Born out of the earth photos series documenting Dartmoor and the Scottish Highlands, Terratypes is Tanoa Sasraku’s latest solo exhibitionpresented by Spike Island.
Sheets of blank newsprint, hand-rubbed with foraged natural pigments, take on geological and geographical information in ochre, graphite and manganese. These Terratypes – inspired by the material structure of the Fante Asafo flags of coastal Ghana and geometric forms found in Tartan cloth, circuitry and pinnacles of rock – form the bulk of Sasraku’s work. These are then stacked, cut and stitched to form geometric compositions andthe paper is steeped in water then torn to reveal layers that expose and encrypt details about the materiality of the land.
Paper, photographs, and bronzes build upon the artist’s ongoing research into hostile wildlands and themes of energy, mythology and memories stored within the British landscape. Torn pieces from the Terratypes are flattened, scanned and enlarged into Liths: monolithic structures that bring to mind Stonehenge and other standing stone formations. Giving and withholding, unknowing and mysterious, these structures seem as doorways to an alternate landscape.
A series of cast bronzes complete the exhibition. Intense concentrations of pigment are held in their centres to reflect the energy flows of the land. Emotional memory runs through each of the works, dwelling on our understanding and connection to the rural environment.
Tanoa Sasraku is a British artist whose practice shifts between sculpture, drawing and filmmaking. She graduated from Goldsmiths College in 2018 and is currently studying at the Royal Academy Schools.
Terratypes is on display from Saturday 28 May to Sunday 17 July 2022 at Spike Island.
The impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February has reverberated across all areas of life, the art world included. Recognizing the risks and dangers Ukrainian artists now face, a group of international artists have come together to raise funds and support their peers through the sale of their works.
Organised by Adam Broomberg, the initiative sees a group of contemporary artists donating an artwork each as an open edition print. Priced at €200, the profit from the sale will go towards emergency support for their peers caught up in the spiralling crisis.
Originally launched in March 2022, another 60 artists have joined for the launch of the second round. In order to address the “hierarchy of empathy that this war has exposed” this round of proceeds will go specifically to BIPoC artists and their families. The non-profit organisations @eachoneteachone_official in collaboration with @savvycontemporary will help facilitate emergency travel, shelter, financial and longer-term support. At this point in the crisis, thousands have died, millions have fled, and uncertainty remains.
Featured contemporary artists include Hito Steyerl, Pierre Huyghe, Nan Goldin, Isaac Julien, Thomas Struth, Tacita Dean, Rosemarie Trockel, Luc Tuymans, Elizabeth Peyton, Thomas Demand, Matthew Barney, Jeremy Deller, Laure Prouvost, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Lisa Brice, Julian Schnabel, Camille Henrot, Subodh Gupta, Sam Durant, Fiona Banner, Anne Imhof, Cyprien Gaillard, and Thomas Hirschhorn.
Since 2013 the non-profit organisation Artists at Risk has launched 26 residences for persecuted artists around the world. Operating at the intersection of human rights and the arts, Artists at Risk is at the forefront of the refugee crisis as it affects artists and cultural workers. All artwork purchases will directly benefit artists fleeing war and persecution.
Typical art biennials take place in large urban centres. Considering forms of personhood in wildlife and landscapes, the Biennale Gherdëina is an exception to the rule, located in the unique setting of the Unesco World Heritage Centre of the Dolomites. Opening on 20 May 2022, BIENNALE GHERDËINA ∞ PERSONES PERSONS is a series of installations, performances, sculptures, sound pieces, textile works, walks and interactive experiences, all across and in response to the landscape.
In its eight edition, the Biennale asks how artistic expressions contribute to the recognition of Earth’s rights and themes of migration, seasonal displacement and transhumance in the region and resonating landscapes.
Doris Ghetta, founder and Director of Biennale Gherdëina explains, “we are living in what has been described as “the era of living creatures”….this means that, if we are to plan a sustainable society, we can no longer incline towards an anthropocentric worldview but need to centre our way of seeing reality around all living things: from air to plants, water, snow, animals and, of course, human beings”
The Biennale is curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, who works at the intersection of art, ecology and systems typically outside of the gallery format, and Filipa Ramos, Strategic Advisor for Ecology at Serpentine, London, and co-founder of the climate-justice focused non-profit, Radical Ecology.
