Contents.

Gavin Watson, DUST #2, January 2012

2012-02-07T13:23:00.001-08:00

Gavin Watson
DUST #2, ROOTS
William Oliver

Picking up a camera at the age of just fourteen, Gavin Watson turned the lens on close friends and family in his naively innocent yet strikingly poignant images depicting British youth culture during the 1980s and 90s. An era in the country's social history where what you wore stood fastidiously for who you were.

Growing up in High Wycombe, a market town turned 60s concrete landscape, Watson and his subjects formed an integral section of the UK's emerging skinhead culture made up of people living outside of the country's metropolitan centres. Where the general attitude towards dressing in anything other than the accepted 'uniform', especially for men, was viewed with contempt and fear. “Now you can wear a kaftan, a pair of Doc Marten 49s and a funny hat and no one gives a shit, but back then things were very different,” explains Gavin. In High Wycombe, circa 1979, for a kid to put on a skintight pair of bleached-out Levi's 501's, braces and 12-hole Dr. Marten's was more than just a look that referenced a political or social standpoint, it was the standpoint itself.

During the 1950s and 60s a countrywide and government led initiative inspired a large proportion of people living in Britain's major cities to re-locate to “overspill towns”, as Watson describes them. The towns were suburb-like expanses located all over England, some newly built and others re-developed, that housed the growing population of industrial and service workers in affordable accommodation. The towns were originally sold as comfortable alternatives with better standards of living. In due course they turned out to be environments planned seemingly as 'holding' sites, hosting a degree of amenities but primarily based around access to larger cities and better resources.

With the Conservative government of the 1980s came capitalist ideals and individualist culture, the rich and poor divide began to increase and subsequently that access was restricted to only those who could afford it. These towns, and the people that inhabited them, were all but forgotten. “It was social engineering, moving all those people into London overspill towns, dumping people into those villages on steroids like Luton and Slough. And then they just left us there, to tear fucking lumps out of each other,” says Watson.

Throughout history it is this kind of disregard combined with a lack of opportunity or resource that has consistently led to social uprisings and 80s Britain was no different. Skinheads, punks, mods, soul boys and rasta's were the divided gangs of the time, formed in their individual communities out of a shared passion for both the associated politics and the relevant soundtrack. Being a part of a gang, a new family of people that understood where you were coming from, was an act of self-preservation. It provided an alternative way of living and learning than that offered by politicians who only seemed interested in helping themselves.

More than just a group of dissatisfied youth, any gang provides a community, a safety and support network, and contrary to the popular image of skinheads shown by the mass media at the time, Gavin's touching portfolio of early photographs captures that. A group of friends having fun, growing and evolving with each other, learning through experience, and ultimately, messing about. While the reality of what that 'messing about' actually entailed may have been more extreme than the general public was accustomed to, it was a product of where they were and what was around them.

Being an integral part of the group, Watson's pictures are not documentary and they are not voyeuristic. His subjects are his friends and in the case of his brother Neville, his family. It is their comfort with him and his camera being around, sometimes active in the image and at others completely unseen, that offered Watson, and still offers his audience, unrivalled access to an emerging culture. Access to the very roots of a community in the process of establishing itself.

Through viewing Gavin's pictures and the relationships that emerge within them you see fear, love, pain and joy. The integral building blocks at the centre of this, or any other, society.

Read the full interview in DUST #2

Kim Jones & Louis Vuitton, Dazed & Confused, February 2012

2012-02-06T07:04:00.000-08:00

Kim Jones and Louis Vuitton
Dazed & Confused
Text by William Oliver

“When I think of Louis Vuitton, I think about a man at leisure much more than a man at work. The way men dress today has really evolved,” says Kim Jones, men’s style director for the French house under the overall creative direction of Marc Jacobs. Jones’s refined attitude, love of heritage, encyclopedic fashion historical knowledge and clean, luxurious (but not overbearing) design style combine to form a strong connection with the Louis Vuitton man.

For his debut spring/summer 2012 collection for the house, Jones has successfully aligned his influences with the brand’s longstanding history. Luxurious sportswear elements are combined with the exploration of travel. Jones’s childhood in Africa is also visible, with this season’s Damier check taken from a Masai blanket he owned growing up. An interest in photographer Peter Beard and his images of Africa led to another element, an American collegiate style. “We were looking at a lot of Ivy League references from Yale, where Peter Beard studied. The collection mixes in elements of the transformation from college boy to life in Africa,” he says. “Peter is an ideal Vuitton man. I love that kind of American aristocracy because it’s really about modern dressing based on sportswear. It’s the style we work with here. We’ve taken things up a notch, incorporated Louis Vuitton’s travel roots and done American sportswear with a European flavour.”

Each garment has been considered to make the overall collection utilitarian, functional and even crease-resistant. Of course, it is also elegant – the rainproof macs are made of silk, for example. Jones: “Technically, the way products are made here is unlike any other brand. Louis Vuitton has the resources to produce unique pieces that others just can’t.”

There may have been a few stops along the way but it feels like he has finally found his place at Louis Vuitton. “It’s a huge name, but one that also knows how to break the rules,” Jones says. “This is a dream role for me in so many ways. There really is so much scope to explore fabrics, materials and design, and produce pieces to an incredible quality. I am trying to bring my own design to the brand whilst also respecting the fundamental values and heritage.”

Katie Hillier Selects Richard Gaspar, Dazed & Confused, February 2012

2012-02-06T06:58:00.000-08:00

Seeking Darkness from Beauty
Katie Hillier Selects Richard Gaspar
Text by William Oliver

Accessories designer Katie Hillier: “Ever since I met Richard I have been in awe of his work. I love shiny things, colour and light, and Richard’s work embodies all of these. It’s not often that you can walk into a room and be instantly spellbound. Richard uses a lot of resin and plastic, some of my favourite materials. His sculptures are simple, clever, unique and utterly beautiful. He’s a total genius.”

Richard Gaspar’s art takes on a variety of different forms, from large-scale installation through sculpture, reappropriation, painting, curation and photography, incorporating a wide field of influences and referencing a number of art-historical movements. Far from being stuffy or overly intellectualised, his work is fresh, clean and witty.

His earlier work relied heavily on his surroundings at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he studied for a BA in Painting. The architecture of the school dates back to the early 1900s and it has a traditionally neo-classical and gothic appearance. Responding to this aesthetic, Gaspar began to build huge clay works within a rotunda space he had been given. Rather than looking to mimic or complement the space, Gaspar saw them as a virus that had taken hold of the environment. “I considered these works an infection or a growth within this classical architecture, like a giant cancer in some way. I was thinking that it somehow looked a bit like a baroque infection. The linguistic origins of the word ‘baroque’ allude to an idea of a rough or imperfectly grown pearl. I found that idea really striking. It has really stayed with me,” he says.

This idea of a rough beauty has become integral to Gaspar’s work and has been an ongoing theme since then. Realising that there were also a number of other artists working with the same medium as he had been previously at the Slade, but still wanting to incorporate this shattered inspiration, Gaspar moved his practice from sculpture to installation-based projects. Interested in the re-appropriation of objects and their symbolic stature, for his final show Richard began to pull items of importance together, creating a collection of individual yet relating ready-made works. “All these different things were assembled like a bodily system, although they didn’t represent a figure, so to speak. There was this strange connection between them.”

Throughout all of the aspects and evolution of Gaspar’s work there is a consistent theme of something dark coming out of something attractive. The work focuses on the decay and the separation, a disparate response to the seductive that offers a different take on what you might expect. “I really like Jeff Koons but part of me has always had a fantasy about smashing one up,” he says. “I like breaking things up and playing with beauty. There is a glamorous violence there that I really appreciate.”

Peter De Potter, DUST #2, January 2012

2012-02-05T05:53:00.000-08:00

Peter De Potter
Interview by William Oliver
DUST Magazine

When I started Angelic Starts and I Am An Image Machine, one of the most important things was to not go too far and overcook it. I wanted to make work that would be very readable, direct in its impact and method. Angelic Starts combines words with an image, I am an Image Machine is pure cut-up, consciously nothing too fancy. I don’t think artists should try to be clever or grand just for the sake of it. I feel the task is to cut away the clutter that stands in the way of the purpose, the ego, and to connect and communicate with the viewer.

Angelic Starts is a list of virtues, universal and human. They’re ‘carried’ by everyday bodies, like mundane, modern versions of the Greek god, Atlas. The virtues are literally written all over their bodies like emblems. Some bodies carry their virtue proudly, others with resentment. The subjects don’t pose but allow themselves to be captured in time and motion as visual statues.

I Am An Image Machine came from observing the way this generation deals with images now that the internet has completely gelled with everyone’s life. Today images have become really ‘free’ in the sense that they are unattached and un-physical, endlessly reproduced. Endlessly commented on, endlessly used. They are often perceived to be free of authorship, context and history, especially by the internet community. When, how and by who an image was made has almost become redundant. All people respond to is the emotional charge, in such a way that images have replaced words when people want to communicate their emotional status.

The series Image Machine... acknowledges that its images are culled from the image machine the virtual world has become and at the same time that they are image machines themselves.
Most other cut-ups are about twisting meaning, perverting the content, but the two images in each Image Machine... are about generational emotion, they aren’t juxtapositions in that they don’t have to work against each other and definitely don't have to ‘explain’ one another. Each separate image is chosen solely for its emotional resonance. Presenting them so closely to another equally charged image should bring forth not new content or meaning, but new emotion.

It has been quite revealing to hear audience reactions to the works. Only a few people feel there’s a puzzle to be solved, the majority deducts a powerful sense of melancholia or an exaltation from them, a sexiness or a deliverance. I always intended the Image Machine... works to be silent, benign, emblematic totems. They don’t necessarily reflect the world we live in, they don’t reference an art movement, they aren’t pages from the artist’s diary and they don’t tell a story. I intend all of my work to function in the same way a poster in a teenagers bedroom or a painting in an altar piece does. Devotion and aspiration - such beautiful qualities.

Where exactly my images come from is not essential to appreciate the works, some are self-made, some appropriated. The various social networking sites are adding a new chapter to the worldwide image bank. It’s a very exciting thought that every day regular people are adding millions of images to the ones television, press and advertising are producing en masse. It’s fascinating to me to discover that people are producing a new kind of bold and effective self-portraiture. It’s a romantic version of narcissism, because people are very aware that their image just floats around in a virtual world and is somehow untouchable. There’s a definite tension between the almost minimalistic, ultra-personal of the webcam/smartphone self-portrait, with the bedroom or the working space as the only backdrop, and the enormity of the internet. And most people are very, very aware of that tension. It’s this isolated ‘alone-ness’ versus the density of the overpopulated virtual community. I think the new kind of self-portraiture is very much about longing and belonging, escapist and at the same time aspirational.

I think that the use of masculinity in art today has become this tainted, somewhat uncomfortable thing. It’s either very cynical and sarcastic or it’s lust-driven, with a total idealization of the male body. In either cases, masculinity is presented as something that needs to redefined, or questioned. I think that’s totally unnecessary. Like so many other things in life, masculinity is a given fact no matter how it manifests itself.

I don’t have much to say about the subject of masculinity, it’s not the core of my work. But I do use a lot of images that depict the kind of masculine behavior that’s labelled ‘typical’ and I do have a lot of faces and bodies in my work of young men that are quite specific as well. There’s a very useful side to things that are ‘typical’ and ‘specific’, they are instantly recognizable and readable symbols. In my work I don’t go about idealizing or objectifying my specific kind of masculinity. I take familiar scenes, faces, bodies, gestures and stances and use them as tools to convey a message or an idea. Almost like a backdrop.

My work really is full of people and they all exemplify humanity. Again, as an artist, I’m more concerned with the nature or the resonance of an image than what’s actually depicted in it – strange as it may sound. Admittedly, I tend to use fragments of life that aren’t that widespread or applauded, alcoholic scenes, night scenes, banter scenes, bonding scenes.

They’re twilight moments, but to me they are very honest and true.

Marco Brambilla - Your History, Dazed and Confused, January 2012

2011-12-16T05:40:00.000-08:00

Marco Brambilla - Your History
Dazed and Confused, January 2012
Text by William Oliver

I grew up watching two films a day from the age of 7 or 8 [1]. They were all mainly science fiction, from around the 1970s, I became really obsessed with that world. I got hold of a super8 camera when I was about 14 and started making all these bizarre movies, 2 or 3 minutes long. They usually referred back to the films I was watching, one I remember in particular called The 10th Victim [2], but also others made by people like Fellini and it was then I became really interested in this very theatrical visual language.

I actually studied photography [3] when I went to University, but I would always make films in my spare time. I would always have to shoot at the weekend as I used friends and family as my crew, so my first short actually took me four or five months to complete. I enjoyed my time at college but I think I learnt a lot more from actually watching films and the director and cameramen mentors and friends I had.

My biggest influence at that time though was Ridley Scott. I worked at Ridley's commercial production company when I was about 23 years old. It was through that I had the opportunity to direct Demolition Man [4]. The type of films I was being offered at that time were always quite large-scale and complex films with a strong budget, although my taste in film was much more specific, mostly European. When I started to work on Demolition Man I don't actually think I had seen an action movie, except maybe The French Connection [5].

It was a very overwhelming experience to go into the Hollywood system at such a young age. The budget for that film was so huge it was a really daunting project. I enjoyed the the visual freedom that kind of a budget offered you, but I didn't enjoy working on some of the script elements and the compromises that had to be made. I don't consider it a personal movie but I was able to inject some satire into it.

I think my transition into art-based film making actually happened because of that film, because I found that there was very little room for experimentation left in cinema. My first piece of artwork was in a group show, in New York, 1997. The final product was conceptually exactly what I wanted it to be. For me it went back to the days when I was making short experimental films, as opposed to plugging into a more narrative based system. I was never really interested in narrative.

In virtually all my work there is a very glossy appeal in the presentation, but at its core it has this contradiction of dislocation. The first film, Cyclorama, was made up from the views of 9 different revolving restaurants across North America. The views were shot time-lapse so you could see the 360 degree sunrise in each revolving restaurant and I synchronised all of the films meaning that you almost erased the effect of the time zone barrier. You put yourself in all places at once, connecting yourself, and at the same time it was shot in such a way, there were no people in the restaurants, the soundtrack was quite austere, that you were emotionally disconnected.

Soon after that the curator Neville Wakefield [6] approached me in regards to his Destricted [7] project of shorts surrounding sex and pornography. I wanted the film I made, Sync, to assault you with as much pornographic imagery as you could see in that period of time, but at the same time would have virtually no narrative. That was the first film I made that actually sampled imagery from other films and it was that which led to other pieces all based on that sampling technique.

I moved into more computer generated work with Civilisation, which was the first time I had made a video collage. I wanted to take a Hollywood film lexicon and, by collaging epic and very visual films, try and get the same feel that I had with Sync but on a much richer scale. That led to Evolution and I'm making a third piece now. All three of these films refer to epic human themes but reprocessed from pop culture and in this case, pop culture represented by film. It is the impact and spectacle of Hollywood that I have become interested in. As the big budget films are now so often presented in 3D, I thought it would be appropriate to make Evolution in 3D, so it would speak the same kind of language but in an even more aggressive way.

Subsequently Kanye West saw Civilisation and was interested in this new kind of technique. We sat down and had a conversation, I didn't actually know very much about his music before we met, and he played me the album. POWER really stood out as something I could imbue with even more fullness than it had already so we decided to work with that. The first thing I said to Kanye was that I wasn't interested in making a music video, I wanted to work on something with him that was a video piece. He is incredibly experimental, willing to try anything that you suggested, and was a very creative person to work for.

I have been very lucky in regards to the resources that have been made available to me for the films that I have made throughout my career, but it is never about the money or how much it costs for me. I sketch my ideas for months before I actually out anything into production, usually working on five or six different projects and the ones that become the most complete are the ones that get produced. Really it is about coming up with an idea and a project that truly excites me and I feel very pleased to be in a position to have that freedom.

1 – Marco originally grew up in Milan before moving moving to Canada and then finally settling in Los Angeles.

2 – The 10th Victim, directed by Elio Petri in 1965, was a club in which human sport hunts are organized - members being alternately hunters, and prey, until they end up dead.

3 – Brambila studied at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada

4 – Demolition Man was a Hollywood action movie released in 1995 starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock and has gone on to be a cult classic due to its less than favorable dialogue.

5 – The French Connection was one of the earliest 'action' films, made in 1971, and has gone on to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

6 – Neville Wakefield is an internationally known curator and writer. He has worked with a number of high profile including Helmut Lang, Matthew Barney and Ari Marcopoulos.

7 – Destricted was a series of art pornography films released in 2006 and made by artists included Sam taylor-Wood, Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney and Larry Clark.

Devendra Banhart selects Louise Despont - Dazed & Confused, January 2012

2011-12-16T05:25:00.000-08:00

Selects: Louise Despont
Dazed & Confused
text by William Oliver

Freak folk musician Devendra Banhart: "Louise has an amazing ability to imbue her work with an inner luminescence, something constant yet volatile, inexorable yet mercurial, held in harmonious captivity by the architecture of each piece. I can immerse myself and study every line within each grid, or step back and let the entire piece wash over me. These are blueprints to the inner firmament. Louise makes me wanna give up and keep trying".

Brooklyn based Louise Despont creates technically precise pencil drawings that hint at an expanded state of mind. Almost psychedelic in their design, Despont's patterns and symmetries are subtly imbued with the artists own coded narrative. “When I started working with architectural tools and geometrics it felt like I had discovered an abstract language of symbols,” she says. “The patterns represent internal forms, directional movement and radiating energies. Rather than describing only the surface of the object, I use the patterns to simultaneously show the inside workings as well as the outside structure”.

The majority of Despont's fine drawings are created on beautiful parchment paper taken from vintage ledger books used in Raj-era British India. Discovering a stash of the books while studying, Louise became enamoured with the depth of colour and the fragility of the paper, thinking about the age and history of the pages themselves. “The paper had a memory that is told through it’s markings. The actual surface of the old paper is broken by these marks and it seems to invite the drawing in,” she explains.

Despont's works were originally made to the scale of the books themselves but have eventually grown to take over up to 32 pages spliced together, allowing her to control the expansion of her abstracted characters and stories. “The early drawings were simple symmetries and forms, I was interested in creating harmonic relationships between the two sides of the page. Eventually the drawings became more complex and began to echo structures, then organic forms – human, plant and animal”.

Despont's images are inspired by a combination of history and detail. Tibetan Thangka Paintings, Persian rugs, Tarot cards, Cathedral and Maze architecture and Indian Tantric and Shaker Gift drawings are all elements she has examined. While taken from various cultures there is a common thread between each style, each created out of an incredibly time consuming process. It is this process that is at the very heart of her work. “I think both the process and outcome of that process can be meditative and I’m interested in art that has a meditative quality. For me drawing is a starting point to exploring energies and dynamics that are unseen but felt,” she says.

Art Talks: Toyin Ibidapo - The Cult of Boys, AnOther Current

2011-12-07T16:47:00.000-08:00

Art Talks: Toyin Ibidapo - The Cult of Boys
AnOther Current

Text by William Oliver

Creating raw, honest images that document the authenticity of youth, photographer Toyin Ibidapo's latest book, The Cult of Boys, is, in her own way, a diary of fleeting moments. Obsessed with capturing “windows of beauty” that are incredibly personal, she knows well that her eye is subjective, Toyin's book focuses mainly on young men with a sense of androgyny and shyness that is unique to adolescence. Although the book also features some women, she has shot many throughout her career, it was after being told by an art director that he preferred her images of women to men that Toyin began to shoot boys in an attempt to prove him wrong. Something that The Cult of Boys does perfectly. The resulting collection of pictures brings together her community of people drawn from various sources, her own personal life, people she has spotted on the street and that she has been introduced to through her work. Throughout the book there is a connecting thread of simplicity, be it in the poses and locations, Toyin shoots almost entirely in her own home or against a grey wall, or through the personality of her subjects themselves. As she describes, her models are “not performers”. A tender and intimate diary, The Cult of Boys take the viewer firmly into Toyin's world, closes the door to the outside and offers up an incredibly authentic version of beauty, just as she see's it.

Who is the most beautiful person you have met through the project?

There are several from the book, it's hard to pick one. I could say Finn, I could say Daniel, I could say Dominic, I could say Jeff. I could say this kid called Bill. Each of them have their own thing, but each gave me the same feeling, I can't say one person. It is different things in different people that make them beautiful to me. It's often a silent thing that they bring to you, they bring their presence which can be about the way they look but it can also be about their energy. For me I often like the shy people. Shyness brings secrets that you can never really unlock, that is very intriguing to someone like myself and I find that quite beautiful and inspiring.

What does your photography teach you?

I don't know how to answer that. That I've got a good eye? I think it has taught me that each person who comes into your life can be brief but as a photographer you have an opportunity to document a passing moment forever. As I said in my book, beauty is fleeting, not everyone is going to remain beautiful. Some of us have a short window where others manage to hold onto their look and grow with it. What I have learnt actually is that some people sow you everything and some people show you nothing, and the people that show you nothing can in fact be showing you more.

Would you describe yourself as a romantic?

Yeah, maybe. Yes, why not. I would describe myself as a dreamer. I think dreaming is much, much better than reality. Sometimes I am dreaming in my photographs.

What does the word masculinity mean to you?

Maturity. It doesn't necessarily mean someone who is physically more masculine, to me it means strength.

The title of the book, The Cult of Boys, suggests an almost obsessional notion. Is it an obsession for you?

It was, absolutely. The book was very much about me almost creating my top 100. Not someone else's, just mine. It is my vision, what I wanted to put out there. It is totally subjective and I know that not everyone has the same taste that I do, we are all different. For me through the collection of people, through the community that I brought together I suppose I felt I was creating a little cult. When you are doing something that doesn't really include the majority and you're representing a minority, when the thing gains momentum it becomes cultish.

What interests you about photographing men that doesn't interest you about photographing women?

It isn't that I don't enjoy photographing women. Some time ago somebody told me that I wasn't very good at photographing men and I took that quite personally, I took it as a challenge and I wanted to prove that I could do it. I didn't want to be told what I could and could not shoot. Also, the fashion word is a female dominated field and I did shoot a lot of girls that I loved shooting and have appeared in the book, but in a way they are the co-stars. I guess a lot of the men I photograph are quite androgynous, as are the girls, so in a way perhaps it is more about that androgyny.

The Cult of Boys by Toyin Ibidapo is published by teNeues.

Damien Hirst - 20 + 20 Covers project shot by Rankin, Dazed & Confused 20th Anniversary Issue

2011-11-25T01:42:00.000-08:00

Damien Hirst is quite possibly the most famous living artist in the world. A household name known for his dissected farm animals in gold plated, formaldehyde filled tanks and his diamond encrusted skull, For The Love of God, with a price tag of £50,000,000. Not bad for a Bristol born, Leeds raised lad who built his career off the back of a self-made exhibition, Freeze, held in a disused warehouse in London's Docklands.

What sort of ideas were you playing with in your very early career, around the time of the Freeze exhibition?

I was into minimalism but I thought it needed to be more than that, I wanted it to be emotional as well.

What did studying at Goldsmiths teach you?

In art school I thought that you had to be original but when I got to Goldsmiths I realised you just steal things and make them your own. It was then that things got really fun.

How old were you when you realised you were successful?

When Charles Saatchi first bought my work, that was when my mum thought I was successful. I remember seeing my name as the answer to a crossword and thinking if you’re the answer to a crossword, you must have made it.

Does it surprise you which artworks are controversial or do you place controversy into them on purpose?

In the beginning I knew you could make someone desire something that they shouldn’t, or be attracted to something that should repel them. I think now my work can be controversial without me even trying.

It was around the time of Sensation that you did the first cover for Dazed?

It was around the time I also did a Vogue cover, which was a nightmare. They didn't get it at all, they had me in a tank with crabs in my hair, and covered in fish. Naked. With Dazed it was cool to do a magazine that was a part of your own generation, that understood.

You chose Judd Trump as the emerging star to feature on the back cover of the issue. Why?

I have always been into snooker. When I was a kid I was really into Jimmy White because he was so passionate but then Steve Davis and Hendry came along and it wasn't about your guts anymore, it was about being precise and mechanical, ultimately boring. I realised that was one way to win but for me it was smashing balls and taking risks. Judd Trump is a young player who plays with a lot of emotion. And he's got lovely hair. He really has.

Crunch Festival - Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Dazed Digital

2011-11-25T01:38:00.000-08:00

Crunch Festival: Hans-Ulrich Obrist

Hay-On-Wye's art, culture, film and literature festival boasts appearances from artist Bob & Roberta Smith, musicians British Sea Power and Obrist, the co-director of Hyde Park's Serpentine Gallery

Text by William Oliver

The Crunch Festival 2011, a series of lectures, conversations and events surrounding art, culture, film and literature, is held annually in the small English town of Hay-On-Wye. It is one of the leading festivals of its kind and draws a number of speakers from all over the world to the area, which is known internationally for its numerous classic and rare book shops.

This year highlights of the festival include live sessions from British Sea Power, Bobby Gandolf and Franz Nicolay and numerous speakers such as artist Bob & Roberta Smith, novelist Mark Haddon and curators Julian Stallabrass, who will be discussing the influence of Banksy's guerilla techniques, and Serpentine Gallery Director of International Exhibitions, Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Dazed Digital caught up with Hans-Ulrich ahead of his involvement in the festival to discuss his forthcoming conversations.

Dazed Digital: What is the theme of the lecture that you will be giving at the festival?
Hans Ulrich-Obrist: The lecture is about curating and the idea that the term curating is now more widely used outside of the artworld. It is now used as in a variety of different contexts, even conferences are being curated, the Director of TED, for example, has now become the Curator of TED. When I started to be involved in the artworld, the term was quite specific, it seemed as precise as a medical term, for example. Now it is unbelievably widespread and that is very fascinating to me.

DD: Why do you think the term has been developed into our social language?
Hans Ulrich-Obrist: I think it has a lot to do with our current moment, the explosion of information. Everyone has to find ways through all this information, to navigate, to choose and to select. I suppose that in a way this sense of curating has become a part of everyday life.

DD: You are also in conversation with Susan Hiller during the festival. Is that also a discussion of curating?
Hans Ulrich-Obrist: That is very separate, it is really going to be about Susan's groundbreaking and visionary art practice. It is about her, her trajectory and her work. There may be one or two questions about curating as Susan has curated one exhibition about dreams, which was incredibly beautiful, but the main body of that conversation will be about her work.

DD: What is it about her work that you find interesting?
Hans Ulrich-Obrist: She is a great pioneer and her journey really is a journey without compromise. Her retrospective at Tate Britain shows a trajectory that has inspired so many younger artists throughout the world. Her practice is one that connects art to a variety of different of disciplines and she is very much one of the great pioneering artists living in this country.

DD: Do you relate to that connection of disciplines?
Hans Ulrich-Obrist: Yes very much so, she is someone that goes beyond the fear of pooling knowledge. Also, the way that she has experimented, she continues to invent after so many decades, is really ointeresting to me. Her extraordinary artists books, for example, and the way she uses that medium in her work, the involvement of poetry in her work, are all key aspects for me.

DD: In regards to the Hays Crunch Festival, what is it that interested you to get involved?
Hans Ulrich-Obrist: It is a festival that is not only about art but about many other things, it is something that seems to make new junctions and connections between people of different disciplines and of course, for me, that is something very fascinating. Also I think it is interesting to sometimes put yourself in a rather remote context. Once people are there, they are centred in that place and I think that breeds new thoughts and connections. When a festival of this kind is held in a big city, very often people come, they do their speech and they leave. I like the captive aspect of it. I think in these contexts new sparks can emerge.

