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The Photographers' Gallery reopens in London

2012-05-16 14:41:00

After almost two years of intense building work, The Photographers' Gallery is ready to celebrate its newly renovated and extended HQ at the crossroads of Soho and Oxford Street in London.

The existing brick and steel-frame warehouse building, accessed via the serene Ramilles Street, a few steps down from the bustle of Oxford Street, was redesigned by award-winning Irish architects O'Donnell + Tuomey. The architects extended it upwards and sideways to create much needed, high quality and airy display areas for what is now the largest gallery in London dedicated to photography. The extension also helps support the building's load in a more efficient way.

The new parts are visible, dark-rendered and jut slightly forward towards the street. Towards the top of the building, three levels of clean, minimal, high-ceilinged galleries make for an ideal exhibition space. Beneath these is an office level and a large education and events room (which will include a camera obscura). The ground level hosts a café, while a generous cut of the ground floor slab gives access to a bookshop and print sales area in the basement.

Wood details - such as the untreated hardwood timber façade elements and the oak flooring - are carefully placed throughout, as are a series of large openings that bring in plenty of light. Those openings span floor to ceiling and offer carefully framed views out towards the surrounding urban landscape. In contrast, apart from those few periscope-like openings, the gallery rooms feature no windows, allowing for the very best climate controlled exhibition display halls.

Meanwhile, plans for exhibitions to spill out on the street and take over the nearby building's back walls are in development, with new work being commissioned for an outdoors program. The Gallery is also hoping to get the street pedestrianised in the near future. 'The whole ambience will change,' says director Brett Rogers.

Officially opening on the 19th May with a spectacular exhibition of celebrated Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky's large-format industrial landscape work, titled 'Oil', The Photographers' Gallery is our new favourite cultural destination in Central London.

Ferran Adria's plans for the elBullifoundation

2012-05-16 14:15:00

When star chef Ferran Adria announced he was to close the doors of Catalonian restaurant elBulli - famed for its its radically inventive fare and impossible-to-get tables - in 2010, he prompted a wave of mourning among the gastronomic cognoscenti.

With dishes such as parmesan marshmallows and melon caviar gracing the 30 course menu, the three Michelin star eatery was repeatedly voted the best in the world, so it was with anticipation that we waited to hear what the culinary wizard had next up his sleeve.

At a recent dinner, hosted by Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica, for whom he is brand ambassador, Adria unveiled his plans for a new gastronomic laboratory, which has been slowly simmering under the radar for some time. ‘We’re not closing, we’re transforming,’ explained the chef. He told us that he did contemplate selling the restaurant, but felt it wasn’t what it deserved and that he wanted the legacy to continue in some way.

Due to open in 2014, the elBullifoundation is the next stage in expanding the ideas that Adria and his team have been developing over the past 25 years. Due to employ a team of up to 30 (15 of them already existing), the new building is swiftly taking shape on the site of the original restaurant, which is tucked away on the Catalan coast in ‘El Parc Natural de Cap de Creus’, one of the largest natural reserves in Catalonia. Designed by Barcelona-based architect, Enric Ruiz Geli of Cloud9, and incorporating a material palette featuring the local mountain rock, it will be an unimposing structure that integrates with the landscape.

Completely self-sufficient, the eco-friendly complex will comprise four main departments, linked and surrounded by a resourceful and considered garden. The ‘Brainstorming’ room and the ‘Ideario’ will be the core of the creative centre and the first point of call for team members who will meet every day to conceptualise and then generate their ideas. This information will then be uploaded for public access in the ‘Worksharing’ space, while a new warehouse will house the considerable collection of awards and ever-growing elBulli paraphernalia.

The last stop for elBulli is a permanent installation, which is anticipated to be in the restaurant’s hometown of Roses. The venue is still to be decided, but the museum will house an historical archive of the establishment ever since its conception by Hans and Marketta Schilling on a once forlorn beach in the beginning of the 1960s.

Something of a national treasure in Spain, Ferran Adria has recently been venerated in a lustrous art magazine called ‘Matador’. Highlighting the history of elBulli along with Adria’s myriad creative achievements and his future plans that include the foundation, the magazine is a graphically executed publication that gives us a refined insight into the workings of the restaurant that was once the most famous in the world.

Fiona Rae exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery

2012-05-16 11:12:00

Fiona Rae remembers acquiring a PowerBook in 1999 at about the same time that she met her husband and fellow artist Dan Perfect. Something of a tech boff, Perfect introduced Rae to the joys of Photoshop and the rest, you could say, is history. Already well established as one of the 'Freeze' generation of British artists (she took part in Damien Hirst's game-changing group show in Docklands in 1988), Rae’s creative outpouring over the past decade - a powerhouse of distinctive works juxtaposing her painterly skills with startling digital age iconography - is the subject of her latest show at Leeds Art Gallery.

Its rather baffling exhibition title, 'Maybe you can live on the moon in the next century', is incidentally borrowed from a painting Rae made in 2009. 'I tend to choose titles for my paintings that I feel have a note of ambiguity about them,' she says of her often teasing phrases. 'The grammar doesn’t quite make sense in them, it's almost a bit poetic. That title seems to me to be rather ludicrous and at the same time ominous, as if the moon is the only place left.'

