Soho Journal Launch

A new quarterly magazine hits the streets of London and I’m very happy to announce my involvement in the inaugural issue that launched earlier this week in the capital. Soho Journal is a well curated lifestyle publication that will feature people, business and editorial articles focused in and around the area of Soho.

Issue 1 covers a range of character profiles and destination reviews in the famed hedonistic quarter and includes my business profile on the Photographers’ Gallery, devoted to its namesake medium for over four decades. From its founding in 1971 in Covent Garden to embedding itself in the ‘world’s most creative square mile’, according to the gallery’s Director, Brett Rogers, OBE, with its ambitious relocation in 2012 on Ramillies Street, I also investigate the art world’s return to the West End with a host of native and international commercial galleries favouring an address in the area over one in the now-gentrified East End.

Read an online preview of my article here or grab a copy of Soho Journal - featuring bespoke tailor and cover boy Mark Powell - for free in a number of hotels, galleries, coffee shops, eateries and retail locations in the W1 area.

For more on Art, Culture & Lifestyle 

visit jonathanvelardi.com

Image courtesy of Kirk Truman 

Frank Bowling In Conversation

Amidst the Frieze furore of last week that reverberated across all corners of the capital, the stylish tranquillity of The Keeper’s House at the Royal Academy played host to an intimate evening in conversation with the artist and Royal Academician, Frank Bowling, OBE. Ahead of the abstract painter’s major exhibition opening this week at the Spritmuseum, Stockholm – home of the Absolut Art Collection - guests had the pleasure of being introduced to the exhibition’s curator Mia Sundberg, art historian Courtney J. Martin as well as critic and long-term friend of Bowling, Mel Gooding.

Traingone will showcase works produced in the artist’s New York and London studios between 1979 and 1996. The exhibition marks a resurgence of global attention that Bowling has received after his solo exhibition, Focus Display at Tate Britain in 2012.

FrankBowling in convo @royalacademy Keeper's House ahead of major exhib opening nxt wk @Spritmuseum #Stockholm. #art pic.twitter.com/DrfgHtNerJ
— Jonathan Velardi (@JMVELARDI) October 13, 2014

The evening covered the artist’s colourful career that is famously reflected in his large-scale canvases. After graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1962, Bowling left London for New York with a “longing to be in literary things” and found his feet within the contemporary literary scene of poets and writers resisidng in the metropolis. It was there Bowling first met fellow Brit Gooding who developed an interest in the artist’s work and his inspiration, which was rooted in the works of great English painters such as Gainsborough, Constable and Turner. Gooding described Bowling at the time of possessing, “an inner knowledge of the works of American artists as a British outsider” while armed with classical foundations. This quality allowed Bowling a freedom to experiment on the canvas unseen before on the New York art scene that saw various influences of geometry and plastic materials manipulated to create sculptural relief on the surface. Charismatically, Bowling describes his practice as being  “intent on making competitive imagery”, which has seen his poetically titled works go on display in a number of prominent international exhibitions and collections throughout his career.

Detail - Traingone (Mahaicony Abary), 1996

Lauded by Gooding as a “master of Colour Field painting’, Bowling’s kelaidescopic-scapes attract the viewer with colour and entice in contextual dynamism – a formula that has proved Bowling’s foresight and endurance in today’s competitive painting market.

The 78 year old artist continues to work between London and New York and is represented by Hales Gallery, London.

Traingone by Frank Bowling, OBE RA opens at the Spritmusem in Stockholm, Sweden on 23rd October 2014 and runs to 6th April 2015.

Follow @JMVELARDI for more on Arts, Culture & Lifestyle

ICA: Off-Site - The Last 3 Years and the Future

The Institute of Contemporary Arts returns to The Old Selfridges Hotel for another year and brings with it a host of international guests for its ICA: Off-Site programme. The concrete carcass of the former residence that sits on the west wing of the luxury department store on Orchard Street sets the scene for an electric schedule of live performance across the mediums of music, art, dance and debate to coincide with Frieze week.