BIENNALE GHERDËINA ∞ PERSONES PERSONS features artists Etel Adnan, Chiara Camoni, Alex Cecchetti, Gabriel Chaile, Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen, Jimmie Durham, Simone Fattal, Barbara Gamper, Kyriaki Goni, Judith Hopf, Ignota, Karrabing Film Collective, Lina Lapelyte, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Eduardo Navarro, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Angelo Plessas, Tabita Rezaire, Sergio Rojas, Giles Round, Thaddäus Salcher, Martina Steckholzer, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser), Ana Vaz and Nuno da Luz, and Bruno Walpoth.
A fly-on-the-wall peep into Martine Rose’s latest runway show, the SS23 digital experience continues the legacy of “What We Do All Day”. Conceived and created in collaboration with International Magic, the website extends the aesthetics of the new collection and runway show into the digital realm. The footage is a CCTV-inspired 12-CAM viewing experience captured on cameras hidden inside the physical show held inside a railway arch in Vauxhall, South London.
Referencing nightclubs, after-hours bars, and dark rooms, the footage gives viewers a taste of virtual voyeurism. As for the clothes, Martine Rose once again plays with proportions offering shrunken silhouettes inspired by “the feeling of wedging yourself into something a bit too small.” This is paired with explorations of larger volumes, playing around with the drape of a coat on a peg, and tension explored through tailoring, referencing “awkward Friday-night-office-drink-doorway-gropes”.
“Martine Rose is always interested in the relation between fashion and our ordinary realities, and this season we began with the everyday, unthinking tussles we have dressing and undressing; Fighting to get into your own clothes, or trying to get into someone else’s. Theclothing accidents involved in urgent sexual encounters or hurried dressing afterwards. Investigating how garments are pulled against the body and their resulting shape or attitude” notes the SS23 collection press release.
A real-time experience, the footage can be found looping perpetually at ss.23.martine-rose.com.
Creativity emerges from countless perspectives. That is the central message of Process, a temporary installation at Alexander McQueen’s Mayfair store. Helming the British label since McQueen’s death in 2010, creative director Sarah Burton invited twelve artists to respond to the Pre Autumn / Winter 2022 womenswear collection. Each artist was selected for their unique approach to art and offered complete creative freedom. The result? A rich dialogue between the work and the chosen designs that takes the creative process as its focus.
Chilean sculptor Marcela Correa responded to the McQueen polyfaille party dress with hand-crafted miniatures on papier-mache dolls with faces collaged from fashion magazines. Jennie Jieun Lee took inspiration from a red leather dress to develop a ceramic sculpture with a reflective palladium glaze. Interpreting three looks, Ann Cathrin November Høibo created a three-dimensional weave in tea rose satin and grain de powder, apricot polyfaille, ivory tulle, wool, cotton and rayon.
Other artists who contributed include Guinevere Van Seenus, a model and photographer who has walked in McQueen catwalk shows since 1996, Beverly Semmes, Bingyi, Cristina de Middel, Guinever van Seenus, Hope Gangloff, Marcia Kure, Jackie Nickerson, Judas Companion, and Marcia Michael.
“I wanted to engage in a new creative dialogue with the collection this season and see how the artists interpreted the work that we created in the studio. It’s been very interesting to see how creativity has sprung from so many different perspectives, and the outcomes that have been varied and beautiful,” Burton stated in Alexander McQueen’s press notes.
To celebrate the launch of the collection a 160 page zine detailing each artist’s personal story and engagement with the designs will be available in stores worldwide. Process is available to view at the Alexander McQueen Old Bond Street store until 21 June.
Deana Lawson’s work harnesses the tropes of family portraiture to create images at once intimate, familial, and spiritual. This week she has been recognised as the force she is, and awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize for having made the most significant contribution to the world of photography in 2022.
The prize was awarded to Lawson at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, in recognition of her 2020 solo exhibition Centropy at Kunsthalle Basel. Fusing the family album with unsettling elements like ‘portals’ into other worlds, her photography reclaims the Black subject as “creative, godlike beings.” Though her sitters are mostly strangers, Lawson describes her works as the process of building “an ever-expanding mythological extended family” to explore intergenerational relationships and their effects within Black culture.
Brett Rogers OBE, Director, The Photographers’ Gallery and chair of the Jury that named her winner, said:
“Deana Lawson is a deserved winner of this year’s prize not least for the sheer inventiveness and complexity of her approach to image making. Her work, which reframes and reclaims the Black experience, harnesses the traditional and the experimental and opens up a very unique connection between the everyday and the mystical. Her subject matter sits somewhere between the ‘here and now’ and the past, a person and a people, the staged and the naturalistic, in a manner which is not didactic or issue driven, but genuinely radical”.
