Simone Martini, The Angel Gabriel (detail), about 1326–34. Collection KMSKA
- Flemish Community (public domain) / Photo Hugo Maertens (257)
The exhibition was organised by the National Gallery, London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Year XIV | Issue 81
November — December 2024
Supplement No. 7
CURATED BY Alessia Caliendo
EIC
Massimiliano Tonelli
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COVER CREDITS
Produced by Alessia Caliendo
Photographer Simone Ammendola
Beauty
Carla Curione
Model Alayana N @ Sophie Models
Photographer assistant
Flavio Federico
Production assistant Michelle Cavallini
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Closed in editorial office on 05/12/2024
High Journal:
DESIGN AS PRESENT-DAY STORYTELLING
The value of design and architecture lies in stories it tells, the images it conjures up and the questions it poses. HIGH Journal curated by Artribune is a meeting point for narratives cutting across the present, giving a voice to the people currently designing the creative panorama.
And the HIGH Everyday Couture collections designed behind this publishing project are these ideas in practical form. Visual tales told by contemporary talents delve into the project’s themes and what links it up with art and design.
One of the centre-stage players in this issue is artist Elena Salmistraro, with Alchimie nel Vuoto, an exhibition held at Galleria Antonio Colombo whose theme is emptiness as creation’s original state. In designs and ceramic and wood work the artist explores emptiness not as absence but as a storytelling-potential space designed to get observers involved and offer insights into emotions and fragilities.
The HIGH Journal project also includes a contribution by Roisin Jones, 2024 HIGH Prize winner. On the strength of the brand’s philanthropy, the artist explores identity and resilience by means of an interdisciplinary practice which melds photography, performance, video and sculpture. Her work is designed to be a tool with which to connect up personal and collective experiences.
This issue also offers an overview of the main European design and architecture exhibitions, analysing their processes and meanings. The journal is not a product celebration. It is an enquiry into design as a meaning- and dialogue-building tool. It reflects on the importance of craftsmanship as a future resource and on art’s potential to get beyond differences to generate connections.
The tales told in HIGH Journal curated by Artribune make up a mosaic of thoughts on the role played by design in the modern world, inviting readers to look at the present afresh. Alessia Caliendo
Imagination matter:
IN CONVERSATION WITH ELENA SALMISTRARO
Elena Salmistraro’s Alchimie nel Vuoto
- The Alchemies of Emptiness - exhibition at Galleria Antonio Colombo reflects on emptiness as artistic creation’s original state. By means of spontaneous designs and materials such as ceramics and wood, the artist tells of a creative process in which freedom of expression and introspection interweave. The recurring ‘monster’ theme
in her work is a metaphor of transformation and acceptance, with design as both therapeutic practice and a bridge between art and design. On the strength of considerable expertise in reconciling artistic design and mass production, Salmistraro also explores the fashion lexicon, working with HIGH Everyday Couture to meld creativity, emotions, and technique.
This shooting between HIGH Everyday Couture and her art, serves as a testament to the synergy between creativity, fashion, and design.
Alchimie nel Vuoto explores emptiness as the primordial state of artistic creation. Can you tell us how it came to pass?
Alchimie nel Vuoto began as reflection around emptiness understood as a creative-potential space. The exhibition focuses on the first stages of the artistic process, with spontaneous drawings free of design aims born from a personal need. Emptiness is a starting point here, transforming emotions and thoughts into actual work. Curator Silvana Annicchiarico structured these fragments into a coherent story, delineating the spontaneous act’s transition to actual object process.
The work combines varied materials like ceramics and wood. What are the challenges involved in working with such a variety of media?
Working with different media requires insight and adaptability. The individual media each have their own lexicon and technical constraints which shape the
creative process. The material in this exhibition were used extremely freely, with no production constraints, as a natural extension of their designs and colours, reflecting a dialogue between expressivity and visual storytelling.