Matthew Stone at The Hole Gallery, New York City - W.com

2011-11-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

Matthew Stone at The Hole Gallery
William Oliver

Artist, photographer, DJ and filmmaker, Matthew Stone has become an established and integral part of London's creative community with supporters ranging from Hans Ulrich-Obrist, Director of International Exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery, to Gareth Pugh and Jefferson Hack. Following a number of solo exhibitions across the UK and Europe, an installation at this years' Venice Biennale and an 18-page fashion story in Dazed & Confused, Stone heads stateside this month to open his first major US solo show at Kathy Grayson’s gallery, The Hole.

“It does feel like I'm taking stock,” says Stone. “Hole is an amazing space and it's a big space, so there is a lot of temptation to try and give an overview of what I have done or where I have come from. I decided with this show, though, that I wanted to do something almost entirely new. I'm at a point with some of my processes where I can comfortably push them forwards and this show has given me the opportunity to really do that.”

Taking 2D images and translating them into “3D photographic sculptural forms”, printing on fabric and geometric birch wood constructions, Stone is currently experimenting with abstracting the body. “I like the idea of trying to make something that has some solid ground, but then has the potential to move. I like the idea that it is almost impossible to re-install the work in exactly the same way.” By creating images that are in part recognizable, but offer new and constantly changing views, Stone is looking to suggest other ways of perceiving our own physical existence. “I'm always photographing bodies but as a way to escape the body. I'm representing it as a piece of technology, a tool to reach different states of mind,” he says.

For his first step onto the New York art scene, Stone is making a bold move — presenting not only an exhibition of newly conceived sculptural works but also the performance piece, Anatomy of Immaterial Worlds, which suffered mixed reviews during its showing at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. The performance starts as a piece of music but devolves into a monotonous repetitive tone based on shamanic drumming with the intention of putting the audience into a semi-trance state.

“Some people saw visions and heard voices—one person said they were talking to penguins and a quarter of the audience walked out,” says Stone. “At the end someone stood up and started screaming, ‘Who is responsible for this!? Who would put something like this on at the ICA!?' In some sense, I saw that as validation.”

Chantal Regnault - Your History, Dazed & Confused November 2011

2011-10-21T05:05:00.000-07:00

Chantal Regnault - Your History, Dazed & Confused
Text by William Oliver

I moved from Paris to New York by accident in the 70s. I was 24 and I had had enough of France. I am a 1968 student, the year of the protests [1]. By 1969 we were all quite depressed, the revolution had not done what we had thought. I went to New York to get away from that, at first just for a summer, but within 48 hours I was in love with it and spent a large part of my life there.

The 70s in New York were particularly visual. The city was practically destroyed, it was in very bad shape, but there was a flourishing street culture. It was the birth of hip hop, the city was full of amazing characters and I needed to document them. I started taking photographs and quickly terminated my future career in academics. At first I was into the breakdancing scene in the Bronx and the graffiti movement, but then I read an article around 1988 in the Village Voice [2] about drag queens and vogueing, called Venus & V.

At that time there were only 4 or 5 Balls a year, but I found one and went along. Usually the venue wasn't great, a community centre or some small club rented for the evening, but I kept going back because it was truly a photographers dream. You have these amazing camera ready characters going to the Balls for the recognition and for the fame, so naturally being photographed goes with it. It was fantastic to not feel like you were sealing the image, my people wanted to photographed.

The Vogue Ball scene developed from the African American Drag Balls held in Harlem back in the 60s. At that time it was mostly drag queens impersonating Rhythm & Blues diva's. It was much more flamboyant - feathers, beads and Las Vegas. At the end of the Drag Ball there would always be a grand finale competition where the best outfits were voted for, which then fed over into the Vogue Balls. The Ball's were expensive to attend and host because of the amount of work that went into the outfits. One of the very famous House Mothers, Pepper LaBeija [3], came up with the idea of opening up the Balls to include further categories for all different sexual identities, not just drag queens - more people, more money. That is how the 'Houses' got started, the name for the teams of Voguers. Each House would have a House Mother and Father who would select their dancers from the scene, called the Legendary Children of the House.

Although it was just a name, those Houses did function like surrogate families. A lot of those kids were black or Hispanic and came from a home-life where it was difficult to be who you were. The scene became so important to everyone, perhaps to excess; a lot of those kids ended up living for the Balls. All of their money went in to the next affair, which required walking a category, all the clothes and accessories, all that it took to be on the runway as a femme queen, a butch queen or a Voguer.

A lot of those kids came from projects, in the Bronx, in Harlem, in Brooklyn, and the Balls were a kind of 'coming out' for them. Even after the Gay liberation in the 70s a lot were still not so sure in society at large and were working in Times Square clubs [4] or as hookers. There were a lot of drugs, hormones, they lived dangerously in all kinds of ways. A lot of them had been kicked out of their biological family, so the House became their family. It was a place these kids could get some protection, some guidance and some love. I don’t mean to idolise it too much because all families have their problems, but it did definitely function.

I photographed the Balls from the late 80s through to around 1992. The scene started to become commercialised by 1990, first Malcolm McLaren released his Vogueing inspired album [5], then Madonna [6], then the fashion world got interested. For a short time it was really in the spotlight and the kids were hired by designers like Gaultier to walk in real fashion shows [7].

I stopped in the end because as a photographer I had to change. You cannot do photographs of Balls again and again without your audience becoming bored. And I got a bit tired too; even if you are watching the most amazing theatre production in the world, after seeing it 200 times it starts to ware. I had explored enough and needed to go onto something else. Naturally it had to be a drastic change and I actually ended up moving to Haiti. I had a broken heart and a friend said to come for a bit and that I will quickly forget. She was right. I started to go back and forth to Haiti regularly and then settled there in 1994.

After that I lost touch and it wasn't until recently, when I started to make the books, that I found out a large amount of people from the Ball scene had passed away from AIDS, drugs or murder. It was inevitable considering how people were living at that time, but it is still so upsetting.

The Balls really did change gay culture, and culture at large, to some degree. They got a lot of people out of the closet and made them proud to be who they are. They brought gay culture into the mainstream, helping it to become more accepted. I was always obsessed with the femme queens, some of whom looked more feminine than me, but it was them that had a really hard time being accepted back then. Now some have their own cable TV shows. They have become idolised by popular culture and celebrated for something that was once seen very differently, and I really do believe the Balls are responsible for that.

[1] A series of protests were held in 1968 by students studying at various French universities. They were focused on changing the education system and began as strikes after confrontation with university administrators and police. The protests spread throughout society and became an influential civil uprising.

[2] A New York based newspaper that was the first to be heavily arts focused and is still seen as an important publication in that field.

[3] Pepper LaBeija, House Mother of the House of LaBaija, was a crossdresser and performer who became the central figure in the NYC Vogue Ball scene. He was featured in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning. Pepper passed away in 2003.

[4] In the 1970s Times Square, NYC, was the 'red light district' of the city, known for its strips bars and brothels.

[5] The album Waltz Darling by Malcolm McLaren was released in 1989 and was heavily inspired by the Ball scene and funk and disco. It featured Bootsy Collins and Jeff Beck. The single "Deep in Vogue" is heralded as bringing Vogueing to the mainstream.

[6] Madonna's infamous track Vogue was released in 1990, taken from her soundtrack album to the film Dick Tracey, and references the Vogueing scene heavily. The video featured prominent Voguer José Extravaganza.

[7] Willi Ninja went on to become a runway model for both Gaultier and Mugler as well as setting up his own modelling agency and famously taught Paris Hilton how to walk a catwalk. He passed away in 2005 of AIDS related complications.

Whitaker Malem - Fashion Archive - Dazed & Confused

2011-10-21T04:57:00.000-07:00

Whitaker Malem - Fashion Archive - Dazed & Confused November 2011

Patrick Whitaker and Keir Malem are among the unsung heroes of what we now know as the truly fashion forward design community that London is internationally renowned for. An elegantly form fitting approach to body con, beautifully intricate leather work and a truly imaginative, fantasy driven aesthetic are the common elements that make up a Whitaker Malem piece. Creating garments since the 80's for designers and artists including Alexander McQueen, Allen Jones and more recently Giles Deacon, the duo have been lauded within the industry but are still relatively unknown to those outside. Although fashion collaborations are the pair's main focus, since 2000 they have worked on major film costume, the results being more than a little iconic. Responsible for Christian Bale’s Dark Knight outfit, Halle Berry’s belt from Die Another Day, the Troy armour for Brad Pitt and Chris Evans' Captain America suit, Whitaker Malem have not only secured themselves a place in fashion's hall of fame, but deservedly a spot in the silver screen's too.

Keir and Patrick first met in 1986 aged 21, Patrick was already on the fashion degree course at Central St. Martins while Keir was on a slightly different path running drama and gay youth counselling workshops. Bumping into each other in true London style when Patrick crashed a Gay Pride after party at the commune Keir was then living in, the pair didn't immediately hit it off. “I think Keir thought I was a bit of a twat, middle class and fashiony back then” says Patrick, “He lived with gay people his own age and had some street-cred”. Not taking his future working partner's initial impressions to heart, Patrick asked Keir to help with his Central St. Martins graduate show and the Whitaker Malem team was born.

Their initial collaboration was for David Bowie's ex-managers wife, “an OTT wedding outfit”, and from there on to the male half of Andrew Logan's 1991 Alternative Miss World outfit. The female half was, and still is, created by Zandra Rhodes and the duo have worked on the male part ever since. “Our early work was always in leather, we developed our own technique for handling moulded leather that was derived from the knowledge of footwear construction I had learnt at college,” explains Patrick. “I believe we kind of pioneered the concept that London designers could produce sculptural pieces that were body based and crafted. Up to that time those techniques had been the sole reserve of French names like Alaia and Mugler. London was really just about street style then, but of course McQueen & Chalayan came along later and really ran with it”.

Having received a degree of press in the early 90s from the likes of UK Vogue and the now defunct Face magazine, the duo were contacted by Katy England to work with McQueen on his debut Givenchy Couture collection and given complete trust and control. “After the initial studio visit we all did some 'scratching on the back of envelope type drawings' and the next time we saw him was to deliver the finished pieces to the atelier in Paris, the day before the show,” says Whitaker. Making a strong impact, the structural McQueen pieces led on to work with Gucci, Valentino and later Hussein Chalayan.

Working on fashion projects throughout the 90s, a number of their garments found their way into various films, purchased by costume stylists from L.A stockists. From there came commissions for blockbuster movies, the first being for Madonna and Halle Berry in 2002's Bond film, Die Another Day. “The has always been an interest in film costume since we were making dressing-up outfits as kids” explains Patrick. Having to learn new techniques, the duo built on what they already knew but added a more functional element. “Film pieces are often done to a fairly strict brief and we have to make repeats as the rigours of an action sequence are quite different to those on the catwalk. It used to be that fashion required a higher quality finish but with High Definition and the big poster scrutiny of many of our costumes, it is now often reversed”.

Having firmly established themselves as the go-to designers for architectural pieces created with an exceptional understanding of the body, they are both keen naturists,Whitaker Malem are now in the pleasant position of getting to work on the projects they really want to. “Our No.1 reason for accepting work is because it's with people we like, this is super important to us. Our aim is to collaborate with clients and produce what is required, whilst hopefully enjoying some of the process and making work that supports our own aesthetic. Fortunately we can now, after some 20 years in the industry, be a little selective sometimes!” says Patrick.

Steve Lazarides - Minotaur - Dazed Digital

2011-10-21T04:53:00.000-07:00

Steve Lazarides: Minotaur

The latest expo at The Old Vic Tunnels feature a sonic installation by Thom Yorke and two sculptures made from what appear to be dead rats

Text by William Oliver

Having taken over The Old Vic Tunnels for the second year in a row, the subterranean space connected to the famous South London theatre, street art gallerist Steve Lazarides has seriously upped the ante for his latest exhibition, 'Minotaur'. Incorporating a deeply disconcerting maze featuring a sonic installation by Thom Yorke, a large-scale mesmerizing abstract film projection reflected in an ominous and regal pool of water, two sculptures made from what appear to be dead rats, graphic footage of bullfighting shown on loop in a cinema and a lavish secret pop-up restaurant by German restaurateurs Pret A Diner, amongst other things, this is more visual theatre than your average art exhibition.

Intent on bringing his distinctive brand of art to a wider audience than just that of the so called “white cube”, Lazarides has always strived to make art accessible and enjoyable as well as challenging and conceptual. With Minotaur he builds on this ethos with grand gestures. Bringing together Stanley Donwood, Jonathan Yeo, Antony Micallef, Conor Harrington, Doug Foster, 3D, Ian Francis, ATMA, Zevs, Michael Najjar and Lucy McLauchlan, all from Steve's own stable of artists, Minotaur sets out to provide a distinctly alternative destination to this weeks numerous Frieze events.

Anri Sala - Dazed Digital

2011-10-21T04:51:00.000-07:00

Anri Sala: Serpentine

The Albanian video artist tells us about his interest in the elements of sound and film that influence his installations at the Serpentine Gallery

Text by William Oliver

Albanian born video artist Anri Sala came to the attention of the art world during the 1990s through his touching and emotionally charged films depicting stories from his native country and the political unrest it was then navigating. Although now known predominantly for his video and film installations, Sala originally trained in a variety of practices including fresco painting before he moved into video. While it may seem a strange leap, it was the interest in layering of image and ideas that was current in fresco painting that Sala has transposed into his work with moving image.

Currently showing at the Serpentine Gallery, Sala's exhibition highlights another important aspect of his work, the interest in music. Sound and the creation of music at the heart of a number of the pieces, and an element that each work could in some way be performed live. The show is made up of a selection of various works made during the past five years and while each may not have been made with another in mind, for this exhibition Sala has chosen works which in some way communicate with each other. Here we talk to him about the show and the conversation between him, the works themselves and the audience.

ASVOFF Winner - Elisha Smith-Leverock, Dazed Digital

2011-10-21T04:43:00.000-07:00

ASVOFF Winner: Elisha Smith-Leverock

The winner of the A Shaded View on Fashion Film competition speaks to us about her new film featuring female body-builder Kizzy Vaines

Text by William Oliver

Recently awarded the fourth A Shaded View on Fashion Film Grand Prize, judged by fashion legend and the awards organizer Diane Pernet alongside Manish Arora, Daphne Guinness and Rossy de Palma is Elisha Leverock-Smith's film, I Want Muscle film. Witty, telling and hyper-glam, it takes the fashion film genre and adds a level of social narrative to sharp effect. A personal portrait of female body-builder Kizzy Vaines, the two-minute short is styled by Kim Howells and profiles pieces by David Koma, Simon Harrison, Aqua, Lyall Hakaraia, Husam El Odeh and Maria Francesca Pepe.

Focusing on the attitudes of others to the idea of female body building, and the reasons behind wanting to push your body to those extremes, rather than portraying Kizzy in the glorious but grotesque way we are often shown women with this physique, Leverock-Smith's film is touching and honest. I Want Muscle is clearly born out of the director's genuine interest in training the body to this degree and the affects, both physical and mental, that it has.

Jonas Mekas at the Serpentine Pavillion - Dazed Digital

2011-10-14T06:18:00.001-07:00

Jonas Mekas' Serpentine Garden Marathon

Dazed spoke to the filmmaker who's presenting Lithuanian artist Vilius Orvydas at the Serpentine expo this weekend, and showing his new film, SLEEPLESS NIGHTS STORIES, as part of the London Film Festival

Text by William Oliver

Born in Lithuania in 1922 and moving to New York in 1949 after five years being forced to live in the Elmshorn Nazi labour camp, Jonas Mekas bought his first movie camera aged 27. Soon afterwards he became closely involved in the emerging avante-garde film scene there and has been making beautifully personal shorts that capture fleeting moments, often with himself and his close group of friends at the center, ever since. Firmly establishing himself as an influential film-maker, Mekas' work has evolved throughout his career to incorporate installation, photography, poetry and writing. His prose has been translated into over 20 languages internationally and his poetry is taught as part of Lithuanian classic literature.

Now 89 years of age, Mekas is still producing works and is currently presenting his latest installation as part of the Serpentine Garden Marathon, taking place during Frieze week. Along with a huge list of artists and creatives, including Pablo Bronstein, Jake Chapman, Rodney Graham, Wolfgang Tillmans, Alice Rawsthorn and Paul Smith, to name just a small selection, Mekas' work will be presented in the Peter Zumthor-designed Serpentine Pavilion. Shortly after the event, the film-maker will also debut his latest film, SLEEPLESS NIGHTS STORIES as part of the London Film Festival. Dazed caught up with the art-cinema legend to get to the core of his latest projects.

Visual Essays on the Self - Self-Portraiture Today HOBO Magazine

2011-10-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

Visual Essays on the Self
William Oliver

An obsession with yourself, your image, your personal form of representation within other peoples eyes, is as deeply instilled in the make up of any human being as is the desire to eat, sleep and
love.

Since the first protohuman noticed a reflection of themselves in a pool of water, an obsession with what we look like, and how we are perceived by others, has been inherent. It does not matter how desperately we pretend to be guided by an underlying sense of morality, pushing us to not to care what other people think, we do. And in a society as built on that self obsession as todays, with its various aiding and abetting multi-million dollar industries, it has become more important to us than ever before.

The act of self portraiture has always been an opportunity to project the preferential image of oneself and can be traced back to some of the earliest representational art. Within the setting of society’s contemporary fascination with the incessant documentation and validation of life through a camera’s lens, it has evolved into something far and beyond that.

Creating a manipulated version of yourself is now such an integral part of everyday social interaction that it has become a much less celebrated moment than previously seen in history. Fine artists who take on the task of creating a representational image of themselves today have subsequently developed the format into something highly orchestrated. The advent of photography and image manipulation has allowed artists to leave a concisely edited and retouched memorial to themselves and these images are incredibly complex in their composition, content and subtext. They are an indelible memory left in fabric of society that clearly mark out the parameters within which they wish to be aesthetically remembered, alongside depictions of their opinion and emotional state.

As with self portraiture throughout history, these projections are an idealised view of the artist’s self, but while a painting is seen obviously as a constructed image, within the realms of a photograph the line between what is real and what is manipulated has become almost unrecognisable.

Each of the artists commissioned for this portfolio have in common the ability to create a construct of their reality that is read by the audience as authentic. Whether that authenticity is derived from the use of social and philosophical intellectually recognised ideas, the surreal dropped innocently into the context of the real, as with Olaf Breuning, or Terence Koh’s commitment to ‘life as art,’ each of the eleven artists create a world that is complete in its finish. One that is believable whether its construction is visible, or not. Malerie Marder’s work, for example, is built up from documentation that is then edited and magnified to create a form of reality that entices you in with, what turns out to be a false sense of, security. There is a conflict in Marder’s images, on the one hand her work is vivid and lush in its aesthetic, on the other it is a cutting commentary on society and its cultural sore points. Marder’s authenticity lies in the background of her images, the vehicle that drives home her point of view. While you can choose to avoid that aspect by simply examining the aesthetic qualities, a bold use of colour or the often romantic composition, you know it’s there, uncomfortable in its honesty. Her contribution to the portfolio is an extensive and intimate series of nine self portraits, one for each month of her pregnancy.

Although Marder’s intense intimacy may be most obvious example of that underlying honesty in this portfolio, each of the artists contributions, and their work as a whole, contains that same thread. It is the depiction of their personal approach to life, the way they see the world around them and their place within it, alongside a common exploration of its darker aspects, that ties them together, informing with various degrees of subtlety and complexity. In a society that is so carved out of a highly constructed and manipulated version of reality as ours, one where almost every image we are fed is polished, finished and manipulated to showcase the subject in the best possible light, a level of authentic honesty, however subtle or complex, is a highly sought after commodity.

by William Oliver

AnOther Current - In Conversation: Jens Hoffman & Dincer Schirin on the 2011 Istanbul Biennial

2011-10-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

In Conversation | Jens Hoffmann & Dincer Schirin on the Istanbul Biennial

In Conversation is a column bringing together friends and collaborators from across the worlds of fashion, art and design

Cuban-born artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who passed away in 1996 aged just 39 from AIDS-related complications, created beautiful, subtle and moving installations relying on ideas current in conceptual minimalism but imbued with a popular sensibility that spoke to a vast audience. His output was inherently based around an open conversation with his lover Ross, Gonzalez-Torres often stating he made his pieces for Ross first and a further audience second. Although only actually creating his body of work in a fifteen-year time frame, since his passing it has been repeatedly installed and exhibited internationally in a variety of contexts, from small local galleries to museums and biennials. This year's Istanbul Biennial has been curated around five themes and concepts that run through Gonzalez-Torres' artwork, focusing on other artists and their related conversation. Here, we bring together one of the biennial's curators, Jens Hoffman, with editor of Istanbul-based art magazine XOXO, Dincer Schirin, to discuss Felix, his relevance today and to an international audience inclusive of all backgrounds and cultures.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres' body of work was produced in a relatively short period before his passing, around 15 years of actual production. Since his death in 1996 his work has been reinstalled on a regular basis internationally. What do you feel it is about his work that has made it consistently relevant?

Jens Hoffman: I think it is a number of factors. His mostly minimalist aesthetic still has strong visual appeal and fits into a contemporary sensibility. The fact that something so elegant and handsome can also carry such radical content makes it even more appealing.

Dincer Schirin: To me, Gonzalez-Torres' works are always open to voyeurism as they involve such intimate narratives. We read what he gives us but we project ourselves into what we see rather than interpret it. He was also known for talking to the museum guards at his exhibitions, educating them about the work and inviting them to discuss it with the audience, changing the boundaries between museum and audience. Jens, while thinking about the audience's energy, how did you interpret this for the exhibition? How much do you know about Istanbul's local audience?

JH: What's most important to understand, in regards to audience, is the fact that we do not see ourselves as the ultimate authority on the interpretation of the works exhibited. Neither do we see this Biennial to be the final word on art or exhibition making. It is perhaps better to understand Biennials as a particular voice presenting various concepts of how to negotiate art and its relationship to the world.

DS: When you announced that the biennial's concept would focus on Felix Gonzalez-Torres' five different works, a discussion started. How do the curators make a connection between the biennial, the conceptual framework and Istanbul? Some of the local art scene have already been pessimistic about the lack of connection between these ideas. Do you think that the exhibitions should be about a connection between the biennial and the city and what do you intend to add to the history of Istanbul Biennial?

JH: There are many different ways of making connections and being site-specific. It would be dull if everyone just repeated one idea of what 'site-specific' means. I do not think that one has to have many venues all around town or talk about the exact political realties of a place to be context specific. That is why Gonzalez-Torres is so interesting to us. Through his work we offer a wider connection to issues like history, politics, identity or migration and mobility, all of which are subjects important in Istanbul but also around the world.

While Gonzalez-Torres' socio-political contexts are read and understood internationally, and they are in a variety of countries with differing cultural and religious ideals, there is a quiet nature to them. That quietness stems from his desire to go "under the radar", to make social and political points from within the establishment, seeing that as the only way to make lasting change. Do you believe his work and the reading and understanding of it has had a lasting effect? And if so, are they the changes he was trying to make?

JH: Gonzalez-Torres did not have it in mind to spoon-feed his ideas to the viewers of his works. That it a very important element of his work to keep in mind. The reason why he called his works Untitled is part of this position. The work changes in time and space and yet the subjects are so universal that in most cases they are perceived quite alike.

Do you not think he had a political/socio-political agenda?

JH: Gonzalez-Torres would have never said that he had an agenda. His way of voicing his political and social convictions was more subtle and complex than that. But you are right in so far as he wanted to make the world a better place, that is certain.

What affect do you think his work has had on contemporary art practice?

JH: I don't know if Gonzalez-Torres knew Herbert Marcuse's writing well, but in his last book Marcuse breaks from Marxist philosophy and argues against the Marxist view that art is a reflection of social class and only useful as a tool for revolutionary causes, and instead posits that art is a tool for transcendence. By evoking the beautiful and the utopian, art can influence how people perceive the world and inspire them to change it.

DS: Felix Gonzalez-Torres believed that meaning could be created by personal experiences with art. If we say that meaning comes from somewhere personal, thus political, could you please tell us how did you build up the politicality of the 12th Istanbul Biennial? If it is not talk to the city, by which I mean local art practice, do you think could it be a risk that the political discourses will not penetrate the audience

JH: The moment you or any other visitor comes in contact with art, a political act is being formed. You start reflecting about what is exhibited and presented in front of you. I am much more interested in that act as a political gesture than any form of visual representation of political situations in Istanbul, Turkey or anywhere else in the world. That is why the show is called Untitled, everyone can fill in that space any way they see it working for them.

DS: I want to concentrate on the issues under the theme of Untitled, (Ross) which gives us a way to consider the notion of family, love, desire, and relationship. Coming from a practice interpreting minimalism and conceptual art with his own personal narratives, Felix Gonzalez-Torres stresses that aesthetics are political, that they are not talking about politics, they are politics themselves. Moreover, some of his works need to be updated when they are shown, for instance his own portrait, Untitled, 1989. What kind of concerns did you have while curating the updated Untitled, (Ross) section of the biennial?

JH: In the context of this exhibition, Ross becomes an emblem of themes of gay love, relations, family, identity, desire, sexuality, and loss – all of which are addressed in different ways by the works in the show. Our decision to have a rather obscure reference in this exhibition’s title is an homage to Ross and Gonzalez-Torres, as well as a way of blending the personal into the political through biographical and poetic means.

Gillian Wearing - Dazed & Confused

2011-10-07T13:41:00.001-07:00

Gillian Wearing
Dazed & Confused 20th Anniversary Issue

Emerging during the 90s alongside the YBA's with her honest, frank and telling photography and video work, Turner prize winner and self-confessed pop culture obsessive Gillian Wearing has influenced far more than just the art world with her images. Her piece, Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say..., made back in 1992, has gone on to continue to be iconic within pop culture today. The simple idea, showing random strangers holding a thought to the camera, has been used by everyone from art college students to advertising agencies and is described by Wearing as “going off into the stratosphere”. Having produced numerous observational works across her 20 year career, all that provide a revealing take on society, we talk to the OBE awarded artist about her unfaltering interest in people and her forthcoming debut feature film.

Dazed & Confused - How did you become involved in the art world?

Gillian Wearing - Quite by chance. I worked at an animation firm on accounts in the 1980s, I was interested in the animation process and eventually they advised me to go to art college. I was accepted into Chelsea to do a BTEC at first, at the end of the first year my tutor told me I had a fine art sensibility so I applied to Goldsmiths.

When did you first start to develop your ideas conceptually?

I would walk around a lot of different studios at Goldsmiths and found it exciting to see what people were doing, things I hadn't seen before. I realised that they had ideas in their work. We were given access to the workshops and one of the first things I did was start to cut up books. That was my first foray away from drawing and painting.

It was after Goldsmiths that you started to be grouped with the YBA's, were you aware of being a part of a scene at that time?

The YBA's were really all from the generation of artists that showed in the original Frieze exhibition. I never really considered myself to be a part of that group as I had been below them at college. It was strange for me when I had my first group show with that generation as in a way I felt like a bit of a fraud.

What was it about the YBA's that made them so influential?

They were artists that gained strength from being part of a group. It gave them the energy to do things, in a sort of punk, DIY way. I think it's important to remember that the YBA's didn't have a manifesto. Rather than a movement, It was more a moment in time that changed British history in contemporary art.

Looking back can see a pivotal 'break' in your career?

Signs that say... I remember actually feeling like it was a good idea while I was making it, and you can't always say that, it got me excited. The fact that you were finding something out about someone you didn't know really struck me. As well as being something that received attention, it also alerted me to the area, conceptually, that I was interested in. I felt then that it worked, but originally thought it was more an art piece for a magazine. I actually submitted and published the first series in The Face. I found it very hard to consider how it would be shown in a gallery as at that time art looked very much like art, and there was something raw about these images.

Were you surprised by how honest the people you encountered were with you?

Yes definitely. Back then we had this idea of British people not wanting to discuss anything about themselves, that they didn’t open up. I would just pass them this piece of paper and all of a sudden they were incredibly honest with me. That's what really made the project for me, it broke all those stereotypes.

That exhibition played a part in your Tate nomination, which you won in 1997. How did you feel about winning?