Starting at the point in which Rae began referencing the changing visual language of the computer generation in her work, the Leeds Art Gallery exhibition presents a body of colourful and graphically abstract paintings. Incorporating complex typography, symbols and small figures or cartoons, their ambiguous nature makes them as amusing as they are sinister. 'I'm interested in how we perceive and understand imagery through its context,' Rae continues. 'In "Maybe you can live on the moon in the next century" (the painting) there are a couple of pandas. They gaze out at the viewer and disrupt the abstract picture space. It's not clear as to whether they are protagonists or bystanders, threatening or benign.'

Rae last showed in Leeds Art Gallery back in 1990, when she took part in the touring British Art Show, and says she is pleased to be back in the gallery's fold. Working together with curator Sarah Brown, Rae has chosen 17 paintings that define her past decade's work. The lyrical titles - such as ‘Press my buttons to give me food and love!’, 2006; 'The woman who can do self-expression will shine through all eternity', 2010 and ‘Bold as a wild strawberry, sweet as a naughty girl’, 2009 - are as dazzling as the works.

We tapped into the mind of Fiona Rae...

Summarise your work ethos in two words?

Don’t stop

If you could save only one item from your office/studio what would it be?

The plastic dinosaur on my painting table.

What is your method of working?

It's changed over the years. Right now, my studio feels as though there's a constant conversation going on within it, with various canvases at different stages. Each new canvas that I begin tends to join in with the talk that's already going on.

Do you listen to music while you work? If so, what are you listening to at the moment?

I go through phases of listening to things but, recently, it's been Brian Eno and Kraftwerk.

What excites you/terrifies you on a daily basis?

Everything! Painting is really exciting but it's also terrifying. I can get awfully despondent and anxious if something seems to be going wrong, almost as though I'm wasting my life, but then a solution appears, rainbows break out, and things get exciting again.

Where do you feel most inspired?

In my studio, it’s my private cave space. Once I’m engaged in painting it’s like I’ve gone underwater and nothing else matters.

A new wave of galleries arrives in Hong Kong

2012-05-15 12:45:00

As Hong Kong presents ART HK 12, its fifth international art fair - now under the Art Basel franchise and expected to draw even more visitors than the 63,500 last year - it is also celebrating its transformation into the de facto art capital of Asia. Thanks to an unprecedented boom in China’s art market and a growing demand for Western art (Christie’s Hong Kong sold £225 million in a week last autumn), several influential international galleries have opened permanent spaces timed to coincide with this year’s fair.

‘There is palpable excitement about how the art scene is developing,’ says ART HK director Magnus Renfrew, who believes the combination of location, language, reputation and international culture has contributed to its status as an art hub.

Just a decade ago, the city was relatively provincial with a weak art infrastructure compared to traditional art centres. But recently a handful of galleries have introduced a rare pedigree of artists to the city. Ben Brown Fine Arts, which recently extended its Andre Fu-designed space, last week launched an exhibition by Italian artist Alighiero Boetti; the White Cube gallery, which staged a successful opening in March, unveiled Anselm Kiefer’s ‘Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom’. Meanwhile, the Gagosian Gallery has spent its inaugural year treating Hong Kong to Damien Hirst and, this month, Andreas Gursky’s first Asian exhibition.

The newest clutch of blue-chip galleries will likely up the ante still further. Parisian dealer Emmanuel Perrotin opens his vast 17th floor Galerie Perrotin with ‘The Nature of Need’, exhibiting the work of American neo-pop artist KAWS. ‘It is the perfect time to be opening in Hong Kong,’ says Perrotin. ‘The market is very exciting and we have a space that allows us to show exactly what we want.’ Striking interiors by Andre Fu make full use of the harbour views and natural light. ‘For me, art spaces are about creating experiences, so we flipped the circulation to the window side, creating free movement along the full-height windows,’ says Fu. ‘It is a quite subtle but effective use of the space.’

Spurred on by exponential growth in Asia, Sotheby’s is opening a sleek 1,400sq m gallery in Pacific Place, designed by local architects Richards Basmajian, and taken the entire fifth floor as an auction and lecture hall. The spaces were micro-designed with flexibility in mind. ‘Even the windows have panels to hang pictures,’ says David Richards. ‘With Sotheby’s the art works vary dramatically from traditional to cutting-edge modern, so the space had to be simple by necessity but details such as flexible lighting were critical,’ The gallery opens on the 19th May with ‘Hong Kong Blooms In My Mind’ by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, as well as an exhibit of French landscape painting from the19th and 20th centuries.

Also this week, Pearl Lam’s eponymous gallery presents its inaugural exhibition of Chinese abstract art, re-examined by contemporary-art scholar Gao Minglu and Paul Moorhouse, curator of 20th-century portraits at London’s National Portrait Gallery. Says Lam: ‘Contemporary abstract art is usually regarded by the West as second hand and derivative, but the Chinese see it differently. This exhibition will show a different perspective.’ The 350sq m new gallery in the Grade II-listed Pedder Building has temporary walls to create bespoke spaces for each piece. ‘The next exhibition will change completely. Windows will appear,’ says Lam, who was drawn to the building’s high ceilings and its paradox: ‘Outside is old but inside is new.’