The ‘monster’ theme is a recurrent one in your work, not only as an artistic subject but also as a symbol of accept-
ance and integration. How do you view your fascination with it and what impact do you hope it will have on the public?
‘Monsters’ embody the transformation of fear into an integral part of everyday life. For me designing monstrous figures has been a way of dealing with, and overcoming, personal fragilities and turning them into strengths. I try
to share this experience via my work, inviting audiences to face their fears and transform them into growth opportunities.
Design has played a centre-stage part in your career and you have described it as an intimate, therapeutic act. How much does this practice influence your approach to design and art?
Design is the starting point for my exploration of concepts and forms. Born as an expressive need, it has turned into a tool with which to visualise ideas and translate them into images. This applies to both design and art, enabling the real world to be decodified and visual narratives to be built. In addition to stimulating creativity it fosters profound connection with each individual phase of the creative process.
You’ve worked with many prestigious design and fashion companies. How does your art work fit in with the demands of mass production?
Art and design share creative roots, however different the needs they fulfil.
Art explores a free, individual dimension while design has to measure up to certain functional and production constraints. But the two have a reciprocal influence on one another and the design itself is a meeting point between them, guiding the creative process and enriching both.
What is the personal idea of fashion you try to get across in HIGH Journal?
Fashion is a language which communicates identity and tells stories. In HIGH Journal I feel the connections between art, design and fashion, using
visual language to dialogue with the public. This reflects my interest in fashion as a medium for personal and collective expression.
How do you see the maison’s creative imagination? What is your favorite HIGH Everyday Couture piece? It balances creativity and style in a sophisticated harmony. Contrasting elements interweave in garments embodying a stratified and coherent vision and a distinctive aesthetic combining spontaneity and sophistication. My favorite piece is definitely the long black dress. It’s not just about comfort — it transformed my mood entirely. It gave me a sense of freedom, a gypsy, rebellious vibe that felt like breaking free from rules and expectations. I love clothes that aren’t just visually stunning but also tell a story about the wearer. This dress, in particular, allowed me to express a side of myself that often stays hidden — spontaneous, instinctive, and free from conventions.
Produced by Alessia Caliendo
Photographer Nicola Biscaro
Beauty Elena Gentile
Photographer assistant Sarah Indriolo
Production assistant Michelle Cavallini
elena samlmistraro
Fine art
Filippo Barbero, photographer and visual artist, develops a personal research project relating to memory, sense of belonging and the intimate relationship with the concept of place.
Realised for HIGH Journal curated by Artribune, this project explores the interaction between human beings, clothing and the surroundings, with an emphasis on an ancestral connection transcending time.
By means of both natural and artificial site-specific installations, Barbero creates a physical and conceptual bridge between garments and the landscape. The attention to clothing materials, volumes and shapes interacts with the material evocations of the Mediterranean scrub, revealing a spontaneous relationship between natural and human creation.
Alessia Caliendo
Architecture and Design
UNMISSABLE EUROPEAN EXHIBITIONS
A journey through the main European design and architecture exhibitions: art history revisionism, innovative projects and thinking on the present.
HANS HOLLEIN: TRANSFORMS
Centre Pompidou, Paris 5 March - 2 June 2025
This Hans Hollein: TransFORMS monographic exhibition explores the work of emblematic postmodern Austrian architect Hans Hollein by means of installations, models, designs and documents, retracing Hollein’s artistic and critical journey from the 1960s to his best-known work. The work showcased includes his colonnaded facade for La Strada Novissima at the 1980 Venice Biennale, the Viennese Haas Haus (1990) and Frankfurt’s Museum für Moderne Kunst (1991). This retrospective re-examines Hollein’s work in the context of the artistic currents of the day, from conceptual art to radical architecture, questioning the general view of him as an exclusively postmodernist architect. Curated by Frédéric Migayrou, the exhibition offers a new take on this complex and influential figure.