I actually thought Cornelia Parker was going to win as she was slightly older and more established. I got really drunk beforehand; a bottle and a half of champagne. When they called out my name, I was so drunk I can't even remember what I said in my speech. I don't think you need to win a prize to feel validated, it's a bonus, that's how I feel you should see it. I know to some people it was everything, but I always felt if you were going to obsess about something, it should be the work.

After Signs... there was quite an investigate side to your work. Where do you think that intrigue comes from?

I remember when I was young and used to stay at my Nan's house, I would look out of the window at the people going past and make stories up about them. I think I was always just interested in people.

You talked earlier about the British sensibility being one that isn't very open emotionally. Were you interested in breaking down that barrier?

I think listening to people and finding out different stories is what I am interested in. As a television addict for many years I always felt like there were so many voices you didn’t hear on TV. The media has grown hugely now and I think that Twitter and Facebook serve a great purpose. I think that's how you find out about the world, by listening to the different experiences that people have in life.

You described yourself as a TV addict and a lot of your work has an element to it that in some way looks at aspects of popular culture. Have you seen popular culture change during your career?

Reality television has changed a lot in TV and film, even to the way people behave with each other in their daily lives. When you watch people trying to be as much of themselves as they can on television, I think it makes people less scared to say things or do things in their own lives. Everyone has now been fed a diet of what reality looks like. We are also now so saturated with multiple platforms. I've got Sky television but I only watch a few channels. Yes I have all the choice in the world, but somehow it doesn’t seem to offer me that many avenues.

Do you think that increase in media has made people become more adept at editing the content they engage with?

You have to move pretty fast to edit all of that information into something you actually want to take in. Perhaps the good thing about television in the 70s was that I would watch documentaries that a kid now would never watch, because they have access to all the things that children actually want to watch. Back then, after 6 O-clock there was only a serious drama, a documentary or a comedy on.

You have just finished work on your first feature length film – Self Made. How did that come about?

The film council asked me to submit a proposal along with 20 other artists, to make an experimental film. Because I was being asked to come up with the idea for a film, I thought it would be interesting to ask other people what they would like to be in that film. We were given the go ahead and I worked for 2 years with the writer, Leo Butler.

What is the idea behind it?

It was always going to be a process piece of work. I would film the casting auditions, then we would have a workshop and an acted scene. The idea developed into using method acting because they then bring an element of themselves to a fictional character.

The film is very much about people's own stories, how did you cast the characters?

We placed adverts in various places, and I had around 2000 people who applied. In the applicants emails, if they gave something of themselves away then that meant I became more interested. The advert was very simple but some responses really told us something about who they were. When we actually met them we kind of knew immediately.

How did you find the process of making a feature?

Intensive. It was actually shot in three weeks which is quite short for a feature but I have never been so exhausted in my life. I would only have about three hours sleep a night. Your adrenalin is running constantly which is great, but there is very little time to stand back from it.

Self Made feels like a distillation of lots of the themes that you have been working with throughout your career. Was that intentional?

I hadn't really thought about that until recently. The gallery owner Carl Freedman said something similar after a screening of the film but I didn't have that in mind before making it. I work very organically and this film was a collaborative effort between everyone involved. I am very much pleased with it though and yes, I think it does distill a lot of the ideas that I have been interested in before.

JR Inside/Out: Israel & Palestine - Dazed Digital

2011-10-07T12:57:00.000-07:00

The Inside Out Project

French artist JR last year set out to increase community awareness by having people submit black and white photos, revealing their personal story and journey.

Built around the idea of its participants, semi-anonymous French artist JR started his innovative Inside Out project earlier this year. Inside Out asks anyone to contribute a black and white photograph of themselves, uploaded to the project website, that reveals something about their personal story, in order to develop community awareness. The images are then printed in poster size and returned back to their owners to be pasted up somewhere in their city or area. Having already exhibited in countries including Brazil, US, Ireland, Pakistan, Uruguay and Iran, and after receiving a number of messages from members of the community in both Israel and Palestine calling for the project to visit them, JR decided to take his ambitious idea to the war torn countries.

Knowing that access to the Internet was a problem in these situations though, rather than asking the participants to upload their images, JR installed a number of photo booths across Tel Aviv and Haifa, Bethlehem and Ramallah, giving the contributors further access. “We did Inside/Out projects all over the world, so when we received messages from Israelis and Palestinians inviting us to create a project with them, we decided to go there and empower those who were silent” explains JR, “In the context of the Israeli and Palestinian situation reaching a crossroads, a reshaping of the Arab world and of Israeli society, we felt it was time to listen to the silent majority that believe the solution leading to two states for two peoples is waiting for implementation, and will bring peace and shared prosperity”. The series of beautiful, simple and challenging images were exhibited throughout Israel and Palestine earlier this month and will be featured on the growing Inside Out site as well as in a book published in Arabic, Hebrew, French and English.

Dazed Digital: What point is the project looking to make?
JR: We want to show that there is massive support for peace on both sides and that young people want to move forward to secure their future. Our role is simply to create a positive, public visual statement in both Israel and Palestine.

DD: What have people’s reactions been to the project so far in Israel/Palestine?
JR: People in the street were with us. Sometimes, there was discussion and some people refused to participate. Yet overall, we can say that we had strong support. Of course, as usual we also had problems with people who wanted to change the project and make it a propaganda tool for their cause. We always said that we don’t play that game and we’d rather stop the project than be used.

DD: Have there been any difficulties?
JR: Of course. Every time we would do a shoot, we were stopped by the police. And every time, the supporters of the project convinced the police to let us continue.

DD: How personal are the stories that people tell you?
JR: In this project, they don’t tell us long stories as they had for some other projects I have done, but we always have a brief exchange. They take their portrait, they wait for it with us and they paste it somewhere with our help. A Palestinian woman helped us to get in Bir Zeit University to engage women. An Israeli man in Mahane Yehuda didn’t dare post his portrait publicly, but he still wanted to have it pasted. So he invited us to follow him to his home and we posted the portrait in the living room.

DD: Are there any particular stories that you have heard over the years that have made an impact on you?
JR: A young man from Algeria wrote to us asking that we print his portrait, but instead of sending it to his mail address he asked us to post the portrait somewhere in Paris. He had met a woman a few years ago, they had fallen in love but he couldn’t go to Paris with her and they lost contact. He just wanted to make sure that his face would be somewhere in Paris. We don’t do that, people need to paste their portraits themselves, but this time I accepted even if though it had nothing to do with the concept of the InsideOut project.

What is next for the project?
JR: At this minute, I can’t tell you. Maybe the project will continue without me and my team. That would be my favourite option, but we can do it only if the local people, the logistics, the energy are all in sync.

For more information please visit: www.insideoutproject.net

Umbro & Aitor Throup: Archive Research Project - Dazed Digital

2011-09-10T04:08:00.000-07:00

Umbro & Aitor Throup: Archive Research Project

The experimental British designer debuts his collaborative archive project with the sportswear label

Text by William Oliver

After designing for Stone Island and C.P Company, conceptually functional designer, Aitor Throup debuts his archive project collaboration with Umbro. Umbro/Aitor Throup Archive Research Project pulls together over two and a half years of research. The capsule collection of reinvented iconic pieces, takes classic designs and reconstructs them, with technical fabrics inserted at key stress points, allowing extra movement, breathability and support.

More than just a focus on performance though, the collection is also aesthetically refined, pared down and minimal. “ARP is based on encapsulating all of the football specific performance construction studies we have done. We have extensive research in terms of the archive and heritage, but more importantly we wanted to define a new, football-specific, language of design,” says Throup.

Mainly made up in muted grey, the collection doesn't follow the preconceived notion of what football kit should look like, taking it to a new style-led audience. Colours and emblems have been removed to make the pieces anonymous. “This project is a summary of everything we have achieved in a more refined and curated way, we had total freedom in a sense, with styles and colours not dictated by a specific team”, says Throup.

Selecting a number of pieces from the Umbro archive to base this new collection around, Throup was interested in fundamentally iconic products. “We started with maybe 10 or 11 iconic pieces and have filtered it down to six” he says. “Some of the archive you couldn’t not choose, the Aztec was worn by the England team in 1966 and the Alf Ramsay jacket, which he wore in that era, is iconic by definition”. As well as being chosen for their status, Throup also selected a number of pieces that connected with him in a more personal way. “The drill top was integral to the 90s, with that triangular insert neckline, everyone wore them. And the Barcelona short is important to me, as its the short I have played football in for years,” he exclaims.

A combination of intense research, exploration and a personal passion, the Umbro/Aitor Throup Archive ARP capsule is a finely curated and perfectly formed collection. Aspirational in aesthetic and high performance in construction, each item is a piece of functional, perfectly designed and definitely desirable menswear.

Christian Jankowsi - Casting Jesus - Dazed Digital

2011-09-10T04:04:00.000-07:00

Christian Jankowski: Casting Jesus

The German artist's latest performance and video piece examines representations of God's son throughout art history

Text by William Oliver

In a moment of inspired surreality, video and installation artist Christian Jankowski's latest piece was offered up to him in what could be seen as an act of Divine intervention. While walking the streets of Rome one lunchtime eight years ago, Jankoswki caught sight of a bloodied figure of Christ having an informal chat with a small group of the Vatican's finest. Not exactly the Second Coming, this was in fact a number of actors discussing their various performances, during the filming of Mel Gibson's epically religious, Passion of Christ. “I had a spectacular view of him in sitting in his caravan, covered in incredibly realistic looking blood, discussing his acting techniques. From that moment, I have always had that image in my head,” says Jankowski.

That image, indelibly stamped on Jankowski's psyche, resulted in his latest work, 'Casting Jesus'. A performance and video piece that examines representations of God's son throughout art history and poses the question, “What would a contemporary version of Jesus be? What would we want him to look like, and how would we want to relate to him,” explains the artist. Taking the form of a television casting show, in the same vein as Next Top Model or Andrew Lloyd Webber's Over the Rainbow, Jankowski's audience watch a number of hopefuls try out in front of a panel of real Vatican staff. Creating a level of realism often seen in Jankowski's work, not only were the judges real, the actor's trying out for the role were also genuine, sourced by agents with the hope of being chosen to play Jesus in a number of further productions. Something Janowski has already started working on, with his chosen one.

Held in the 1,000 year old Complesso Santo Spirito, originally a hospital, the casting was filmed live and streamed to an audience of 300. “Both the Jesus' and judges were microphoned up during the show. They didn’t realise how clearly they could be heard when they whispering behind their hands to each other, discussing the appearance and performances of the different Jesus'” says Jankowski. “When you sit at home watching those shows you always catch yourself saying 'oh she's so bad' or 'look at that', you always opinionate. But it was something different to hear a group of Vatican officials discussing Jesus' various good and bad traits”.

While it may have a surface level of humour, it was not the Jankowski's idea to ridicule the Vatican. Rather than poking fun at the Catholic religion, the film looks at society as a whole and our relationship with these sorts of TV shows. “The genre of the casting show is a relatively new one. It was really interesting to see how quickly the judges from the Vatican adopted the style needed for the show,” says Jankowski. “We only gave them minimal ideas previous to the event, they turned up about 15 minutes before the filming and knew exactly what to do. Then again, I suppose pretty much anyone would”.

Ron Arad - My History, Dazed & Confused July 2011

2011-07-18T01:05:00.000-07:00

I was born in Tel Aviv some 60 years ago[1]. I was a spoiled brat. The only complaints I have against my parents are that there was not much to rebel against. They were a very arty family, mother a painter, father a photographer, brother a musician.

Of course, I still brought my own deficiencies to the world. I'm sure if I grew up now I would be spotted by social workers and declared special needs. They would have dealt with me and I would have become an accountant. Luckily they didn't spot me and ever since I can remember I have got away with not doings things the way I was expected to.

It was an obvious move for me to go to art college [2] but I never planned to be a designer. I was interested in things, in objects, but more through fine art than design history. When I arrived in London I studied at the Architectural Association [3], but I didn't originally intend to study architecture. It was simply that the AA seemed more fun than the Slade [4], for example. When I came to the interview at the AA I had no portfolio, I simply took a pencil and showed them that I could draw. They asked me why I wanted to be an architect and I told them I wasn't sure I did.

For some reason I got onto the course and I had a great time there, there was lots of good spirit and I strengthened my outsider position. In London at that time no one was actually building anything, so architecture was very much on paper, Archigram [5] was at the height of things and people were experimenting. The college was a very pluralist place, it had decadence next to Trotskyism.

After I finished I started my company, One-Off [6], and we began to get a lot of press. The company was very organic and self invented. At that time we were creating pieces by bashing steel chairs until they admitted they were comfortable steel chairs, or using reclaimed Rover car seats. I didn't know that by salvaging car parts and making furniture I was doing 'design'. The reference I had in my mind was about found objects in art - Picasso's Téte de Taureau, 1942, made of bicycle parts, or Marcel Duchamp's work. Somehow I was sucked into this world of furniture.

I was always surprised at our success. I remember, when I was given 24 hours to leave the country because my Visa had expired, the head of the Design Council, Lord Riley, personally helped me. He wrote a letter to the secretary of state for immigration, saying that I was an asset to the country and I should be able to stay.

Slowly architecture came to us. Moving into and designing our new studios gave the company a chance to experiment with our current ideas about architecture, on a small scale. Through this people asked us to design buildings. We have two offices now, one that deals with art and design and one that deals with architecture [7]. Within architecture there are so many rules, building regulations, you have to run everything past so many people. I find it difficult to be told that I must do something differently by somebody who is less well informed as an arbitrator of taste. The people working for the architecture office keep me in line and I am very grateful to them.

Improvisation has continued throughout my career. I never ever considered taking an academic route and when the Royal College of Art asked me to become the head of the Design course, I thought it was funny [8]. I didn't have time for that, so I had to improvise on how to do it without time. What I had learnt earlier at the AA, in regards to pluralism, was something I tried to recreate at the RCA. While I hope that my twelve years there will be remembered as a good period, it was never at the expense of my studio. For a long time my motto at the RCA was to only employ people who said they didn't have enough time to do the job. I was never confused or dazed by the Royal College of Art, but eventually I began accumulating guilt for not spending enough time there. I think it is only fair that somewhere like the RCA has a fresh wind that runs through it and so it was time to leave and I went back to the studio.

The transition from the college was an easy one. I had continued working throughout my time there was immediately focused on the three retrospective exhibitions, at the Pompidou, Paris, MoMA, New York and the Barbican in London. This was actually quite a strange experience. I remember, at the Pompidou, being told off when I tried to move one of my original Rover chairs slightly. This was a chair that had been in my house for many years. My children were breast fed on it and they were telling me I couldn’t touch it without putting white gloves on.

Throughout my career I have been very lucky and have never had to choose what platform I work across. I have made industrial design, one off pieces, art and architecture. My work has been exhibited in museums and is used in homes. I don’t like my work to be categorized - that it must be art, or architecture or design. I see these as lazy preconceptions. I don't need a passport to go from one field to another. I think that is really what some people have a problem with, in regards to what I, and the company, do. Often, if someone looks at a sculpture of ours, what disturbs them is that I also design mass produced chairs. It's not actually to do with what is in front of their eyes.

That is the nice thing about the new Roundhouse installation [9]. It is free from the Bolshevism of the art world. It has no snottiness about it. It has fantastic fine artists, Christian Marclay, Matt Collishaw, David Shrigley and it has rock n rollers like OK GO. The Roundhouse doesn’t have the constipation of the art market. The piece is free to be enjoyed by children, by mothers and by the snotty art world. The piece is also, in some ways, very 'me'. There are no borders, no guidelines. There is no entrance or exit, you can walk through or view from the outside. Also, none of the artists involved in the project are doing what I thought they would. They are all doing something entirely different, which cheers me up a lot.

Ultimately I think I have an ongoing curiosity and a low boredom threshold. That is really what runs through everything I do. I think of myself as very lucky and I often want to say thank you. Thank you for tolerating us and thank you for letting us play.

Footnotes:

1 – Born 1951

2 – Ron Arad attended the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem from 1971 – 1973. The Academy is famous for attracting teachers and students from the Bauhaus in Germany in the 1930s, which had been shut down by the Nazis.

3 – The Architectural Association is the leading school internationally for contemporary architectural concepts. Previous students include Rem Koolhaus, Zaha Hadid, Janet Street-Porter and David Chipperfield.

4 – The Slade School of Fine Art is based at Oxford University, Cambridge.

5 - Archigram was a conceptual group of architects based at the AA in the 1960s. Their ethos was to create a new reality through hypothetical projects. Archigram is perhaps most famous for their exhibition in 1963 at the ICA, London, Living Cities. The show was based around the idea of creating cities that could move, evolve and interconnect.

6 – One-Off was set up in 1981 with Caroline Thorman in Covent Garden.

7 – Ron Arad Architects wasn't officially set up until 2008. The company's designs include the Tel Aviv Opera House, Design Museum, Holon, Israel and the Olympic Bridge, London.

8 – Ron Arad was head of the Department of Design Products at the Royal College of Art from 1997 – 2009.

9 – Curtain Call will be on show at the Roundhouse in Camden from 9-29 August. The work is a 360 degree 8 metre high and 20 metre diameter curtain made from 5,600 silicon rods, onto which films are projected. The films are all commissioned works by artists including Babis Alexiadis, Hussein Chalayan, Paul Cocksedge, Mat Collishaw, Ori Gersht, Greenaway & Greenaway, Christian Marclay, Javier Mariscal, SDNA, David Shrigley and students from the Royal College of Art.

Dazed & Confused - Converse Art Prize 2011 - June 2011

2011-06-14T04:10:00.001-07:00

Ai Weiwei - Age of Craziness - Dazed & Confused June 2011

2011-05-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

Feature by William Oliver
Interview by Henrik Bork

At the time this article is being written, we are unaware of leading Chinese artist, activist, architect and critic, Ai Weiwei's whereabouts. Known internationally for his involvement in the design of the Beijing Olympic Stadium and his Tate Modern Turbine Hall installation, Sunflower Seeds, we contacted him just a few days before his disappearance. Ai had granted Dazed & Confused an interview, to be completed the following week. We were to discuss his two forthcoming exhibitions and his ongoing political activism. Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads is his first large-scale public sculpture installation recreating 12 bronze traditional zodiac symbols, on show over the summer at London's Somerset House. The second show, a survey of his work at Lisson Gallery, will run concurrently.

On Sunday 3rd April, Ai was detained by the Chinese authorities as he attempted to board a plane bound for Hong Kong. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested and taken to an unknown location. For the two weeks following his detention, the Chinese government offered no word on his location or wellbeing. After this, their only comment was to say he had been arrested for what they loosely described as “economic crimes”. Ai's arrest subsequently led to a host of international human rights, artworld and media figures, rallying for his release. “Ai Weiwei stands for humanity and for free speech. Life is devalued by the imprisonment of artists, writers and free thinkers. We, who are lucky enough to be able to speak out, must now speak out for them,” says British artist Bob & Roberta Smith, integral in the petitioning for Ai.

Consistently politicised in varying degrees throughout his career, discussed as perhaps the real reason for his recent detention, Ai Weiwei was born in 1957 to outspoken poet parents. Prominent within China as members of various revolutionary political associations, to this day his late father, Ai Qing, is considered one of the country's leading modern poets. In 1958 he was denounced as a critic of the Communist government. The entire family was moved from their home in Beijing to a labour camp, where Ai lived until he was 17 years old. He described his childhood during an interview in 2008 saying, “As a youth, I lived as the son of an enemy of the state.” His upbringing has had an obvious affect on the way Ai views the world.

In 1981, aged 24, Ai left China for America where he stayed for 12 years, spending the majority of it in New York surrounded by Andy Warhol's influence. The early works he made there show the beginnings of his interest in socio-political themes. They included photographs of the Tompkins Square riots in '88, images of the Chinese exile community and portraits of beat-poets including Allen Ginsberg. It was also there that he learnt about western contemporary art, something not possible under China's regime. “I think his sensibility was shaped by what he saw with Andy Warhol. If you look at his work compared to any of his contemporaries who haven’t had that experience, there is an easier translation. He knows the language of international art. A lot of work that comes from China is literally like another language, its hard for a westerner to comprehend, but I think people can understand Ai's way of thinking because of his time in America,” explains Greg Hilty, Lisson Gallery director.

Moving back to China in the early 90s when his father fell ill, Ai's work began to be more political, standing out as a curator and activist unafraid to go against the governments restrictions. He was heavily involved in setting up a community for avant-garde artists in Beijing and published three books profiling them. To a westerner it may not seem that revolutionary, but in a country governed with strict regulations it was the beginning of Ai as a cultural leader to a new generation of radical artists. “Making those books was very much about adding a level of criticality into the art scene in China,” says Katie Hill, curator and senior lecturer in Chinese contemporary Art.

Cultural activism also became clear in Ai's curation of his alternative to the state organised Third Shanghai Biennial, in 2000. The group exhibition, titled Fuck Off, featured a number of avant-garde Chinese artists including Cao Fei, Xu Zhen and Yang Fudong. “The activities he was conducting then were, right from the start, about positioning himself as an intellectual and as an artist,” explains Hill. “He comes from a long line of traditional Chinese intellectualism that is about speaking out on issues of freedom and the ability to express yourself with creativity,” she says.

The Fuck Off exhibition was also highlighted Ai's cultural activism informing his own art. He included a series of photographs, giving the middle finger to various internationally recognised monuments including Tienanmen Square. Other important politically charged pieces throughout Ai's career include Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, where Ai shows himself destroying an ancient Chinese ceramic and Colored Vases, an installation made up of neolithic pots dipped in bright industrial paint. In 2007, as part of the Documenta 12 exhibition, Ai brought 1001 people from all over China to the small German town where the show was being held. The work was made, in part, to raise the profile of Chinese people in a relatively monocultural town. Ai's forthcoming exhibition at Somerset House, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, is also a continuation of his interest in the relationship between pop art and traditional Chinese heritage. The piece uses the sculptures, originally made in the 18th century as part of Beijing's famous Summer Palace, and recreates them, almost as 'ready-mades'. These works are poignant culturally, but they also display the artists understanding of western contemporary and pop art. “From one point of view he is making them sacrilegious and iconoclastic and from another he is facing pop art with the depth and physical reality of a very ancient culture. Ai loves that kind of tension,” says Greg Hilty.

As Ai Weiwei's profile and the politicisation and activism in his work has grown, it has become harder for him to live and work in China. In 2009 he underwent major surgery following a serious assault by police. Ai claims the attack, which he says was due to his investigations into the governments cover up of a large number of deaths associated with the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, prevented him from providing evidence in court. His blog, where he had published thousands of children's names missing after the earthquake, was deleted shortly afterwards, as were many of the updates on Twitter.

Although it has become increasingly difficult, Ai has maintained his position in the country. “I will never leave China behind, unless I am forced to,” he has been quoted as saying. “When he returned in the 90s after his exile to America, Ai wanted to make a difference and wanted to work within China. It is the context where he works and I think his reason for staying is as a very necessary protest against forgetting. China has been a studio for him, it is where he finds his materials both physically and metaphorically,” says international curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Having firmly established the language of his art, architecture and curation in his cultural and political activism, Ai's career has continued to maintain subversive and poignant comments on the country that he lives in, sometimes fights against, but ultimately loves. Rather than simply highlighting hypocrisy's, as is often the case in the western world, he uses his work to actively make changes in a real way. As we move into a global society, where those on the outer edges of the mainstream are experiencing increasing levels of oppression, Ai is an incredibly important cultural figure, willing to stand his ground and make his voice known.

Sign the petition Ai Weiwei's release
www.change.org/petitions/call-for-the-release-of-ai-weiwei

Text Me Up - Tracey Moberly - Dazed & Confused June 2011

2011-05-20T06:33:00.000-07:00

Text by William Oliver

Simply inspired by the genuine sense of happiness she found was attached to the arrival of a seemingly unassuming step forwards in technology, Tracey Moberly's book, Text Me Up, painstakingly documents the artists' life over the last 12 years. “It was 1999 when I got my first text message. I had just come out of my marriage and was in a bit of a bad place. It was amazing, all of a sudden this message arrived that was just a really nice sentiment. Like a little sugar rush pinging in,” she explains. Instantly addicted Tracey has kept almost every single SMS she has ever received, apart from that very first one. “I accidentally deleted it but regretted it straight afterwards. After losing that one I knew I couldn't just throw them away”.

Started without any real destination in mind, the project has gone on to be an inadvertent autobiographical document of her life. It is a no holds barred picture of the highs and lows of those years, the friends she has met and the adventures she has had. “I don't mind that the book became autobiographical, you live therefore you are. It has been something that has run through break ups and breakdowns. I have included a lot of people from my life but I haven't included anything that is derogatory to people, that's another book entirely,” she says wryly.

Moberly's project uses the short and sweet messages we have come to take for granted as her narrative tool. Each chapter is laid out in chronological order, with the texts edited to tell the story of her incredibly interesting life. Adventures to Moscow, New York and Haiti all feature, as do friends including Banksy, Bill Drummond, Howard Marks, Irvine Welsh and Pete Doherty.

While Text Me Up is, in one way, Moberly's personal diary, it is also a diary of the people she has come into contact with and what was happening around her. “It's my slice of social and cultural history but in a way I can't claim it as my slice because it is also so many other peoples worlds. Its just capturing that particular piece of time”.

As well as a diary the book is also an examination of how the incorporation of SMS has fundamentally altered the society we live in. “There are a lot of heavily sexual texts in there, 'Kiss my velvet helmet' for example. It's the banter you can get away with in a text, there is nothing in it. A lot actually come from female or gay friends. Thats a really interesting thing to me, the way texts have changed us and moved us away from that really moralistic society,” says Moberly.

ViceStyle.com - Proper Lads Looking Normal - Michael Mayren

2011-05-06T05:26:00.000-07:00

Text by William Oliver
Photography by Michael Mayren

Michael Mayren focuses his camera on the sort of guys that most people would either be too scared to make eye contact with in the street, or—in the case of a lot of gay fashion guys—stare so longingly at they would risk having their face kicked in.

Growing up on a council estate in Bolton, near Manchester, Mayren was surrounded by those boys. Rather than seeing normal working class lads as being some exotic social stereotype to ironically document, he started taking their portraits simply because he wanted to represent the guys he knew, and in some way, himself.

While the subjects in Mayren's photographs might look rough, the pictures show a lot of character and aren't hugely posed. He mainly shoots guys that he finds on the street or in shops, because to him, "models aren't that real". Recently, Mayren has begun to shoot fashion for the likes of Vanity Teen, designer Courtney Mc, and ourselves.

Dazed & Confused - Charlotte Smith - May 2011

2011-04-28T05:19:00.000-07:00

Charlotte Smith - Cascading Tassels and Monochrome for the Tough Modern Woman

Text by William Oliver

One of the most innovative graduates from this year’s Central St Martins MA Fashion course is the textile designer Charlotte Smith. Her final collection, boasting contrasting blacks versus whites, three dimensional blocking and thousands of individual tassels is a marvel to behold.

Smith has been working chiefly with tasselling, created from a combination of different yarns, silks, wools, chainette and plastics, since she started out as a design student. “I really did try to move away from the use of tasselling, but slowly the hard became soft again and I started working with chiffon and then moved back to the tassels,” she explains. “It’s the same with colour. I tried to work with nudes and light greys, but generally those colours don’t work for the look. I just love working in black and white.”

Coming from a textile background, Smith works closely with a team of designers to create her finished pieces. Her process begins via experimentation with various materials, and the final results are born out of a process of trial and error. “The team helping me create the garments were always told to finish everything perfectly,” she says. “We actually ended up getting things wrong so many times because it looked too finished. It took a lot of trialling to basically just hack into a piece of jersey and work the tassels on top.” The end result is in fact more dependent on the textile itself than a preconceived idea of how the finished product will look. “I play around with things a lot. I will manipulate a material until I come to its natural conclusion.”

