OUR DEMONSTRATION at GNM Gallery, King’s Place | Art and activism

OUR DEMONSTRATION is a exhibition project on the theme of art and protest that’s been a year in the making and we’re getting really excited about it – mainly because we know one of the curators, CSM student Miranda Booth. 

You can see the results of all their hard work at the GNM gallery at King’s Place – expect everything from Guardian archive photography, chewing gum art (see the poster above) and a riot in a jam jar i.e. a miniature recreation of student protests.

Those asked to participate works on creative resistance vary from unknown talent to more established, contemporary artists and all of this takes places in the foyer of the newspaper’s offices in King’s Cross, London.

The exhibition’s private view is this Thursday evening and it runs until 3rd May.

Jeremy Deller review // Joy in People at the Hayward

Valerie's Snack Bar (2009)

Jeremy Deller is pretty demanding. As part of ‘Joy in People’, a survey of the Turner Prize-winning artist’s work showing at the Hayward until May 13th, Deller and the exhibition’s curator, Ralph Rugoff, expect you to nosy around in his teenage bedroom cupboards, walk blindly through a Stuart Hughes mural of an open mouth and sit down for a cup of tea in Valerie’s Snack Bar.

Then again, that’s nothing compared to building a float to parade around Manchester as part of Deller’s procession during the International Festival in 2009. Or restaging the Battle of Orgreave, a clash between miners and riot police under Thatcher, with 1000 other people – sixteen years after the event.

The films and audio slideshow of Deller talking through some of these works – Beyond the White Walls –  only serve to remind visitors to the Hayward that we weren’t part of the original work. But you just have to get over this or you won’t enjoy Deller’s stories. He’s modest, engaging and funny as he talks about his lack of a formal education in art and his interactions with all sorts of groups and individuals in the UK and, with a burnt-out Iraqi car in tow, across America.

The smaller projects that made me smile the most were The Uses of Literacy – in which Deller asked fans of the Manic Street Preachers who felt educated by the band to make art inspired by their music and recommendations – and Middle Class Posse, a series of hand signals that Deller came up with to allow gangs of Radio 4-loving, tea-with-one-sugar drinking people to communicate secretly.

His work is like a series of flashmobs with heart – the thrill comes from being part of a short-lived or publicity-shy event but the difference is Deller tackles subjects that matter, if even just to one community.

And although this is a retrospective, Deller ain’t dead just yet. Something tells me there will be a lot more volunteers from the Middle Class Posse rushing to sign up for his next “work of art” if the queues at the Hayward were anything to go by.

All images show installation views of Jeremy Deller: Joy in People at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre. Click to enlarge – if you don’t join in, Deller won’t be happy at all. All works courtesy the artist. Photos: Linda Nylind

Valerie’s Snack Bar (2009)

The History of the World (1997)

Open Bedroom (1993)

It Is What It Is (2009)

So Many Ways to Hurt You (The Life & Times of Adrian Street, 2010)

COMING SOON: 20 Years of Dazed and Confused exhibition

Here’s a date for your diary. Friday 4th November sees the opening of 20 Years of Dazed and Confused Magazine: Making It Up As We Go Along. at Somerset House. And, good news, entry is free. The latest London event with a fashion focus (following the excellent Masters of Style in the summer), the exhibition will look back at two decades of the art and style bible’s cutting edge content, celebrated cover stars – including Kate Moss, pictured – and iconic imagery. Curated by Jefferson Hack (who cofounded the magazine in 1991 with the photographer so famous he only needs one name, Rankin).  Work on show comes from some of the biggest names in the art and fashion worlds, from stylists like Katie Grand and Alister Mackie to artists Damien Hirst and Sam Taylor-Wood.  Alongside the exhibition, a book with the same title will be released, chronicling the ‘make it up as we go along’ spirit. I’ll be first in line at Somerset House come November, so expect a review shortly after.

20 Years of Dazed and Confused Magazine: Making It Up As We Go Along is on at Somerset House from 4 November 2011 – 29 January 2012. Entry is free. See the Somerset House website for more details.

Join the call to bring the Alexander McQueen exhibition home

Fashion editor Melanie Rickey thinks that New York’s recent Alexander McQueen exhibition should be brought home to London - and we couldn’t agree more.

You can’t have missed the acres of web space recently devoted to Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, the exhibition that was held at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art this summer. Heck, there were street style blog posts and articles written about the queue on the last weekend alone, when closing time was extended to midnight to meet visitor demand. I don’t think a queue has had that must press coverage since the Eurostar disaster at King’s Cross St Pancras two Christmases ago (I should know – I got home to Holland three days late because of it).

My point is, the exhibition was a huge success. Described by Suzy Menkes in the New York Times as ‘exciting, stimulating and thought-provoking,’ it attracted 661,509 visitors between May and August. Which is great news, a fitting tribute to the all-too-short life of one of Britain’s greatest ever designers. But therein lies the rub: so far, there are no plans to hold the exhibition to Britain, and the city that Lee Alexander McQueen called home.