DIFFICULT SITES: ARCHITECTURE AGAINST THE ODDS
The Royal Institute of British Architects, London 11 October 2024 - spring 2025
The Difficult Sites: Architecture Against the Odds exhibition narrates twenty architecture projects tackling extreme challenges ranging from rugged terrain to complex urban spaces. Via design originals, models and photographs the exhibition celebrates the work of architects such as Neave Brown, Norman Foster and Tonkin Liu, highlighting the creative potential of the design constraints they encountered. From the 20th century to today, the projects selected show the opportunities for innovative and visionary architecture inherent in such challenges.
PLATFORM: BETHAN LAURA WOOD
Design Museum, London 14 February 2025 - January 2026
London’s Design Museum is inaugurating its PLATFORM series, a new exhibition programme focusing on the contemporary designers currently reshaping the creative panorama, with a first edition of the work of Bethan Laura Wood, a multi-disciplinary designer known for her materials exploration and collaboration with artisans. The selection of her work in this free exhibition showcases furnishings, ceramics, fabrics and lighting with a focus on design’s relationship with everyday life. Wood explores the emotional bond we form with objects, reflecting on their value and the memories bound up with them.
SOCIAL SEATING
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich 26 April 2024 - 11 May 2025
The theme of the ninth edition of the Rotunda Project is “sitting as a collective experience” explored in a fifteen-seat exhibition covering a time span beginning in the 1950s and continuing in the present. Social Seating turns the Museum’s Rotonda into a spontaneous visitor meeting space to foster a return to face-to-face contact in our increasingly digitalised world. The installation also reflects on sustainability and new industrial design practices and seeks to promote analogue socialising and give everyday objects new interaction functions.
MODERN INTERIOR
Muzeum Architektury, Wrocław 21 November 2024 - 16 May 2025
The Modern Interior exhibition retraces evolutions in Polish interior and furniture design in the 1950s and 60s, the period known politically as the Polish thaw, characterised by a quest for a new design lexicon. The work on display includes historic photographs, iconic furniture such as Józef Chierowski’s 366 Armchair and public building designs such as Bar Wiking. It shines the spotlight on the use of innovative materials like nylon and glass and the era’s intergenerational design dialogue. The exhibition is also a chance to reflect on design’s capacity to shape new approaches to home and collective spaces.
[sostantivo femminile] Forte impressione, turbamento, eccitazione.
Lasciati ispirare dalla Collezione Peggy Guggenheim. Scopri l’energia e la bellezza delle avanguardie con Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Leonor Fini, Alberto Giacometti, Emilio Vedova, Jackson Pollock e molti altri che hanno fatto la storia dell’arte del ‘900.
guggenheim-venice.it
Vasily Kandinsky, Paesaggio con macchie rosse, n. 2 (Landschaft mit roten Flecken, Nr. 2), 1913. Collezione Peggy Guggenheim, Venezia.
Art Was Art
The fashion editorial for HIGH Journal curated by Artribune was shot at the newly inaugurated Scaramouche Gallery in Milan, set amidst the evocative backdrop of James Brown’s exhibition, Prehistoric New York: 1981–1986. This compelling showcase, open from November 30th to April 5th, 2025, features over 30 museum-caliber works by the acclaimed American artist.
Produced by Alessia Caliendo
Photographer Simone Ammendola
Beauty Carla Curione
Model Alayana N @ Sophie Models
Photographer assistant Flavio Federico
Production assistant Michelle Cavallini
High Prize 2024
INTERVIEW WITH THIS YEAR’S WINNER, ROISIN JONES
“Roisin studied on the MRes RCA programme from 2023–24. I was ever so fortunate to supervise her work through a year spent across studios, galleries, libraries and archives. In her practice as an artist, writer and theorist – moving across sculpture and print-making, poetry, performance, and thesis-writing – Roisin meditated upon her family history in Jamaica; memories told by relatives and felt, wordless, in the body; and what she described as the the ‘dance’ of her diasporic identity. Her work was deeply researched, beautifully articulated and creatively ambitious. I look forward to what comes next...”