The presentation at The Photographers’ Gallery marks Lawson’s first institutional show in the UK. The exhibition showcasing the four shortlisted artists for 2022 – Anastasia Samoylova, Jo Ractliffe, Deana Lawson and Gilles Peress – is curated by TPG’s Katrina Schwarz and will be displayed at The Photographers’ Gallery until 12 June 2022.
Ever wondered what a party flyer from a 1973 Stonehenge free festival looks like? Or a design promoting a 1980 illegal warehouse party? NEW AGE B2B – Stonehenge to Jungle scratches that itch. A compendium of flyers and collectibles from subculture archivist Toby Mott charts the origin of hedonistic rebellion and utopia.
The comprehensive collection by the London-based artist traverses the Stonehenge and Free Festivals, through to 1980s illegal warehouse parties and acid house, sound system and dub clashes, rave, and finally jungle. With art and design direction by Jamie Reid, former art director of Dazed and Confused magazine, party flyers from the 1970s to 2000 are sourced and curated from the Mott Collection. Known for his work with the Grey Organisation – an artist’s collective that was active in the 1980s – and for his fashion brand Toby PiImlico, Mott went on to establish an archive of British popular culture from punk to rave.
575 entries of flyers and other collectables showcase the visions of masters like Pez and Junior Tomlin – the Salvador Dalí of Rave – charting youth rebellions for a generation. Alongside the artwork, the book features interviews with the trailblazing designers alongside documentary photographer Alan Lodge, record producer Chris Peckings, DJ and Spiral Tribe member Ixyndamix among many more.
Moving beyond the music, Mott offers an insightful look back on British party culture that digs into its roots. Bringing together reggae, rave and sound system culture, the collection charts the often overlooked impact of the Black British community on rave music.
Following the success of Incubator 21, Angelica Jopling is back with Incubator 22, a six-week-long programme spotlighting six new London-based emerging artists who have never had a solo show. The consecutive exhibitions showcase London-based emerging artists, Mary Stephenson, Xavia Duke Richards, John Richard, Archie Boon, C. Lucy R. Whitehead, and Alicja Biala.
In residence at London’s A. Society in Chiltern Street, Twin caught up with the exhibition’s founder and curator, Angelica Jopling, to discuss platforming young artists and her collaborative approach to curation.
Can you explain the intention behind Incubator 22?
The idea for ‘Incubator’ stemmed from a failed grant proposal I wrote in 2018. I wanted to provide a platform for young artists to show their work in a collaborative space with maximum freedom. The general aim was, and continues to be, to reflect the energy and shifting cultural face of a city through the eyes of emerging artists. One of the hardest stages of an artist’s career is the beginning when they’re attempting to articulate a sensibility. Emerging artists rarely have the opportunity to present their work in a solo capacity. Yet this can paradoxically be a great catalyst for artists to take risks, be experimental, and create a cohesive body of work for a show.
Can you explain how you decide which artists to feature?
It varies. I typically visit many different artist’s studios before deciding who will be shown at Incubator. Beyond the work itself, the attributes I’m most drawn to in an artist are a genuine passion and confidence in their work as well as a distinct vision of what they wish to execute in the space.
How do you approach your role as curator?
I love working with artists at the beginning of their careers and giving them the space to create freely. I like to spend a lot of active time in the studios, discussing their process, refining ideas, and understanding their inspirations and what drives their work. All of which influences the approach when it’s time to install. The collaborative approach extends to my work with Clara Galperin -Incubator’s curatorial consultant – who has helped to shape the vision.
Incubator 22 is now open at A. Society, 2 Chiltern Street, London, W1U 7PR by appointment
A landmark event in the annual photography calendar, The Palm* PhotoPrize shines a spotlight on the photographers to watch. The team behind the prize has announced its shortlist for 2022. With an overwhelming 6800+ submissions this year, they have painstakingly whittled it down to 108 photographs. And they do not disappoint.
A mix of portraiture and landscape works, the shortlist reflects the international appeal of this competition. From London to Brooklyn, Kyiv to Tel Aviv, there is a breadth to this year’s shortlist that showcases each photographer’s unique aesthetic.