While there is a definite elegance in Smith’s designs, there is also an engaging and subtle questioning of gender. “There is femininity in the movement, but it’s not beautiful,” she asserts. “We wanted to bring a bit of flesh in, seen through partitions in some of the blocks, but for it still to be abstract. It is androgynous, but at the same time you can see glimpses of the woman. I don’t think some of it would look out of place on a guy.” Smith is currently planning her wedding, and she’s marrying an army boy. He might have other ideas about what he’d prefer to shimmy down the aisle in, but we wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of this bride. She says: “My woman is tough. She has taken a few drugs, had some sex and seen a few bands. She has been around the block a bit, but she’s still got something to her. She might be a bit roughed up, but she definitely isn’t a heap!”

VICESTYLE.COM: The Seldom Seen/Brett Lloyd & Felix Werbowy

2011-04-26T17:35:00.000-07:00

Brett Lloyd is a great photographer and the bits of the fashion world that get excited about photos of skinny young men love him. In maybe three years, he went from being unpublished to having his work featured at the very apogee of fashion publishing, maybe not the mass circulation stuff, but the stuff fashion people want to be seen in; AnOther Man, Vman, Candy, i-D, and Vogue Hommes Japan. Brett doesn't just shoot fashion, he also takes tons of photos of the friends he makes trawling the world's social networks.

New York-based art photographer Felix Werbowy was one of those boys. After loads of emailing, and a bit of Skype, they're friends now but have never met. Probably like a lot of people's faraway iChat friends, the two only really communicate when they've got some stuff to offload. Eventually they came up with the idea for their Tumblr, The Seldom Seen.

Art guys will want to know that the abstract pictures are mainly based around light, shape, and color, and everyone into guys will like the fact that there's plenty of skin on there. The result is a weirdly collaborative diary of two guys - who actually live completely separate lives and something like a new-wave-Tumblr-fashion-thing - where posting a picture is reciprocated with another well thought through picture, and the participants get to buzz off each other making something pretty.

Vice: Did you know each other before you started the project? 
Brett Lloyd: I was introduced to Felix's blog by a friend in Paris in 2008. We didn't really start chatting properly until a couple years later. The first proper chat we had, we'd both recently separated. It was a sad Christmas.

 What do you like about each other's work? 
Felix Werbowy: I like the eroticism in Brett's work. It comes across as completely heartfelt.
BL: The work in Felix's diary instantly had me thinking. There were lots of shots through the window of the world beyond and it seemed like he was some kid trapped in his house. Maybe he's not trapped in the house, maybe he just doesn't want to go out and he's happily playing around with his camera. Straight away I was thinking about the photographer, imagining what he was like. I was interested in him. That doesn't happen very often with me.

What is it that makes you feel a particular affinity with each other's work? 
FL: There is such a powerful emotional presence in his photographs.
BL: Though his photographs are not explicitly self-portraits, you get an overwhelming sense of Felix.

 Have you both actually met in person now? And if so, what was the first meeting like? 
FW: As of right now, our relationship is purely electronic. 

What was the original concept behind the project? 
FW: The Seldom Seen has always been about talking with pictures.
 BL: Invention or discovery and dialogue within light and shape. 

As you said, the works focus on light and form as opposed to people. Why?
 FW: When Brett asked me to do this, he really put a lot of emphasis on light and I was attracted to the idea of exploring something as abstract as that. 
BL: I guess shooting portraits all the time was getting on my tits a bit and I wanted to try something new. I went to South America last year and thought I'd try out landscape photography. It didn't work out though, I just couldn't get excited by it. When I got back to London I began experimenting with my iPhone camera, shooting light and shapes. I was getting some great shots that reminded me of Felix's work.

You guys are using images as a form of chat. How does that work?
 FW: Think of it as a sentence that is only whole once the two posts are up on the page.  One image explains the other. 
BL: One of my favorite pieces was the shot of the shiny penny on the windowsill. It wasn't particularly my best image, but once Felix put his response up it literally took my breath away. I got the impression he was thinking above and beyond normal stuff. Straight away, these two images set a scene - the start of a movie almost. I wish there could of been a third and fourth of that series.

What's Seldom Seen for? 
BL: To tell stories.   There are also pictures of our lovers and exes.

Did you always want it to be that personal? 
FW: I don't think we thought about that. The majority of the photographs come from our private lives, so that made things unintentionally personal.
BL: I guessed it would be, given what we shoot. My boyfriend forever inspires me and he's always around me. Lucky me.

Some of the images are very voyeuristic.
 FW: That's very important to the project because I like to capture my subject without disturbing it. For me, that makes a pure image.
BL: Yeah, it's about seeing what's around you, not interacting with it. I have taken lots of the photos whilst on the bus or the train. Shooting fashion, you are always constructing an image and everyone involved is in on it. With Seldom Seen I can do the opposite. Taking photos of people on the street or on the bus is great. If the person sees you, even better.

What sort of pics work best? 
FW: I try to keep Brett in mind and how my image will work with his. Though the decisive factor for me is the presence of light and the intensity of the colors within the image.
BL: I want people to go, "I love that, what is it?"  

DAZED DIGITAL: Little Joe: A Queer Film Magazine

2011-04-26T17:31:00.000-07:00

As Sam Ashby's publication screen films as part of London's Fringe Festival this weekend, his magazine's second issue examines how sexuality is portrayed on our screens

Text by William Oliver

While it may be only on the second issue, queer film magazine, Little Joe, has already earned itself a cult following. Started last year by editor and designer Sam Ashby, the magazine documents both the emergent history of gay film, how it evolved, what it meant and where it stands today. While the first issue focused mainly on discovering older gay film, the second issue has evolved to include lesbian and trans Directors and newly made work.

Contributions include Stuart Comer, Tate Modern film curator, interviewing the institution that is John Waters and a rare interview with the late artist, Frank Ripploh, translated from German for the first time. Inspired by the discovery of Andy Warhol's 1968 cult classic, 'Flesh', the magazine has very much been about getting information about these often missed films to people. With a series' of film screenings as part of the London's Fringe festival, including Ripploh's Taxi zum Klo, issue two launches and screenings planned for Berlin and New York, Little Joe is doing just that.

Dazed Digital: Have you always been obsessed with film?
Sam Ashby: Ever since I was a kid. I grew up in Hampshire, in the middle of nowhere, and had quite a secluded life, film was my escape. Growing up gay I really felt that I pushed myself into other worlds and tried to recognise myself.

DD: Was gay film always a particular interest?
Sam Ashby: No, I was just interested in sexuality on screen. I would record things obsessively on Betamax and then VHS. I still have old copies of BayWatch on Betamax actually, I was completely in love with Pamela Anderson. Or at least I used to tell people I was, but maybe I was just into Billy Warlock.

DD: How did you start to discover the sort of things that get into Little Joe?
Sam Ashby: I have weird late night Google odyssey's and then also through art magazines and friends. For the first issue I got a lot of support from Stuart Comer, film curator at Tate Modern. For the second issue, Thomas Beard and and Ed Halter from Light Industry in New York have been massively helpful. They have influenced me to broaden my taste.

DD: How has that developed in the second issue?
Sam Ashby: This issue moves away from more obviously gay films, it is a bit more theoretical and serious in some ways. I am trying to dig a bit deeper and discover the histories behind these films and the people that made them. I was inspired by my trip around the States last summer, many of the people I met were directly involved in contributing. It builds on the personal endeavour of the first issue by developing a community.

DD: Do you have certain Directors you are always interested in?
Sam Ashby: Not really. I think, as with most things, it's hard to be consistent. When I was younger I was really into Ang Lee, I know he is kind of obvious and mainstream but there is something that I really like about him. Even Hulk I kind of love.

DD: Do you think there is a homoerotic undertone in Hulk?
Sam Ashby: Maybe. I kind of fancy him.

DD: Which version, as Bruce or as Hulk?
Sam Ashby: As Hulk. He'd be fun. I'm also really into Stanley Kubrick's films, Eyes Wide Shut is amazing to me. Even Nicole Kidman's terrible drunk and stoned scenes are compelling. I think Sally Potter is great but she also made some real duds. Derek Jarman has made some great films. Roman Polanksi and Michael Haneke as well of course.

DD: Has making Little Joe opened you up to new film makers?
Sam Ashby: Yes definitely, Frank Ripploh for one, who directed Taxi zum Klo. He was an incredible artist. I think he was presenting himself in a really open honest way which was astounding at the time and still really holds true today. Fred Halstead I wasn't aware of before I saw LA Plays Itself. It is art porn in the truest sense.

DD: Do you think art can be porn and vice versa?
Sam Ashby: Yes I do. There is actually a piece in the second issue about Community Action Centre, a new video by A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner. The film is art porn, that is the only way to describe it. I was really turned on by it, but it also has a real political purpose.

DD: Is purpose what makes the dividing line between porn and art for you?
Sam Ashby: I think so in some cases, but if you look at someone like Fred Halstead you can perceive his work as art now, but at the time he wasn't doing it in that context. If you look at how he was making the films, how really he was kind of making them for himself, I think that is the work of an artist.

DD: So overall what is it that you want people to take away from reading Little Joe?
Sam Ashby: I want people to go out and discover new films and not just open Time Out and be faced with the obvious. For me producing the magazine has been an amazing journey that has led me to meet people, to come across work. I guess that's what I want you get from it. To be inspired to be educated.

DAZED DIGITAL: Christian Peterson Wants You

2011-04-26T17:25:00.000-07:00

Text by William Oliver

After moving from the UK to Seattle, Christian Peterson set up 'I Want You' magazine in conjunction with his design company, Dumb-Eyes, in 2007. Based around discovering and platforming new psych-art and artists, the large format quarterly has gone on to become a point of reference in an often under represented community of artists. Asked to produce a collection of films by the artists he has worked with for Dazed Live, we got in touch with Christian to find out a bit more about the magazine what he's got planned.

DAZED DIGITAL: Daniel Levin & Ben Solomen's 'Captured'

2011-04-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

Text by William Oliver

Showing as part of the Dazed Live screenings, 'Captured' is a documentary that delves deep into the life and times of New York's Lower East Side through the lens of film maker and photographer Clayton Patterson. His extensive archive covers two decades of the lifestyles of the people living there with an unnerving eye. Pulled together by Daniel Levin and Ben Solomen, along with editor Jenner Furst, the film provides a direct and indepth look at the changing face of a neighborhood, once an alternative community, now gentrified. We talk to the filmmakers, Daniel B. Levin and Ben Solomen, about the film and Daniel's next project, a narrative feature based around the people he met while 'Captured'.

Hooligan Magazine - Vicestyle.com

2011-03-24T04:54:00.000-07:00

Hooligan Magazine - Interview with Igor Zinatulin
Text by William Oliver

Hooligan was originally set up in 2002 as a tongue in cheek zine-style magazine running features on, for example, how to torture your neighbor's cat. Now, it's literally the only magazine published in Russia that even touches on obscure fashion, music and art from around the world. Style mag Hooligan is a vital source of information in a country where the pressure to conform, even creatively, is immense. Catering for the weirder end of fashion and pop culture isn't a big business idea in Russia. In fact, running a magazine like Hooligan in a country where state control is foreboding and overbearing - both subtly and not so subtly - means putting together a style mag is a way more political act than it would be in the US or UK. Socially censored shit, outsider ideas, and general weirdness get a bit of space to breath in the pages of Editor, Igor Zinatulin's Hooligan.

Normski - Vicestyle.com

2011-03-24T04:50:00.001-07:00

Normski interview - Vicestyle.com
Text by William Oliver

Most British people over the age 25 know exactly who Normski is - the mentalist necklace-wearing presenter of Dance Energy. Sure, TV did youth culture, but it had all been pretty art school. Until Dance Energy came along with live performances from the likes of Naughty by Nature, Rebel MC, Public Enemy, Inner City, The Prodigy and the Ragga Twins exploded onto people's early evening TV screens and dominated the cooler kids school bus chat. The show also featured Style Squad, a weekly slot showing you what kids were wearing everywhere from Bristol to Jamaica. With the slew of information we can get our hands on now it's pretty easy to stay on top of your game, but back then - with his high-top fade - Normski was the one voice on TV telling it how it was out in clubland. But before he presented Dance Energy, Normski was pretty much the biggest hip-hop photograher in the UK, shooting for the likes of i-D, Melody Maker and NME.

Melanie Friend - Last Shot - Dazed & Confused April 2011

2011-03-24T04:47:00.001-07:00

Melanie Friend - Last Shot - Dazed & Confused
Text by William Oliver

Melanie Friend's documentary images go further than simply telling a story. Working as a photojournalist in the 80s for a number of agencies and publications, her photographs are both key news pictures and, as she says, “quiet shots”. Friend moved away from photojournalism into reportage during the 90s, but her work continues to be politicised. She photographed family life in Kosovo and more recently spent time documenting asylum seekers incarcerated in UK immigration centres. Friend's work both encapsulates the core of what is happening around her, in a traditional photojournalistic style and at the same time is imbued with something further. Her photographs leave the audience considering and questioning with both subjectivity and emotion.

“Like many of us at that time I was politically engaged and my work had a political drive. I was a freelance photo journalist for many years and on that particular day was attached to a womens photography agency called FORMAT.

I remember going down to Trafalgar Square and seeing both riot and mounted police, and missiles - bricks and bottles - flying through the air. I hate having my movement restricted and can get quite claustrophobic. I had been reading about the Police's kettling tactics, which have come up in the news again recently, so I retreated. In hindsight I'm glad I did as I know there were injuries on both the protestors and the Police's side that day.

I decided to just hang about on the side streets, St Martins Lane and Charring Cross Road. That is where I saw the two Japanese guys in the picture. I don't remember a lot but I know I must have had a brief conversation with them as I captioned it 'Japanese Tourists'.

It was quite surreal. I remember looking at them thinking that they looked bewildered but quite excited. They must have stumbled into this riot after a shopping trip to HMV on Oxford Circus.

Its interesting how this shot affects me now, looking at it after all these years. I am really interested in the Japanese guys, who they were and how witnessing this riot affected their image of the UK.

I hadn’t seen the photograph for a while and when I look at it in hindsight it has perhaps more resonance than at first. I see the smoke in the background almost as Thatchers regime going up in smoke, her reign came to an end later that year. It also makes me think about the beginnings of consumerism and celebrity in the nineties, the HMV bags juxtaposed against the fire and rioters. A lot of people talk about that shift towards a less politicised culture during that decade.

The atmosphere was very heady on that day and you felt you were really witnessing something extraordinary. Every time I went to document a demonstration I would see the same colleagues, it was a very intoxicating time and we all felt unified against the Thatcher regime.

That was actually one of the last protests or demo's I covered. It was the end of Thatcher and the drive to protest in that way lessened for a period. Also for personal reasons, as I damaged my back and couldn't really run around like that anymore. Its an incredibly physical job and you have to be alert and aware to many things. I have moved into a slower sort of work, where I don’t have to run around carrying cameras, but my work is still political. I very much admire my contemporaries from that time who are still doing the job now.”

Stephen Sprouse - Fashion Archive - Dazed & Confused April 2011

2011-03-24T04:41:00.000-07:00

Stephen Sprouse Archive Feature - Text by William Oliver

An advocate of Warhol's attitude to pop culture, Stephen Sprouse was a designer that represented everything 80s and 90s New York. Easily combining art, graphics, couture and street style, Sprouse took the raw energy and bold colour of Downtown and injected it with effortless grace.

Sprouse's clothes were beautifully cut and impactive. Born from an obsession with detail and quality, they were weaved through with glamour and youth. He was years ahead of his contemporaries in terms of understanding changes in fashion and commerce. “In this People magazine generation, information gets absorbed so fast that you've got to repeat the past quicker. You can basically repeat what was in style a couple of years ago, and it's new again because so much was absorbed in the meantime,” he described in 1987.

Starting out in New York, Sprouse worked as the senior assistant to high class designer, Halston, for ten years. He learnt a great deal and loved his time there, Halston often said to Sprouse “you should pay me to work here”. Sprouse was living in a Downtown warehouse at the same time, dressing iconic friends including Debbie Harry and Steven Meisel and collaborating with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. “I moved into the building that Debbie Harry and Chris Stein lived in and we all became friends. As for the clothes, we'd cut up old stuff and pin it together. Then they'd go up the street and play at CBGB's,” Sprouse described in Interview magazine. “We were living such a strange existence, going off in a limousine with Halston to have dinner at Diana Vreeland’s and then, because we were so broke, we’d have to scrounge for change to take the subway home”.

Designing since he was 7 years old though, it was no surprise that he eventually left the moneyed chic to set up on his own. His first eponymous collections combined what he learnt at Halston with his own lifestyle. The results were a fitting combination of chic, flattering lines, super bright colours and pop culture references. It was a mix of high and low culture, “Stephen didn't just stir the pot, he shook it up,” explained fashion director and editor Candy Pratts Price.

Sprouse presented his second collection in 1984 and did so on a spectacular scale, shown to an audience of 1,500 at the Ritz nightclub. New York's boldest club kids sat next to international fashion editors and the models were introduced by a psychotically grinning, blonde, transexual model, Teri Toye. “It wasn't just a fashion show, it was a rock concert. Everyone was there, Andy, Manolo, all of New York,” said Toye.

Although Stephen's initial collections were bought up and rapidly sold out, he quickly ran into financial trouble and declared himself bankrupt in late 1985. He continued working on a range of projects throughout his career, but it did not go smoothly. While it was Sprouse's inimitable graffiti adorning the sell out hit that was Marc Jacob's Louis Vuitton handbags, his own 2002 diffusion range for US budget store, Target, was failing.

Sprouse's legacy is a huge one and his influence can still be seen today. His brash attitude to colour, print, femininity, masculinity and everything in between, is still current. His bold graphics are now a badge of honour worn by street style and fashion kids and his cross pollination between artists and designers is common for fashion labels today. Debbie Harry once described Sprouse saying “he had great intuition and was almost psychic,” and she was right. He was a visionary that saw what was coming long before the rest of the industry. But that was quite possibly the problem, he was perhaps just one step too far ahead.

Talking Timbuktu - Hamidou Maiga - Dazed Digital

2011-03-24T04:38:00.000-07:00

Text by William Oliver

Although he has been working since the early 1950s in and around Timbuktu, it is only in the last year that Hamidou Maiga's personal and insightful portraits have come to light in the Western world. 80-year-old Maiga's images were discovered by curator and gallery owner Jack Bell, and have since been acquired by the Victoria & Albert museum.

Stylish and beautifully composed, the photographs show villagers, musicians, artists and sportsmen and are a document of the the changes in Malian society, from the 1950s to the present day. They stretch across a time when the country was evolving from a French colony to an independent African nation. The formal but intimate portraits depict these changes in the economy through the clothes his subjects wear, and the film stars and celebrities they mimic with their poses.

James Franco interview, The Art Newspaper - March 2011

2011-03-02T09:16:00.000-08:00

James Franco Interview – The Art Newspaper March 2011
William Oliver

James Franco’s Hollywood career already includes credits as director, producer, screenwriter and leading actor. He won a Golden Globe in 2002, has had two further nominations and, by time of going to press, will also know whether his nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor will have won him an Oscar statuette at the ceremony where he was also co-host.
As a visual artist, however, his career is still in its early stages. Franco completed a year-long programme of independent study at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in 2009, is due to begin his PhD in art at Rhode Island School of Design this year and has had just two solo exhibitions to date, including “The Dangerous Book Four Boys”, currently at Peres Projects, Berlin (until 23 April).

Despite his limited artistic output, Franco has nevertheless already worked with artists Marina Abramovic and Paul McCarthy, and with film director Gus Van Sant (with whom he has a joint exhibition on show at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, until 9 April). Such high-profile collaborations, in the early days of his career, have been greeted with scepticism by some art world insiders, and with not a little confusion. An April fool’s day joke last year by a prominent New York dealer—that Franco had been chosen to represent the US at the Venice Biennale this year—was rapidly reblogged as genuine news, to a combination of both interest and cynicism. Franco may not be the official US representative (the slot is being filled by Puerto Rican duo Allora and Calzadilla) but in fact he is, he says, planning a Venice project with artists including Ed Ruscha, Paul McCarthy and Douglas Gordon.

Franco’s exhibition at Peres Projects’ galleries in Kreuzberg and Mitte, Berlin, features poignant and personal videos, installations, photography and drawings with themes including identity, adolescence, masculinity, his family and his childhood. Although in his early video work Franco chose to cast actors as the central figure, in these later pieces he plays the role himself. The films, and a series of photographs, depict Franco as characters from his own memories of adolescence.
Despite his familiarity with intense public scrutiny born from his Hollywood success, he is aware that his entry into the art world has attracted a diversity of opinions and readily admits that he has a way to go if he is to be regarded as a fully formed artist of serious intent.

The Art Newspaper: The works in the Peres Projects exhibition span around four years. How long were you working on those pieces?

James Franco: I was working pretty solidly for those four years. Other than a few I included that were from my childhood, the earliest works are from the beginning of my time at UCLA, created with their chair of the department of art, Russell Ferguson. That work consists of videos made about five years ago. There are then other pieces made during time between my other commitments.

There are themes throughout the exhibition that focus on identity and masculinity through adolescence. What is it about that period of your life that inspired you?

Part of the show is autobiographical. When you are dealing with youth one often uses memories from your own experience, consciously and subconsciously. The real kernel of inspiration that led me to use childhood images, structures and motifs was the realisation I wanted to create a feeling of “too much” and of “overflowing”. I wanted some of the works to feel immature and under developed, so that I would be able to infuse them with larger ideas. I wanted to feel like the themes were almost too big for the structures and the forms.

How long have you been making work?

I started in my early teenage years. I was a painter then, as most young artists are; it was just what was accessible.

What was the impetus behind you starting to create work again?

I have been interested in contemporary art for a very long time, even before I started painting as a teenager. I wanted to go to art school but my parents wouldn’t pay for it. That seemed a strange decision as they met on the art programme at Stanford University, California, but they didn’t want me to go down that route. I originally went to UCLA as an English literature major but then later I returned. I had been collecting contemporary art, was introduced to Russell and we ended up doing one year’s worth of independent study together.

What were those first works like?

That collaboration resulted in my first video works, some of which are in the Peres show. It was a way to work with film that was not dependant on narrative, as I had been as an actor. Those early pieces were attempts to get away from classic story telling and to start working with the medium in different ways.

In your later video works you often include yourself as the main character but in earlier films you used actors as that central figure. Why was that?

Because of my need to get away from what I had been doing as an actor. Because of that history and connection I didn’t want to put myself in them at first. They often showed destruction of house-like structures: there is one where the character chops up a structure with an axe. If I made the piece now I would do it myself, but at the time I was afraid it would feel like a performance. Also I was worried that people would see it as a character they already had a preconception of, that they wouldn’t consider it as an essential act.

Was that around the time you made the film Erased James Franco?

Yes, I made that film with the young New York artist Carter—it was not titled by me. The work was based on Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning [a filmed performance piece where Rauschenberg erased a De Kooning drawing given to him by the artist]. Originally it was to be a similar erased performance, but it developed into something more than that. Making that film showed me I could use myself in work of this kind. It opened up that possibility for me. I started working with my persona as an actor in my art to different ends. Not necessarily using my skills in a way that would allow the audience to be drawn into a performance and forget that it was me, but in fact to do it in a way that made sure people wouldn’t forget it was me.

You have noted Kenneth Anger and Paul McCarthy as influences on your work.

They are both huge inspirations. Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kommandos had a big influence. I find the aesthetic and irony in those pieces incredibly interesting. As far as I know Scorpio Rising features a real motorcycle gang. I find it fascinating that Anger convinced the group to let him film them. I imagine they thought they were coming off as tough and masculine, but the way Anger shoots them it becomes something sexualised and homoerotic. I was inspired by the way in which he transformed them and made us see that culture in a different way.

Why Paul McCarthy?

I am drawn to his relationship with film and my understanding of that, having worked in LA for so long…the way he takes classic film and Hollywood film, and then, in his words, “just fucks it up”. I have been working in that world for so long…but he has shown me a way of being able to step outside and examine it. I am honoured to be currently collaborating with him.

What are you working on together?

Paul and his son, Damon, and I are working on a piece which will be shown at the Venice Biennale. It is to be a large-scale collaboration, hopefully with Ed Ruscha, Paul McCarthy, Douglas Gordon, Aaron Young, Terry Richardson and Harmony Korine. Basically all my favourite artists.

Do you have a network of artists you are in conversation with?

Yes, recently a lot of my work has been about collaboration. Because I come from the film world, which is largely dependant on collaboration, it is natural for me to continue working in that way. Of course the results are different, the way that the collaborations are geared is slightly different, but ultimately it is a similar creative process.

The exhibition at Peres Projects was previously shown at the not-for-profit New York space, Clocktower. Has this version of the show changed?

It is almost the same show. Javier Peres saw the exhibition at Clocktower and offered to take it to Berlin. We have reworked it slightly as it is across the two galleries that he has there.

How do you feel about your reception into, and how you are seen within, the art world?

Generally I have been happy but of course there is going to be a lot of scepticism in the beginning. As far as being taken seriously, all I can do is look to my own activity and say, honestly, this is where I have been spending the majority of my time. I am in school to learn more about this side of my work. I am doing everything that “legitimate artists” have done. Okay, yes, the response has been mixed but to be honest, I almost want that. As an artist there is usually a period where you pay your dues. I have certainly done that as an actor, I did that for years, but with my art I am now in a strange position. I am going to get a lot of attention, whether it is good or bad, from the get-go. I am happy though, because however sceptical the critics are, I am able to show with respectable people—Peres and Gagosian for example. We’re going to the Venice Biennale. For me, I don’t know how much better it could get right now. I am taking this as seriously as I can and in some circles I am getting a good response. That is all I can do.

London Fashion Week Autumn Winter 2011/2012 - Dazed Digital

2011-02-24T08:05:00.000-08:00

Dazed Digital London Fashion Week Autumn Winter 2011/2012 backstage interviews and show reviews, covering all five days including menswear. Interviews include Richard Nicoll, Giles Deacon, Christopher Kane, Christopher Bailey (Burberry Prorsum), Christopher Shannon, Mark Fast, James Long, Thom Murphy (New Power Studio) amongst others.

Text: William Oliver
Photography: Morgan O'Donovan

Transmediale Berlin - Dazed Digital

2011-02-24T08:02:00.000-08:00

ARTS & CULTURE

TRANSMEDIALE IN BERLIN

Last week's edition of Germany's leading arts and technology festival was a perfect opportunity for artists, experts and activists to showcase their ideas for the future of digital media

TEXT BY WILLIAM OLIVER

Running since 1998, Berlin's Transmediale is Germany's leading festival relating to media arts and technology in all it's forms, and one of the most forward thinking of its kind internationally. The week long event pulls together musicians, experts and activists and looks at the evolving future of digital, and the ways in which it is changing society. Held annually, the festival included performances from Stephen O'Malley's (Sunn O)))) KTL project, Hype Williams, Pariah, Monolake and Raime alongside talks, discussions, seminars and workshops. Dazed Digital caught up with the festivals curator, Stephen Kovats, to talk about the concept behind this years theme, networked society and living online.

Dazed Digital: What is the concept behind the festival?
Stephen Kovats: This year's theme, RESPONSE:ABILITY addresses the way networked society is redefining our physical presence both on and offline. It examines the Internet in terms of the potential available to not only participate in, but actively shape, society's central zone of inquiry and the need to defend it from restrictive intervention.

DD: What was the inspiration behind this year's theme?
Stephen Kovats: Among other things, questions which arose from the previous festival, related to the radical transformation of identity and the sense of 'liveness' online. Also the way in which the cultures of digital networks have arrived in mainstream culture.

DD: How has the theme translated into the programming of the festival?
Stephen Kovats: This year's festival is highly performative, interactive and process oriented. Most artworks, for example, are not fixed entities, but exist in sleep, active or performative states. There is a large focus on workshops, meetings and discussions, which examine the issues around identity and open or alternative digital network systems.

