. Undertaking extensive research, she then utilises conceptual photography to go beyond an image – to crystallise the interactions constitutive of our identity and conception of reality.

www.sc-camors.com

PETER GOODHALL

His extensive exhibition CV includes the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art and the Odessa Biennale of Contemporary Art. A multidisciplinary artist, Vionnet is based in the Zürich Metropolitan Area.

Peter Goodhall is a widely-exhibited professional artist with a collection of international awards. He paints contemporary images in a modern realist style, often on large canvases. The sea and water are subject matters throughout Goodhall’s work, and are the inspirations for creating subtle paintings which are infused with bold movement. Fascinated by the patterns, reflections and distortions occurring in the movement of water, he is challenged to capture fleeting moments in oil on canvas.

www.nicolasvionnet.ch | Instagram: @nicolasvionnet

www.petergoodhall.com

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CHARLES XELOT

HARRIET MOUTSOPOULOS

Living between Paris and Saint Petersburg, Charles Xelot is a French photographer who takes Russia as his main focus. The featured project, There is Gas Under the Tundra, explores industrial development in the Arctic region, embracing social and environmental issues in modern civilisation, whilst reflecting a fine art sensibility.

Sydney-based Harriet Moutsopoulos is a collage artist who works under the name Lexicon Love. Drawn to the surreal and unsettling, she seeks out the unexpected connections between humour and tragedy. Ultimately it is the way in which collage art challenges traditional notions of aesthetics which she finds most appealing.

www.charlesxelot.com

www.lexiconlove.com I Instagram: @lexicon_love

TAE HO KIM

NATALIA NOSOVA

Holding an MA in Visual Communication from the Royal College of Art, Tae Ho Kim focuses on reinterpreting the visible world through geometric structures. The Imperfect Visual Materialism series asks the question: what position does illusion hold in modern, visual culture? The resulting works play with patterns as symbolic expression.

Natalia Nosova is a Russian-born figurative painter, printmaker and photographer, currently living in London. The pillars of her art practice include: the recording of experiences from a female perspective, the incorporation of gestures and an expression of women’s roles in the world.

Kim believes the expression of optical illusion to be underestimated, noting: “the highly sophisticated mathematical structure and the profound scientific approach that make the illusion have been less emphasised than its aesthetic and playful elements.”

www.nosova.com

www.rca.ac.uk/students/tae-ho-kim

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Left: Woman with yellow hat drifting (phase 2). Right: Same as left and Woman with blue hat drifting (phase 2).

artists’ directory

2b+photo

anne-marie giroux

2b+photo (Tobias Meier) specialises in storytelling editorials for fashion and advertising. 2b+photo makes conceptual photography with many intricacies that draw the viewer in. He carefully crafts the featured sets, backdrops and visual effects for contemporary photography with a pop art and surrealist feel. His work is detailed and colourful, communicating brand aesthetics through highly stylised images. www.2bplusphoto.com

Montréal-based Anne-Marie Giroux's practice focuses on conceptual projects through painting, sculpture and installations. The work-inprogress Drifts proposes a feminine point of view upon a "mocking questioning of the relevance of being an artist." The installation will be featured 21-24 February at Artist Project in Toronto. www.anne-mariegiroux.com

Anya Myagkikh

Camila Quintero

Anya Myagkikh explores the potential of lines and texture, revelling in the sheer joy of the creative process. With an increasing prevalence of the Internet and social media, Myagkikh considers her art to be honest and undiluted. This is demonstrated in the Molecule of Imagination series of paintings and mixed media work. She has exhibited at Barcelona International Art Fair and Spectrum Miami. www.anyamyagkikh.com