Michelle Sank’s posed portrait of Miss Drag SA, as well as Megan Eagle’s intimate portrait of a mother breastfeeding her young child are standouts in the selection. Elsewhere there’s Camille Lemoine’s capture of a young girl astride a horse and a simple evocation of play in a black and white portrait of a boy skimming stones by Isabel Martin.
The judges, which include the likes of Alastair McKimm and Lola Paprocka, will work on the selection of 20 finalists, and eventually decide on first and second place. Shortlisted images will also be in the running for the Canvas Represents Mentorship Award and the People’s Choice Award will be decided by a voting system open to the public via the website.
I’d like to get to know you is a tentative exploration into a reimagined sibling relationship against the backdrop of British summertime. Shot at their mother’s house in rural Devon over the course of one summer, the uniquely singular relationship between sisters is explored and reframed. For the intimate series Francesca Allen turns the camera on her younger sister, Alida, and unravels the theme of family ties, re-tied.
The sun-soaked images of poppies in bloom and swims in rivers, sports shorts and high-legged swimsuits, paints a vivid picture of a complex sisterly relationship and reveals, not only in how Francesca sees Alida, but how Alida sees herself. Intimacy and confrontation – a push and a pull, – are seen in Allen’s personal approach. Allen admits her and Alida’s relationship growing up was never particularly close. Portraiture, in this instance, is configured as a two-sided exchange opening up space for empathy and exploration.
The London-based photographer straddles the worlds of fashion and documentary photography, across themes of friendship, female bonds, and interchange between photographer and subject. Her first monograph Aya saw Allen spend a month in Japan photographing musician Aya Yanase. This second monograph is a testament to her developing practice and a celebration of sisterly bonds and the beauty of the British countryside.
WE ARE MADE OF STAR STUFF asks us to step into deep time. From 4th – 27th March, the HOXTON 253 art project space is unearthing the layered entanglements that exist between humans and their natural environment and inviting us to enter into a geological worldview.
“All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff” wrote Carl Sagan in 1973 in “The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective”.
Rocks, minerals, ice and the crust of the ground we walk on collect evidence of slow ‘deep time’. No longer bound to the dominating constructs of capitalist time, deep time is a way of seeing the world across multiple timescales. Curated by Berta Zubrickaitė and featuring work from Lydia Brockless, Ilana Halperin, Geistė Marija Kinčinaitytė, Matthew Needham, Josephine Pryde, Georgia Somerville Watts and Maël Traïca the works draw attention to the ways in which human and non-human agencies are wrapped together.
Textiles in collaboration with Syrian women in Istanbul to upcycled toe-trainers and toe heels. Immersive video essays to imaginary subterranean worlds. WE ARE MADE OF STAR STUFF rethinks our relation to temporality and points towards a plurally determined existence.
HOXTON 253 art project space is a green and sustainability-conscious initiative. Highlighting artistic voices that challenge the current system, they create environments that question our communal and individual responsibilities to the world.
Hot off the press, The Vulgarity of Being Three-Dimensional is an immersive new book of photography and sculpture by Danish photographic artist Tine Bek. Expect aesthetic experiments that reject hierarchy and structure. Shapes that run-over, flow, crumble and bulge. Sculpture where vulgarity strangely isn’t at all vulgar.
Fruit, material, fabric and figures are brought together in a mix of still life, found forms and photographed sculptures. Elevating everyday objects as unassuming protagonists, Bekshe exposes and rejects material hierarchy. Who says marble is more impressive than foam? Why should a stone fountain take centre stage over a bathroom tap? Scratch beneath the surface and what separates these luxury materials from scraps?
In the text ‘Within the commonality lies the sparkling truth’ Isabella Rose Celeste Davey writes, “Vulgarity, from the Latin term vulgus, was the term for common people, an insinuation of the ordinary. We consider the vulgar to be crude, below our station, brash, crass, rough – terms that are charged with ill interest, with gall, with remorse. What if vulgar was not a bad thing at all, merely a removal of a mask. The slipperiness of expectation slinking away?
Bek’s primary mediums are video and photography, with multi-media collaboration at the heart of her work. She uses photography not just to record, but rather to produce artistic crossovers that open up new possibilities.
As curtains close on fashion month, in an industrial warehouse the spotlight shone on TOGA’s A / W 2022 collection. In the video presentation, juxtaposition was front and centre. Hybridized garments, raw edges, and cut-out sections carry throughout Yasuko Furunta’s designs.
