What’s On – London Art and Design Events September 2016

This month sees the launch of LuxuryMade by Media 10 in the hitherto hidden setting of Olympia’s grand Pillar Halls – once the UK’s first electric cinema. Staged as part of the London Design Festival 2016, LuxuryMade focuses on the high-end contemporary interior design market.

50 luxury brands are exhibited providing the very best examples of contemporary decorative and luxury furnishings, furniture, fabrics, lighting and accessories. Exhibitors will include Julian Chichester, Cassina, Gainsborough and Jacaranda.

The show is organised by Media 10 and will run alongside 100% Design. Read the interview with the Show Director William Knight.

100% Design is the biggest and longest running contemporary design trade event in the UK, and is the commercial cornerstone of the London Design Festival. This year over 25,000 people are expected to attend. As always this mega fair will attract architects, specifiers and designers from across the globe who come to see the latest products from top international brands. The fair is divided into four main industry sections: Interiors, Workplace, Kitchen & Bathrooms and Design & Build.

Supporting events at the fair include a talks programme curated by the Design Museum; a series of installations that will attempt to push the boundaries of design; and LuxuryMade showcasing contemporary decorative and luxury furnishings, furniture, fabrics, lighting and accessories by some of the most prestigious manufacturers.

Decorex is undoubtedly one of the capital’s most important interiors trade fairs. Although it is mostly targeted at the industry, the event is also open to the public for a limited period. Now in its 39th year, this veteran of London design will be showcasing its own edit of over 400 exhibitors of high end brands. The fair’s theme this year will be the roots of design, considering the origins, the processes involved and examining the influences and influencers that continue to shape and set the tone for the industry today.

The fair will also host a seminar series; an interior design mentoring programme; Crafthouse examines the role of craft in our lives; and Future Heritage showcasing design critic Corinne Julius’ predictions of the luxury creators of tomorrow.

The first London Design Biennale will be launched this September at Somerset House with over 30 countries participating. Countries from six continents will present newly commissioned works that explore the theme Utopia by Design.

London Design Biennale will see installations curated by the leading museums and design organisations in the world, including Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (USA), DAMnation (Belgium), German Design Council, the MAK and Austria Design Net, Moscow Design Museum (Russia), Triennale Design Museum (Italy), India Design Forum, Southern Guild (South Africa), The Japan Foundation, and Victoria and Albert Museum (UK). Designs will be created architects, designers, scientists, writers and artists.

Merge Visible brings together six well-known practitioners of digital collage in contemporary fine art photography. All six artists utilise computer software to create imaginative compositions, part reality, part fantasy. Artists include Emily Allchurch, Deborah Baker, Lisa Creagh, Ellie Davies, Barbara Nati and Suzanne Moxhay.

Although these artists have abandoned easel and canvas for hi-tech methods, they are all heavily influenced by the more traditional practice of fine art painting. Emily Allchurch, perhaps the most, as her works are contemporary reconstructions of particular Old Master paintings by the likes of Bruegel and Piranesi. Meanwhile Deborah Baker admits that the abstract nature of her images is indebted to abstract expressionism and its practitioners, from Willem de Kooning to Jackson Pollock. While according to Lisa Creagh, her works owe much to Dutch Flower paintings and Byzantine ecclesiastical art, as well as Islamic geometrical designs. Whereas Barbara Nati acknowledges the influence of nineteenth century painting to her work, and Suzanne Moxhay, the early film-making technique of matte painting, where backdrops were painted on sheets of glass and integrated by the camera with the live-action on set.

Common to them all, though, is the use of photography as their medium and computer technology as their tool to create meticulously choreographed compositions, seamlessly integrated, which provoke intense visual resonances, alive to the digital age.

Main Image : Stars 15 by ©Ellie Davies courtesy of Mall Galleries

The LAPADA fair is one of the most important showcases for art and antiques in London and will return to Berkeley Square for the eighth year running. It is as much a social event as it is a commercial one, with vast numbers of visitors converging on this fashionable square in Mayfair from the four corners of the globe.

The 100 exhibitors of the fair will show a wide variety art, antiques, design and decorative arts, ranging from between £500 – £500,000. Here you will find jewellery, furniture, carpets, tapestries, antiquities, clocks, ceramics, silver and fine art.

This huge annual event celebrates and promotes London as the design capital of the world and as the gateway to the international creative community. It is both cultural and commercial, with over 400 events including exhibitions, trade events, installations and talks. Since the festival was launched in 2003, it has been imitated by over 80 other countries that have set up their own design festivals.