Simon Lee Gallery opens this week in the same building with an exhibition of new works by American artist Sherrie Levine . Designed by Belgium-based Bataille Ibens, the gallery carries over the aesthetic of the Lee’s London gallery and acts as a project space. ‘We are adopting a different model to the conventional gallery,’ says Asia director Katherine Schaefer. ‘During the rotations in our space, mediums will range from painting, drawing and sculpture to multimedia installation and film.’

It’s not yet clear what benefit these international players will bring to Hong Kong’s emerging art community. Although they clearly have the potential to reshape the cultural landscape, local gallerists and collectors like Calvin Hui, founder of 3218, a loft-style contemporary gallery in Hong Kong’s Wong Chuk Hang district, have mixed feelings. ‘Many people say Hong Kong is the number one art market and there are a lot of opportunities, but I am still concerned about the size of the market. Tiny galleries will still find it hard to promote art.’

'Liquid Glacial' tables by Zaha Hadid at David Gill Galleries, London

2012-05-14 15:14:00

David Gill is a man who requires little introduction. A firm fixture on the contemporary design scene, the distinguished Spaniard can be credited with spearheading the shifting perception that design can be labelled as art, having commissioned pieces by Fredrikson Stallard, Barnaby Barford and Tom Dixon. This month sees Gill re-opening the doors of his eponymous gallery, 25 years since his first foray, right in the heart of Mayfair.

Located on a quiet corner of King Street, and a stone’s throw away from Christie’s, the mammoth two-floor space is a minimalist vision to behold. In addition to the main gallery space, this version 3.0 (Gill still owns a by-appointment-only space in Vauxhall) will also host an expansive library and additional exhibition area downstairs. A sober solicitor’s office in its previous incarnation, the concrete-floored space is flooded with natural light, thanks to newly installed wall-to-wall windows.

Making the most of this newfound natural light is the gallery’s inaugural exhibition – an expectedly high-falluting series of tables from the mind of a repeated Gill collaborator, Zaha Hadid. Entitled ‘Liquid Glacial,’ the series’ four pieces each resemble plates of moving ice, complete with legs akin to furrowing tunnels of water, draining down from the surface. Crafted from a new-fangled acrylic resin in Italy, each table is smooth to the touch in spite of its illusionary rippled appearance.

The Gill-Hadid partnership has been tried and tested. In 2007, Gill commissioned Hadid’s first foray into furniture, the now iconic ‘Dune Formations’ series of wall-shelving, tables and benches in an alchemic tarnished ivy shade, which are also on display in the new Gill space this month.

'This idea of glaciers and ice is something we’ve been exploring for awhile,' explained Hadid, while supervising the installation of the new pieces. 'You can’t reinvent the wheel everyday.' And with prices starting from £100,000 for the coffee table rendition of ‘Liquid Glacial’, there doesn’t seem to pressure to do otherwise.

Manifold Editions pop-up store, London

2012-05-14 12:52:00

You know your way around contemporary art. You can walk into a gallery and talk that art theory discourse with the best of them. You attend auctions and know a good price for a small Peter Doig canoe painting or some of Lisa Milroy’s shoes. Even so, even for experts like you, contemporary art can be an opaque world that seems to poorly serve the individual collector of more modest means. Which makes new contemporary art website Manifold Editions something of a godsend.

Launched in November 2011, it sells limited-edition, high-quality signed prints that you can browse at your leisure. It offers prints costing up to £3,000 and the whole process is transparent, accessible and easy. You can buy what you think will look good on your walls, not what you think will treble in price if the artist gets picked for the next Biennale.

‘This is for people who want to live with contemporary art, not for collectors who want to stick an investment in storage,’ says James Booth-Clibborn, the driving force behind Manifold Editions. The company distributes the prints of other suppliers and also commission and print works itself by the best known of the YBAs and a range of international contemporary artists.

Quality is the key here and Booth-Clibborn has the background to provide it. For the last ten years he’s been at the art and design publisher Phaidon and before that worked with his father Edward's high-end art publisher Booth-Clibborn Editions. ‘I’ve been involved in the printing process for 20-odd years, and never tire of pushing the production process ever further,’ he says.

The website, designed by British graphic design behemoth Why Not Associates, features works by artists that include Anish Kapoor, Gavin Turk, Sam Taylor-Wood, Damien Hirst as well as the aforementioned Doig and Milroy.

For nervous online art buyers, Manifold Editions is also offering a chance to see the works close up this month. Booth-Clibborn has opened a pop-up store in the Front Room at St Martins Lane hotel, London. On show until 27 May, the event marks the launch of the company’s second commission by British artist Marc Quinn, comprising editions of a series of four works, including silkscreen prints of his iconic sculpture of Kate Moss in a yoga pose. Other artists include Gary Hume, Elizabeth Magill and 2011 Turner Prize nominee George Shaw.

New York and Köln pop-ups are also in the pipeline, and the company also has a presence at the London Affordable Art Fair, marking the first time in a very long while that some of these international big hitters have had the word ‘affordable’ anywhere near their names.