As well as highlights starring Isabel Lewis, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Rhizome, last Thursday’s highly anticipated collaborative set between Korakrit Arunanondchai and boychild with AJGvojic commanded block-long queues for the late evening performance.

The Last 3 Years and the Future comprised of four video works accompanied by a live performance centred around a stage that had been decorated with Arunanondchai’s trademark bleached denim canvases. 

The scene in The Old Selfrdiges Hall reflected the current state of young performance art that the Bangkok-born New York-based artist is affiliated with: an unashamed aesthetic clash and sensory overload that parallels our virtual demeanour for information and speed. 

The four video works that span between 2012 and 2014 were collaborative in their construct – another emerging signature of new-age performance art – to create a complex overlapping of narrative and context shot over specific lengths of time and rooted in the artist’s heritage. 

The Future (2014) – the last in the four-part series – is an ongoing feature film shot this summer in collaboration with boychild: an intensely captivating chameleon and performance artist based in Los Angeles. Clips of popular culture television such as talent shows and news feeds are spliced together with cultural landscapes and digitally manipulated imagery over a dynamic score that set the scene for the anticipated live element of the performance. 

The theatrics of strobe lighting and smoke machines - designed by Serbian AJGvojic - created an impressive climax through the various sets to a break in its pace. Arunanondchai and his smoking, denim-clad posse handed over the stage to boychild’s exhilarating body-centric display. A remix cut of TLC’s 1999-hit Unpretty accelerated as the metamorphic artist produced gender-bending shapes and convulsions that played on notions of beauty, androgyny and anarchy shrouded in an apocalyptic haze. 

From Arunanondchai’s denim canvases to boychild’s body-as-canvas and AJGvojic's canvassing of the environment with texture and sound, The Last 3 Years and the Future was a stimulating experience to behold of 'live surface' expression and an exciting insight in the radical directions and influences being explored within contemporary performance art.

View more images and video from the performance The Last 3 Years and the Future by Korakrit Arunanondchai and boychild with AJGvojic on my Tumblr page hashtag-highlife-lowlife.tumblr.com

ICA: Off-Site runs to 18th October 2014 at The Old Selfridges Hotel, above Selfridges Food Hall – click here for a full schedule of live events. Korakrit Arunanondchai’s denim paintings may be viewed at the ICA on The Mall in the group exhibition Beware Wet Paint through to 16th November 2014.

Follow @JMVELARDI for more on Arts, Culture & Lifestyle

Top image courtesy of ICA

Frieze Week: White Cube Escape

With Frieze London now in full swing, it may be impossible to find a tin of white paint anywhere in the capital. With over 160 contemporary galleries featured at this year’s fair, that’s a lot of stands to be transformed into white cube utopias with the prospect of dangerously entering ‘once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all’ territory. If you’re looking for an art fix with a difference, head off-piste from the white-capped surroundings of Regent’s Park with my pick of 5 alternative spaces to view contemporary art set in the surroundings of zoos, hotels and office spaces across the capital during Frieze week:

Paradigm Store at 5 Howick Place

There may be no better location than Victoria to reflect London’s expanding growth – it’s sheer speed perhaps represented by the wind swept public art sculpture by Yinka Shonibare, MBE – aptly titled Wind Sculpture – that resides opposite the vacant commercial space-turned-temporary backdrop for the international group exhibition Paradigm Store. Spread across five floors and 80,000 sq ft, Paradigm Store presents an impressive display of new and recent works by seventeen artists selected by curatorial partnership Tina Sotiriadi and Alistair Howick of HS Projects. 

Untitled: No Inside, 2014 by Simon Bedwell - variable dimensions

Photo: Sylvain Deleu - Courtesy of the Artist & MOT International

The diverse exhibition explores issues of the decorative and the functional, incorporating a variety of mixed media works that are concerned with the relationship between conceptual art and design. Visiting the exhibition is by appointment only and provides an exceptional opportunity to be personally guided by Sotiriadi and Howick through the compelling installations by artists such as Claire Barclay, Ulla von Brandenburg, Cullinan Richards, Simon Bedwell and David Shrigley.

