Cult
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A/W14 Collection, photography: Nick Knight, SHOWstudio, courtesy of 1Granary
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Jessica Mort
Palo Alto 9
The Formal Absence of Independence, 2014
Kate Cooper, Rigged, 2014, courtesy of Kate Cooper
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Kate Cooper
Vera Hoveling 6
The LinkedIn profile of Jessica Mort— thank God for the Internet!—is oddly impressive. Recipient of the Stella McCartney scholarship, former intern at Céline and Christopher Kane, H&M Design Award semi-finalist, Vogue Talent… the list goes on and on! Mort, who is currently a junior designer at Loewe, graduated from Central Saint Martins last spring. Her final MA collection consists of classic menswear pieces, primarily the rugby shirt, violently destroyed and manipulated. Striped vests fall apart into coloured frays and weaves, functioning as a decorative layer over oversized trousers. Striking detail: all collars are left virginally white, reminding us of the starting point of the iconic designs. As if her CV needed anything more, one of Mort’s designs was recently captured by Nick Knight for SHOWstudio, transforming modelof-the-moment Sang Woo Kim into the ultimate sportswear explosion. Need we say more? By Leendert Sonnevelt www.jessicamort.com
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Indiewire introduces the latest Coppola on the block’s debut with one striking sentence: ‘It seems that at a certain point in the Coppola family you’re given a camera and a typewriter and tasked to go out and make your own film.’ Paterfamilias Francis did it, writing film history with classics such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. His son Roman did it, writing film scripts for Wes Anderson. And of course Roman’s sister Sofia proved herself the goddess of cool with movies like The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation. Even their brother Gian-Carlo, Gia’s father who died after a tragic boating accident in 1986, was a great all-rounder in the scene. At this point, there are circa 13 Coppola relatives across several generations working in the industry. And so is newbie Gia, granddaughter of Francis. She debuted last year with her teenage indie drama Palo Alto. A faithfully concise adaptation of the book of short stories by actor/ filmmaker/writer/all-rounder James Franco, it’s stuffed with the most up-tothe-minute songs by British singer, songwriter, producer and cool cat Devonté “Blood Orange” Hynes, formerly Lightspeed Champion. It’s a smart choice by Coppola, who has to keep the family reputation as Hollywood royalty in check. Moreover, she also helps other Hollywood scions with their careers: Emma Roberts (daughter of Eric, niece
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of Julia) plays the lead in Palo Alto opposite Jack Kilmer (son of Val), who makes his début in this drama. Kilmer is no stranger to Coppola, who tutored him while he was in elementary school. Like knows like. Even so, together they bring a new, fresh look, sound and feel to the table, combining their talents and connections smartly—preferably without the help of their famous parents, of course. So, no designer bag girls working with Daddy’s capital; no wannabes touring around the hottest clubs while chanting some famous family name. Coppola worked her way up, starting out as a photographer before working on Sofia’s movie sets. Later she made fashion shorts of her own, finally followed by Palo Alto. The latest Coppola successor seems to have learned from the classic knowledge and storytelling of her granddad while keeping the hip factor that aunty Sofia is famous for. By Maricke Nieuwdorp
Maybe you’ve noticed a recurring subject in contemporary art as of late? Artists seem increasingly preoccupied with the simulated or computer-generated world vs. our authentic reality— two dimensions that are now in constant overlap. Vera Hoveling, interactive artist and graduate of the prestigious Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, immerses herself in this topic—although she likes to take things to the next level of complexity. Hoveling believes that “the more complex the virtual, the more it appears alive. If the level of immersion is overwhelming enough, virtual reality becomes reality.” It’s intelligent technological art that evolved as she got her head around computer coding. For her graduate show Hoveling presented beautiful results with a display of crazyrealistic projected pyramids that used a lilac Pepper’s ghost effect, from which emerged the “living” digital entities. By Kelsey Lee Jones
Release 17/10 UK
www.verahoveling.org
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In the world of post-production, image manipulators create digital doppelgängers—those ultra-pervasive, ultrarealized body doubles. They are expensive, unpaid figures that perform on our behalves. They can be disturbingly realistic, especially when you consider the labour inherent in their creation. Does this mean they are real? For Rigged, her first institutional show, British artist Kate Cooper takes over Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Arts, hijacking the illusory spaces of advertising images. She tests our experience of them, and our relationship to them. Cooper also seeks to expose the position that the female body has occupied in the history of advertising and digital-image technology. What makes this work fascinating is the economy of withdrawal, as our own “real-life” bodies use a strategy of refusal and camouflage as a technique of survival. By Kelsey Lee Jones until 11 January 2015, Rigged, KW Institute for Contemporary Arts, Berlin
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