May beauty news: editor's picks

2012-05-14 10:00:00

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'Excentrique(s)' by Daniel Buren for Monumenta at the Grand Palais, Paris

2012-05-11 17:19:00

Creating an installation for Monumenta in the nave of Paris' Grand Palais is just about the most prestigious commission any artist can win in France. This year, the honour has gone to French grand master Daniel Buren, who follows Anish Kapoor to become the fifth artist ever to fill the dazzlingly glamorous and grandiose space.

Titled 'Excentrique(s)', Buren has conjured a giant cluster of plastic circles, which overlap to form a colourful canopy. You can wander among them, watching how the light, shadows and reflections change with the weather. At night, roving spotlights bounce off the green, blue, yellow and orange panels, disco-style, while an on-a-loop sound track (of a text read in 37 different languages) ensures you won't start dancing.

'When the sun comes out, everyone is upside down,' says Buren, pointing upwards to our reflections on the circles. 'In the beginning, I was impressed by the building, and didn't know how to compete with its extravagance. But it's rather alienating. So I set about providing a human scale by creating a kind of shelter.'

His circles, held up with trademark black and white steel poles, come in four colours only, assembled on site in a repeat pattern, which began alphabetically, with b for the colour blue. You feel safe walking under them, and the reflections create rainbow like patterns under your feet, making you want to linger.

At the centre of it all are mirrored glass circles that you can walk on, to witness the top of the roof, which Buren has covered with intermittent blue panels. It creates a clever contrast between old and new, colour and transparency, pomp and simplicity. Buren, who is 64, is known for his exquisite and masterful use of space, and here you can see why.

Hermès 'Leather Forever' exhibition, London

2012-05-11 14:24:00

Leather has been the cornerstone of Hermès’s oevre for almost two centuries. Little wonder then, that the French luxury brand is dedicating a whole exhibition to the material, making its long-standing love affair the focal point of the aptly-named ‘Leather Forever’.

Hermès turns 175 this year. And with Britain having much to celebrate – thanks to the Olympics and the Queen’s Jubilee – debuting ‘Leather Forever’ in London was the brand’s own canny way of joining in on the cultural celebrations.

‘Leather and craft is our essence and our identity’, said Chief Operating Officer Axel Dumas at the opening. Case in point, an on-site workshop – framed by a wall piled high with the brand’s iconic orange boxes – housing craftspeople from the Hermès workshops in Paris, who are on-hand to demonstrate the brand’s intricate leather-working process.

The exhibition has been sensitively designed by Alexandra Plat, who has created an ultimate fantasy world of leather, filled with surreal touches such as a sunset-lit ‘desert’ flanked by a sandy floor - a tented display of travel-related accessories taking centre-stage. A viewing station, equipped with glittering silver opera binoculars, taunts the viewer's line of vision towards a giant neon Kelly bag, filled with different variations of the brand’s iconic bags through the years.

But the most playful message has been saved for last. In a room containing a toy theatre, a sumptuous red and gold stage curtain opens and closes dramatically. Revealed, are four one-of-a-kind versions of the 'Passe-Guide' bag. Paraded one after the other in rotating fashion, the bags are magically swapped as the curtain closes and then opens. Created specially for ‘Leather Forever’, the bags will be auctioned for charity with Christie’s between 14 to 31 May in a time-based online auction.

Omega's Olympic record of timing inventions

2012-05-10 17:53:00

When a tenth or a thousandth of a second can make or break a career, timing is everything. Ever since the first modern Olympic Games, held in Athens in 1896, time measurement has been the pivot around which the event turns. It’s a serious job for serious timekeepers.

A few watch brands have taken on the task in the hundred-odd years of the event’s history. Swiss motorsports timer Heuer (it acquired the TAG prefix in 1985) was a natural partner in the 1920s, while Seiko has also been timekeeper for several Games. But it is the Biel based brand Omega that has had the most consistent link, and London 2012 marks its 25th outing as Official Timekeeper.

It’s no mere brand-endorsement exercise, either: the pursuit of ever more precise timing is what makes the watch world tick, but the Official Timekeeper is under scrutiny to develop equipment that is not just up to the job but that is better at it. Hence, affiliated watch companies have always poured huge resources into sports-timing technology.

And, because Omega has presided over a century of change - when stopwatch holders at the touchline reluctantly gave way to electronic timers then digital methods – the company’s role as a technology pioneer is pretty impressive. Its engineers have spent decades developing kit that is not only elegantly designed – so as not to impede audience views of athletes crossing the finishing lines – but that performs and concurs with the demands of athletes, officials and the millions of people who watch the Olympic Games on television.

Take the Omegascope, which launched in 1961. By enabling live running times to be relayed on television for the first time, it directly engaged audiences, enhancing viewer experience, making broadcasting history while it was at it.

Naturally, Olympics timekeeping is computer-based now, but Omega continues to accelerate change, propelling the future of sporting performance along with it. Practising swimmers at Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre in east London were recently asked whether improvements in Omega’s touch-pad technology – a system that responds to a swimmer’s touch but not the movement of the water – would pass muster.

Here, as part of our inaugural Sports Special (out now), we chart Omega's unbeatable track record of Olympic timing inventions, from the 1920s up to the impending 2012 London games.