Gemma Blackshaw
Professor of Art History at the Royal College of Art, HIGH Prize Curator
How do your multicultural roots influence your themes and narratives?
My multicultural identity makes for a complex, fluid belonging concept. This reflects on my work, which deals with themes such as memory, migration and resilience. My personal experience enables me to interweave individual and collective stories and explore universal themes bound up with identity and belonging.
What are the challenges around dealing with themes like these?
The art of Roisin Jones, 2024 HIGH Prize winner, is interdisciplinary and rooted in her multicultural heritage, incorporating photography, performance, video and sculpture. She uses themes such as memory, identity and resilience to interweave personal and collective narratives. In this interview for HIGH Journal curated by Artribune, Jones speaks about her educational background, the challenges bound up with her exploration of themes such as racial identity and her future plans, including a residency in Jamaica and a solo exhibition.
What prompted you to explore such diverse media, from photography to performance, in your artistic practice? I’ve always been very curious about the various forms expression takes and many of the media I use are rooted in my personal history. For example, photography has been a passion of mine since childhood. My older sister used to bring cameras back home and that is how my fascination with photography grew, as playing with these made me feel like I was gaining access to a new world. Browsing through my family photo albums, observing the way people change and remembering those who are no longer with us showed me just how powerful photography is as a memory-preservation tool. Theatre was another staple of my childhood. I went to theatre school when I was growing up and performing was a cornerstone of my creative language. All this taught me how to connect with audiences and turn emotions into narratives by means of the body and voice. Now all my work starts with a question which prompts me to choose the media best suited to exploring it and I often intertwine photography, video, sculpture and performance into stratified, multidimensional work.
One of the main challenges is balancing personal vulnerability with artistic responsibility. Tackling subjects as profound as this requires you to navigate your way through personal experiences and wider dynamics bound up with complex social contexts. It can be emotionally demanding but using my work to stimulate dialogue and foster greater understanding is crucial to me. Remaining authentic is equally important, avoiding simplifications which can detract from the meaning of the message.
How did your time at the Royal College of Art influence your approach to art and storytelling?
My time at the Royal College of Art was essential to my development. It gave me the tools I needed to deepen my creativity, to see it not simply as a means of personal expression but also as a bridge to other people. The stimulating environment there and dialogue with fellow students and teachers encouraged me to experiment with art as tool with which to explore complex themes and build narratives with a social impact.
What are your goals for the next chapter in your artistic journey?
I’m working on two main projects which enquire into themes such as self-realisation and sense of community. And I’m also getting ready for a residency in Jamaica, which will give my practice fresh cultural perspectives. One of my shortterm goals is a solo exhibition, a very important project which is currently taking up a lot of my energy. The future is open but I remain determined to continue exploring and evolving as an artist.
artisanship, HIGH-style
HIGH’s spring-summer 2025 collection explores a new balance between tailoring and technical innovation, offering garments and accessories designed for a modern wardrobe, with heterogeneous materials, avant-garde finishes and ensembles playing with juxtapositions and asymmetrical lines cutting right across the collection. The byword for its wide, adjustable silhouettes is practicality, by way of details such as coulisse, pleats and inserts. Its fabrics range from silk satin to certified cotton, classic denim to technical materials with the priority being comfort and versatility. The collection’s iconic items include its double-breasted Intercept trench coat, a new take on this traditional coat style featuring a technical beige gabardine front combined with a pleated black fabric back, a contrast which gives this item a modern twist. And the experimentation continues with Couture Denim, reworking conventional denim with fluid cupro fabric, for a workwear-inspired look
given an innovative touch. The Hearsay reversible jacket offers two versions of the same garment: pin-striped, indigo cotton on one side and a combination of patterns designed exclusively for the collection on the other. The collection also comprises a parka with a délavé finish, optical-effect multilayer skirts and sophisticatedlook trousers designed for multifunction use. What all this has in common is handcrafted techniques and avant-garde processes. Spraydyeing with natural colours, environmentally friendly washes and hand-printed patterns make these truly unique items. An emblematic example of this is the Cheerful dress decorated with a large three-dimensional iris handcrafted in Italy using an air brush and a paintbrush. It is HIGH’s ability to combine experimentation and creativity which continues to mark it out, with collections responding to modern needs with a future-oriented vision of material- and working technique-trends.