Paradigm Store continues through to 5th November 2014 at 5 Howick Place SW1 1BH – viewing appointments may be arranged with Allison Thorpe at Sutton PR - allison@suttonpr.com

Little Manhattan, 2007–2009 by Yutaka Sone - marble, 55.2 x 265.1 x 85.1 cm

Photo: Sylvain Deleu- Courtesy of the Artist & David Zwirner Gallery, New York/London

ICA Off-Site: The Old Selfridges Hotel

The dilapidated, concrete carcass of the former Selfridges Hotel in Mayfair plays host to another ICA Off-Site programme from the capital’s pioneering Institute of Contemporary Arts. This year’s event will encompass a dynamic schedule of performance, music, art, dance and discussion presented by both London-based creative platforms and international artists. 

Brooklyn-based artist and curator Isabel Lewis will launch the week-long event that will feature the collaborative performance The Last 3 Years and the Future between New York-based artist Korakrit Arunanondchai with boychild and AJ Gvojic as well as the discussion of art’s function and circulation in our internet age conducted by online arts platform Rhizome.

ICA Off-Site: The Old Selfridges Hotel at 1 Orchard Street W1U 1QZ runs to 18th October 2014 with daily events and live performances.

Angela Bulloch for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars

With the art world’s ever-increasing affinity with the luxury sector through collaborations and limited editions, it is no surprise one of the world’s most prestigious motor car manufacturers want to ride the successful art-luxury formula. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars have commissioned celebrated artist and Turner Prize-nominee Angela Bulloch to create a new work derived from the properties and scale of the marque’s equally celebrated Phantom model. Cipher of L. is materialised in the artist’s ‘Pixel Box’ aesthetic, emitting coloured light that reflects the manufacturer’s bespoke 44,000 hue-option pallet.

The specially commissioned installation, Cipher of L. by Angela Bulloch will be on show in the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars London showroom, 15 Berkeley Square W1J BDT until 23rd October 2014.

Cipher of L., 2014 by Angela Bulloch

Photo: copyright Getty Images - Nicky J Sims

One Man’s Trash (Is Another Man’s Treasure) at 33 Fitzroy Square

A rare opportunity to view the conceptual works from the Danjuma Collection will be on display within the Georgian splendour of 33 Fitzroy Square, near to Regent’s Park, throughout the month of October. Founded by London-based collector Theo Danjuma in 2008, the collection includes over 400 works by established and emerging artists including Wade Guyton, Alex Israel and Dahn Vo. One Man’s Trash (Is Another Man’s Treasure) will explore the idea of found material employed by the artists represented in the collection. Contemporary African art will also feature, providing a unique landscape of global artistic activity.

One Man’s Trash (Is Another Man’s Treasure) will occupy 33 Fitzroy Square W1T 6EU through to 28th October 2014.

BC (3550), 2011 by Ruby Sterling

Cerith Wyn Evans at ZSL London Zoo

With the intentions of creating an exhibition for both human and animal life alike, Cerith Wyn Evans presents his contribution to this year’s Frieze Projects within ZSL London Zoo. The multisensory neon intervention will be installed in the zoo’s Snowdon Aviary, designed by Antony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon), Cedric Price and Frank Newby.

Cerith Wyn Evans at ZSL London Zoo will be on show during Frieze Art Fair through to 19th October.

Cerith Wyn Evans at ZSL London Zoo for Frieze Projects

Discover this year’s Frieze highlights and new programmes on the Frieze London schedule in my article for London Calling available to read here.

Frieze London

The art world descends on London this week for arguably the highlight in the art market's global calendar. For several weeks Regent’s Park has been at the centre of a hive of activity in preparation for the twelfth edition of Frieze Art Fair. Over 160 leading contemporary galleries and over 1000 artists from around the world will be showcased under a temporary white cube mothership, designed by Barber & Osgerby of London-based Universal Design Studio.