Originally from Bogotá, Camila Quintero is based in London, where she recently graduated with an MA in Illustration from Camberwell College of Arts at UAL. Referencing architecture, photography, design and geometry, each work explores the three-dimensional quality of perspective. Her work has been selected for the UAL Collection, FLOCK 2018 and the ARTIQ Graduate Art Prize. www.camilaquintero.co.uk | Instagram: @camilaquintero_art

christiane zschommler

Denise McAuliffe Hutchinson

In the lens-based art of Christiane Zschommler, notebooks, photographs and personal documents become the starting point for reflecting upon her experiences within society. The UK-based artist creates images by obscuring the content, reducing it to traces of the original. Her series Beyond Orwell is shortlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize and will be exhibited 8 March -14 July at York Art Gallery. www.christianezschommler.co.uk

Of particular interest to Ireland-based artist Denise McAuliffe Hutchinson is the organic process by which the chosen materials – from paint to found objects – shape the piece which emerges from a blank canvas. Her work was recently featured in a solo exhibition at the GOMA Gallery of Modern Art Waterford and she is currently preparing for a show in New York later this year. www.denisemcauliffe1.com

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eric wiles

Hana Louise Shahnavaz

Northern California-based artist Eric Wiles combines fine art and landscape photography to reveal dynamic images of natural beauty and manmade objects. A contemporary approach has brought his work to wider attention including an exhibition at the Musée du Louvre. Wiles was nominated for the Black & White Spider Awards and was named an Artist of the Year 2018 by DESTIG magazine. www.ew-photo.com I Instagram: @eric.wiles.photo

British-Iranian painter Hana Louise Shahnavaz creates works with an exquisite amount of detail. Vibrant pigments handmade from 24-carat gold, rare semi-precious stones and plants provide the colour schemes for each composition. Shahnavaz finds inspiration in the natural world, as well as classical and folk traditions from Persian culture. www.hanashahnavaz.com I Instagram: @hanaalchemyart

julia aurora guzmÁn Amsterdam-based artist Julia Aurora Guzmán produces sculptures and installations that play with the viewer’s perception. Each piece interweaves systems of support and social dynamics with a focus on architectural scale and spatial depth. Guzmán will exhibit at Art Rotterdam 6-10 February with Galerie Fontana; her solo exhibition at Galerie Fontana in Amsterdam opens 6 April. www.juliaurora.com | Instagram: @juliauroraguzman

Golden Days, 2018. Acrylic painting, 120cm x 80cm.

hyunmin cho South Korean mixed media artist Hyunmin Cho currently lives and works in London. She creates three-dimensional works from discarded objects and detritus, repurposing abandoned elements as materials for art. The resulting pieces demonstrate the potential of the overlooked fringes of everyday life – how the way we think of objects can be changed.

Instagram: @nuunmincno

julijana ravbar

karen rao

Slovenia-based Julijana Ravbar is an internationally-renowned painter.

She strives to make art that moves and inspires, whilst allowing the viewer to form an individualised connection with the work. She has described her work as "an abstract reflection of what is within my heart and soul."

Ravbar’s paintings are displayed in collections around the world. www.artfinder.com/julijana-ravbar I Instagram: @julijana_ravbar_art

Karen Rao is a felt artist based in Brighton. She specialises in animalinspired costume wear in the tactile medium of wool, which she finds rich in colour and dramatic in texture. Using the ancient art of wet felting – consisting of only wool, soap and water – eared and horned headdresses are created for theatre productions, festivals and everyday wear. www.karenrao.com I Instagram: @karenraofelt

For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com

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artists’ directory

Kiyora

Krytzia Dabdoub

Kiyora’s detailed papercutting works aim to depict the changing pockets of energy that make up our universe. Through bold, patterned contradictions, the compositions express light and dark, movement and stillness – using paper as a plane of representation and an outlet for creative expression: a source of energy in its own right. Kiyora is based in Japan. http://kiyora888.mods.jp I Instagram: kiyora888

Living in San Francisco, Mexican artist Krytzia Dabdoub is inspired by nature.