DD: The festival surrounds art and digital culture as a whole, can you tell me about the different elements this includes?
Stephen Kovats: We are interested in a broad and multidisciplinary discourse in art, as it relates to and reflects digital culture.

DD: What are the highlights for you, in regards to this discussion?
Stephen Kovats: There are a lot, and many different elements from music, film, experience based pieces, performance, discussion, exchanges, installations, seminars, but the Open Zone is a good starting point. Workshops are organised by leading artists and experts working with open technology and critical art. We have Ursula Endlicher, Heath Bunting, Elizabeth Stark, Les Liens Invisibles and Open Design City. All are discussing how we can respond to the constant flux of digital life. The HacKaWay programme looks at both technological and social systems that are being critically de- and re-constructed, to envision and bring about new realities.

London ShowRooms MEN Paris - Dazed Digital

2011-02-24T07:58:00.000-08:00

LONDON SHOWROOMS MEN

Co-hosted by the British Fashion Council and acclaimed style writer Tim Blanks, the showroom was set up to promote British design talent during Paris Menswear Week

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MORGAN O'DONOVAN
TEXT BY WILLIAM OLIVER

London's womenswear designers are, of course, solidly staged on the fashion industry's international platform. For years the city has been the point of reference for cutting edge and established talent that is well received on the catwalk and translates strongly into stores worldwide. While London has in the past been a hub for more formal menswear it is, in comparison, only relatively recently that forward thinking mens designers have been receiving similar interest.

Although this season will still only be the 11th edition of the dedicated MAN show at London Fashion Week, it is now essentially one of the highlights. The city's menswear designers are producing some of the most interesting, beautifully finished contemporary clothes seen internationally. While the world's editors may be beginning to focus on what London has to offer, there is still a long way to go in getting it industry established.

As a much needed tool to help London menswear receive the recognition it deserves, the second instalment of LONDON showROOMS MEN set up in Paris from the 22nd - 25th of January. “LONDON showROOMS in Paris has been successfully running for five seasons. Extending this to some of the best emerging menswear talent in the UK, for the second season, is very exciting. It takes some of the highlights of menswear day into the international calender. "It's a great opportunity for the promotion of emerging British designers to the international menswear buyers and press,” says Caroline Rush, CEO of the British Fashion Council.

Highlighting 18 leading emerging designers, the event showcases the diverse talent the city has to offer. Installations include those whose designs are already beginning to make their way across the water with J.W Anderson, Lou Dalton, Tim Soar and E. Tautz's nod to the city's tailoring history. Christopher Shannon, Christopher Raeburn and Katie Eary bring their take on British street style, Nazir Mazhar shows his super creative accessories and Dr. Noki's NHS provides a great example of what can be done with sustainability in mind.

“London's menswear is enjoying a return to prominence and the mens day has reached bursting point, but the timing of the London shows, in regards to buyers schedules, has always been tricky. The solution was to take the best of the city's emerging menswear to Paris and now the Showrooms are starting to feel like an important part of Paris's menswear showcase,” says Patrick Grant of E. Tautz.

With menswear designers in London providing a fresh take on the city's style-led history, from the suits of Saville Row to the creativity of its street style, the BFC's Showrooms is an essential platform. It takes emerging designers and profiles them, gains them recognition and hopefully means this new generation can continue to grow, evolve and establish.

Phil Collins - Marxism Today - Dazed Digital

2011-02-16T04:17:00.000-08:00

PHIL COLLINS' MARXISM TODAY - ARTS & CULTURE - Dazed Digital

TEXT/PORTRAIT BY WILLIAM OLIVER

2006 Turner Prize nominated artist and film maker, Phil Collins' works range from a day long disco dance marathon filmed in Ramallah to a series of Columbian nationals singing along, sometimes phonetically, to tracks by The Smiths. Often with a slightly humorous level of accompanying visual intrigue, Collins uses his subjects as vehicles with which to pose questions about society and its politics. In his latest exhibition, Marxism Today, he focuses on the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the affect it had on those living and working in the former GDR. The film will be the last exhibition to be held at London's British Film Institute gallery space. Dazed Digital caught up with the artist to discuss the show, his obsession with reality television and the state of Britain today.

Dazed Digital: A lot of the topics in your films are quite diverse. Where do your ideas come from?
Phil Collins: Usually from visiting somewhere. The Smiths film came out of time I spent in Bogotá, for example. I spent a lot of time in Columbia going to indie and rock and roll bars. I was interested in that culture being not about the language of salsa, paramilitaries and cocaine, the three big Columbian stereotypes. Those bands seemed so much about 80s Britain to me, they seemed so linked to Thatcher and living in the UK at that time. It made me question whether nationality was a performance.

DD: Is there a concurrent theme that runs through your films?
Phil Collins: Usually there is a provocation at the heart of them. On some levels I hope there is a social commentary, but much like Perceus attacking the head of the Gorgon, you look in a diagonal to find the politics of something.

DD: There seems to be an aesthetic in your films that references contemporary TV documentaries and the stylised aspect of them.
Phil Collins: I'm interested in how tightly documentaries are structured and what sits under the beating heart of those representations of the real. I love watching the news and evaluating which interests those media support. You begin to see structures in news media, how they don’t report Iraq for example and why entertainment becomes the news. Dancing on Ice, X-Factor, that kind of Orwellian drama that we have come to know and hate intrigues me.

DD: How do you feel about the move towards the almost circus and freak show aspect of current TV documentaries?
Phil Collins: I watch a lot of reality TV so I know more about morning shows like Trisha and Jeremy Kyle. Programmes which look at the evacuation of the social field. The people that apply to be on these shows often believe the promises of society have failed them. It is amazing to see the psychology behind those shows, the discipline and punish role of the host.

DD: Can you tell me about the two films you are showing at the BFI?
Phil Collins: I was in Berlin during the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall and I thought about what happened to the people that taught Marxism and Leninism. After '89 not only does that job evaporate but also their expertise and knowledge devalues at a very rapid pace. I tried to find out what happened to them, where did they go? We spoke to forty people, filmed ten and then in the final film, Marxism Today, used three. I was trying to find stories which would work in a biographical, not analytical, reading. What the teachers thought of what happened and what became of them afterwards. We focus on three characters, one women whose husband killed himself just before the fall in '89. A doctor who taught political economy and then moved into the banking system and became very rich. The third set up an introduction and dating service and was the mother of an Olympic gymnast. They all have very different trajectories within the reunification.

How did the second film, Use, Value, Exchange, come about?
Phil Collins: After meeting these people I became interested in the idea of them giving a lesson at one of their schools, to students attending now. It was an elite economic school in the GDR time and is now a business and economics school. I was interested in how she would teach such a deep subject to such a broad spectrum of society.

DD: Do those films tie into what you see happening in contemporary society?
Phil Collins: After the failure of the Left in '89 people in Britain turned to continental philosophy and followed the rise of technology and the internet. The spaces for dissent seem to be evaporating as they are incorporated into capitalism. The mobile phone is revolutionary rather than a revolutionary action being revolutionary. Its an enormous change from the culture of the 70s and the 80s.

Dani Tull - ID pre Spring 2011

2011-02-11T09:22:00.001-08:00

Text by William Oliver

California born, bred, and influenced Dani Tull continues a lineage of bohemian, alt-lifestyle and Psychedelia inspired artists that have emerged from the Golden State. While Tull may be in part referencing an era of radical, yet perhaps naïve, possibility with his fantasy driven art, he brings it sharply up to date with a subtle and subversive take on modern American society.

Living in Los Angeles for the last twenty years, Tull appeared firmly on the city's left of centre art scene at the beginning of the 1990s with numerous exhibitions across L.A and California. Starting out producing mainly illustrative pieces, focusing on iconography from America's pop culture heritage that somehow feel like a veiled comment on the country's social values, it was these early works that jettisoned Tull's career. His first solo exhibition featured an extended portfolio of 'clown' paintings. “For me, there seemed to be level of psychic connectivity and an acidic mysticism between the clown image and the physical properties of oil paint” he explains, “I liked the challenge of redeeming the painted clown image”.

Due to a family background that included his pre-beat bohemian photographer granddad, Sam Cherry, and influential beat poet uncle, Neeli Cherkovski, and his own alt-output, Tull quickly became an integral part of the indie Californian scene. “When I was a kid family friends included the writer Charles Bukowski amongst others, I’ve always been around artists and individualists,” he says. “I think any artist is a continuation of a crucial lineage, and this is an important time to be an artist because so much is missing from the current state of our civilization”.

During the 90s Dani's prominence continued, showing at numerous cutting edge galleries including Blum & Poe and Jessica Fredericks, he was invited to install an exhibition as part of Lollapalooza and appeared as the only straight male artist featured in Marsha Tucker's infamous post-feminist Bad Girls exhibition at the New Museum, New York.

While a stellar career loomed, at the end of the 90s, in a typically laid back Cali style, Dani removed himself from the art world to focus on making music. After fronting bands including Boygeorgemichaeljacksonbrowne and playing guitar in Eric Avery’s post Jane’s Addiction project, Polarbear, for almost ten years, Tull freely slipped back to visual art full-time.

Given his background it seems only appropriate that artist, photographer and designer Hedi Slimane, who has an intrinsic interest in various music scenes, would appreciate Tull. Introduced to the artists' work while visiting Tull's friend and central alt Californian figure Jim Shaw's studio, Slimane invited Tull to be a part of his forthcoming California Dreamin – Myths and legends of Los Angeles group exhibition at Almine Rech Gallery, Paris. The show includes pieces by John Baldessari, Dennis Hopper, Mike Kelley, Raymond Pettibon, Ed Ruscha, Sterling Ruby, and Aaron Young, highlighting the work of a generation influenced by the area's optimism and informed by its counter culture heritage.

Tull describes being an artist in Los Angeles to being “on your own island, with the other islands just close enough to visit but far enough away to maintain the enterprise of your own islands cultural affairs department”. He see's the physical distance between people and places as contributing to the actual work he produces. “There is a lot of space between us here, and plenty between the galleries and museums. That space is not a vacuum, it’s purposeful, meaningful and plays on the psyche,” he says.

Taking a step back and looking at Tull's work, you can clearly see the influence this distance, and subsequent isolation, has had. The time devoted to exploring his own thought processes and narratives is obvious in his concepts, which often create worlds within worlds. Tull's work visually tells a highly constructed story that is overlaid with what he sees around him, “Fantasy lays just under the surface of our own reality,” he says.

This idea of invented reality is perhaps best seen in Tull's The Subterranean River Caverns of Los Angeles. The body of work chronicles his investigations into a secret network of caverns supposedly hidden under northeast Los Angeles. As part of the project Tull created maps to these imaginary sites. Many people believed these maps were real and dedicated time to looking for the 'portals' marked with an X. Although the resulting hunts were originally not conceived of by Tull, they are an interesting and fitting real world by-product of his constructed mythology.

It was in fact the concept of this LA mythology that led Slimane to commission Tull for his i-D cover portrait, which, in turn, Tull felt gelled with his personal ideology. “I appreciate Hedi's willingness to let me draw his portrait for a magazine that typically features a high-fashion oriented photo for its cover. There’s a nice irony to that. There seems to be a flow and freedom to his creative energy that is both natural and deliberate”.

With a lifestyle as involved in the artistic and creative as Dani Tull's, he is a character that defiantly sums up the idea of 'living with art'. An artist dedicated to continuously remoulding their life and output to fit ever evolving concepts and ideas. Tull is not constrained by one particular medium and his work both draws on the heritage of a 'scene' that has gone before, while still clearly referencing a knowledgable and sharp evaluation of the contemporary world around him.

Theo Adams Company - In Conversation - Another Current

2010-12-18T03:02:00.000-08:00

In Conversation | Theo Adams Company
In Conversation is a column by William Oliver bringing together friends and collaborators from across the worlds of fashion, art and design

The Theo Adams Company combine references as diverse as classical opera, reality television, high camp and Greek tragedy. Directed by the self-taught Adams, the company brings together performers from a vast array of disciplines to produce often overwhelming productions that cut through the boundaries of stage play and performance art.

Heralded as an invigorating addition to London's alternative scene, Adams has provided a meeting point for leftfield performers that gives them a platform to express aspects of their creativity, perhaps otherwise not given an outlet.

Their forthcoming Cry Out piece, which will be debuted in the UK at London's ICA after being shown as part of a larger work created in conjunction with Louis Vuitton in Japan, puts all of Adams' notorious elements into one grand spectacle. We sat down with Theo, set designer, David White, and actress, Gwendoline Christie, to discuss the power and importance of spectacle today.

RAIME's Dark Electro - Dazed Digital

2010-12-15T05:22:00.000-08:00

Text and photography by William Oliver

An esoteric, refined and cerebral sound that is culled from a life-long obsession with electronic music informs this industry tipped duo.

Pulling together diverse references including early 80s industrial and goth acts like AC Marias, Konstruktivsts, German Shepherds and Throbbing Gristle, through to Detroit techno and dubstep, Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead are garnering heavyweight insider interest. Their first EP, released in September, was strongly pushed by Simon Reynolds, author of the hugely influential biography of Post-punk, 'Rip It Up and Start Again', profiled by The Big Pink's Milo Cordell in the NME and caused one of UK techno's founding fathers, Karl O'Connor (Regis), to remix one of their tracks.

With a live set secured for the brave and intellectually curated Unsound electronic music festival in Krakow, Poland, and a subsequent supporting set for Eyeless in Gaza, off the back of the first three track release, and the second EP appearing as a best selling single of the week on Boomkat, it looks like the future of electronic music is in their dark and foreboding hands.

Casa Cavalli, interview with Roberto Cavalli, Dazed and Confused, November 2010

2010-10-18T08:14:00.001-07:00

Text by William Oliver

Roberto Cavalli will tell you adamantly that he never intended to project himself into the position he is in today. The position of power dresser to the ultraglam jetset and occasionally their husbands, or perhaps more accurately, their occasional husbands.

Emerging in the 70s from humble beginnings as a textile print designer in Florence, Italy, his techniques were quickly picked up by influential French Fashion houses such as Hermés and Pierre Cardin. This interest effectively initiated his profile, and through a continuing interest in dressing people in designs, textures, fabrics and multiple animal skins, that more than make the wearer stand out in a crowd, or on a red carpet, the Cavalli brand has rapidly grown to be stocked across the most exclusive destinations in the world.

Three decades into his career and Roberto now counts numerous stars and celebrities as not only his customers, but also his close friends. He has built his label around his lavish lifestyle, and exuberant personality, as much as around the designs he produces. With his Miss World nominated wife, Eva Düringer, continuing the role of brand promotion in all the right places, at all the right parties, where perhaps Roberto himself now takes the occasional bit of 'me time', it is a safe bet that Cavalli the brand will continue its reign as king of super sexy and glamorous for many years to come.

You have been designing for over thirty years, and continue to produce clothes which are worn by some of the most glamourous people in the world. What keeps you inspired?

In the beginning, I didn’t really know anything about money, I just thought I would do this to meet beautiful women and give myself more opportunities to have fun. All my life, I just wanted to have fun, and I think remembering that is what keeps me excited.

You have a huge empire now under the Cavalli brand, how did it begin?

I had a few very good ideas and built from there. The printing on leather for instance, or the recycled jeans, which were sold in my first store in St. Tropez back in '73. Each piece was artisan, beautiful clothes using beautiful techniques. I was quickly so successful that when I did my first fashion show, the following summer, I was showing with Armani, Versace and Missoni at Sala Bianca in Florence.

How did it feel to be such a success at that time, so early on in your career?

It was fantastic, but back then to be a designer was not like it is today, to be a designer was not to be a rock star. The woman then was different to the woman now. When she would buy a beautiful jacket, she would take out the label because she didn't want her friends to know where she bought it.

Do you feel like you have seen a lot of changes in the industry since you began?

Things were a little slower, now everything is so fast, and has so much money behind it, that it's hard to make anything really special, because you have to sell huge quantities. That is against creativity.

Your work became super desirable in th early 90s, with many celebrities wearing and supporting Cavalli. How did that happen?

In the 90s I started to experiment with print on denim, and stretch denim, as well as printing on very light silks. I saw the beauty that those silks could produce, and it was then that the stars started to approach me. Slowly, slowly, I became the designer of the red carpet. I think they saw that I could give them assurance in their sexuality; to be completely sexy and also to be beautiful.

Did you always want to design for celebrities?

No, absolutely not. I am actually very passive in a way and I take life day by day, it was not planned. When I met Jennifer Lopez for the first time, and Cindy Crawford, I was so excited, like a little boy. I became close friends with these people because they are like me, they have a shy side. Victoria Beckham, she is so shy; I remember when I first went out with Victoria she held my hand so tight I could feel her heartbeat.

You are now, in many ways, as famous as the people that you design for. How does that feel?

I tell you, to be famous you have to be a big actor. Don't think that all of us want to be famous all of the time. I would like to be famous one week of every month. All of us, Jennifer, Victoria, myself, we all have a time when we step back, we have to hold onto something for ourselves.

You met your wife Eva in 1980, and she has been a huge part of your life as a designer since. Would you describe her as a muse?

Of course. In the beginning, whenever I meet someone and fall in love they are a muse of mine, but she has stayed with me throughout many years and she still inspires me.

How has she influenced the Cavalli brand itself?

She is a Libra and she is incredibly balanced, so she is very much the manager behind what I am doing. In some ways it is frightening because I think she probably knows more about the business of fashion than me.

What is it that you see as the heritage that Cavalli as a brand has left behind within the fashion industry?

I think that my taste treads that very fine line between sexy and vulgar. It is sexy and it is chic, but that line, when it can become vulgar, is so close to the other two that it is difficult sometimes. I see women who wear my clothes in the wrong way and I hate it; they wear them in a vulgar way. What I want people to see is that you can wear something and be incredibly sexy, and have a very strong look, but still, very much, be chic.

Komakino film by Dennis Schoenberg - Dazed Digital, October 2010

2010-10-05T02:51:00.000-07:00

KOMAKINO FILM BY DENNIS SCHOENBERG

The SHOWStudio collaborator and filmmaker shoots Federico Capalbo and Jin Kim's new Komakino collection

Taking reference from a time when how you dressed, genuinely, represented what, and who, you believed in, Federico Capalbo and Jin Kim's Komakino is, today, a bolt of authenticity. Built of a sincere desire to simply create garments that project the couples own identity, the duo pull together references from all aspects of their personal aesthetic and ideals, for each collection. Rather than start again from scratch at the beginning of every season, Komakino's themes remain a constant. While there is, of course, some variation in weight and fabric from spring/summer to autumn/winter, it is the same ideas and the use of very similar palletes and shapes, that highlight the label as an identity as opposed to a look.

Capalbo and Kim are very much interested in creating a community of like minded individuals around their work, pulling together a collective as opposed to working as lone figures. Recruiting both photographer Dennis Schoenberg, and writer Dean Mayo Davies, together they have produced a short film and installation as part of a Komakino exhibition, held at Envoy Gallery, New York. Featuring a soundtrack by infamous industrial act Coil, the footage takes the fashion film to a new level, creating a tense ideology and a subtle call to arms, as opposed to simply a soundtracked and post produced, moving, photo shoot.

Dazed Digital: Where did the idea behind making a film originally come from?

Federico Capalbo: We created the Envoy installation based on themes from the last three collections, and decided to make a film that also communicated these as part of it. The feeling of someone who believes in something, but is almost in revolt, was very current. We knew we would use banners and flags, and we also became interested in American college fraternities and the esoteric idea of a brotherhood.

DD: How did working with Dennis Schoenberg come about?

Federico Capalbo: We knew each other and knew we had a lot in common; we have the same references in music and sub-culture even though he is maybe ten years older. Dennis is very dedicated and passionate about what he does.

DD: Did you have a script for what you wanted?

Federico Capalbo: I storyboarded parts of it, but we didn’t want to be too literal. In the end it is just a solitary boy carrying a flag, God knows where.

DD: It seems that all of the different aspects of your work influence each other fluidly. The aesthetics of the film are of course inherent in the collection, as the clothes tell the story, but the same ideas are current not only in this collection, also in previous ones.

Federico Capalbo: Yes, I think that this idea of revolt runs through it all, through the film, the installation and the collection. But not as part of an army, more someone who is true to himself, rather than loyal to something.

DD: Do you have key pieces that appear throughout each collection?

Federico Capalbo: We regularly use certain elements of tailoring, and both trench and MA1 jackets, with some military influences, utility pockets for instance. It means something to us. It's what we wear.

DD: The label has a strong counter culture, and the tougher aesthetics attached to it stylistically, aesthetic, which is currently quite unfamiliar in fashion. Is that something that you want to bring forwards again?

Federico Capalbo: It's something that is missing I think. There is, perhaps, a lot of appearance but little soul, in design currently. We don't want to appear pretentious and say that what we are doing really stands out because 'we truly believe'. We just want to create an identity, and what we do is what we are interested in; the music that we listen to, and the people that we refer to.

DD: Do you feel that idea of identity is something that is lacking in some of today's fashion and style?

Federico Capalbo: Maybe. I wouldn’t want to do anything I didn't feel very connected to.

DD: So what is it that you want to leave behind with Komakino?

Federico Capalbo: It's not so much that we want to leave something behind as to build something new. We know we are too influenced by things that are in the past, but we do think we need to represent them, so that they can be referenced in the future, to create something new. I do think you should be aware of what has been before, in order to move forwards.

Michael Clark Tate Turbine Hall Performances - AnOther Current, September 10

2010-09-07T17:55:00.000-07:00

Culture
Extra | Michael Clark: Tate Modern Performance
— September 3, 2010—

Leading choreographer Michael Clark and his contemporary dance company recently completed their seven week residency in the Tate Modern's grand Turbine Hall. Clark's installation centred on platforming the creative process behind his work, profiling it from inception, through practice to performance.

Not only asked to be a part of the audience, Clark also presented an open invitation to the general public. He asked them to come forward and train with the company in the Tate, culminating in a series of performances given over the last weekend of the installation.

The four performances, held over the August Bank Holiday, combined a series of Clark's pieces performed by both a group of his company's dancers, and his chosen 75 members of the public.

While the two groups were clearly identifiable, one gracefully taking control of the cavernous space, the other presented in teams of semi-militantly organised squads, visibly recounting the steps back in their mind, the work as a whole was an experience that was in fact not too short of amazing.

Opening up contemporary choreography, to be examined and hopefully understood, was at the core of Clark's residency. And in that, he was entirely successful. Watching the piece, as an audience member, you felt completely involved, the honesty of the new dancers combined with the education that Clark's company presented, fixating.

Seeing the intensity on the faces of the public dancers so clearly, allowed you to understand the mechanics of contemporary choreography in a way that watching trained professionals doesn't allow. Contrasting this with experiencing trained professionals almost effortlessly take control of that huge space allowed you to understand both the technical, and creative, difficulty that is overcome to do so.

Clark's company has been pushing forwards with movement and choreography since beginning in 1984, and his installation in the Turbine Hall simply continued a brilliant career history. One that has constantly been changing the boundaries of movement and dance, and which, without a hint of condescension, constantly presents it at ground level in an intense and visually arresting way.

Bik Van Der Pol - Artist Interview, The Art Newspaper September 2010

2010-09-01T05:47:00.000-07:00

“We are not moralists”
Artist duo Bik Van der Pol on climate change, butterflies and why they’re not pointing any fingers
By William Oliver

Since 1995 Jos Van der Pol and Liesbeth Bik have been working as the collaborative duo Bik Van der Pol. Based in Rotterdam, they produce art that examines ways of interacting with the viewer, and that centres on the reinterpretation and representation of other contemporary artists’ work. In 2005, they exhibited their ongoing project “Past Imperfect” at Secession, Vienna—a series of rooms that in part closely examined the work of Lee Lozano. The show was credited with resuscitating interest in the previously relatively unknown artist. The 2009 exhibition “Pay Attention”, at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, included a three-room installation featuring their take on works by Sol LeWitt and John Baldessari.
Bik Van der Pol’s often socio-political output has ranged from the production of multiples, both publications and objects, to installation, screenings, sculpture and photography. The pair are the winners of this year’s Enel Contemporanea Award, sponsored by the Italian energy company Enel, which has been running in its current format since 2007. The prize, originally curated by writer and curator, Francesco Bonami, and now in the hands of the director of exhibitions at the San Francisco Art Institute, Hou Hanru, has previously been presented to multimedia artist, Doug Aitken, performance and installation collective, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, and Olafur Eliasson’s former assistant, Jeppe Hein.
For their entry, Bik Van der Pol proposed a large-scale installation, which will be exhibited in Rome’s contemporary art museum, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (Macro), towards the end of this year. The work is based around architect Mies van der Rohe’s revolutionary Farnsworth House design, built in 1951.
The Farnsworth House was originally designed as a single-room weekend retreat for Edith Farnsworth, a prominent Chicago-based nephrologist, and located in a once rural setting next to the Fox River, south of Plano, Illinois. Recognised as significant even before it was finished, models of the building were exhibited in New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1947. Since then the building has been considered an icon of minimal modernist design, with its structural elements pared down to express the idea of “dwelling” in its purest form. The building is made up of one single solid wall and three extensive glass walls, to give the inhabitants a feeling of being as close to nature as possible, while still providing the security of an enclosed structure. It represents Van der Rohe’s minimalistic ideology in its most defined form.
Controversially, considering the award’s sponsor, the duo’s winning submission is intended to provide a platform for discussion on climate change, and the effect mankind has on the environment we inhabit.

The Art Newspaper: A large proportion of your output references contemporary art history and other artists. Where does this stem from?

Liesbeth Bik: It came from a reaction to the idea of the authenticity of art. When we began collaborating, the work was really a criticism of this idea of the authentic original. We felt that it was important to not always create new ideas or new works, but that by recreating existing works we could renew a certain way of looking. It was also about taking an opposing view to always producing for an art market.

TAN: What makes a work relevant enough today to be reinterpreted?

Jos Van der Pol: A good example would be our work Sleep with Me, 1997, an installation showing Andy Warhol’s Sleep, 1963, in its entirety. Today you would switch off the television or turn over because Sleep is five-and-a-half hours long and for the first 20 minutes nothing happens at all. It was interesting for us to ask a contemporary audience to endure that. When we showed it in Vilnius the audience was especially young. It got to the point where the character, John Giorno, eventually turns up and the crowd exploded, like “wow” something is actually happening!

LB: That work also represented the idea of a shared experience, which is incredibly important to what we do, as we provided beds for groups of the audience to lie on while watching. We would have around 30 or 40 beds and, for example, in Vilnius around 150 people turned up.

TAN: You mentioned that your work can be seen as being in opposition to the art market.

LB: We are not against the art market or against our work being bought and sold. We want to create specific experiences that can be remembered and taken away by the audience. We want the viewer to commit to a situation, and gain something lasting from it, but not necessarily to have to own the work to do that.

TAN: Do you actively try to create work that cannot be formatted easily for the market?

JVP: No, not necessarily. We don’t make unsellable works of art on purpose!

LB: We do actually want to make sellable work!

JVP: Yes but we’re not succeeding… [laughs]

LB: Sometimes we sell, but funnily enough I don’t think that selling a piece of art has anything to do with the object itself. For example, we sold a large collection of books to a museum that we sourced from an anarchistic publishing house. Although it no longer exists, ultimately the collection is simply a selection from their stock; the books are not unique, they are copies. We curated the selection, but they are just books. It is interesting to us that because the collection has been bought by a museum, it is then treated as a work of art.

JVP: Another aspect of that particular work is the installation of a photocopying machine with the collection, so people can make copies of these books and distribute the content freely. The idea was to play with the rules, asking: “What is a collection and…?”

LB: “…what is value?”

TAN: Your winning submission for the Enel Contemporanea Award 2010 was inspired by Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House. Why that building?

JVP: The fact that the house was built to be so incredibly close to nature, its openness and its transparency; you are totally exposed, it’s a radical gesture and a radical design.