Port Adriano marina by Philippe Starck, Mallorca

2012-05-10 15:52:00

‘It is almost invisible,' says Philippe Starck, of the new Port Adriano marina in Mallorca. 'The architecture exists only on the second view. When you first arrive, you don’t notice anything and after a while you start to see.’ So don't expect a grand architectural statement then. It may have been designed for mega yachts, but there's nothing bling about Starck's design. Instead he has opted for a pared down, low slung and elegant structure that is home to restaurants, bars, a car park, fashion and nautical stores, as well as a marina.

The architect was brought on board by Antonio Zaforteza, owner of Ocibar – the island’s flourishing nautical-management company. Starck's love for all things oceanic and his experience in yacht design, however, ensured he needed little coaxing. ‘I cannot survive without the sea,’ he explains, adding: ‘I design mega yachts for other people, but I only have a small boat. It’s grey and incredibly ugly with lots of boxes of wine and mattresses for the children.’

Located on the south-west bay of Palma de Mallorca, the capital of the Balearic Islands, the marina has up until now been a rather disappointing docking space for yachts and speed boats. Inspired by his intense dislike for onsite car parking spaces, Starck’s mission was to create a structure that artfully concealed an underground car park below sea level. ‘I’ve seen a lot of harbours - they are all horrible. And there is worse - there are marinas. Marinas for me are basically huge parking lots.’

Instead Starck has created a clean, linear, two-level structure featuring concrete columns, topped off with a slatted wood roof and a striking staircase lit from beneath. Design details include street lights modelled on standing lamps, handsome numbered steel mooring plates and chic bollards. ‘When I design something I try make it so that it doesn’t become obsolete in 20 years,’ says Starck. ‘We are stuck in a ‘Kleenex’ society and the only way to work is to create timeless design.’

Under construction: Astrup Fearnley Museum by Renzo Piano, Oslo

2012-05-10 14:34:00

Somehow, despite being responsible for London's Shard - the tallest, sharpest, shiniest tower in Europe - Renzo Piano has escaped the tag of the ego-architect. Famous instead for an approach that prioritises people and places over statements and grandeur, burying and blending even the most significant, vast buildings into their surroundings, Piano was the perfect choice for Oslo’s newest architectural attraction.

Spacious yet low-lying, solid yet exploiting every inch of light available, understated in its materials yet meticulously detailed throughout, the new buildings set to house the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Contemporary Art are a reflection of the city’s psyche - indeed the wider Norwegian one, which is also typically informal and modest.

Swiftly taking shape at the up-and-coming new waterfront district, Tjuvholmen, the museum is set to open at the end of September this year. The Museum, which first opened in Dronningensgate in 1993 to house and display the Astrup Fearnley Collection, closed its current premises on 1 January in preparation for the move.

The new space has cost some 650 million NOK (around 80 million euros), and covers an area of 7,000 sq m at the end of the Tjuvholmen strip, already lined with high end restaurants and private galleries. In contrast, the Astrup Fearnley is designed to attract a wider audience, and unlike many landmark contemporary new museums whose architecture competes with the content, here the focus is very much on the art displayed and engendering a lightness of experience within the space.

The most striking views of the building itself are from the water, from which the double curved roof construction in glass slopes elegantly upwards. Filtering daylight into the main exhibition space for temporary exhibitions, the art on display is lit exceptionally well - something that can be really appreciated when standing on the mezzanine in the main exhibition space.

Concentrated on individual works and artists, rather than on movements or historical periods, over the years the Astrup Fearnley Collection has amassed some major pieces, including Jeff Koons' sculpture of Michael Jackson and Bubbles (bought in 2002 for $5.1m), and works by Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Doug Aitken, Olafur Eliasson and Cai Guo-Qiang among many others. Like many buildings by Piano, this is architecture with a beauty that creeps up on you - something that should comply well with the museum’s aim 'to present international contemporary artists in illuminating depth' while still communing happily with Norwegian art scene and the city of Oslo.

Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations exhibition, New York

2012-05-10 14:17:00

There is no such thing as bad publicity or indeed bad bad-mouthing. So back in January when Miuccia Prada made some disapproving remarks about an upcoming show, juxtaposing her work with that of 1930s couturier Elsa Schiaparelli, at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, it merely served to increase anticipation of what might, or might not, be a ground-breaking exhibition. 'It’s too formal,' said Mrs Prada to Womens Wear Daily, in an off-guard backstage moment. '[the curators] are focused on similarities…but they are not taking into consideration that we are talking about two different eras, and that [Schiaparelli and I] are total opposites.'

Tomorrow the exhibition 'Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations' finally opens to the public, having already been partly exposed through the medium of the unparalleledly celebrity-packed fundraising annual Met Gala on 7 May, where everyone from Beyoncé to Gary Oldman, Robert Pattinson, Marc Jacobs and Carey Mulligan had an early viewing. I had an even earlier viewing, last Friday, when mannequins were still being moved into place, the hairdresser Guido and his team were matching satin head coverings appliquéd with butterflies, lips and insects to outfits and designers were painstakingly applying text to vitrines.

Even then, what was clear was a compelling binary iteration of fashion from Schiaparelli, whose major period of activity was the 1930s, and Miuccia Prada, who is a contemporary tour de force. Schiaparelli’s concern with the torso is matched with Prada’s obsession with below the waist. Schiaparelli’s figurative hats meet Prada’s outstandingly elaborate shoes.