Over the the course of 9 days, hundreds of events take place across London encompassing a wide range of design disciplines. The festival is an umbrella organisation that includes many partner organisations that also put on a dazzling variety of events. In addition there are also a series of major events at the V&A and Somerset House as well as high profile Landmark Projects in some of London’s most iconic spaces.

Open House London 2016 is an annual opportunity – over the course of a weekend – to experience up to 700 of the capital’s buildings first hand. Many of these buildings are not normally accessible to the public. There’s a full programme of walks and talks and all of it for free.

The not-for-profit organisation behind these events began their activities in 1992 to promote public awareness and appreciation of the capital’s building design and architecture. The aim was to help people demand better quality buildings by being better informed. Open House quite rightly believes that there’s no better alternative to the direct experience of the best of our buildings.

This is the 29th edition of the 20/21 BRITISH ART FAIR. Held annually at the Royal College of Art, the fair is unique in specialising in Modern and Post-War art but also features work up to the present day. The main periods covered are the Modern (1900-1945), Post-War (1945-1970), and Contemporary (1970 onwards). The 55 exhibitors will show paintings, prints, drawings, photography and sculpture.

The founders of the fair were concerned that Modern British art (with the notable exceptions of Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Ben Nicholson) was undervalued and needed a flagship. At that time the market for international modern art was booming and British art was quietly gathering momentum. The age-old assumption of the superiority of French and then of American art, was disappearing and the art schools were turning out the artists who became the YBA movement, headed by Damien Hirst and his contemporaries.

Having survived the recession in the early 90s, art dealers have thrived but the explosion of interest in art since then, both in the UK and globally has caught everyone by surprise. There has also been a dramatic change in attitudes to buying art. Twenty five years ago it was more an elite activity, but, with the advent of the YBAs and the phenomenal success of Tate Modern, art now appeals to a very broad audience and the 20/21 British Art Fair has undoubtedly played its part in this development.

Pablo Bronstein is the latest in a series of celebrated British artists to create a site-specific work in response to the imposing Duveen galleries which sit at the heart of Tate Britain.
Bronstein is known for his interest in pre-20th century European design and architecture and for creating often satirical performances which fuse modern and historic elements commenting on art and its place in society.

This, his most ambitious project to date, takes inspiration from the neo-classical surroundings of the Duveen galleries and the artist’s interest in the Baroque period to create a continuous live performance. Dancers will move through the galleries interacting with architectural elements, creating a spectacle not to be missed.

This very popular and enjoyable show is unusual in that it has responded to decorators seeking unusual antiques and 20th century designs for home interiors. There is much that is genuinely idiosyncratic and prices are generally affordable. Exhibitors are encouraged to show their wares in room sets, which is an inspiring way to see how items may be displayed.

The Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair was launched in 1985, the first to specifically unite the antiques and interior design trades. Today there are three events a year: a Winter Fair in January, a Spring Fair in April and an Autumn Fair during the busy ‘design season’ in late September./p>

The Design Centre at Chelsea Harbour is a one-stop marketplace for interior design and Focus is its main annual event, taking place at the start of the ‘London Design Festival’. The fair is the opportunity for the Centre’s 120 or so showrooms to show off their latest new ranges.

But that’s not all: Visitors can see the latest launches, meet the industry’s top creatives, observe skilled craftsmanship at demonstrations, exchange ideas at workshops, join curated tours and trails and join in the Conversations in Designs sessions. Don’t miss ‘Art & Interiors at Focus/16’, a curated exhibition with art that has inspired 30 international designers.
18 – 21 September trade preview, 22 – 23 September all welcome.

Christopher Wood had a brief but influential and turbulent life and career. He – and Ben and Winifred Nicholson Wood – developed a self-consciously unsophisticated style that was partly inspired by the untrained Cornish artist Alfred Wallis. He effortlessly entered into fashionable circles Both in London and Paris, meeting Augustus John, Picasso and Jean Cocteau.

Wood’s understanding of naïve art was influenced by his early exposure to the work of modernists in France such as Picasso, Cezanne and Van Gogh, who all drew upon Non-Western art and so-called ‘primitive’ cultures. An addiction to opium was responsible for the direct and visionary quality of his later paintings.

This is the first major exhibition of the artists’ work in 35 years and celebrates the magnitude of his achievement during the ten years before his untimely death in 1930, aged just 29. Including paintings, set designs and drawings created on both sides of the channel, it also explores Wood’s immense personal struggle as he juggled the conflict between the reserved sensibility of his English heritage and the hedonism of the Parisian avant-garde.