LB: While it is the basis for the Enel work, the Farnsworth House was not actually the starting point. The brief for the award was “energy” and originally we decided on the use of butterflies and their metamorphosis to represent a variety of things within that brief. We realised we couldn’t have them flying around the museum, so we looked for some way of containing them. We researched different designs of glass boxes and eventually came across the Farnsworth House. Mies had originally built it on stilts to survive flooding, as it was next to a river, but over time the water levels have risen and today the house has been flooded six times. In a way that building became like an indicator, as butterflies are, of climate change. For us, all of a sudden, it made sense to use the Farnsworth building in the work.

TAN: And the work is an exact replica of the house, simply scaled down?

LB: It’s 75% of the original, for pragmatic reasons it was not possible to replicate exactly in Macro. The scale is slightly different, the house is in fact taller than the original as the hall in the museum is very high and we wanted to play with the dimensions and size. We thought about the role the public play in the work as both performers and audience. We wanted them to be able to walk around it, as well as within it. We didn’t want the house to be stuck in the space, it should be like a stage that you are able to view from different sides. Conceptually, changing the dimensions fits in with our general oeuvre. We have been working with ideas of models and copies as a tool for activating discourse on notions of nature, idealism, history, life and sustainability, and not as a nostalgic memory for an architectural era that once was. The issue of using a copy plays a role in the sense that the model is loosely based on the Farnsworth house, but it is not exactly like it.

TAN: And what was it that originally inspired the use of butterflies?

LB: The original award brief has certain points that it asks you to work with, such as sustainability and energy. We also understood that it was important to make the piece a spectacle in some way. The most important thing to us was the aspect of sustainability related to climate change, and how we as people influence that. We fly, we drive, we eat, we drink; all of these things have a huge impact. Butterflies are a strong indicator of how humans affect the environment; they are embodied as fertilisers of plants, integral to the earth’s life cycle, and we discovered a statistic that suggests the devastating effect on mankind if butterflies were to die out. They are second in line to bees in this way, but I think we just thought, “well, butterflies are sexier than bees, so we’ll use butterflies”.

TAN: The award is sponsored by energy provider Enel. Did you not feel focusing on climate change may cause some problems?

LB: I think many of our projects are slightly critical. We try to be constructively critical, we don’t want to point the finger and say, “you’re doing it wrong,” but we are ultimately still critical. We also don’t want to be educators, and we are not moralists. Suggesting they are doing something wrong, producing energy from coal or nuclear power and depicting them as the bad guys, that wouldn’t help us win the prize. Also, intellectually, we know that it doesn’t open a dialogue if you simply point the finger.

TAN: So if you don’t want to be an educator are you simply saying that the issue exists?

JVP: I think we are highlighting the situation but also leaving it open for interpretation. If a work is effective then it’s always open for interpretation from different sides.

LB: I mostly appreciate works of art that don’t depict one opinion as right and one as wrong. At the same time I think it’s much more interesting if works are interpretable but still perform politically. They don’t tell me what to think but they do open up a discussion. We want to provide a platform in such a way that you can see these different angles, and then we leave the audience to choose how they want to interpret them.

Hussein Chalayan & Andree Cooke 'In Conversation' - AnOther Current

2010-09-01T04:28:00.000-07:00

Hussein Chalayan and Andree Cooke Photography by Rosey Trickett

In Conversation | Hussein Chalayan, Designer, and Andree Cooke, Curator
— August 31, 2010—

In Conversation is a column by William Oliver bringing together friends and collaborators from across the worlds of fashion, art and design.

Meeting back in 1993, when groundbreaking designer Hussein Chalayan was creating an installation for the Prague-based, British Fashion Council-run Window Gallery, curated at the time by Andree Cooke, the pair have been friends since, collaborating on a variety of projects.

Chalayan's creative approach has always been one based solidly in ideas and concepts, his work blurring the lines between what is described as art and what is described as design, while Cooke is regarded as being one of a handful of curators very much open to this cross-referencing between outputs…

The designer and curator are currently working together on Chalayan's new solo exhibition, B-SIDE, held at London's Spring Projects gallery, a space curated by Cooke and set up originally to provide a platform for contemporary work across the fields of art, fashion and design. This show focuses on the designer/artist's film work, installations, animation and sculpture.

We brought the two together to discuss ways of working, where they fit, and whether or not they feel like they have to.

Walter van Beirendonck - The Joy of Six, Walter highlights 6 Emerging Fashion Students, Dazed Digital, August 2010

2010-08-26T03:19:00.000-07:00

Text by William Oliver

Walter van Beirendonck - The Joy of Six

Click on the link below to read Dazed Digital's profiles of the six Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Art students, as chosen by Walter van Beirendonck.

Walter Van Beirendonck Archive Feature, Dazed and Confused, September 2010

2010-08-12T03:30:00.000-07:00

THE JOY OF SIX

FROM HIS INFAMOUS 9OS LABEL WILD & LETHAL TRASH TO TUTORING AT THE ANTWERP ROYAL ACADEMY, WALTER VAN BEIRENDONCK IS ONE OF FASHION'S TRUE MAVERICKS. HE TALKS TO WILLIAM OLIVER ABOUT CREATIVE TENSION, PUSHING THE LIMITS AND… BEARS.

PHOTOGRAPHY/SCOTT TRINDLE
STYLING/ROBBIE SPENCER

Walter Van Beirendonck is celebrated as one of the infamous Antwerp Six - the ultra-talented group of forward-thinking fashion designers that came out of Belgium in the 1980s, and who went on to be some of the most respected and conceptual characters working in the industry.
For over three decades, he has brought his inimitable character, thought provoking sense of humour and a big splash of colour to the catwalk, but that's not the whole story. Alongside his work as a groundbreaking designer, he has also been a tutor at the Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts Fashion Department for over 20 years (where he originally studied), and has taught many innovative contemporary designers including Kris Van Assche, An Vandevorst and Wim Neels.
If you thought that was more than enough work for one man, think again - Van Beirendonck also regularly curates international exhibitions and has collaborated on high-profile set and costume designs, including U2's legendary PopMart Tour.
Van Beirendonck's large frame and huge beard are a very visual testament to the fact that he has never been one to fit the traditional image associated with a designer, and has stuck closely to his ideals, both creatively and politically. If you were going to associate him with anyone it would be the "Bear"community of large, bearded hairy gay guys, having sent them prowling down the runway in his designs on more than one occasion. Bringing elements from both womenswear and the fetish scene into his designs. he also plays with gender and sexuality - his clothes exude masculinity while challenging the preconceptions associated with what a man can and "should" wear.

DAZED & CONFUSED: What was it that inspired you to start designing?

WALTER VAN BEIRENDONCK: The main reason was David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust period. I liked the fact that you could communicate different ideas through changing your image.

You studied at the Antwerp Royal Academy in the 80s with people like Ann De:meulemeester, Dries Van Noten and Dirk Bikkembergs. What was that like?

We didn't realise how exciting it was then. We did a lot of things together - studying, travelling, parties, concerts ... After we graduated, we worked on shows in Belgium and went to London together. We knew being together helped us work, but we didn't know what it would become.

And you all showed together at the London fashion fair in the mid-80s...

We did that show in 1988. mainly because we wanted to get out of Belgium. as we couldn't attract international press at that time. We just decided London was the best place to go, and it was also relatively cheap. Six of us travelled together to do that fair: Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Bikkembergs, Dirk Van Saene, Marina Vee and myself. It was there that the term the 'Antwerp Six' was coined.

Your sexuality, and sexuality in general, is something you have worked through all of your collections. Why do you like discussing that through fashion?

Its not that I want to discuss it. but it is a part of me that is very important. In my first collection, I was interested in artist Allen Jones, and I think that came through in the use of fetishistic elements. It was not that I was actively involved in fetishism, more that it intrigued me.

Do you feel it is important to allow people to consider sexuality on a broader scale?

I am so surprised that in 2010 people are still shocked by elements of sex and sexuality, as well as race and religion. These differences in people seem completely normal to me. and I am rather confused that it is not like that for everyone. I am trying to achieve an open vision, and I want to
show that there are many things socially possible today.

Just a few years after graduating, you launched the label Wild & Lethal Trash. What was the idea behind that?

The jeans company Mustang approached me when street fashion first started to establish itself, and I went to see the company with my portfolio. They were amazed by the street fashion look that I showed them and gave me the opportunity to create a youth line inside the company. It started as
a streetwear project and ended as a high-end designer line.

What was its appeal?

I think it was the right feeling and the right product at the right moment. That period was about experimenting and looking towards the future in a bright way and it fitted really well into that generation. Eventually, Wild & Lethal Trash became a victim of the 'Prada Sport period' - the end of the 90s when everything became dark again. Then the style was totally minimal, nylon and black, and the company behind W< wanted me to move in that direction. Eventually, I stepped out of the company and left everything behind me. It was a decision about whether to take the money or go for creativity.

Do you feel like you have finally found your place?

Yes, but I always felt like there was a special place for me in fashion, I have never fitted in with the more traditional fashion world but I have always enjoyed that position, slightly as an outsider.

The Walter VB collections have a strong political and social element to them, in your use of text. Where does the inspiration to do that stem from?

In the older collections, just after W <, it really became about personal statements – I wanted to communicate what I was thinking about on a wider scale, outside of just clothing and youth culture. I really am 100 per cent involved in every collection. I do all of the design, the selection of the music, and choose the models and the styling for every fashion show. The collections are an extension of my ideals.

Do you have ideas that run through all your collections?

Each collection has something in particular about it, based on what I see happening in the world. but all my ingredients are similar. The ethnic inspiration, different types of tribes and rituals, are always there, as is changing the boundaries of mens fashion and gender. I like tension, and I try to provoke tension.

You also incorporate fetishistic elements into the collections. What is it you are looking to communicate?

I think that the whole fetish scene is one where boundaries are changed all the time. and I am really interested to try to get that spirit into fashion. For example. working with Parisian corset designer Mr Pearl and using corsets on men's bodies invites that sense of tension. I also love the edge you get by using a latex mask or a latex garment. I am interested in the way a mask can change identities, change roles and create characters.

Are you looking to create a new idea of what menswear can be?

It's not that I want to dress men up in womenswear - I am simply using elements that are normally seen on women on a man, I don't want to imitate a woman. For instance, in the latest collection we did red lips and red nails on the men. It was super-interesting to me that even though both of those ideas are very well-known on women, when placed on men they look really masculine. That masculinity is important to me.

You have designed with larger guys in mind, and have infamously included the gay 'Bear' community on the catwalk. What made you want to do that?

The first time was in 1995 as part of a show called Bears And Fairy Tales. At that time the Bear scene was small and not really known in Europe. And I had to bring in a lot of models from London. I found it interesting that I could show a totally different type of man, because it was very common to use the thin physique. To some people, putting these big guys on the runway was really quite shocking.

You have just shown your most recent collection in Paris, entitled Read My Skin. What was the inspiration behind it?

I'm fascinated by how today everyone has such mixed racial backgrounds. At the Antwerp Academy, where I teach, my pupils have parents who come from all over the world; they have mixed nationalities and mixed cultures. I feel there is a new world rising, one where everyone's nationalities will be so mixed that you end up with a new race. It is also a reaction to how people are judged by their skin colour, I used embroidery and fabric with holes so that you get to see the colour of the skin underneath.

What satisfaction do you get from lecturing at the Academy?

Well I don't know what I get, but I give a lot of energy! No, it is amazing to spend two days in an environment that is purely about creating new things. It is nice to be away from the office, it's almost like two days of holiday every week. It is very energy-consuming though, as I want to get inside the student's heads and push them forwards, but it's also incredibly interesting for me to be around young people with new and fresh ideas.

Do you think it is important to stay connected to the new generation?

I definitely think it is and that is something that I really appreciate - not getting grey together with my audience! Working with young people is important as a fashion designer - you are sharing information but also learning from them.

As someone who has worked across so many platforms and had such influence on so many people, how do you think you will be remembered?

I think that everyone will agree, or at least I hope they will, that I really did try to do it in an unconventional way and come up with new propositions. I hope that I will be remembered for that and also that I pushed some boundaries. That's really important for me because it's ultimately what I want to do as a fashion designer. If that aspect wasn't a part of this, then I wouldn't even consider doing it.

Polish Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennial, Dazed and Confused, September 2010

2010-08-12T03:28:00.000-07:00

Artist Agnieszka Kurant and architect Aleksandra Wasilkowska, both based in Warsaw, Poland, have collaborated on an ambitious site-specific interactive installation titled Emergency Exit, for this year’s Polish Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Inspired by the Black Swan Theory, an idea surrounding the high impact of unpredictable and unexpected ‘rare’ events that was coined by Lebanese-born scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan, Kurant and Wasilkowska have conceived what they describe as a “fictional urban sport” for their pavilion.

Building a large-scale structure that resembles a ski-jump towering above an abyss of clouds, the pair wants the pavilions visitors to let go of their fears and inhibitions, climb the tower and leap off.

With a foam bed positioned covertly underneath the clouds, the installation’s participants will land comfortably, but only after releasing themselves from the preconceptions they have about the safety of making the jump. “One of the project’s points of departure was our interest in the loss of control over form and meaning in both art and architecture. This project is related to the complimentary and contradictory needs of the city dwellers, related on the one hand to the need for safety and order, and on the other the need for a certain wildness and spontaneity,” says Wasilkowska. “We also wanted to introduce something that will break the usual system of architecture and to integrate some direct experience as opposed to the mock ups, models and films that will mainly be shown in the other countries pavilions,” continues Kurant.

More than simply building something that draws people in with its spectacle, the ideology behind the work is to produce an installation that creates its own story through word of mouth, a localized urban myth specific to the biennial. “Small events can cause high levels of impact on the complex systems of society, economy and politics. A very small change can cause a major change. These rare events can be rumor or urban legend, and that is what in some way we wanted to do with this project,” explains Wasilkowska. “We want to break logic, provoke confusion and change the normal perception of what you expect to see at the biennial, to get people all across the site talking about what is possible in the Polish Pavilion.”

Emergency Exit is the result of the collaborative duo approaching architecture, and the needs of people living in the city, with an artistic and creative mindset. It provides an alternative to what they see as the ‘logic of the mundane urban reality’ by giving those involved a chance to step outside the normal rules associated with city life. The work offers a sense of danger, something unexpected and unknown, in a situation that is so often strictly regulated.

Martin Parr, Dictators Private Jets, Dazed and Confused, September 2010

2010-08-12T03:26:00.000-07:00

Taken from the Archive of Modern Conflict, a series of photographic collections documenting various aspects of war and social disturbance, this image shows the opulent, and ever-so-slightly eccentric, interior design of a private airplane.

Selected by Martin Parr as part of his curated exhibitions at this year’s Brighton Photo Biennial, the image was shot by photographer Nick Gleis in the mid 80s and forms part of a series of 15 photographs depicting dictator’s, billionaire’s and other megalomaniac’s aesthetic sensibilities when it comes to the inside of their private jets.

“The Archive of Modern Conflict is one of the most remarkable collections of photographs I have ever come across. When I was putting together the programme for the Brighton Photo Biennial I had the image in the back of my mind, knowing that it had to be shown somehow,” explains Parr.

This particular photograph was taken in the jet owned by Saudi Arabian billionaire Adnan Khashoggi. Khashoggi made his money brokering arms deals between Saudi and the US in the 70s and 80s and became infamous for his involvement in a string of scandals including one of the biggest divorce settlements in history. During the 80s he was considered the richest man in the world and conducted business almost entirely from his yacht, the worlds largest at that time. The design of the private jet was completed by renowned Texan ‘interior artist’ Michael Reese and featured a futurist theme with holographic arch, video projector, casino and revolving bed.

Described by Parr as “remarkable kitsch imagery that highlights a fantastic sense of bad taste and money down the drain”, this photograph, and the others in the collection, allows the viewer to glimpse inside the otherwise unseen inner sanctum of the super powerful, super wealthy and very possibly super corrupt.

“These pictures are examples of the huge amounts of money that has been spent, in what are often the most impoverished continents, purely on the glory and the egos of these dictators. I mean, it’s so wonderfully corrupt and disgusting, it’s fantastic,” says Parr.

Brighton Photo Biennial is on show at various locations throughout Brighton and Hove 2 October -14 November.

David LaChapelle's return to Fine Art, The Art Newspaper, July 2010

2010-08-10T03:19:00.000-07:00

David LaChapelle's return to fine art
The photographer known for his glossy, glamourised images reveals why he fell out of love with fashion and is now focusing on his art

Over a 20-year career, David LaChapelle has carved a name for himself as an enfant terrible of pop culture photography. The cutting, acerbic wit and layered symbolism in his celebrity portraiture, fashion and advertising images is seen as a bolt of honesty—albeit a glamourised and high-gloss one—in an industry known for its false vision of reality.

During the last few years, LaChapelle has moved away from commercial work to focus on fine art. While retaining his unique visual style, this new direction highlights his interest and understanding of both contemporary practice and art history.

While in London working on his current exhibition, “The Rape of Africa” at gallery Robilant + Voena (until 25 May), The Art Newspaper met up with the infamous photographer to discuss the show, falling out of love with fashion and the new path his work is taking.

The Art Newspaper: What is your interest in fine art photography?

David LaChapelle: The fact that so much contemporary work is conceptual. When you are looking at it you know that it can only be art because it couldn’t be anything else, but it can be difficult to unravel. That is something that activates me; I want to make work that that has a language people can read.

TAN: Although you have had a successful career shooting for advertising and magazines, you actually began in galleries. Why did you move into commercial work?

DLC: I started showing in galleries in the early 1980s in New York City. I felt successful because my friends liked the work, and some of my shows were well attended, but my last gallery show of that period, in 1991, really wasn’t. At that point, when you’re not reaching an audience, you have to look for other ways of getting your work seen.

TAN: Why do you think the show was not well received at that time?

DLC: To be honest I was naïve about the whole process back then, I didn’t even know that there was a hierarchy of galleries. I was showing in SoHo but the gallery itself was completely off the map. I became a little disillusioned, had met Warhol and was shooting for Interview. I began to treat the magazine as my gallery; if people ripped out the pictures to keep, that to me was like a collector or a museum taking the works.

TAN: After a long-standing career shooting celebrity portraits you have now moved back into fine art. Your latest exhibition centres on one image, The Rape of Africa. What was your idea behind that photograph?

DLC: I visited the National Gallery and began looking at Botticelli’s Venus and Mars. I wasn’t in love with Botticelli in the way I was in love with Michelangelo, but I saw this painting and was so excited by its personification of the gods in a figurative way. Having people represent war, greed, love and beauty, and the fact that they were post-coitus, seemed incredible. It occurred to me that the painting could be contemporary; the ideas in it still seemed so relevant today; as fast moving as our world is, we haven’t progressed with our morality or spirituality.

The use of Africa in my photograph is about it being the cradle of civilisation, the idea of Mother Earth and Mother Africa. The production of gold in Africa is destroying both the society and the country itself but continues because of our obsession in the West. The human suffering and the cost to the environment are incalculable. We are degrading our mother and we are raping Mother Earth in our quest for financial security, but while doing so we are ensuring our own insecurity.

TAN: Why did you choose Naomi Campbell as the model for Venus?

DLC: Botticelli used Simonetta Vespucci as his model for Venus. She was famous in Italy at that time for being a great beauty, and Naomi Campbell is a great beauty of our time. I wanted to twist the idea slightly and talk about greed and wealth etc. It was not just about Africa; Naomi in a way was the representation of Africa even though she is not actually from Africa. I looked at her and thought it didn’t matter, I didn’t need to have a woman from Africa to represent what I was trying to say.

TAN: Will The Rape of Africa form part of a series?

DLC: No, this picture is a stand-alone work. I am producing a lot of other pieces that are a series, but they are taking longer and longer to complete. Not because I am getting lazier with my production, but as I move forwards I am applying further layers to the narrative and symbolism in the imagery, and that process adds time.

TAN: Have you now fully made the move from fashion into fine art?

DLC: When I first left [fashion] there were a lot of reasons. I felt I had said all I could say within the format of the images I was making at that time and I had started to come up against a few problems from clients surrounding my ideas. I shot the series Jesus is my Homeboy for i-D, a hip contemporary style magazine, but they had issues with it because of the depiction of religion. I shot something for Italian Vogue that they had problems with because of the destruction in the pictures, and the fact that it was on newsstands around the time of hurricane Katrina. Also I wasn’t interested in the same things I was 25 years ago; I didn’t want to meet any new pop stars. It occurred to me I didn’t have the creative freedom I wanted. Fashion and magazines as a vehicle to reach a broader audience had reached an end for me, so I looked for other outlets.

When I first started the art pieces I said I would never go back to commercial but the studio became really quiet and I started to lose touch with my people. What I do is really collaborative, there is a huge amount of work that goes into the set building and designing. People think it is all done digitally but that is a fallacy. Really, because of this, I have done some commercial work recently but my real focus is now on my art.

Monsters Illustrators Interviews, ViceStyle.com, August 2010

2010-08-09T03:33:00.000-07:00

Photography by Saga Sig, Illustration by AC Bananas

For the recent Monsters shoot, we took five of our favourite illustrators and asked them to do their thing on some photographs of a model in good threads. It's sort of half Ralph Steadman, half psychedelic Disney, and being a monster seems to be as good a fashion fantasy as any. We asked the illustrators about their twisted outlook on life, and if this was a result of their dark and contorted childhood. Or not.

NOKI X Lovebox, Dazed Digital, July 2010

2010-07-22T03:00:00.000-07:00

© Morgan White

Showing a collage of his current collection, combined with artisan pieces created by various artists and designers, NOKI presented the first ever catwalk show on the main stage of a festival at Lovebox on Sunday. The sustainability minded designer and artist has been producing one offs and 'street couture' pieces for over a decade, and fittingly the show opened with a montage of archive film tracing the last eight years of NOKI's history shown on the monumental stage screens. Using vintage garments and dead stock to create breath-taking pieces imbued with attitude, the inner city festival presentation was the perfect situation to platform the NOKI ideology. Along with last nights opening of the new 123 Store in London's Brick Lane, which showcases the NOKI label with other designers over three floors, the coming year looks like its going to be the one that see's the labels sustainably created one off's get the attention they deserve.

Dazed Digital: How did the Lovebox show come about?
NOKI: I was asked if I was interested in doing a NOKI show at the festival by the promoter James Bailey, and I really liked the idea and what was possible in that context. I was inspired by it being the first ever show of its kind on a main stage at a festival. We curated the current collection to make it a high fashion statement, presenting 20 girls and 24 looks. We pulled together a lot of great people to work on the show, amazing stylist Kim Howells, Gloved Up on the gloves and shoes, Piers Atkinson did the millinery creating a basic shape from recycled New Era samples that I then customised further, Craig Lawrence on knitwear and Dr Hook working with us on the crochet neck braces.

DD: How did you feel it went?
NOKI: It was fantastic, I always wanted to be a rock star! We were three sets away from Grace Jones, what more do you want? It looked great and was nice to pull so many people together under the NOKI umbrella. I am really all about collaboration and the NOKI House of Sustainability umbrella embraces arts, crafts and creativity. The show ended up looking really Amazonian for one reason or another and kind of Mayan, it definitely had something of the Apocalypto about it. A hip hop Apocalypto.

DD: How are you approaching the newly opened shop?
NOKI: The floor has been minimally styled so that we can keep moving things around, and changing the landscape in there. It is new for me to be connecting with the retail world in this way but I like it. It gives the idea of the sustainable and the one off a new angle, and a new way of being consumed. I'm entering a commercial era, but in a way that works for NOKI. It feels like 13 years of being in the wilderness and now we're entering the retail landscape.

Martine Rose, Dazed & Confused, August 2010

2010-07-15T03:23:00.000-07:00

Combining sportswear elements, streetwear influences and tailoring doesn’t at first sound like the most refined of combinations. Martine Rose however, with her eponymous menswear label, manages to add these ideas together and come out with something well thought out, interesting and super desirable. “Working with the rules attached to a shirt, for example, which essentially hasn't changed in 100 years, and combining it with something that breaks the conventions of what men will wear, is hugely exciting” Rose explains. “The thing about sportswear is that you can get away with murder. Try putting a man in a fluro yellow shirt with a blue stripe and generally you’re going to have problems. Within the realms of sportswear it is all possible!”

Rose first came to the attention of the fashion industry with a unisex t-shirt line, LMNOP, which she started in an attempt to get some creativity back into her life during an internship. Originally making everything by hand, screen printing the labels and paper bags the t-shirts were sold in through to making the T’s themselves, the first collection was picked up by a Japanese distributor and was soon stocked in high profile London boutiques including Browns, Browns Focus, B-Store, and internationally.

Eventually graduating to her current Martine Rose line, this label is a much more focused operation. Originally based purely around shirting, it has progressed during the last three seasons to include full looks, with t-shirts, jackets and some beautiful bondage trousers, which were shown last season. The labels growth has been organic, but at the same time considered, and has produced consistently interesting yet wearable pieces. “It's been slow but ultimately I just really want to get it right. I keep listening, keep watching and feeling what is relevant and what isn't. Slow and steady wins the race,” says Rose.

Recently adding a collaboration with Timberland to her own line, Rose looks set to achieve even further success over the coming year. A solid pairing considering Rose’s influences and Timberland’s background and customer, the combination is ripe to produce forward thinking, contemporary and at the same time accessible outerwear. “I really wanted to create something that was practical, but that had my own signature on it. I hope that I have created a fusion of the two, a piece of clothing with all the performance details, and a thoroughly modern silhouette for a thoroughly modern man!”

FLESH, Dazed & Confused, August 2010

2010-07-15T03:20:00.000-07:00

Heralded as bringing the now vibrant gay scene to Manchester in the late 80s and early 90’s, DJ and promoter Paul Cons’ FLESH club night, originally at the infamous Hacienda, returns this month after an absence of over 20 years. “I’ve been asked many times to bring FLESH back, and I just thought, if not now, when?” says Cons.

FLESH originally began as Gay Monday, but at the time, around 1985, the city had a relatively intolerant attitude to gay culture and with the night managing to pull in an average audience of around 50 people, it lasted only 6 months. While it wasn’t hugely popular Cons’ kept on at Hacienda manager Tony Wilson to try again, excited by his Hacienda funded ‘cultural inspiration’ trips to New York, where he hung out with nightclub luminaries Micheal Alig and Larry Tee at Paradise Garage and The Tunnel.

In 1991, when the Hacienda was struggling with its reputation for drugs and gangs, Cons’ decided to approach Wilson with a new idea. “I remember having a conversation with Tony and telling him we should do a fuck off fabulous gay night at the Hacienda to change the whole scally vibe that had engulfed the club. I told him Manchester gangsters would be too scared to come to a gay night!” he says.

FLESH came at the perfect time with Manchester’s gays ready and waiting for something they could really get stuck into. From day one the club was packed with a super dressed up and hedonistic crowd. It pulled in pretty much everyone from the scene including coach loads of Wolverhampton drag queens, naked guys, someone called Nicky Cellotape Tits, the Pet Shop Boys, Robbie Williams in his early Take That days, a young William Baker, Matthew Williamson and even Ryan Giggs. “Unlike in London, where nights like this may be taken for granted, people used to spend weeks preparing their looks. All the designer shops would be mobbed, the hairdressers super busy. Designers of choice were John Richmond, Vivienne Westwood, Nick Coleman or Red or Dead, and generally people showed as much flesh as possible. Feather boa’s were in, before they were naff!” says Cons.

The night revitalized the Hacienda and became known for its debauched parties. Showers were installed in the club and subsequent dripping wet and writhing clubbers became a usual site. Performances were a staple of FLESH. One particular show from legend Leigh Bowery included him giving simulated birth live on stage; “with shed loads of fake blood and gore bringing 1,000 sweaty topless men and women down off their E’s”.

With the gay scene today fully established, commercial and crossing over into the mainstream, Cons sees restarting FLESH as a chance to bring back a bit of the edge that it was once known for, outside of what’s happening in London. “It’s a good time to look back and celebrate, but I also think we need to look to the future and what comes next. I’d love the night to be a kind of queer re-boot, a night of memories, passion and excitement that hopefully will inspire who knows what? For me this isn’t about nostalgia - it feels necessary,” he says.