Large-scale paintings ruminate around the landscape – specifically the impact of human destruction and its increasing pollution levels. Her works are a call to action, connecting viewers to the sea and sky in an attempt to centralise the organic world. Dabdoub works in Studio 7 at the Peninsula Museum of Art in Burlingame, California. www.krytzia.com I Instagram: @krytzia.dm

kuzma vostrikov and ajuan song

laurie borggreve

Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song are multidisciplinary artists based in New York. Since 2015 they have employed a signature use of analogue photographic processes. Humour and melancholy are expressed in the 100-image series Absolutely Augmented Reality, which comments on the paradox of hyperconnectivity and the simultaneous dissociative nature of our present reality. www.kuzmavostrikov.com I www.ajuansong.com

American artist Laurie Borggreve transforms a variety of conventional materials into delicate and highly detailed sculptures and installations that invite close examination. With a background in both design and art, she uses a multidisciplinary approach to stretch the potential of materials and craft the hundreds of handmade components that form each artwork. www.lborggreve.com | Instagram: @laurieborggreve

Makotu Nakagawa

melba juez-perrone

What comes after death? This age-old question has been the cornerstone for many artists over the years. Makotu Nakagawa approaches the subject with intimacy, clarity and graphic representation, depicting his father and his body through numerous stages of life, death and the spaces inbetween. www.makotu.net

Melba Juez-Perrone sees painting as a visual representation of the poetry inside us. Each of her works is an expression of these emotions, through colourful and vivid portraits and still lifes. The pictures evoke her multicultural background – moving from Guayaquil, Ecuador to Boston for her studies, and then to Harvard, where she is currently based. www.melbajuezperrone.com

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Minuella E Chapman

orlanda broom

Minuella E Chapman's latest series – entitled Byzantium (Arcadia) – interfuses contemporary photography with leitmotifs of memory, landscape and the classical beauty of Greco-Roman sculpture. The works can be seen at the North Sydney Art Prize 2019 finalist exhibition at The Coal Loader Centre for Sustainability in Waverton, 2-17 March.

Instagram: @minuellachapman

UK-based artist Orlanda Broom paints lush, exotic landscapes that explore the idea of lost or wild environments. Celebrating and responding to the beauty of landscape and flora, the underlying tension of her work is the potential loss of these places. Broom's paintings have been exhibited internationally and featured in numerous competition shows. www.orlandabroom.com I Instagram: @orlandabroom

rosana de montfort Rosana De Montfort is a UK and Czech Republic-based artist who moves against the mainstream with her neo-surrealist paintings. Her focus is on visual and emotional impact, leaving no questions unanswered. Her art of picturing singularity has won collectors from Sydney to California, entering the art arena with an unusual style of unmistakable vehemence. www.rosanademontfort.com I Instagram: @rosanademontfort

Top: Rain, 2018. Oil, acrylic and Belgium linen, 50cm x 175cm. Bottom: The Distance, 2018.

Oil and Belgium linen, 50cm x 70cm x 2 pieces.

Geometry in Pink. Acrylic paint and mixed media, 40cm x 40cm.

Paweł Sadaj Award-winning multidisciplinary artist Paweł Sadaj provokes an investigation of visual discourse. Using multiple techniques – such as traditional photography and new digital technologies – he calls for an analysis of emotion and narrative, through images that pose more questions than answers. Sadaj lives and works in Warsaw. www.pawelsadaj.com

sandra morellato

sheau ming song

Montréal-born Sandra Morellato has a degree in Architecture from McGill University; training to draw landscapes and cityscapes has had a profound effect on her paintings. Bold shapes, shadows and highlights depict a vivacious lust for life. Working full-time as an artist, Morellato's pieces can be found in international public and private collections. www.artmorellato.com | Instagram: @artmorellato

Sheau Ming Song has a PhD from LICA at Lancaster University and is an Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei City. His work demonstrates the essential issues of two-dimensional representation, and documents the visual possibilities of painting materials. He has exhibited at Art Taipei, Art15 London, ART.FAIR Cologne and the-solo-project in Basel. www.sms1967.com