For many people, Giacometti’s (1901-1966) highly distinctive work is more recognisable than his name. The artists’ characteristic style dates from 1947 when he started to make tall and spindly sculptural figures. Inescapably linked to the post-War climate of existential despair, this body of work has been universally admired and imitated ever since. Following on from a fascinating exhibition focusing on Giacometti’s portraiture at the NPG last year, this giant of 20th century modernism is having his first show at the Tate for fifty years.

This exhibition will focus on the influences that shaped Giacometti and the experimental way in which he developed his practice. The exhibition includes some never before seen plasters and drawings alongside more familiar bronze sculptures and oil paintings. From his first works of art through his Surrealist compositions, to the emergence of his mature style, Giacometti has rarely been explored this fully.

Lukas Duwenhögger’s highly distinctive work is at first sight a modern and surrealistic orientalism. His figurative paintings in pastel colours often portray men in homosocial gatherings in his adopted home of Istanbul. There is a palpable empathy and even love for many of his subjects. These works appear to subtly reference high cultural traditions of portraiture and painting through the prism of class, politics and sexuality – as seen by a cultural outsider.

This exhibition is the largest and, surprisingly for so significant an artist, amongst the first surveys to date for Lukas Duwenhögger. It includes paintings, installations, collages and objects made over more than thirty years.

A century after her New York debut, Tate Modern presents a major retrospective of the American modernist artist Georgia O’Keeffe. This is the first important solo institutional exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK for a generation. O’Keeffe’s work is reviewed in depth and her place in the canon of twentieth-century art is reassessed. The exhibition situates her within the artistic circles of her own generation and also indicates her influence on artists of subsequent generations.

Recognised as a foundational figure of American modernism, O’ Keeffe – who was born in the late 1880s – has secured a central place within the mainstream art world from the 1910s to the 1970s. This exhibition will relate her practice back through the American tradition of landscape painting – in which she excelled – as well as forward to anticipate the gendered landscapes and statements of feminist artists of later generations. For this reason, as well as her enduring engagement with abstraction and landscape, the serialised, increasingly economic and stylised paintings of the southwestern locations called the ‘Black Place’ and the ‘White Place’, will be at the heart of the exhibition.

A fascinating perspective of the exhibition is O’Keeffe’s professional and personal relationship with Alfred Stieglitz; photographer, modern art promoter and the artist’s husband. Stieglitz gave O’Keeffe access to the most current developments in avant-garde art. She – however – employed these influences and opportunities to her own objectives. Though sometimes turbulent, this was a largely fruitful relationship that brought about reciprocal influence and exchange.

Of course the enduring popular notion is that O’Keeffe was simply a painter of flowers – and this is a conception she faced during her lifetime. This exhibition will consider these remarkable flower works in the context of her overall production as multi-layered images. Rather ambitiously the show aims to demonstrate their connection to abstraction, gendered imagery, bodily analogy and Freudian interpretations, and to her spiritual engagement with the landscape.

One of Britain’s greatest living painters, David Hockney returns to the RA with a remarkable series of acrylic portraits following on from his monumental landscape exhibition in 2012. After spending some 8 years back in his native Yorkshire, Hockney returned to LA, his adopted home of 30 years.

Recuperating from a stroke and the shock of the tragic death of a young assistant at his home, he found himself unable to paint. Finally in the summer of 2013, Hockney produced the first of this series – a portrait of his studio manager clutching his head in his hands. His friend and curator of this show Edith Devaney, noticed a similarity with Van Gogh’s Old Man in Sorrow. She also felt that this was a kind of self-portrait.

82 portraits followed (including one landscape), all of people Hockney knows well. They include friends, family and acquaintances – include office staff, fellow artists, curators and gallerists such as John Baldessari and Larry Gagosian. Each work is exactly the same size. The sitter always sits in the same chair, against the same vivid blue background and all were painted in the same time frame of three days. These portraits are hung in the order they were painted, from July 2013 to March 2016. A solitary still life painting is also included in the show. When one of the sitters failed to show up, Hockney simply painted a still life scene instead.

The Palace of Versailles has put on a number of high profile exhibitions over the last eight years – and this year is the turn of the extraordinary Olafur Eliasson. Anyone who ever saw his striking installation – ‘Weather Project’ (2003) – in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, will never forget it. That powerful installation was viewed by more than two million people.

The exhibition – that is well worth travelling out for – comprises of pieces of radically different scale and medium both within the palace and also outside in the gardens. The exterior works all relate to the various states of water – fluid, fog, and glacial. The most astonishing piece is a monumental waterfall in the canal on the central axis of the garden, made possible by a tall crane. This spectacular device references an unrealised design by Andre Le Notre.