FLESH, Bank Holiday Sunday, the 29th August at FAC 251 The Factory, Manchester 10pm – late

The Art Newspaper, Graham Hudson, Art Basel 2010 Daily Editions

2010-06-21T04:56:00.000-07:00

Chosen from a shortlist of new and emerging designers pulled together by a committee of industry insiders, Design Miami/Basel have selected four individuals and collectives to showcase in their Designers of the Future Award, sponsored by W Hotels. The resulting commissions will be on show in various locations throughout the fair.

Inspired by his recent Kings Cross Central artist residency, based on a regeneration project building site surrounding disused nightclubs in London’s Kings Cross area, artist Graham Hudson has produced a large-scale modular scaffolding frame bar and venue, complete with beer stains, for his contribution to the award.

Responding to a brief set by the high end hotel chain, to create a DJ booth that can travel to their various sites internationally, Hudson has treated the project as a continuation of his residency work, titled The End of The End, due to be exhibited in October at the German Gymnasium on London’s Pancras Road. The project takes its name from the closing of famous nightclub The End, one of many London clubs that shut their doors in the early part of this decade.

Hudson sees the closing of these venues as culturally important, viewing it as the end of a movement in popular culture, and the end of a form of youth culture. “Has there been another comparable counter culture movement since then, other than the emergence of online communities?” he asks. “I was not a huge fan of the club scene itself but I am interested in the subtle way that laws were changed around that time, giving bars later licenses while cutting club licenses back. It moved people from nightclubs into late night bars, which were in a way easier to monitor and control. I am using the closing of clubs as a metaphor for the state interest in personal freedom”.

Not only focusing on the legality issues that these clubs faced, Hudson also cites the integration of house music into the mainstream, along with the rise of the Internet, as reasons for the closures and subsequent death of the scene. “The music had become available everywhere, and therefore the specialist scene that surrounded it was diluted” he explains.

The Designer of the Future installation is built from tubular scaffolding to create the various sections of a nightclub, and can be made from new or reused materials, giving each build a different look. It consists of a bar with dance floor and raised DJ booth, and is designed as a blueprint which can be used to create the work in situ and in keeping with each new locations different spatial restrictions.

The aesthetic of the structure is inspired by remnants left in the empty Kings Cross clubs, which have been Hudson’s studio for the last 12 months. His DJ booth is based on ones from these various venues including The Cross, Bagleys and Turnmills, and is raised up as an “icon to the creative source, the DJ”, in keeping with the design typical of late 90s clubs. He has clad sections of the scaffolding in black, and dirtied the structure; including using spilt beer on certain areas. “I want the work to feel like somewhere that has seen a better day, and definitely not be seen as an object of high design” he says.

Hudson sees the traveling bar as a way of heralding not only the defunct venues themselves, but also what they stood for. The idea is to promote discussion on what has ended socially and culturally with the removal of these venues as meeting places, and to produce a functional piece of design. “I want the bar to be used, and to be best seen when you are interacting with it and other people. But it is also a memorial to the death of this culture, and to that episode of society” he says.

Over the last three years Hudson has regularly used scaffolding in his work. It is the ability to build something that is “ultimately an exoskeleton which gives you a sense of scale without entering into the recreation debate” that he says interests him. Previous works have included the large-scale installation An insignificant extension in space and a considerable extension in time (Prototype for a Fendi Museum, Milan), 2009. The piece consisted of a scaled down scaffolding build of a museum for the high fashion Italian brand, complete with sectioned rooms and display objects bearing the Fendi logo.

While some of his previous works may have been interactive, in part at least, the W Hotels commission is the first of Hudson’s projects that are both fully functional and an artwork with its own theory. Although there is an opportunity to discuss what it is that makes something a piece of art or design, or to examine the meaning of destination in regards to his placement in a design fair, Hudson doesn’t want his work to be categorized. “It’s good for artists work to be shown in Design Basel. Why not? I think working across those platforms gives a certain freedom and it means that the functionality of an object, and the aesthetic and ideology, are all focused,” he says.

Converse & Dazed Art Award - Shortlist Artists Interview: Peter Ainsworth

2010-06-21T04:47:00.000-07:00

Launched in April, the Converse/Dazed 2010 Emerging Artists Award heralds the next generation of the UK’s creative stars. On offer for the winning entrant is a first prize of £6,000 along with an exhibition for the shortlisted artists at London contemporary art space, Stephen Friedman Gallery. Open to non-represented artists under 35, the winner is to be selected by six acclaimed art world figures including presenter and writer Tim Marlow, gallerist Sadie Coles and artist Mark Titchner. The lucky ones are Peter Ainsworth, Francesca Anfossi, Steve Bishop, Laura Buckley and Jess Flood-Paddock and over the next five weeks we will profile the short-listed artists in the run up to the announcement of the overall winner. First out on Dazed Digital is photographer and film-maker Ainsworth, who graduated from his degree in Fine Art in 2006, following it with a Photography MA at London College of Communication in 2007. His work examines the city and our way of living in it; how we are affected by it and the traces we leave.

Rok Hwang, Dazed and Confused, July 2010

2010-06-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

How to Look Good from Every Angle

The London based designer Rok Hwang's points of reference are seriously eclectic. He first got excited about clothes after seeing the epitome of simplistic sportswear cool that is the Nike Air Force One; he notes 90s Pierre Cardin and 60s Yves Saint Laurent as his designs of choice; and he gives Tilda Swinton a nod as The One that he has always wanted to dress.
Since graduating from Central Saint Martins with an MA in fashion just last year, Hwang has been receiving some deservedly high-profile attention. His first womenswear collection - shown as the finale to the prestigious CSM catwalk show and presented on schedule as part of London Fashion Week - was lauded with praise from the likes of Vogue lcalia, Vogue Girl and Harper's Bazaar. But Hwang is not just a press darling; he has also been credited with numerous awards, such as the Chloe Award in 2009 and more recently, the 2010 L'Oreal Professional prize.
Although he approaches both men's and womenswear with a similar aesthetic, something he describes as "reacting slightly against the eye, in a way that is not easily understood", Hwang also has an awareness of the differences in creating clothes for
men and women. "My approach to menswear is slightly more careful and it's about being myself," explains the designer, "I think about attitude, music and how the fabric feels on skin", I become really conscious of the fine borderline in mens design. For womenswear, I tend to think more of aesthetics, image, freshness, originality and timing."
Originality and timing are definitely two points Hwang was in tune with when he sent his girls down the runway earlier this year. His star-shape themed, draped fabric dresses were accompanied by bold shoulders, complementing yet contrasting tones, an unique geometric cut-outs that gave his classicism a distinct contemporary edge.
No doubt it is this combination of elements that has resulted in numerous award judge
recognising his huge potential.
With a sincere love of fashion - "my only hope is to be working hard in the industry, all day and night" - and a formidable understanding of how to design distinctly beautiful an elegant clothes, it is only too easy to understand why Rok Hwang is one to keep your eye on.

AnOther Current, In Conversation, Maison Martin Margiela 20 Exhibition, June 4, 2010

2010-06-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

Kaat Debo and Bob Verhelst - Photography by Rosey Trickett

In Conversation | Maison Martin Margiela 20 Exhibition
— June 4, 2010—

In Conversation is a bi-monthly column by William Oliver bringing together friends and collaborators from across the worlds of fashion, art and design

After its debut in Antwerp at the MoMU Fashion Museum, and a second showing in Munich, the Maison Martin Margiela ‘20’ Exhibition, celebrating the label’s 20th anniversary, opens at Somerset House in London. Eagerly anticipated, the show presents some of the most forward-thinking and avant-garde artisan pieces alongside catwalk videos, installations, jewellery and three fantastic films showing the wardrobes – and numerous styled looks – of three dedicated Margiela collectors. Pulling together the three main figures behind the curation, organisation and aesthetic of the exhibition, we asked Kaat Debo (curator of exhibitions at MoMU), Bob Verhelst (exhibition designer and scenographer for Maison Martin Margiela), and Claire Catterall (curator at Somerset House) about the show, and what makes MMM quite so special.

AnOther Current - 'In Conversation' Hervé Mikaeloff and Pablo Bronstein

2010-06-02T04:36:00.000-07:00

Herve Mikaeloff, Pablo Bronstein and William Oliver Photography by Rosey Trickett

Art
In Conversation | Hervé Mikaeloff and Pablo Bronstein
— June 1, 2010—

In Conversation is a bi-monthly column by William Oliver bringing together friends and collaborators from across the worlds of fashion, art and design

To celebrate the opening of the Louis Vuitton Maison on London’s New Bond Street, curator Hervé Mikaeloff has brought together artists, performers and stylists to create works and installations for the store. At the centre of these is a performance conceived by Pablo Bronstein, an artist known for his architectural drawings and sketches, based around the ideology of luxury. The resulting work, utilizing heritage and archive Vuitton pieces, brought with it difficulties and challenges, but has resulted in what Bronstein describes as his “most critical performance to date.”

AnOther Current 'In Conversation' - Modern Menswear with Kim Jones, Aitor Throup and Jonathon Anderson

2010-05-27T01:39:00.000-07:00

Portrait by William Oliver

Art
In Conversation | Modern Menswear
— May 26, 2010—

In Conversation is a bi-monthly column by William Oliver bringing together friends and collaborators from across the worlds of fashion, art and design

In a brightly-lit, glass-walled office on the third floor of the Alfred Dunhill headquarters in central London, sit three of the city's most innovative and forward thinking menswear designers. Kim Jones established himself during the early part of the Noughties. His considered take on youth and the attitude and masculinity of his designs earned him a deserved fanbase, further cemented by his later collaboration with the sportswear brand Umbro. In 2008 Jones joined iconic British menswear brand Alfred Dunhill as creative director, a union that garnered much praise. Sat next to Jones are Aitor Throup and Jonathan Anderson. Throup's conceptual and technological experimentation, combined with his refined aesthetic and intense interest in the functional, has earned him a cult following. The Argentina-born designer, who has worked with Stone Island and CP Company, and recently designed the England football kit for Umbro, will shortly be releasing his much anticipated debut signature collection. Jonathan Anderson is the creative director of his own line, JW Anderson, currently heralded as one of the bright lights of Britain’s new menswear talent. He is also credited with revitalising Sunspel, a company known for its fine quality men’s underwear. Dutifully appreciative of London's heritage as a hub of men’s design, the three designers represent a sharp new take on British menswear. We brought them together to discuss a changing industry, the effect of a digital marketplace, and the death of youth culture as we know it.

Inez & Vinoodh, Dazed and Confused, June 2010

2010-05-14T03:41:00.000-07:00

Inez & Vinoodh
Text by William Oliver

The incredible catalogue of work produced by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin over the last 25 years has exploded the inner workings of both art photography and fashion photography.

Creating highly charged and subtly manipulated imagery, the duo - who are a team both professionally and personally - have worked with Lanvin, Yves Saint Laurent, Balmain, Gucci and Chanel on images that exude aspiration and glamour, yet at the same time have
an intellectualised, almost politicised slant. Their upcoming retrospective Pretty Much Everything, at photography space Foam_Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam, is a continuous flow of 275 works. The individual pieces and their interaction with one another provides an insight into the couple's beautifully intricate, yet calm
and collected, way of seeing.

DAZED & CONFUSED: What is it about each other's personality that inspires you?

INEZ VAN LAMSWEERDE & VlNOODH MATADIN: What one lacks, the other has. We are very similar and can't bear to be apart, even for as little as three hours.

How does your collaborative process work?

We work on everything together and shoot at the same time from different angles. We value each other's opinions and bounce ideas off each other, so that in the end only the most essential ideas remain; it's an exciting process.

What comment are you making about advertising and fashion through your work?

In our opinion, fashion imagery shows people the route to glamour, aspiration, desire, nostalgia. The nostalgic element is what drives fashion. It reminds us of the time when people started to define their visual identity, usually at around eight years old. Depending on the age of the designer, stylist or photographer, this "re-living" of the past through fashion is what inspires trends. We try to approach all of this with humour and reverence.

What is your favourite piece of work from your extensive collaboration with designers MM Paris?

We are creating an entire font together. There is now a female and male alphabet, numbers, and punctuation. There are also masks based on our photographs of male and female models, young models and celebrity portraits. Next will be monetary symbols that will be based on our pictures of children.

Why did you appear both in front of, and behind, the camera for the recent Lanvin campaign?

It was Alber's [designer Alber Elbaz at Lanvin] wish to have "the best of Inez and Vinoodh", in every sense of the word. We decided to remake some of our iconic images using ourselves as the models.

And how did you feel about modeling?

Scared! We had to distance ourselves from the process and be entirely trusting.

Do you have a particular favourite in your upcoming retrospective at Foam?

"Me Kissing Vinoodh (passionately), 1999". It is the best example of how. in our work, digital manipulation is used to visualise an emotional and charged internal state. It denounces the notion of surface.

Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Pretty Much Everything, Photographs 1985-2010, is showing at Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, from June 25 to September 15

Collier Schorr New Faces Portfolio styled by Robbie Spencer & Katie Shillingford, Dazed Digital

2010-05-14T03:37:00.000-07:00

Collier Schorr Extravaganza
Legendary photographer, mixing fine art and fashion editorial skills, show off her talent in Dazed's June issue and on Dazed Digital
Text by William Oliver | Published 14 May 2010

One of the few photographers that comfortably and effectively straddle both fine art and editorial fashion work, Collier Schorr has been shooting beautiful images of youth for nearly 25 years. Approaching both aspects of her output in the same way there is little to differentiate between the two, her images examining gender, sexuality and ambiguity with a tenderness rarely seen. Her recent portfolio for Dazed & Confused is no different and the haunting results leave you with a feeling of authenticity that only she manages to capture. We caught up with her to talk about the shoot, her process of working and what she has planned for the future.

Doug Aitken, extended interview, Dazed Digital

2010-04-20T04:31:00.000-07:00

Doug Aitken on Art
As the California-based artist presents PA, an annual photographic art magazine, Aitken talks inspiration, insomnia and images with Dazed Digital.

Working with film, photography, installation, architecture, design and text, to name just a few of his approaches, and having collaborated with Tilda Swinton, Donald Sutherland, Cat Power, Werner Herzog, Ed Ruscha, Rem Koolhaus and Robert Altman, amongst many others, Doug Aitken is both an avid collaborator and incredibly prolific. While his work comes in many forms there is a similar tone and register throughout that exudes a sense of displacement and a dreamlike aesthetic. He has exhibited in museums, institutes and at high profile events internationally, including the Venice Biennale, the Whitney and Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Pompidou Centre, Paris, during his 30-year career. Doug’s recent work, a contribution of over sixty images to photographic art annual PA Magazine is a beautiful set of photographs, shot over a ten-year period, that locates the viewer in his hazy, warm, pastel-coloured vision of a city that seems something like L.A, but is in fact a composite of many cities worldwide. Shot on the fly, rarely, if ever, set up, the pictures engulf the viewer in a compelling yet evasive narrative that draws you in and leaves you desperately searching for more.

Carsten Nicolai, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter and Siobhan Davies - 'In Conversation' AnOther Current

2010-04-19T06:02:00.000-07:00

© William Oliver

In Conversation | Movement and Sound
Interview and portrait by William Oliver

As part of Parallel Voices, the recent programme of dance, movement and sound performances held at the Siobhan Davies Studio in London, a series of artists from varying disciplines came together to show and discuss their work, and collaborate.

Curated by electronic sound art pioneer Carsten Nicolai (who recently composed the music and light performance for the Calvin Klein A/W10 collection show), Parallel Voices included contributions from Throbbing Gristle’s Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter, Ryoji Ikeda who is a label mate of Carsten’s on Raster Noton and a regular collaborator, and legendary German industrial act Einsturzende Neubauten’s Blixa Bargeld.

We brought together Carsten, Cosey, Chris and Siobhan, the studio’s founder and auteur of movement and choreography to discuss how, and why, they make the work they do.

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Doug Aitken, PA Magazine, Dazed and Confused May 2010

2010-04-15T03:26:00.000-07:00

The California-based, multi-faceted artist Doug Aitken presents a voyeuristic, surreal and hazy collection of photographs in his issue of PA, a new annual photographic art magazine. The periodical offers an artist working in photography a number of pages, unlimited by advertising, in each issue, and invites them to freely contribute their own and other artists' works.
These beautifully printed editions, published once a year, are now on their second issue, which features Aitken and the illustrator Phillip Hays. Aitken has included some of the late Hays's work - watercolour portraits depicting icons of the 60s that Aitken describes as "masterpieces of acidic control".
The fact that PA is presented in an unlimited way, and not restricted by commercial constraints, was what originally intrigued the artist. "It is a very special thing; no advertising, no hidden agenda, just a set of white pages waiting to be filled” says Aitken, "Instead of thinking about classic cliches, such as an introduction or how to close and how to sequence, this was an open landscape” Aitken's images are almost dreamlike. They were taken all over the world, span a decade and are a combination of un-choreographed portraits and natural and man-made landscapes. The pictures all have a similar feeling and register, with Aitken describing them as "subconscious snapshots that you see out of the window of a passing car or train; things you observe while waiting for someone”.
The artist created the series to have no real beginning or end. "I like that it almost has too many images and that they have no priority," he says. "They merge and bleed to create a dialogue back and forth; an emotional tone and frequency."
There is a common feeling between the PA series and some of Aitken's previous photography and film making - he also works with architecture, installation and text, creating a sense of dislocation. The film Sleepwalkers (2007) features Tilda Swinton and Donald Sutherland among others, and was shown as four individual films screened simultaneously. Originally presented on the external walls of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the common thread was a character that "increasingly vanished into the world around them". Describing his artistic viewpoint, Aitken says he is "fascinated by the indecisive moment and the peripheral view".
The PA photographs have a warm and inviting feel to them and, similar to his other work, they somehow inspire the emotions connected to daydreaming; a sense of being wrapped up in your own thoughts and of looking at the world in a way that is uniquely your own. These pictures leave you asking questions, wanting to know more, and at the same time, provide you with incredible, aesthetically pleasing triggers that allow you to fantasise your own personal narrative.

Jenny Holzer - Your History, Dazed and Confused, February 2010

2010-02-21T10:08:00.000-08:00

I was born in Ohio[1], at Holzer Hospital oddly enough. My father was an athlete and an unsuccessful car dealer, my mother a rider.
I drew madly and happily until I was five or six years old, but then through my teenage years I tried to become normal. It was only in my 20s, when I realised normalcy was out of reach and maybe I was okay with that, that I went back to art.
I first studied the standard liberal arts, including biology, English, and sociology, and changed schools every year or so. I spent time at two high schools, Duke University, the University of Chicago, Ohio University and eventually the Rhode Island School of Design[2], which was officially ‘arty’.
Before RISD I thought I should become a lawyer. The idea of being an artist worried me for a long time. A lot of my family literally helped people. One set of grandparents included a doctor and a nurse, and the other set a capitalist and schoolteacher. I was uncertain that art’s wonderful lack of utility could ‘do good’ in the same way.
I enjoyed Rhode Island, but I nearly was kicked out for painting my studio - windows, walls, ceiling, door, and floor - in a washy blue. This blue hardly was radical but it was too odd for what then was a relatively conservative painting department.
I was accepted into the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program[3] and that saved me, and through that I was able to graduate.
Although Rhode Island was difficult occasionally, it was useful and pleasant to have ‘fellow travelers,’ other art students, around me. And I had good experiences with professors outside the painting department. These men were sincere and dedicated; they couldn’t imagine themselves as anything but artists.
It was at RISD, and then at the Whitney, where my conceptual work developed. I'd go to the library to search and find physics, psychology, economics, and many other sorts of diagrams. I was curious about the relationship between image and text, and diagrams seemed a rather essential representation of information. I appreciated the way the captions gave you what you needed in very few words.
This research led me to write on my mediocre abstract paintings, but that was an unhappy combination. There was colour and atmosphere in these paintings, not satisfactory colour or atmosphere, but the start of what I try to have in my installations now. And the diagrams encouraged me to search hard for concrete content, an ongoing occupation.
At the Whitney I began looking at ideology and wanted to approach belief systems from many different angles. I went to the left wing, to centrists, and to the right wing. I read politicians, critics, crackpots, dictators, and visionaries. I began to compose short pronouncements distilled from what I had read[4]. These sentences became the Truisms[5], the one-liners that started my art life. Once I had the Truisms, I had to decide where to display them. They didn’t belong in a book, and they weren’t poetry; so I came up with the idea of displaying them on street posters. I wanted to give short versions of the big questions to people in an accessible form.
At that time I had no interest in showing in a gallery space. I still wasn’t sure I was an artist, or that I could be or deserved to be. At that time I thought of my practice more like standing on a soapbox - but without actually being there. The anonymity was critical. I wanted people to consider the ideas but not give more than passing thought to who produced them.
Sometime during that period my work became noticed, through the kindness of Dan Graham[6] who saw my posters and mentioned them to the curator Kasper Konig, and I began to have an official art career. I would describe it as a slow incline with various dips rather than a steep trajectory, but I was relatively young when I did a show at DIA, then the Guggenheim, and represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. During that time I also had a baby[7].
Those three shows took place in a few years and that was an insane time. I worked on DIA when I was pregnant, had a young child for the Guggenheim, and my daughter celebrated her second birthday at the Venice Biennale[8]. I don’t recommend that. I see why guys don’t do it. Although it was a great period for learning, realizing art is hard (and it should be), the rest of life was desperately difficult at moments.
It is tough on relationships when you’re obsessed by art, and to be honest I think it’s harder for women than for men. Successful male artists appear to attract adoring people while successful female artists tend to make partners and acquaintances angry, and babies (properly) confused. What is considered a good thing in a man is potentially troublesome in a woman but I was determined not to crumble, tempting as it was. It’s almost impossible to balance one’s personal relationships and mothering with the art imperative. I apologize and still explain to my daughter with some regularity.
I have to admit that the move from the street into museums was not the most comfortable one. Anonymity was taken away, but it was a ultimately an honor to be invited inside. At the very beginning I thought I was better off on the street, unseen, but it became clear soon enough that I wasn’t fast becoming anything other than an artist, so I finally gave over and allowed myself to make work.
Over the years my work has changed. Going from the street to the museum partly came from the need and desire to be a better artist. In the best of worlds, the work would be seen, and I would remain a shadowy figure. This mindset still affects the sort of work I tend to make, pieces that are glimpsed, that exist for a moment and then in memory.
Footnotes:

1 Jenny Holzer was born in a town called Gallipolis in 1950.

2 The Rhode Island School of Design has developed numerous high profile artists including Roni Horn and Andrea Zittel, with Dan Colen, Ryan Trecartin and Jordan Wolfson more recent graduates.

3 Started in 1968 by Ron Clark, the program has helped develop the careers of artists including Rirkrit Tirivanija and Julian Schnabel.

4 Holzer originally created her own texts but later began to use writing borrowed from authors including Henri Cole and the Polish Nobel laureate Wislawa (use of Polish l) Szymborska as well as government documents and other historic texts.

5 Truisms is a series of compiled succinct sentences written by Holzer which have been used in various formats, including her posters, LEDs, T-shirts and projections.

6 Dan Graham started his career as a gallery dealer founding the John Daniels Gallery in 1964, becoming a notable artist during the 70s and 80s working in film, video, sculpture, and performance.

7 Jenny Holzer’s child was born in 1988 and inspired her work Mother and Child.

8 Holzer won the Leone d'Oro prize for her presentation in the United States pavilion in 1990.

Lucy and Bart, Dazed & Confused, February 2010

2010-02-21T10:02:00.000-08:00

Meeting by chance, while working as part of the research team at electronics company Phillips, Lucy McRae and Bart Hess quickly realised that creatively they had a lot in common. “One night working late, we started discussing beauty manipulation and body expression and realised we were coming from a similar perspective” explains Lucy. “After a day of hard work we needed to expel the rest of our creativity and frustration, so we started to play around with the office tools we found, sticking them to our faces and taking pictures” continues Bart.
Forming the collective Lucy & Bart, the pair began to meet once a week to search out disposable objects and examine how they could apply them to the body. The often organic and bizarre looking ‘outfits’, using anything from toothpicks, balloons, seed growing bags or insulation foam, were all created within one day.
Starting the project was originally something purely personal for the pair, simply about creating work not constrained by commerciality. “With Lucy and Bart we don’t have to bear in mind budgets or other restrictions that clients give us. Don’t get me wrong, working for clients is fantastic, we like the challenge of making something nice despite the restrictions, but it’s also great to be free to do whatever pops up in our heads!” says Bart. What began as a self-initiated project, giving both designers the opportunity to express their own ideas, soon garnered attention. After their work appeared on two blogs, we-make-money-not-art.com and nextnature.net, the duos own blog received around 30,000 hits a day.
Lucy and Bart have since been evolving the work and touring internationally with what they describe as a ‘live plastic surgery performance’. “We liked the idea of touring the experience that we were having in the studio. We wanted to offer this manipulation of the body, manipulating how you look, to other people. Quite often, after we have been working in this way for a full day, we end up feeling almost mentally disturbed, and that process is really interesting for other people to experience” explains Lucy.
What began as a way of expressing themselves outside of their day jobs has provided the designers with really interesting work, bringing new opportunity. While still working together, they are now looking more to their own individual projects and both are now collaborating with musicians, artists, fashion designers and design agencies. “In the beginning Lucy and Bart was a way of exerting all the energy we were not able to channel in our working week, and now what was a sideline is becoming really exciting, taking over from our day jobs. The Lucy and Bart project has created a portfolio of work giving us access to other worlds that we are really interested in, and that is so exciting. I would have never imagined that we would go from the Phillips Design research team to the position creatively that we are in now” says McRae.

Gosha Rubchinsky extended Q and A, Dazed Digital

2010-01-29T15:06:00.000-08:00

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Gosha Rubchinsky, Dazed and Confused, February 2010

2010-01-21T02:46:00.000-08:00

Young designer Gosha Rubchinsky has very little in common with his gold, diamond and mink wearing counterparts. The designer's post-Soviet, youth culture-inspired and anarchic aesthetic owes more to industrial post-punk, skate culture and graffiti than it does to the world of billionaires and their wives.
Starting out five years ago assisting other Russian designers, Rubchinsky quickly realised he wanted to create his own line. "Mainstream Russian style is very much influenced by Soviet times," explains the 25-year old. "Those 70 years when everyone had to be the same as each other. I think there is still the echo of this in Russian style today, but I am not interested in that. When I was working with other designers, I felt that their frames and ideas were too tight for me, too restrictive, and rather than confront their ideas and argue with them, I wanted to create my own aesthetic."
Gosha's first collection, presented at the end of 2008 for S/S09, was entitled Empire of Evil and it clearly set the agenda for his following collections. Influenced heavily by Russia's seemingly ubiquitous obsession with sportswear - emerging after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991- his aesthetic can be examined in two ways.
Firstly, it displays an inherent interest in the kids growing up in a country that was undergoing huge political and social change, and secondly, it is a reflection on a society previously unconnected to western consumerism.
"As soon as sportswear brands were sold in Russia, everyone started wearing them,” says Rubchinsky. "Kids in Russia now don't want to be the same as everyone else; they do not have that Soviet influence. These kids, just one generation younger than me, are just like any other kids in the rest of the world – they want to be new and they want to represent the new!"
His latest collection takes these ideas and evolves them. Presented in three parts, his S/SlO offering incorporates a breathtaking film, a book of photographs shot mainly by his friends, and a performance as opposed to a catwalk show of his clothes. Shown in a disused gym in Moscow's suburbs, Gosha had his shaven-headed, tough-looking models work out in the collection for an hour, instead of walking a runway.
This combination of elements allowed Rubchinsky to fully tell the story of what he dubs "The Clash of Russian Mentality" between the new generation and the legacy of the Soviet years.
Rubchinsky's work stands as a window into a relatively unseen youth culture. One that picks and chooses from western society, and that, at the same time, is still completely in love with its motherland. "I think about moving to the US or UK sometimes, but it is only something I could do temporarily," explains the designer. "Everything that I love, and that inspires me, is here in my Russia."