Frieze week is a flâneur’s paradise for not only high quality art but the spectacle of artists, curators, collectors and members of the art cognoscenti who peruse statement gallery stands and jaunt from country to country – travelling as locally between West and East London to as far reaching as the contemporary art quarters of America, Asia and Europe, all within a few stylish steps from one another.

Discover my guide to this year’s schedule at London Calling, the latest platform where I will be contributing arts and culture-related highlights in the capital. Plan your visit to Frieze with my breakdown of the five programmes taking place between 15th and 19th October. From the annual Frieze Projects commissions that will be popping up across several locations on- and off-site to the popular Frieze Sculpture Park featuring international public art works in Regent’s Park as well as old guard creations at Frieze Masters - there is something for every eye at Frieze.

Visit London Calling to read my article Frieze Art Fair: London 2014 in full.

Frieze Film - Baby I Got Better Things To Be Doing With My Time by Cally Spooner

Frieze Art Fair runs from 15th-18th October and Frieze Masters between 15th-19th October in Regent’s Park, London. Access to Frieze Sculpture Park is free to the public.

Yayoi Kusama's Pumpkins

Between the towering cranes and construction that envelope the landscape of East London, a super-sizing of quite another sort may be found behind the walls of Victoria Miro’s Wharf Road gallery. In my latest blog entry for Ohh Deer, I visit a new body of work by visionary artist Yayoi Kusama. A series of three oversized pumpkins lie on the gallery’s enviable water garden – a fitting synergy with the Japanese artist’s longstanding intrigue of the natural world.

Pumpkins, 2014 by Yayoi Kusama - Victoria Miro, Wharf Road gallery London

Pumpkins mark the first time Kusama has worked with bronze on this scale, ranging from knee to head height. The plant has played a prolific role in the eccentric artist’s career – first making an appearance as early as 1948. After over five decades, Kusama affirms there is much more fantasy to be explored with this bulbous form, reinterpreted in her trademark Pop aesthetic that has been revered in major international exhibitions to commercial collaborations with luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton, under the direction of Marc Jacobs, as well as t-shirt graphics for Japanese retailer Uniqlo.

My full review Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkins - on show until 19th December 2014 in the Victoria Miro garden - is now available to read on the Ohh Deer blog.

Look out for other public artworks by the artist during Frieze London 2014 at Frieze Sculpture Park in the English Garden in Regent’s Park between 15th - 19th October 2014. 

Follow @JMVELARDI for more on Arts, Culture & Lifestyle

Image courtesy of Victoria Miro

Introducing: Melting Butter

Is it just me or do time and travel never seem to get along? There’s never enough time while you’re away exploring new sights and sounds and when you get back it feels like a lifetime waiting until the next adventure can begin. Despite much technological advancement – of which time travel is not one – if you’ve ever precariously perched out of your hotel window to catch free Wi-Fi out of thin air and punched the words ‘what to do in’ while you’re away from home, then you’re doing it all wrong. Lose the generic travel guides and reviews and by all means get lost; just get lost in the right places. After accumulating a fair amount of mileage on my travels, wandering the streets with only my eyes, ears and sensibility, I’ve amassed an international cultural log of art and design must-sees that I’ve not known what to do with - until now...

I’m very excited to announce I have joined the correspondent team at lifestyle hub Melting Butter. Founded by fellow globetrotter Jenny Nguyen-Barron, Melting Butter is a traveler’s ultimate digital companion, offering a curated online guide from dawn to dusk for explorers in search of the most inspiring and aspiring hotspots in New York and around the world.

As the site’s new arts and culture correspondent I’ll be covering contemporary art and design staples from across the pond in London and the rest of the UK as well as across Europe. Catch up on my latest favourite hotspots including Tate Britain, Tate Modern and the Barbican Centre online now.

Follow Melting Butter as I work my way through my travel log of galleries and institutions throughout Europe to make time while you travel last that little bit longer.