For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com

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artists’ directory

silke wellmeier

Soumisha Dauthel

Germany-based Silke Wellmeier works with porcelain, freely constructing it by hand into thin-walled, geometric forms. The resulting vessels are minimal, with an almost organic surface. The repetition of elements – both individually and within a group – is a central theme of the work, examining their relationship with each other and with the surrounding space. www.silke-wellmeier.de I Instagram: @silkewellmeier

Circling around themes of mythology and social contraction, Soumisha Dauthel’s practice uses paint as a mechanism to make sense of the complex world around us. Approaching paint in a new, interdisciplinary way, each composition pulls together a tapestry of forms and patterns – collages of colour and shapes as an amalgamation of visual references. www.soumishadauthel.com I Instagram: @soumishadauthel

stephanie mill

Sven Pfrommer

Stephanie Mill is an urban contemporary artist inspired by the natural world. Combining photography with multiple digital processes, she expresses soulful colour with a vibrant aesthetic. The I AM series explores the play of light through water using recorded sound input – a visual expression of what it is to be alive. Mill is represented by Curious Duke Gallery in London. www.stephaniemill.com | Instagram: @art_stephanie

Award-winning photographer and visual artist Sven Pfrommer transforms the lens through the introduction of mixed media – combining acrylic, metal, resin and canvas, the bright works focus on process and outcome.

Berlin-based Pfrommer has worked on numerous commissions for hotel, fashion and product design projects throughout Europe and the USA. www.svenpfrommer.com I Instagram: @sven_pfrommer

Toshiyuki Sato

won moon and won woo lee

Award-winning Japanese artist Toshiyuki Sato is a graduate of the School of Art and Design at the University of Tsukuba. By stacking serial plates, he produces a range of polygonal and organic models. Each abstract sculpture is an investigation into continuity and topographics – where textures are central to understanding the world we live in. satos.webcrow.jp

The work of London-based South Korean artist Won Moon intersects performance, installation and sculpture. She draws upon personal experiences to explore broader themes of division, identity and displacement. One of the resulting works is Entanglement, which was created in collaboration with North Korean emigrant Won Woo Lee. www.kyungwonmoon.com I Instagram: @kyungwonmoon

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claudia pombo

DilEra Topaloglu

Brazilian-Dutch painter Claudia Pombo offers an adapted view of nature and human situations.

Different forms of her creative expression include illustrations of Amazonian mythology, metaphysical art, as well as landscapes. The piece shown here is entitled The Sky is Not the Limit.

Based in Istanbul, painter Dilera Topaloglu blends reality with expressionism – capturing everyday moments and translating them through vivid colours and kinetic brushstrokes. The resulting pieces – including the self-portrait shown here – communicate a sense of movement and dynamism, reinventing the potential of painting. www.dileratopaloglu.com Instagram: @dileraofficial

clpombo.wordpress.com clpombo.art@gmail.com

Flower Basket Spring. A collage of canvas, print, leaves and glitter, 50cm x 50cm.

doris taussig

elaine duncan

Born in Vienna, Doris Taussig currently lives and works in Bucharest. She is the creator of the popular emoticon-inspired character HappyTottii™, who features in numerous love-themed pieces. Taussig's practice combines computer graphic techniques with elements from nature, giving artworks a daydream-like quality in today's digital culture. www.happytottii.com

Santa Fe-based Elaine Duncan incorporates the act of dance into her art practice. By partnering with the media and the canvas, painting becomes a physical act of rhythm, texture, surface and subsurface: always moving, always in flux. Contradiction and irony are excavated by masking or scratching through the paint, revealing hidden surfaces in her work and shapes that play into the negative space. http://elaineduncanart.simpl.com

elizabeth de monchaux

Eva Gentner

London-based sculptor Elizabeth de Monchaux is inspired by elusive spaces: something is or is not about to happen, and the gaps inbetween.