Text William Oliver J Photography Bruna Kazinoti
Styling John Colver
Hair Alex Brownsell at Punishment
Make-up Nobuko Maekawa
Model Benoit at Nine Daughters and a Stereo

Nigo & Tetsu - URSUS/BAPE, Dazed Digital, January 2009

2010-01-06T09:56:00.000-08:00

Old friends Bathing Ape founder Nigo and WTAPS creative director Tetsu are currently working together for the first time on their super exclusive new streetwear line Ursus, from the BAPE stable. Seen as the darker, edgier side to BAPE, Ursus brings together new ideas and a new look for the Japanese label, incorporating a more considered feel to the clothes. Dazed Digital met up with the pair, at London’s infamous and traditional Connaught Hotel, to talk about their new venture, obsessional collecting, folk photography and The Pogues.

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Javier Peres, AA Bronson and an invisible Terence Koh 'In Conversation', Another Magazine Online

2009-12-22T03:04:00.000-08:00

AA Bronson and Javier Peres 'In Conversation' at Art Basel Miami Beach 2009 - © William Oliver

William Oliver travelled to Art Basel Miami Beach (in an attempt) to bring together three of the fair's regulars and long-time friends – Javier Peres, owner of L.A and Berlin based gallery Peres Projects; AA Bronson, one time member of revolutionary art collective General Idea and the driving force behind artists' book initiative Printed Matter; and the ever-glamorous artist Terence Koh. We discussed the importance of fairs and their critical impact on the contemporary art landscape.

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Adam Neate - A New Understanding, Exhibition Catalogue Foreword, Elms Lester Painting Rooms, November 2009

2009-11-25T03:24:00.000-08:00

The early work of the majority of artists is not widely seen. It is produced during their artistic infancy, developed through the formal training of an academic institution. Their work is critiqued by a small group of people in similar stages of development. It is only after this, when they have achieved a level of confidence through appreciation and evaluation, that they offer up their work to be seen by the public eye.

Entirely self-taught, Adam Neate’s career almost reverses this process. From the outset a large and diverse audience has seen his work. He emerged as a street artist, his pieces seen by hundreds of people a day. With a reputation carved from that notoriety, Neate quickly earned himself many dedicated viewers. Traditionally, young artists carry out their early experimentation in the relatively obscure confines of the educational system, along with the safety net that provides. In Neate’s case every stylistic development and evolution has been placed in the public realm in one form or another, and subsequently discussed and assessed by his audience. It is this process of constant evaluation that has informed his work.

A street artist is constantly looking to keep ahead of the game, to produce a piece of work that is better than that of his contemporaries and something that intrigues people enough to leave the work in place, or in the case of Neate’s early career ‘drops’, pick the work up and take it away. This almost basic instinct to be the best, or to be the most interesting, is innate in Neate. “I am very aware that you’re only as good as your last painting, so I am constantly pushing forwards. I’m interested in progression, making aesthetic leaps, evolution. As a human, in whatever you do, as a footballer, a builder, a banker, you try and be the best that you can be.”

This exhibition enables us to see clearly the development in both his work and his career. There is a definite connection between one work and the next. The Three Stages, Neate’s examination of the emotional process gone through when drinking, can be seen as the beginning of an idea that he continues to develop in his Grey Portrait. An almost freehand style, yet with an element of both cubism and surrealism. It is possible to see his starting point in one painting, the ideas he begins to work with stylistically, what he wanted to say with that particular work and then how that relates to the next. “My way of working is a linear movement, a progression. That’s what gives me the excitement; starting somewhere and ending up somewhere else, that creativity and that direction,” he explains. “For me the real excitement starts when you create a piece, and it starts like a blob of energy that pushes you to come up with ideas and all of a sudden you move onto something else that can become your next style and you make a jump, a leap. If you hadn’t made that one work it might have taken you ten years to get to this point, but that one work leads you so directly that you feel like you can’t physically stop the process.”

These paintings are the culmination of skills learnt through many years work and in that sense, can be seen as his coming of age. “This show is kind of like my degree show. I have spent a long time building up to it, learning different techniques in a lot of different places. I have been in the studio for the last year, constantly experimenting and developing and have put as much of what I have learnt as I can into practice”.

This is his second solo gallery show, following on from his ‘Paintings, Pots and Prints’ exhibition in 2007 and Neate has used all of his drive and ambition to push his work forwards into new territory. He has added ideas that were previously unseen in his paintings and he has striven, and succeeded, in creating work that is as much about the content as it is about the aesthetic. This is perhaps a key differential between what we see on the street, in an urban environment, and what is traditionally shown in a gallery space. He has drawn from his own private life and what he sees on a daily basis and incorporated those ideas, to create work that talks directly to the viewer on a level that is honest. “I would rather paint an emotion or an experience so that I don’t get bored. It’s like exorcising a demon. I want to paint something that I want to finish and see through to the end. If I were painting a beach scene or a kingfisher watercolour it would just become an image that anyone could create. I want to paint something that I have experienced and in a way, pass that experience on. For me the integrity lies in making something entirely your own, from your own experience”.

The move from working as a street artist into the gallery is never going to be an easy one. It needs a great deal of consideration and comes with many pitfalls. As well as your own integrity and language you also need to consider your audience. “You can’t just start speaking German to someone who doesn’t speak German,” as Neate puts it. To create a coherent exhibition, an artist needs to understand what he has done before and at the same time look to where he wants to end up, what the future of his work means. Neate is aware of this development in his work and excited by it. “This body of work has changed so much from when I began; I have a whole new direction with it,” he says. “For me it has become a new way of thinking and learning. In some ways I feel like I have pushed it so far in that space of time that people who know my work might not recognise it. There are signs in there, bits of my language that have continued, but ultimately this exhibition demonstrates that I have tried to go one step further.”

And he is right. With this body of work, the stylistic leaps that Neate has achieved are demonstrated in a clear and concise way, and while it leaves behind his work as a street artist, it does not disinherit it completely. His voice is still there, he is still Adam Neate, but he has developed to the point where it is time to look at his work on a new level. His work takes into consideration all of the styles he has examined during his self-education, and references them in a way that is completely honest. “This show is a mixture of languages, isms, techniques and materials. These works are a collaboration of all the styles and techniques I have used over the years,” he explains. “I’m a believer in not being precious about what you do and moving on to something new if it feels like the right thing. If it is a positive move then I am happy about it. I always thought I would be painting on the street all my life, but now when I am in the studio and painting in this way, I feel that going back would be regressing for me.”

This exhibition not only presents the viewer with the most recent stages in Neate’s progress of stylistic and ideological development, it also fulfils his aim to give the audience something to think about and to carry on thinking about, after they leave the paintings themselves. Neate has moved on from his past respectfully and developed his content and his style into something that sets him apart. He has had the courage to follow his truths and make his own way, and make it in a way that projects himself onto a new, aesthetically and stylistically rich plane, that looks both to his past and his future.

Kenzo Creative Diector Antonio Marras, Dazed Digital, November 2009

2009-11-19T04:32:00.000-08:00

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Joining Kenzo in 2003 and effectively reimagining the womenswear line, Antonio Marras graduated to overall creative director of the label, originally set up in the 70s by Kenzo Takada, in 2008. Given full artistic direction on all aspects of the brand, adding childrenswear, homeware, accessories and menswear to his previous output, Marras has firmly taken hold of Kenzo and molded it in his own vision.
His first menswear show, which graced the catwalk back at the beginning of this year, was a directional collection that laid the groundwork for Marras’ concept. Describing the ethos behind his ‘Kenzo universe’ as being “not about a Kenzo family but more about a Kenzo tribe” Marras sees the Kenzo man as someone “…who has a kind of natural twisted elegance, a modern take on the dandy; a man who can make a classical style unique”.
True to his vision, this season’s menswear collection has taken 19th century explorer Pierre de Brazza as the starting point. De Brazza is credited with being the man that discovered the Congo through one of his many self funded expeditions, and a gentleman that played by his own rules. Seeing out his quest for new lands and a further understanding of the world on his own terms, “Pierre de Brazza was someone that travelled in a very humane way and was very much respectful of the local people. He was an idealist and for this reason he was the perfect Kenzo man, a cosmopolitan dandy” says Antonio.

Kenzo Menswear SS10 - Backstage photography by Claire Robertson

Taking inspiration from the images conjured up when he thought of travelling across the desert, Marras has incorporated this aesthetic both in the choice of palette – muted hues “as if the colours were faded away by the sun, by the wind and the sand” – and in the styling, shape and volume of the garments. Looser yet still beautifully tailored soft cotton blazers and jackets combine with washed knits and wider, ankle length linen trousers, to give off a relaxed yet elegant feel. An image that is very much akin to the romantic vision associated with late 19th and early 20th century British colonials.
Grey’s, off white’s, khaki and washed out slate blue all feature heavily in the collection, lifting the clothes and allowing them to stand out while at the same time being understated and refined. Across the collection detailing includes elaborate yet masculine floral and leaf prints, multiple pockets and buttons adding a very slight military feel along with draped, low-slung collars. “I wanted the clothes to look as if they were exposed to the sun and the wind for hours, so overall they look looser and older. I wanted to associate more fitted cuts with more comfortable pieces to create contrasts. It is the wardrobe of an explorer; it has to be comfortable and therefore looser. In my head these clothes are a part of ‘him’ so they carry the signs of his life, his marching and trekking through the desert” explains Antonio.

Kenzo Menswear SS10 - Backstage photography by Claire Robertson

Kenzo has always been a label with personality, a look that is at the same time classic and accessible while maintaining a connection to themes at the forefront of each season’s mood. Marras is very much aware of this heritage of the label and the aesthetic with which Kenzo has always been associated, but concurrently acknowledges the direction in which he wants to take it. “There are things I absolutely want to take forward with me from Kenzo’s history. For instance the mixing of different cultures, what the French call the “métissage”, and the “joie de vivre” philosophy of the brand. I never wanted to make a revolution at the label, but at the same time I want to take Kenzo into modernity, yet keeping all of its codes and values. It is a very special house with a unique DNA and I have always thought I had to continue it, not erase it” divulges Marras. “Brands are nothing without a strong identity. Everyone can make nice clothes nowadays; brands have to give more than just nice design. They have to offer a vision, a universe, and a signature. Kenzo has always had strong values and heritage, but now it is my turn with the house and I’m just trying to take them forward, in my own way”.

Jaiden rVa James, Dazed & Confused, December 2009

2009-11-18T09:34:00.000-08:00

Showing as part of the Menswear Installation for the second time running at last seasons London Fashion Week, Jaiden rVa James’ presentation injected the proceedings with a hotly anticipated dose of edge and colour. Skin tight rubber outfits, made up of vest, super short shorts and matching full face spiked hoods, in rich, lucid yellow, red, and blue, were paraded through Somerset House by the labels two young designers.
Providing a vivid contrast to the surrounding classical architecture, the presentation gained the duo, Rasharn d’Vera Agyman and Jaiden James, some impressively positive and high profile attention. With Dazed’s own Creative Director Nicola Formichetti alongside Lady GaGa, already credited as fans, these boys are definitely headed for big things.
Taking their inspiration for S/S10 from outsider youth culture, the pair researched photographs and artwork focusing on how teenagers represent themselves today. “The collection is called Youth by Youth, it was about being young and not fitting in. The main inspiration came from Ryan Mcginley and Larry Clark’s pictures of wild and alternative kids. It wasn’t a celebration of youth nor the mourning of its passing, we wanted it to be somewhere in-between the two” explains Jaiden. “That’s also what the hoods were about, in a way. We wanted them to sit between the beautiful and the scary, to represent the angst and strife that adolescents go through”.
Living in the same apartment block Jaiden and Rasharn met completely by chance. The pair quickly discovered they had a mutual creative passion and decided to collaborate, “we both had really strong ideas about clothes but more importantly we both wanted to inject some new energy into menswear” explains Rasharn.
The collaboration’s resulting line looks at men’s fashion from a fresh, directional but still accessible perspective. While their recent LFW presentation might have been something of a showpiece, the rest of the boys work has been on point for incorporating an edgy element into a definitely wearable look. “We want to explore each item in a different and new way while maintaining an understanding of how the fit and cut are of the utmost importance to the wearers body” comments Jaiden on the label’s ethos.
It’s obvious that these designers are focused on taking things one step further with menswear, but at the same time Jaiden and Rasharn clearly know what a guy feels comfortable wearing.
Jaiden rVa James is a rare breed of men’s label. One that is willing to take risks and push boundaries, but one that doesn’t have a burning desire to push it’s look from the sublime, to the ridiculous.

Rankin's Cheeky - Book of Rankin's erotica photography published by Te Neues: Interview with Tuuli, Rankin's model, muse and wife, October 2009

2009-11-03T08:07:00.000-08:00

WO - How many times have you worked with Rankin?
TS - (Laughs) So many times I can’t possibly remember exactly. We did a couple of shoots shortly after we first met, but since we became a couple nearly four years ago we have shot countless times. At one point, when we were doing the book Tuulitastic we shot constantly. Even now if he just needs a girl to come in and do a test, I’ll do it, because I love working with him.

WO - Do you shoot mainly shoot erotica together?
TS - It’s a mixture. We have done some fashion stories as well but I think now it is such a part of our relationship, and our relationship through film, that it’s always erotic in a way. We did an ice cream ad recently and even that could be seen as erotic. I mean I was having cream sprayed at me, but also the tension between us comes through in the pictures.

WO - Had you done any erotica before you met Rankin?
TS - No, but he just made me feel so comfortable that in no way did he have to persuade me. The first nude shoot we did together was for Arena Magazine, six years ago. Even now when I look back at those photographs they are definitely some of my favourites. They have a real life to them, sexy and powerful but beautiful as well.
That is what his work is though, and what it always has - something more to it.

WO - How do you feel about your erotica photography being seen by the public?
TS - There are a couple of images that I really haven’t liked, and I have asked for them not to go out, which Rankin always understands.
There are other images that I have found difficult, but that’s fine because I do get them and I understand them. Sometimes it can be very much his opinion of me and perhaps that is not how I see myself. Everyone sees something different in people and I understand that.
Before that first Arena shoot he called me up and said “So the circulation of Arena is about X thousand? So at least double that amount of people are going to see this shoot. Out of that number about 20 percent are men that are going to wank over you. How do you feel about that?” At the time I replied, “just shut up, too much information”. But now I honestly don’t think about it. You just can’t picture it, its not very real. Also when I am doing the erotica shoots in the studio, ultimately I am being someone else, I am acting out a part that is a piece of me, but not completely me. It is quite detached.
I have fan mail people have sent, with pictures of me completely naked and they ask me to sign it and send it back to them. That is pretty strange, but it’s ok.

WO - What do find strange about that?
TS - That they have actually bothered! With any kind of modeling though, you ultimately do it to look sexy, look hot and to be seen. If I had a problem with the erotica being seen then I would have a problem with modeling full stop.
These pictures aren’t just some girl standing there, bland, naked, pouting. These pictures have got something to them, they are very beautiful and I am proud of them as images. I am so happy to have done them, and therefore happy to have them seen. I couldn’t be happier with Tuulitastic; I think it is a real testament to our relationship. It is exactly what it says on the cover, ‘a photographic love letter’.

WO – There is such a strong sexual tension in some of the images. Do you find it a turn on when you are shooting them?
TS - It is performing for your boyfriend and that is erotic and I enjoy it, but I don’t know that it physically turns me on. Because of our relationship it’s a form of extended foreplay similar in part to a girl getting dressed in the morning and flashing a bit of underwear at her boyfriend. A kind of hint to what may come later.
When you are in the studio shooting you’re concentrating so hard on getting it right and there are so many people around - hair, make up, stylists, assistants - it takes the eroticism out of it. It is creating a highly orchestrated and beautiful image and it takes a lot of work to get that.
Ultimately if I did get turned on in that situation it would be voyeurism and I’m not really into that, I wouldn’t want to be watched. I generally get more turned on when its just the two of us. Which is fair enough.
We have done shoots with just him and me, on our own, and that is a very different thing. We did one in a hotel room in Russia for a lingerie advert. I did my own hair and make up and we did it in a very candid style. That was very intimate and that did turn me on more. Really that was just about being in an amazing hotel room, in Moscow, with your boyfriend.
When you have got hair and make up and his assistants holding lights I would have to say it doesn’t turn me on.

WO - But you can feel a tension…?
TS – Yes of course, it’s exciting and fun. You’re showing off for your boyfriend. I am basically saying ‘look at me look at me, I look amazing!’. There is a whole performance aspect to it. And my performance is totally for him, he is completely focused on me, looking at me through a lens, and that creates a real sense of tension between the two of you.
I know what he likes, from a photography point of view, and I like doing that for him. I am very good at picking up on his mood and what he wants from me, and vice versa. I am completely willing to give him what he wants in front of the camera because I am in love with him. ‘I’ll do anything for you baby…’(laughs)
The love of his life is his photography, he is addicted to his work and to be so involved in that is fantastic. When you see really great pictures that you have done together, that you have collaborated on, it’s a very satisfying feeling. We have done so much now, we both love working together so much and it is such a part of our relationship that I think it would be a real shame if we didn’t get the chance to do that. It would almost feel like there was something missing.

WO - The photographs made out of the studio, in hotel rooms etc, seem more about documenting a moment between the two of you. How do you feel about those pictures being seen by the public?
TS – (Laughs…) We edit them. A lot.
Actually, I’m completely fine with it. I was originally quite funny about the first ones we made in that sort of situation going out, because it is actually very obvious what was going on. Now I don’t mind at all, they are not just gratuitous, and there is something so beautiful in them.
Its strange, I actually feel very safe when we are photographing them because I respect Rankin and how he will take the pictures. If you had asked me six years ago what I thought about having images of such an intimate moment being seen by so many people, I would have said I would have felt very exposed and vulnerable. Now it is actually not like that at all because I am so safe in our relationship and trust him and his judgment completely.
I know that if it came down to it and there were pictures that I jus didn’t want to be seen, they wouldn’t go anywhere. There are definitely photographs that haven’t gone anywhere.

WO - What do you get back from shooting erotica?
TS - It is very liberating. I previously thought I could never do underwear shoots, let alone nudity, but your perception changes. I don’t think it’s half as taboo as people believe. Rankin’s erotica is especially beautiful; it has something more behind it. The girls’ in his photographs are not just objects on a page.
It can also be very challenging and I like the amount of work I have to put into it. You are magnifying an emotion, feeding off a mood and expanding on it. You know what your face looks like in a particular expression, you understand that certain body movements say certain things and you learn how to garner an emotion. You have to really put your all into it otherwise erotic photography becomes flat. Very easily you can just have one element out of place and the image becomes so much more page three.

WO - What is it that makes these photographs stand out from glamour photography?
TS – The quality of the photography is amazing! The lighting, the production values, they are beautiful, stunning, images. There is so much more depth to them than simply a girl with her tits out. Glamour photography is purely about serving a purpose and satisfying a need. Rankin’s erotica goes a lot deeper than that.
There is a feeling and a mood that is being conveyed and Rankin always manages to show the personality of the model. I think a lot of the girls that shoot glamour photography are pretty much interchangeable because ultimately they are just little dress up dolls.
When you go for a casting for any job with Rankin there is a questionnaire to answer with some general questions about you as a person. Sometimes he asks you to draw a picture; he wants to find out about the girl and her personality. You find with some models that it is very hard to get who they are out of them on film. Rankin wants someone who wants to work with him and has something to them, because he knows that’s when he gets the best pictures. He wants somebody who has more than just beauty; they have to have a spark, and that comes through in the photographs.

WO - Do you think it has given you a confidence that you didn’t have before?
TS - It really has. Its funny when we were shooting Tuulitastic together we did so many nude shoots that when I went to do a fashion editorial spread, and I put on a dress I just didn’t know what to do with it. I had become so comfortable shooting nude.
If you don’t have something to hide behind, you don’t have any props, you do become more confident in front of the camera. When you are shooting erotica you are metaphorically, and obviously literally, stripped bare. You have to really delve deep inside yourself, and that does breed a huge amount of confidence.

Carsten Nicolai - Unitxt, The Art Newspaper - Frieze Art Fair editions, October 2009

2009-10-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

German artist Carsten Nicolai is showing a site-specific version of his project Unitxt at London’s Sketch Gallery, and is performing a live concert at the venue at noon this weekend (Saturday 17 October), the show’s closing date.
The piece, which has been adapted to fit the constraints of the space, was originally composed as an album, released in 2008, with a subsequent live performance. Unitxt is an experimental work that examines the process of converting digital files into sound. Developing software that creates an audible version of files from computer programmes such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, Nicolai has incorporated the results into edited, audibly accessible loops and segments. “The Sketch piece is a kind of installation version of the Unitxt performance,” says Nicolai. “You may recognise all the elements from its previous version, but they are arranged differently here, and generated by the software as opposed to being controlled by me. There are regular elements programmed into the work, but there is also a degree of it that is constantly changing with random combinations.”
Taking his original creative process one step further for the version at Sketch, Nicolai has designed a system to create visual representations of the sound in the form of projections on the walls. “We built a special programme to run the visual software and hardware in real time so what you see is not video,” he says. “It is all in real time, generated by the soundtrack, and the soundtrack is ‘composed’ by the software on a 24-minute loop.”
The resulting combination of abstract sound and visual elements that make up the Sketch installation is reflective of the artist’s approach as a whole. Nicolai’s interest is in creating work that is, at least in part, digitally self-manufacturing. Works such as Unitxt provide a sensory bombardment that examines technological advancement in art and the viewer’s resulting emotional response.
Originally training as a landscape architect, Nicolai began to experiment with sound and digital images during the early 1990s. He co-founded the experimental Voxxx cultural centre in his hometown of Chemnitz, Germany, in 1992, and later established the record label Raster-Noton in collaboration with Olaf Bender and Frank Bretschneider. Providing a platform for the output of digital sound experimentation, the roster of those associated with the record label includes numerous internationally celebrated artists and experimental musicians—Wolfgang Voigt, Sleeparchive, Signal, Ryoji Ikeda, Ryuichi Sakamoto (from pioneering 1970s Japanese electronics act Yellow Magic Orchestra) and Nicolai himself all regularly release, perform and collaborate through Raster-Noton.
Nicolai sees the label as akin to a non-profit organisation, describing it as “artist-run and not working on a commercial master plan; it never has been and never will. We see it as a platform to distribute ideas”. This ethos, along with a dedication to the scientific experimentation of digital art forms, has led the Raster-Noton artists to present numerous high-profile presentations at events such as Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennial and Documenta X, as well as at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts and Tate Modern, and New York’s PS.1 Contemporary Art Centre.
Alongside Nicolai’s museum-based presentations, the artist also regularly performs in traditional music venues under his performance name Alva Noto. Not wanting to draw a distinction between art and music, he describes his output as a crossover form that can sit comfortably in either viewing space. “For myself I don't need these definitions, it is not important for the work,” he says. “I see the space I perform in as purely functional. The museum is perfect for installation art shows and the club for music and sound performances. In simple terms, one is the white cube, the other the black cube”.

Superflex - Frieze Film, The Art Newspaper Frieze Art Fair daily editions, October 2009

2009-10-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

Frieze Film takes an alternative approach this year, focusing on one collective rather than screenings from a selection of artists. Curator Neville Wakefield has commissioned Danish artist activist group Superflex to produce a project, titled Frieze Film 2009, shown for the duration of the fair and on Channel 4, 12-15 October, 7.55pm.
Superflex focuses on sociopolitical issues through films, installations and interventions. Recent pieces include this year’s film Flooded McDonald’s, shown at the South London Gallery (16 January-1 March 2009), which saw the collective recreate one of the fast food retailer’s branches and slowly fill the building with water while it was eerily devoid of staff and customers. In 2008 the group was invited to present work at the New Orleans biennial Prospect.1, and chose to exhibit a single photograph, When the Levees Broke We Bought Our House. Priced at $20,000, the cost of the work was devised as the amount a Danish couple would have saved on the purchase of a property post Hurricane Katrina, when European banks lowered interest rates in anticipation of a related economic downturn. The funds raised through the sale of the work were then used to purchase building materials, which were distributed throughout one of the hardest hit areas of New Orleans, the Lower 9th Ward Village.
Superflex has looked to the economic crisis as the starting point for the Frieze commission. Rather than focus on the current situation from a “facts and figures perspective”, as collective founder Rasmus Nielsen describes it, the work examines the crisis as a psychological issue. “The film deals with the financial crisis as psychosis,” says Nielsen. “Naturally there is a fear level related to the crisis and we are dealing with that part of it. The film looks to walk you through your deepest fears related to this issue and then produces a short revelation at the end.”
The film, screened as one piece at the fair, is divided into four three-minute shorts for Channel 4’s “3 Minute Wonder” series. Working with a hypnosis practitioner, the collective scripted a series of sessions that place the viewer under hypnosis, taking them through scenarios relating to the crisis and, ideally, relieving them of their fears. The idea is that once under the low-level hypnosis of the film, the viewer will deal with negative feelings around issues such as losing a job or pension, or anxiety about the economy in general. Towards the end of the four sessions, the hope is that these fears will dissipate and the viewer will approach the crisis from a more relaxed perspective. “We are trying to get the viewer to the point where they understand the financial situation as partly a psychological phenomenon, and we then try and treat it with known psychological tools,” says Nielsen. “There is a humble hope that this way of thinking could lead to a more complex understanding of these sorts of crises. These events are not just about facts and figures, but also very much about emotion and social construction.”

Dior - Kris Van Assche, Dazed & Confused, October 2009

2009-09-19T06:18:00.000-07:00

Kris Van Assche has been firmly yet respectfully evolving the super skinny Dior Homme silhouette, left behind by his predecessor Hedi Slimane, since his debut collection for the label two years ago.
Autumn/Winter 09 sees Van Assche’s direction of shape, texture and importantly, volume, “Autumn/Winter 09 is all about the volume”, eloquently cemented.
Tailored yet loose fitting ‘just’ oversized elements can be seen throughout trousers, shirts and jackets with high collars, pleating, beading, print and beautifully elaborate cuts all visible, providing a dramatic yet softer and altogether more playful look than Slimane’s Dior.
Taking reference from Malcolm McLaren’s 90s house track Deep in Vogue, based around the New York voguing scene, Van Assche has created something that is simultaneously classic and fun, just when we need it. “The Deep in Vogue music video was about young culture and a new take on fashion, it was about letting go and that really inspired me” he explains, “when the financial crisis struck it seemed more important than ever to place this idea of fun, to contrast against the social mood and inject something lighthearted.”
The collections theatrics and confidently laid back mood led the designer swiftly to one of his favourite places in the world, Buenos Aires, for this exclusive Dazed shoot, finding his inspiration, backdrop and models in the Argentinean city. “I have always had a love affair with Buenos Aires. A lot of the models I work with are cast from there,” he says, “I love the way people look at you straight in the eye on the street. They are proud of how they look and I wanted to convey that attitude”.
The resulting photographs sum up Van Assche’s new take on Dior Homme perfectly; confident, masculine, chic and refined while at the same time being relaxed, playful and just that little bit cheeky.
What was once a new direction for the French label now looks firmly set, and while it may be a definite push forwards, Van Assche is not looking to eradicate what has gone before. “Dior can easily be reduced to a skinny black suit. It has now become the heritage of Dior and was originally a huge statement within fashion. Ultimately though designing is about evolution and I feel now it is not so modern to be restricted by the clothes you wear. Today modernity is relaxed yet defined,” divulges the designer in his warm Belgian accent.
“The most recent show for Dior was a real turning point for me, in the way I evolved certain elements of the label’s heritage. It was well received and I feel I have found my spot and am on track to finding a new vocabulary for Dior, in a very respectful way. It is not about going against the heritage of the label but about working with it, to establish a new direction”.