“Hoops, bouncing, swinging,” is how Furutu described this season’s collection. The show notes reference Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing,)” with the collection featuring a medley of silks, faux fur, sequins, feathers and lamé fabrics. We are certainly keen to swish across the dancefloor in these designs, red sequins and faux goat hair flouncing with each step.
Models were on the move to the backing track of “Inkjet” by Crate Classics, remixed by 5 Easy Pieces. Fur trims and knee-high leather, spliced tailoring and drop skirts, the clothes showcase Furuto’s eclectic charm while remaining refined. A colourful knit peeps beneath the hem of a blazer, while the next look inverts the design. Elsewhere, kimono-inspired jackets in crushed floral and faux-fur fringed blazers pay tribute to TOGA’s free-spirited tailoring. These playful details carry the designs beyond gender binaries with an emphasis on wearability.
This season’s accompanying film is directed by fashion photographer Johnny Dufort. Established in 1997 the Tokyo-based brand celebrates its 25th year with Furutu at the helm, continuing to offer deconstructed modern classics unique in every cut. Take a look at the collection in full here.
A rare opportunity to feature as part of the next wave of photography talent, Palm* Photo Prize is an annual open call exhibition for early-career photographers. Featuring submissions from across the world, since 2018 the prize has supported, elevated and showcased the next generation of image-makers. With a strong focus on stand-alone imagery and no set themes, the prize is one of the best places to get your work in front of the right people. As long as you don’t already have an agent or gallery, then you’re good to go
One hundred entries with be selected by Palm* and will feature in the exhibition at 10 14 Gallery sponsored by Spectrum & INK. The photographer’s agency Canvas Represents will also present one recipient with a ‘Mentorship Award’. They will receive a three-meeting mentorship with a team of agents.
The Judge’s Panel prizes, People’s Choice Award and Canvas Represents Mentorship Award will be announced online in June 2022. Get your entries in here.
Big, bold and future-facing, Gentle Monster has shaken up the eyewear game. Once upon a time, Ray-Bans or Oakley performance frames were the main offerings in the every-person eyewear department. Fast-forward to today and Gentle Monster has joined forces with Coperni to create a range of avante-garde sunglasses. Chasing the future, the 5G-inspired collection consists of 2 models: the 5G and the 5G BOLD. Nineties references toRoboCop and Back to the Future are paired with new ideas around connection and speed.
Shot by Parisian film director Alexandre Silberstein, the campaign video takes us into The Matrix. Featuring singer Le Diouck and models Louise Roberts and Jeanne Zheng, it transports us into the brand’s technological universe. The collaboration is accompanied by an Augmented Reality Instagram filter, offering users the chance to virtually try-on the 5G Bold sunglasses.
Already approved by the likes of Zendaya, the 5G BOLD goggle-shape features voluminous curves, an acetate frame and an eye-catching logo. For the minimalists, the 5G has a cat-eye silhouette that is slightly less bold but no less impactful.
Committed to the digital-friendly lifestyle, the shades come with a virtual set-up box that enables 5G communication with the 5G eyewear. The future of eyewear has landed, Doc and Marty would be into it.
The collaboration collection is available now worldwide, sold at Gentle Monster and Coperni’s on/offline stores, and global select shops.
Theatrical staging, high-drama and luxurious technicolour – photographer and filmmaker Alex Prager’s large-scale photographs feature ensemble casts that teeter between reality and artifice.
Afternoon, 2021, courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London
In this intimate series classic American archetypes are presented in the cinematic colour palette of a Hollywood Western. A cowboy, a cherub, an air stewardess, all frozen, suspended mid-air. Artefacts of modern American life seem to float – or fall – alongside them.
Dawn, 2021, courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London
Part One: The Mountain at London’s Lehmann Maupin gallery continues her exploration of the hyperreal. The series was created as a response to the last two years and the effects of the pandemic. Prager’s meticulously constructed characters are paired with details from the character’s backstories – casino chips, prozac and a pair of high heels capture our human idiosyncrasies.
Twilight, 2021, courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London
Prager plays on the tradition of classical portraiture as a way to encourage people to really look at one another again. After such a long period of isolation and polarisation, she works to flatten people out and then hone in on our emotional states. These questions are infused into each portrait, creating a spiritual death and consequently – rebirth. Shot in her hometown of Los Angeles, The Mountain draws on the themes of revelation, pilgrimage, achievement, and adversity.
Alex Prager’s Part One: The Mountain is at London’s Lehmann Maupin gallery until March 5 2022.
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