In an attempt to remedy this, Grazia’s Melanie Rickey (who you might know better as blogger @Fashedatlarge) has started a campaign to bring Savage Beauty to London, and we at Style & Then Some wholeheartedly support her efforts. Using an online petition and the hashtag #bringmcqueenexhibitionhome on Twitter, Rickey hopes to persuade the organisers to stage the show at the Victoria and Albert museum, London’s principal venue for fashion exhibitions. There’s no doubt it would be hugely popular, so would make sound financial sense. But more than that, the people of London deserve a chance to see up close the work of this visionary designer. A retrospective of the house of McQueen really belongs in the place where he lived, worked and, tragically, died.

If you, too, want to see Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty brought home to London, add your name to the more than 2,100 signatures on the online petition. While you’re at it, why not post on Twitter the reason you think the exhibition should come to London. Don’t forget the hashtag #bringmcqueenexhibitionhome.
UPDATE: Success! The McQueen exhibition WILL be coming to London, Fashedatlarge confirms. Job well done.

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Ten things I learned at the royal wedding dress exhibition

The Royal Collection ©2011, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

 

1. Six different types of lace can be seen on the dress.
2. Four of the lace motifs were chosen to represent the nations of the United Kingdom– rose, thistle, daffodil and shamrock.
3. The lace was appliquéd onto the satin gazar fabric by the Royal School of Needlework, an embroidery school that dates back to 1872.
4. The sewing needles had to be renewed every three hours to ensure they remained sharp enough.
5. The overall design of the dress was intended, according to designer Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen, to ‘look to the past but look forward as well,’ so the bustle echoed a traditional Victorian shape but the corsetry was typical of the house of Alexander McQueen.
6. The skirt pattern was shaped like an unfolding flower.
7. Heavy canvas was strategically placed on the ‘petals’ of the skirt to make sure it retained its shape when Catherine walked up the aisle.
8. The earrings that the Middleton family had commissioned as a gift for their daughter feature a diamond in the shape of an acorn, as seen on the family’s coat of arms.
9. The Royal wedding cake featured 900 flowers and leaves made out of icing.
10. Because they didn’t eat the royal wedding cake itself (it’s on show at the exhibition now) the Duke of Cambridge had a chocolate biscuit cake commissioned by McVities, presumably to keep reception guests happy.

The Royal Wedding Dress: A story of Great British Design is open until 3^rd October 2011 at the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace. Visit the Royal Collection website for more details and to book tickets.

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Get dirty at the Wellcome Collection

You’ve got three weeks left to see Dirt, the latest exhibition at my favourite free London museum the Wellcome Collection.

Chronicling dirt, disease and decay throughout the ages, Dirt: The filthy reality of everyday life looks at attempts to combat filth in all its forms. From the belief that cleanliness is next to godliness and ‘Jews are lice and they cause typhus’ (that’ll be the Nazis then), books, posters and public education materials show the way our attitude to disease has changed throughout the years. I particularly liked the section on Jon Snow’s pioneering work on the spread of cholera. There’s a reason they named that pub on Broadwick Street after him you see – Snow discovered that cholera was being spread because of shared water pumps by mapping cholera deaths in Soho. Mixed in with all the historical artefacts are pieces of topical modern art, like two side by side videos of a man washing his hands, which, the caption tells me, makes it an ‘emotionally charged’ act. While I love modern art exhibitions in and of themselves, here I think it’s largely superfluous to need and I much prefer the factual side of things where you get to learn loads of interesting facts. For instance, did you know that the Dutch town of Delft is so called because it was built around a main canal that was ‘delved’ out of the ground. Good eh?

Dirt: The filthy reality of everyday life is on at the Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE until 31 August 2011. Entry is free. Go to the Wellcome Collection website for more info.

Going to Tate Modern? Forget Miro, head to the Diane Arbus room

I went to Tate Modern last week and really didn’t rate the main exhibition, a retrospective of Spanish painter Miro. I was far more excited to discover a new room dedicated entirely to American photographer Diane Arbus.

Diane Arbus Puerto Rican woman with a beauty mark, N.Y.C. 1965 © The Estate of Diane Arbus

Arbus is one of those photographers who you might think you’ve never heard of, but chances are you will have see some of her stark black and white street photographs before. I think that many are as beautiful as a page from a Vogue photo spread, which may be explained by the fact that Arbus, who died in 1971, started out as a fashion photographer.

Diane Arbus: A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y. 1970 © The Estate of Diane Arbus

This exhibition features a selection of archetypal Arbus portraits. Transvestites, midgets, an albino, a giant – these were the misfits Arbus chose because they were ‘things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.’ Spread over three rooms,  the exhibit opened in May and will remain on the third floor of the Tate until March 2012. Entry is free, so take my advice: skip the big ticket Miro and instead make a beeline for ARTIST ROOMS: Diane Arbus.

Diane Arbus Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962 © The Estate of Diane Arbus

Photos courtesy www.masters-of-photography.com