Inside the chateau, mirrors and light are variously used to confuse perceptions. This appears to be a nod to the magnificent sun of his Turbine Hall installation. The Sun King himself would doubtless have approved.

This is the first major exhibition to celebrate the connection between early photography and British art. It brings together photographs and paintings including Pre-Raphaelite, Aesthetic and British impressionist works.

The exhibition spans 75 years and opens with the experimental beginnings of photography in dialogue with painters such as J.M.W. Turner and concludes with its flowering as an independent international art form in the Edwardian era.

Works by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, JAM Whistler, John Singer Sargent, John William Waterhouse and others will for the first time be shown alongside photographs by pivotal early photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, which they inspired and which also inspired them.

The V&A – which is of course many people’s favourite museum in London – is flying high, having been named Museum of the Year 2016. It has won the UK’s largest arts prize, for providing visitors with what judges called an unforgettable experience. The London museum was praised for an exhibition programme that included its most visited ever show, an Alexander McQueen retrospective, and the opening of restored permanent galleries devoted to European arts and crafts from 1600-1815. More than 493,043 visitors from 87 countries went to the McQueen show – Savage Beauty – making it the museum’s most visited exhibition.

From its excellent temporary exhibitions on subjects as varied as Botticelli, Bowie or underwear, to its magnificent collections and beautiful spaces and Italianate courtyard, the V&A is one of the best experiences in town.

The Welcome Collection always put on art exhibitions that mine the deeper scientific bedrock of art and creativity. This series of changing installations is no exception as it examines perspectives from artists, psychologists, philosophers and neuroscientists to interrogate our understanding of the conscious experience.

The focus is on phenomena such as somnambulism, mesmerism, and disorders of memory and consciousness, the exhibition looks at ideas around the nature of consciousness, and in particular what can happen when our typical conscious experience is interrupted, damaged or undermined.

This fascinating exhibition recreates the lost interiors designed by the Bloomsbury artists Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. It was in 1913 that this Group founded The Omega Workshops Ltd – a design enterprise that aimed to reflect the progressive values of their creative circle. Fry who conceived the idea, wanted to break down the hierarchical divisions between decorative and fine arts and to provide many of his friends – who were struggling to find a commercial market for their painting – with an opportunity to earn additional income creating bespoke household accessories.

The range of items made included painted furniture, murals, mosaics, stained glass and textiles, as well as entire interior design themes for set living spaces. The group was eager to ensure that pieces were bought based on quality rather than the artist’s reputation; consequently each was displayed anonymously with just the omega symbol inscribed. It wasn’t long before many fashionable Bloomsbury residents were vying to have their homes transformed. Unfortunately few of these London interiors survived the war; and the only remaining complete decorative schemes are at Charleston, which acted as the group’s base in Sussex.

This exhibition aims to recreate the lost Bloomsbury rooms, bringing together a range of decorative objects designed by Bell, Grant and Fry between 1914 and 1930, both for the Omega Workshops and independently. They are displayed alongside paintings and drawings that show the interiors in situ.

For 16 years the Serpentine Pavilion has become an international site for architectural experimentation, presenting inspirational temporary structures by some of the world’s greatest architects. In fact it is also one of the top-ten most visited architectural and design exhibitions in the world, and a much anticipated London event. As always, the brief is to design a flexible, multi-purpose social space with a café that is open to all throughout the summer. With the aim of introducing new talent into the UK’s built environment, architects are selected from those who are yet to build a permanent building in the UK.

This year there will be not one – but four architects each commissioned to design a 25 m2 Summer House. The inspiration for the Summer Houses is the nearby Queen Caroline’s Temple, a classical style summer house, built in 1734 and a stone’s throw from the Serpentine Gallery.

Bjarke Ingels Group’s structure is described as an ‘unzipped wall’ that is transformed from straight line to three-dimensional space, creating a dramatic structure that by day houses a café and by night becomes a space for the Serpentine’s Park Nights programme of performances. Kunlé Adeyemi’s contribution is an inverse replica of Queen Caroline’s Temple – recomposed into a sculptural object. Barkow Leibinger was inspired by another, no longer extant, 18th Century pavilion also designed by William Kent, which rotated and offered 360 degree views of the Park. Yona Friedman’s Summer House takes the form of a modular structure that can be assembled and disassembled in different formations and builds upon the architect’s pioneering project La Ville Spatiale begun in the late 1950s. Asif Khan’s offering takes its cue from the fact that Queen Caroline’s Temple was positioned in a way that would allow it to catch the sunlight from the Serpentine lake.