Barbican Centre image: Padsyms

Heal's Discovers

One of my favourite previews on the design calendar is the Heal’s Autumn Collection presented in its London flagship on Tottenham Court Road. As one of the leading furniture emporiums in the country for more than two centuries, the brand continues to provide high quality, accessible design for the contemporary home. Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, the Heal’s Discovers programme continues to work with emerging talent, promoting innovative design from the drawing table to the shop floor.

Heal's Discovers 2014: Ester Comunello, Tom Parfitt, Josh South and Sam Lloyd

Ahead of its official launch at the London Design Festival in September, I previewed this year’s Heal’s Discovers designers who are all alumni from traditional furniture making and product design universities from across the country. Kirsty Whyte, Heal’s Product & Design Manager, explained to me the importance of design ethos that had been considered in choosing both the university and its subsequent graduate for the programme. Craftsmanship and material are at the core of the designers’ varied practices and this is reflected in the British-made values that Heal’s maintains for its in-house collections. Kirsty and her team mentored each designer through the stages of concept to viable product and worked closely with specialist British manufacturers for their production.

Ester Comunello introduces her Turn Collection – comprising of a coffee table, floor lamp and mirror – as a response to society’s detached relationship with product design. The Brazilian designer and graduate from Bucks New University based her concept around dexterity and craft when designing the range, which requires easy hands-on assembly without the nuts and bolts of flat pack counterparts. 

Turn Collection by Ester Comunello

The screw mechanism and ridges allow owners to engage directly with the piece using their hands; defining its shape and form, even offering the ability to clamp onto existing pieces of furniture or architecture. The result is a highly dynamic range that is made in Norwich using beech wood.

details: Turn coffee table (above) and Turn mirror (below)

Modernist architecture was the principal inspiration behind Tom Parfitt’s Maya side table. The Rycotewood-graduate hails from a wealth of industry experience at British furniture brand Benchmark before developing new skills and methods while studying for his degree. The side table - manufactured in Cheltenham - boasts the impressive credential of being made from over 90% recycled material. Equally impressive is its finish and physicality – smooth polished concrete and minimal lines. The solid form features triangular voids that make for just enough decorative intrigue as well as functional storage.

Maya side table by Tom Parfitt

Aluminium and oak come together for the Sand Cast range by Kingston University-graduate Sam Lloyd. A bar stool and low stool are presented in an angular style with an aluminium seat - manufactured after its namesake - upon three legs available in natural or fumed oak. A variety of manufacturing techniques are involved in its production that include aluminium casting from South East London to the hand-turned timber from Whitstable.

Sand Cast stools by Sam Lloyd

Design duo Luscombe and South met at Northumbria University where they established their collaborative studio. Philip Luscombe and Josh South introduce their first fully realised project together in the multi-functional Rickard Stool. After a series of prototypes – a making process favoured by the designers rather than sketching - the stool evolved to be suitable for sitting and standing as well as for display as a side-table. The natural and fumed oak components of the two-tiered stool are highlighted with contrasting dowels along its curved surface.

Rickard Stool by Philip Luscombe and Josh South

Alongside the debut designs of the emerging designers, the 2014 Autumn Collection looks to six new ranges by established designers and studios that include ‘Future Craft’ and ‘Modern British’ takes on minimal Nordic and Japanese aesthetics through to reinterpreted silhouettes of classic lines respectively. 

Perfectly (Imperfect) Stool by Galvin Brothers

The Perfectly (Imperfect) Stool by the Galvin Brothers with its misshaped turned leg in white oiled English ash and William Warren’s asymmetrical Deconstructed Windsor collection in dark wood were notable highlights that embraced design details underneath the surface top, pleasing the eye from head to toe.

Deconstructed Windsor Collection by William Warren

The Heal’s Discovers 2014 range from all five designers will launch on 13th September 2014 at the London Design Festival and at 100% Design between 17th and 20th September 2014. 
For more information about the range and collections featured in this post visit heals.co.uk or view in-store at 196 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 7LQ and nationwide from next month.