The similarities of the two Italians’ work – both hail from privileged families and came to the business of fashion later in life – is staggering, though this is less through a direct influence of one on the other, but the linking force of Yves St Laurent who was deeply interested in Schiaparelli’s work and Mrs Prada is in his. The lip motif, for example, that Schiaparelli created with the surrealist Salvador Dali was adopted by YSL in the 1970s and by Prada more recently.

Reinforcing the idea that these womens’ ideas are sometimes confluent and sometimes opposing are continuous films – directed by Baz Luhrmann in the style of My Dinner with Andre – where actress Judy Davis as Schiaparelli on the left side of the screen appears to converse with Miuccia on the right. Schiaparelli’s words are taken from her autobiography, published in 1954, while Prada’s come from recent interviews. The idea of an imaginary conversation is derived from a 1930s column in Vanity Fair which once imagined a meeting between Stalin and Schiaparelli as well as Jean Harlow and Sigmund Freud.

The exhibition has been brought together by Costume Institute curator, Andrew Bolton, whose McQueen show last year in the same spot was such a triumph, and director Harold Koda. Both women, says Bolton, didn’t really care about titles, more about doing their job, though Schiaparelli is clearly a couturier with the skill of the Parisian ateliers at her disposal and Prada has a different advantage of a world stage.

'To me, Miuccia is most interesting when she talks about minimalism,' says Bolton. 'She says she used it as something to hide behind in the 1990s, when she was still ambivalent about working in fashion. But you can see here, through her exuberant use of print, decoration and colour that she is no minimalist.' Indeed, this is a point where her and Schiaparelli certainly collide. While the latter might have used fashion as an artform, and Prada sees herself as part of an industry, both are proved by this show to be very keen to push the boundaries of fashion and endlessly willing to provoke.

Acne launches the Snowdon Blue project

2012-05-09 15:57:00

Acne Studios' latest undertaking is a study in the colour blue, or blue shirts to be precise. The Swedish brand has published its first book - a collection of portraits taken by Antony Armstrong-Jones (or Lord Snowdon, as he is better known), for which all his subjects have donned his famous 'blue' uniform.

The charismatic London-born photographer, who married Princess Margaret in 1960, has fixed his lens on practically every world notable from the Queen, Princess Diana and Tony Blair to Manolo Blahnik, Yves Saint Laurent and Serge Gainsbourg. Through the course of his 40-year career, the tonal palette of shirts has been a constant fixture.

‘The blue shirt is anonymous and yet kind of a uniform’, explains Snowdon, who kept a small pile of the garments in varying shades and textures in his studio, ready for his subjects to throw on. Featuring 61 of these portraits, the book, entitled 'Snowdon Blue', is accompanied by a travelling exhibition - beginning in London's Mayfair shop, followed by Paris, New York and Stockholm.

Also in the mix is a limited-edition collection of eight shirts (in blue, of course) – an homage to those worn by the famous subjects in Snowdon’s portraits.

The project continues Snowdon's relationship with the Swedish fashion brand, which began in 2007, when he was commissioned to shoot a series of portraits of students and teachers at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design for Acne Paper.

The Snowdon Blue book, limited-edition signed prints and shirt collection are available to buy in all Acne stores worldwide and through Snowdon-review.com.

May travel news: editor's picks

2012-05-09 13:20:00

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Discover & Deliver: a new website that brings the hotel to your home

2012-05-09 11:36:00

In an age in which a few virtual clicks can bring almost anything to our finger tips, it’s a wonder why the idea for a lifestyle website enabling us to purchase furniture we've seen in design hotels around the world hasn’t appeared sooner.

The brainchild of Isabel Rutland, Discover & Deliver sells a tightly curated selection of designs by the likes of Sergio Rodrigues, Hans Wegner, Arne Jacobson and Jean Prouve, as seen in hotels and restaurants from Hotel Americano in New York to the Waterhouse in Shanghai and Belgraves in London.

Searchable via hotel or designer, the items can be purchased directly through Discover & Deliver and are made by the original manufacturer. And should you not be able to find an item you’ve seen, then send them a snap and the company’s ‘Find It’ service will do their best to identify and provide you the opportunity to purchase it.

The website also acts as an online design library, showcasing styles that range from the Arts & Crafts movement of the 19th Century and the Fin de siècle Viennese and early German modernist works, through to Bauhaus and Modernism, right up to the present day.

Artist's Palate: Douglas Gordon's cullen skink

2012-05-08 14:44:00

Turner Prize winning multi-media artist Douglas Gordon references mirror, memory and autobiography in much of his work. He also used the Goya portraits in the Prado as his storyboard when preparing the cameramen who filmed his real time portrait of Zinedine Zidane playing a match for Real Madrid, but that’s another, rather marvellous, story. This recipe is inspired by the sight of his father eating Scotland’s famous smoked haddock soup in the Glasgow institution that is Café Gandolfi. He stipulates that the fish is to come from Aberdeen; the new potatoes from Ayrshire and the sharp knife used to barely stir them should be handed down from your Granny. If you don’t have a Granny a Grandmother may suffice, but try to get hold of some finnan haddie, the lightly cold-smoked haddock that goes best with the onions, leek, garlic and milk that makes this dish far superior to a bisque or a chowder. He also wants us to mention that Café Gandolfi and his father are both still going strong.