She uses combinations of geometric forms to create abstract sculptures for exhibition and commission.

Through digital photography she also creates images that complement her sculptural works. www.facebook.com/EdemonchauxArt www.edemx.co.uk

Eva Gentner's works utilise a fragile, concrete fabric, created from cement cast on jute and mixed with pigments. The resulting material is sewn into garments, hangings and installations. Exploring flexibility and impermanence, each piece is a playful approach to materiality and natural aesthetics. Gentner has exhibited work throughout Germany in addition to creating costumes for performances. www.evagentner.de

Gilda Jabbari

Hazuki Katagai

Gilda Jabbari elevates the everyday through collaged images. Falling into the discourse between tradition and innovation, interior and exterior, her photographs recreate 13th and 18th century Persian miniatures, transforming objects, patterns and designs through a contemporary lens. Jabbari has a master’s degree in Photography from the Royal College of Art, London. www.gildajabbari.com Instagram: @gildajabbari

Fascinated by the mysterious connection between the physical and psychological, award-winning Japanese artist Hazuki Katagai asks: what would happen if we were to “wear" our feelings? Accessories for Wearing Emotions is a series of 21 functional devices which explores the definition and nature of internal emotions, what Katagai describes as "the complex functionality of being human." www.hazukikatagai.com

For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com

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Irena Jurca

Ivana de Vivanco

Slovenian artist Irena Jurca utilises a self-reflective approach to understanding the invisible experiences of humanity. Her practice expands upon the power of image-making in the construction of our sense of identity, and the factors that influence this. Jurca has a degree in Cultural Studies from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana. www.irenajurca.com

Chilean-Peruvian Ivana de Vivanco is currently based in Germany, producing large, often life-sized, paintings that consider artificiality in image-making.

The bright colours and absurd compositions provide a stage for the surreal. Her works have been featured in numerous publications including 100 Painters of Tomorrow published by Thames & Hudson. www.ivanadevivanco.com Instagram: @ivanadevivanco

jean davis

Jiří Kamenskich

Jean Davis is a figurative abstractionist painter who integrates subjects into undefined environments to express subconscious thoughts and feelings. The various compositions represent psychological and selfportraits. The piece shown here is Mnemosyne, created using oil and silver leaf on panel. Davis lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and works from her studio in Alameda. www.jeanzart.com

Czech artist Jiří Kamenskich is interested in the ecological and archeological dimensions of our relationship to the landscape in the Anthropocene. The sculpture shown here is entitled 1m 3, and is based upon a discarded lid from a plastic bottle found when Kamenskich excavated 1m3 of earth.

It was reproduced in polyurethane foam and has a volume of 1m3. www.jirikamenskich.com

Judit Horváth LÓCZI

klaus lenzen

Multi-award-winning artist Judit Horváth Lóczi studied graphic art and landscape architecture in Budapest. Well versed in abstract painting and installation, she assembles playful constructions that reflect upon light and shadow, as well as multidimensional forms.

Horváth Lóczi notes that this is how she processes personal events, as "every artwork is a page of a diary." www.horvathjudit.com Instagram: @horvathloczijudit

Klaus Lenzen is a Düsseldorfbased photographer. In his latest series, Pole Vault, he endeavours to portray sport from an aesthetic perspective. He pays attention to the elegant shapes and structures created by athletes in motion.

Lenzen notes that these minimal compositions are hushed moments of movement and time. www.klauslenzenphotographie.com Instagram: @klenzen53

Uncontrollable Clearance Delay 50, 2018.

150cm x150cm.

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Laura Niculescu

maria smith bohannon

Bucharest-based Laura Niculescu was a 2017 winner of The British Institution Awards for Students at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in London.

The Less is More project relates to the intention to simplify images and alter spatial perception. She notes: "Through my artwork I want to emphasise an ethical viewpoint; letting go of useless ornaments." www.facebook.com/laura.nic.3

Maria Smith Bohannon is a graphic designer and artist based in the USA. In addition to client-driven commissions, she designs Euclidean laser etchings and prints, experiments with typography and creates collages.