Follow @JMVELARDI on Twitter for more Art, Design and Lifestyle  

Images courtesy of Heal's 

Ain't Nothing Normcore About Rudeboys

Earlier this year New York-based trend forecasting group K-HOLE introduced normcore into the dictionary of streetstyle (The New Normal - The New York Times, April 2014). Waist-high white wash jeans, over-sized tees and non-descript sneakers were being spotted on fashion packs around the world. The look is post-aspirational, mall-in-the-middle-of-nowhere get up. Think out of office hours Obama, the late Steve Jobs or American tourists in Europe from the Nineties. Rarely do the words normal and fashion meet in the same sentence, however this neologism - borne from its distant metaphorical relation, hardcore - continues to trend amongst hipster boys and girls who want everyone to know they could give zero fucks about Yeezys or Yves Saint Laurent. 

This summer Somerset House presents the antithesis of normcore. Return of the Rudeboy is an original exhibition showcasing the sartorial subculture that bridges the swagger of the 1950s in Kingston, Jamaica to the sharp tailoring of London’s Savile Row. Unlike the peacocks that were parading down the King’s Road or Carnaby Street during the Swinging Sixties (Sex, Drugs & Fish n’ Chips, September 2011), Rudeboys (or Rudies) didn’t dress to impress but dressed for themselves. Caribbean immigration to the United Kingdom during this time led to a revival of dapper dressing between young rebels influenced by punk and reggae music of the era. The movement is an extraordinary insight of an attitude towards menswear that until only recently is being acknowledged by fashion commentators. The confidence demonstrated in recent seasons of male sprezzatura, or nonchalance, when it comes to one’s threads, borders on the aesthetics of Rudeboy culture. It is the routine and attention to detail reflected in the collaborative nature of the exhibition however, which firmly define the Rudeboy as much more than superficial swag from head to toe.

Return of the Rudeboys - Somerset House London

Central to the Rudeboy look is putting a twist on its heritage and this is successfully echoed by the visual mash up of garments and styling objects displayed in the neoclassical opulence of Somerset House’s South Wing Terrace Rooms. Creative director Harris Elliott and photographer Dean Chalkley, curators of Return of the Rudeboy, feature a host of bespoke contributions beside the quintessential suited and booted mannequins, that include objects by box maker Kitty Farrow and luggage maker Alstermo Bruk. Hats, shirt collars and even hair combs are given their very own custom splendour in exquisitely designed travel cases, perfect for the Rudeboy on the move. And how does a Rudeboy get around town? On an Opus Dopus freestep by Paul Gaba, paired with a tasseled pair of KIL-LER kicks by Mr Hare of course.

#style mix frm #RudeboysReturn exhib @somersethouse #London June13 - Aug25 2014. #doyathinkimsexy #fashion ... https://t.co/VDteCVOmdA
— Jonathan Velardi (@JMVELARDI) June 13, 2014

The Rudeboy lifestyle embodies everything from the accoutrements of fashion to the sounds that put a kick in one’s step. Alongside the large-scale photographic portraits of over sixty influential Rudeboys and Rudegirls on the scene today, a playlist of tracks selected by each subject to capture the spirit and soul of the Rudie philosophy offers a sensational experience through the multi-media galleries. The dynamic curation continues with the installation of a ‘grooming station’ from Johhnie Sapong X We Are Cuts that offers hair cuts and beard maintenance, by appointment only, in a fresh pop-up barber shop.

KIL-LER loafers by Mr Hare

Return of the Rudeboy is one of those exhibitions visitors will think twice about what to wear before leaving the front door. You have been warned: ain’t nothing normcore about Rudeboys.

  

Return of the Rudeboy runs to 25th August 2014 at Somerset House London. Visit returnoftherudeboy.com for details of special events and film screenings throughout the duration of the exhibition. 

Follow @JMVELARDI on Twitter and Vine for more 

#highlife and #lowlife art, culture & lifestyle.