Big fish.

One is enough,

Aberdeen boneless.

Smoked, of course.

Haddock, that is.

Pan fried, just right; a capful olive oil and a knuckle of butter.

Meanwhile, new potatoes, preferably Ayrshires, halved, then quartered, should simmer, parboil... not too much water but add a wee cup of olive oil to the pot.

Not too much water,

but don’t throw away the water.

Never throw away the water.

Skim off the scum.

When tatties are done (they still

have some bite in the middle,

al dente, my friends, al dente…)

Reduce water to half volume.

Don’t worry if the potatoes start to catch on the pan; it’s delicious.

Finally, friends, introduce the fish with the butter and fat..

Always.

Some garlic?

Yes!

Crushed or sliced, no matter.

A little onion, or two.

Half a leek: the best part of.

-------------

So, where was I?

-------------

Give all into the pot – potatoes,

fish and the rest...

Do NOT blend, do NOT mash.

But stir the potage together with a sharp knife, preferably handed down from yer granny.

When the soup has become ‘soup’, fish out the skin and bones, pardon the puns and...

Add milk to give the necessary volume.

Add some wee parsley sprigs –

and if you feel adventurous, some coriander or lovage.

No salt required.

Pepper as much as you want but

hide it from your mum.

Enjoy!

It’s the devil’s breakfast...

Frieze New York 2012

2012-05-08 11:41:00

Randall's Island, a small islet on New York City's East River, has historically been a place for outsiders - once home to an orphanage, asylum, and a reform school - however this weekend, the island was very much a destination for the inside. Boat-loads of art lovers descended on the island for the Frieze art fair's inaugural New York edition, where a 250,000 sq ft serpentine-shaped tent, designed by SO-IL (Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu), held pop-up booths for 180 of the world's top galleries.

The expected blue chip gang were in attendance, and appropriately situated near one another: at London's Victoria Miro, generations of talented female artists were represented, including Alice Neel and Yayoi Kusama, and Sarah Sze; while White Cube gallery dominated in the British male lot, offering up a Hirst case filled with fish in formaldehyde; Antony Gormley's concrete Room II sculpture, and a glass paint-on-aluminium 'painting' by Gary Hume.

Across the corridor at Sprüth Magers, Barbara Kruger's 2012 work 'Too big to Fail' seemed to be a nod to the fair itself while a quartet of Astrid Klein collages from the 1980s recalled a freewheeling past. Meanwhile, New York's David Zwirner Gallery devoted the entire booth to Minimalism, with works by Fred Sandback, John McCracken, and Donald Judd, among others.

On the other end of the tent, big guns Hauser & Wirth and Lisson Gallery were on form: in Hauser & Wirth's immaculate booth (featuring works by Matthew Day Jackson, Subodh Gupta, Roni Horn, and more) a bright blue dwarf by Paul McCarthy giggled at passer-bys, while across the corridor, a beguiling and monumental yellow Anish Kapoor disc at the Lisson Gallery stand kept the uplifting colour scheme going.

While big galleries brought out their best, it was some of the smaller galleries that stole the spotlight: works by Gillian Wearing, Dirk Stewen, and David Salle made Maureen Paley gallery a draw; cow-hide loveseats by Richard Artschwager and intricate drawings by recent Guerlain Drawing Prize-winner Jorinde Voigt had Mayor Bloomberg lingering at David Nolan Gallery's booth; and a space-station like geometric sculpture by Buster Graybill at Jack Hanley Gallery had adults and children alike enthralled.

The fair was not just a visual feast, but also a literal one. On the its opening night, dealer Gavin Brown and actor Mark Ruffalo 'performed' a Rirkrit Tiravanija-inspired piece, cooking and serving sausages to the crowd; at Breeder Gallery's booth, fair-goers could crack walnuts between the legs of Jennifer Rubell's life-sized reclining nude Barbie figure; and in the booth of Andrew Kreps Gallery, Darren Bader's sculpture offered guacamole out of a French horn. Gallery booths were flanked by food stands (both inside and outside) from some of the hippest downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn eateries, including Roberta's Pizza, Fat Radish, Frankies Spuntino, and the Standard Hotel Biergarten.

Playing to the island's history, curator Cecilia Alemani invited eight artists to use the site as inspiration for the Mulberry-sponsored Frieze Projects, resulting in a carnivalesque shadow puppet theatre by Ulla von Brandenburg; a collaborative work by local schoolchildren with Tim Rollins and KOS (Kids of Survival), painted on (appropriately) Thai mulberry paper and inspired by the story and score of A Midsummer Night's Dream; a commissioned short story by American novelist Rick Moody; and a chance to have your own bust cast by artist John Ahearn (a reconstruction of a legendary 1979 exhibition 'South Bronx Hall of Fame').

Despite the overcast weather for the start of the fair, the airy tent was flooded with natural light and this, along with the spacious booths and generous corridors, made for a very uplifting art-viewing experience.