Smith Bohannon is currently an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Oakland University. www.mariabohannon.com Instagram: @mimismithbo

Marta Promińska

Matt Herriot

Marta Promińska is an awardwinning painter and architect based in Warsaw. Using old masters' techniques – such as oil painting and sketching – she translates traditional painting through a "neoperceptive" lens. Promińska's work is featured in the book Arte Arcana, published in July 2018.

Matt Herriot is a contemporary portrait artist from London who is currently studying at Yale University.

Through his large-scale oil paintings, he seeks to blend hyperrealism with abstraction in portraiture, pushing the boundaries of the genre whilst presenting it in a commercially viable format. Herriot won the Young Artist 1st Prize in the National Open Art Competition in 2017. www.herriotart.com Instagram and Twitter: @herriot_art

Instagram: @marta_prominska www.facebook.com/martabajus. hypnagogicpainting

MichaŁ jan Borucki Working primarily with oil on canvas, Michał Jan Borucki creates surrealistic visions that address contemporary notions of beauty and the complexities of the human condition. Based in Warsaw, Borucki reflects upon storytelling and the singular experience, using iconographies from religion, mythology and history. www.mborucki.pl Instagram: @m.borucki www.facebook.com/mborucki.art

The Beginning, 2015. Oil on canvas, 60cm x 80cm.

mhairi ballantyne In her recent paintings, Mhairi Ballantyne is drawn to the allure of distant places. The immersive environments created are remote yet within reach, imparting a sense of the known. Ballantyne's practice also includes drawing, sculpture and installation. www.mhairiballantyne.co.uk Instagram: @mhairiballantyne

Nick West

Peter Spurgeon

Nick West is a British artist based in Tokyo. Much of his practice takes books as its subject matter. In the past, West has used the folded pages of a subway map to create abstract paintings, or has made an alphabet using circular-bound books. Interested in language and disrupted narratives, his recent work, shown here, is a book assembled from thousands of matches. www.nickweststudio.com

During World War II, the British Air Ministry commissioned film technicians to design fake cities, airfields and oil refineries, with the objective of diverting bomb attacks.

Peter Spurgeon documents these decoy locations, investigating the intriguing space between theatre and conflict. UK-based Spurgeon has won numerous prizes including an ESPY Photography Award. www.peterspurgeon.photo

Sari Mansala

thomas w kuppler

Based in Central Finland, Sari Mansala calls upon the landscape as a central, abstract concept. Using acrylics, she experiments with texture and colour to make ethereal and sculptural paintings that are both transient and perplexing.

The work shown here is entitled Häiriö – Distraction, an acrylic on canvas piece created in 2017.

Thomas W Kuppler's process of methodological experimentation, exploration and continual questioning of the media is driven by the need to both deconstruct the representational character of a photograph and to expand the conventional limits of form and dichotomy between the visible and the invisible. www.dadaxus.com info@arttwk.com

www.sarimansala.com

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Durban July races, South Africa, 2005. Picture credit: Š Martin Parr / Magnum Photos / Rocket Gallery.

last words

Sabina Jaskot-Gill Curator, National Portrait Gallery

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As the only national gallery with a specific interest in British identity, and on the influence of those who have made their mark on history and culture, it is fitting that the National Portrait Gallery should be recognising the work of Martin Parr. Only Human revolves around one of his most engaging subjects: people. The presentation includes portraits taken in the UK and around the world, revealing the eccentricities of modern life with affection and insight. New work made by Parr immediately before and after the 2016 Brexit referendum also raises questions around national identity. The show contributes to an ongoing debate about what it means to be British in an international context. Only Human: Martin Parr is at NPG, London, from 7 March to 27 May. www.npg.org.uk/martinparr | #MartinParrNPG.

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