Maroc Re-MIX: High’s SS25 collection
HIGH’s 2025 Spring-Summer Collection is inspired by the landscapes, traditions and contrasts of Morocco, in an approach which incorporates visual and cultural elements from a land suffused with history. The project transforms travel recollections into a clothing line designed for everyday use, balancing contemporary influences with echoes of nomadic culture.
Its colour palette explores cobalt and Majorelle blues, conjuring up the country’s iconic ceramics and gardens. Sand and ochre nuances bring desert landscapes to mind while fuchsia, tobacco and saffron echo the country’s flowers and markets and its whites are inspired by the purity of its traditional clothing. The collection’s colours fade into and mix with one another in processes such as dégradé and délavé, obtaining effects which conjure up natural light and shade transitions.
The collection’s shapes and details convey movement and transformation. Its silhouettes comprise garments with Sangallo and macramé
inserts, geometric-motif flared jackets, playful high-volume pleated and ruched skirts and cargo and jodhpur trousers. Practical elements such as strategically located pockets, adjustable belts and mobile panels add dynamism and adaptability.
The garments feature details designed to obtain visual contrasts and novel interpretations: shirts with inverted collars, folded-back sleeves, deconstructed outfits and overlapping tops generating perceptional stratifications; handpainted prints depicting stylised floral motifs, blue and pink flowers and patterns reworking natural forms.
The choice of materials makes garments simultaneously lightweight and high-performance: cotton, cashmere and silk combine with hightech fabrics such as Sensitive® jersey while denim is reworked to make for a lived-in look.
The collection’s juxtapositions and combinations conjure up a national cultural heritage of great historical richness.
the spring-summer 2025 sport capsule
The spring-summer 2025 SPORT SMART capsule collection is a modern reworking of sport clothing, combining practicality and style for free time and leisure use. Designed for modern women, the collection consists of Made in Italy items crafted with recycled and regenerated fabrics, for a sustainability focus.
Its key elements are a scuba jersey Q-NOVA® bomber jacket with matching skinny trousers whose mesh inserts create a sophisticated semi-transparent effect. Sensitive® jersey is used for the collection’s A-line midi dress, balloon top, sport tracksuits and bermuda shorts with coulisse designed to increase their wearability and facilitate movement.
This athleisure collection’s must-haves include fluid jackets, hooded sweatshirts and asymmetrical skirts in Regen® nylon by Hyosung, a material which combines softness and durability. Details such as white elastic bands conjure up a 1990s sport feel, giving these items a highly distinctive style.
Available in a colour palette ranging from black and navy blue to coral red, the Sport Smart capsule collection combines comfort, versatility and an innovative leisure-clothing look with large volumes and a style ideal for everyday use.
modern crisp the poplin ss25 project
The bywords for HIGH’s Spring-Summer 2025 capsule collection in poplin are minimalism and practicality, with lightweight, comfortable garments designed for everyday use. The cotton poplin this collection is based on reflects the brand’s focus on materials combining userfriendliness and modern style.
Soft silhouettes, sophisticated lengths and comfortable volumes make it an ideally versatile collection, with core items including a V-neck dress with a foldable collar and front coulisse, palazzo trousers and a workwear-inspired tracksuit. It is
their simplicity and adaptability to all occasions which stands out. The colour palette ranges from white to navy blue by way of neutral, earthinspired colours, all offered in piece-dyed versions for a luminous finish.
The collection’s atmospheres are Mediterranean, echoing the spring-summer 2025 collection’s themes and offering a practical, contemporary capsule wardrobe. Combining comfort and style, these poplin garments are ideal for anyone looking for multi-functional garments without compromising on contemporary design.
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