This up-note rippled across the East River, with dozens of art-related events taking place in Brooklyn and Manhattan. In West Chelsea, the NADA fair took over the former DIA building on 22nd Street, with galleries like Nicelle Beauchene, Ana Cristea Gallery, Gavlak Gallery, Lisa Cooley, and IBID Projects showing top works. Meanwhile gallery shows like Richard Avedon and Lucio Fontana at the Gagosian, Liam Gillick at Casey Kaplan, and Dana Schutz at Friedrich Petzel, were crowd-pleasers.

Downtown, the New Museum opened shows by Phyllida Barlow, Tacita Dean, Klara Liden, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Burg, and Ellen Altfest; and Lower East Side galleries were brimming with visitors for 'Downtown' night. Over in Brooklyn, the collaborative indie fair seven @ SEVEN, located in a former industrial boiler room, was as wildly popular as its Miami edition.

Harry Winston opens a new salon in Shanghai

2012-05-08 11:25:00

Harry Winston may specialise in exceptional diamond creations for the body but, with the opening of its new salon in Shanghai this month, it has also created an exceptional jewellery box to adorn the Chinese landscape. Built from scratch in the smart Xintiandi district and tucked cosily into the base of the Andaz hotel, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, the Harry Winston pavilion reflects the shape and character of a faceted stone.

The structure and interior were overseen by Harry Winston's regular design associate, Bill Sofield of New York's Studio Sofield. 'Light was the starting point,' Sofield explained at the opening event. 'I've often thought that jewellery shops can feel like little prisons, so we aimed to have as much natural light flowing through the building as possible, as though it were being reflected in a diamond.'

Sofield has a point about the dark, claustrophobic nature of many high-end jewellery boutiques, products of an industry that is understandably furtive about drawing too much attention to the value of its wares. His design is a welcome antidote and completely transforms the retail experience.

While there are no closed-off areas, the two-tier building has viewing areas upstairs and down, where displays are carefully angled to reflect the products. Subtle colour and lighting variations make the men's and women's watch areas feel right for their intended consumer yet, at the same time, open to all.

The building succeeds in bringing the traditional, sometimes stuffy business of jewellery shopping elegantly up to date, welcoming casual wanderers and serious investors alike. Meanwhile the old-style gold font used on the exterior (created by a Winston designer in the 1930s) nods to the company's heritage (Harry Winston established his eponymous New York boutique in 1932) and adds a distinctive New York touch.

To celebrate its foray into Shanghai, Harry Winston has unveiled a range of limited-edition watches and a line of charms in platinum and diamonds, an HW monogram and lucky '8' among them. It has also launched the Qipao Ultimate Adornments collection to pay homage to the brand's latest destination.

Hyundai Veloster

2012-05-04 17:21:00

The lure of the brand casts a strange shadow across the car industry. At the high end, the badge is everything, and products need to conform to the litany of expectations that have been carefully cultivated throughout the parent company's life. On the other hand, the market is wide open for a bold usurper to slip in and shake up the established order - providing the product is good enough.

Hyundai has built its British reputation on the provision of value and no-nonsense design. The Korean multinational began as a spin-off from its parent company (specialising in construction), assembling a global team of mass production specialists and churning out millions of low-cost, built-to-a-budget saloons for markets around the world that were looking for a cheap alternative to Japanese cars. So far, so good, but Hyundai's relentless economic minimalism couldn't last for ever, especially as Western markets began their push upmarket. Like its sister brand, Kia, Hyundai has used design to bring its brand up to date, adding a dash of premium feel while still undercutting most of its rivals.

The Veloster is the Korean answer to the European fashion for sporting compact coupes. There are a couple of caveats. For one, it's not especially sporting, at least not in 1.6 GDi trim as tested here, but there is a certain style in the way this small four-seater has been put together. The other is the design. Low and purposeful, with racy details like the centrally mounted twin exhaust pipes, deeply scalloped rear light enclosures and two-part glazed boot, the Veloster began life as the Veloster Coupe Concept from 2007 - an early stab at moving into a more design-savvy market place. The concept was well received, green-lighting the Veloster project. It'll be a matter of personal taste as to whether you consider this a concept car made flesh or a rather over-styled hatchback.

The production car's key idiosyncrasy is its use of only one rear door, on the passenger side, allowing easy access to the rear but without 'spoiling' the lines when viewed from the driver's size. This suggests Veloster drivers might be practicing a certain amount of self-deception when it comes to viewing their family car as a sporty coupe, not a practical family machine.

Inside, the company lives up to its reputation for doling out plenty of standard equipment, and the (optional) sat nav is of decent quality. The dash design still has awkward hints of 1990s-era audio equipment, with its swooping curves and flashes of plasticized 'chrome' but it's far from the worst offender in its class. The Veloster even got the odd admiring glance and comment as it makes its way around town, in the way that freshly minted car designs are wont to do, but it's likely to remain relatively scarce, so there's no chance of familiarity breeding contempt.

Ultimately, the Veloster is a sporty-looking car for those who don't really need the performance and are more than happy not to pay for it. It's a competent, pleasing design that helps Hyundai even further along the tricky road from budget to premium brand. If badge snobbery is not your bag, the Veloster offers neat, efficient and low-cost transport with an unpretentious attitude.