Love the Barbican? Then your Friday nights are about to get a whole lot better. The London institution has announced Anyone Can Dance, a new late-night party series launching in February 2026 with an opening night curated by UK-based creative collective Eastern Margins – a platform dedicated to championing alternative East and South East Asian (ESEA) culture.

The series celebrates global club music as heard through UK diasporas, spotlighting dance floor sounds from around the world refracted through local scenes. The first of five nights planned for 2026 takes place on Friday 20 February, when the Barbican’s Level -1 foyer will be transformed into an intimate dance floor, open until 3am.

Eastern Margins is known for foregrounding alternative and grassroots Asian culture across genres including J-pop, hyperpop, techno, rap, pop-punk, jazz and grime. Their Barbican takeover highlights the ongoing dialogue between diaspora and place, bringing together bedroom-DJ Nick Cheo, Seoul’s Bass Queen Kollin and rising talents Jianbo and Meyy. Fresh from hosting the second edition of their Margins United festival, Eastern Margins now brings its boundary-pushing energy to the Barbican after hours.

The announcement of Anyone Can Dance follows the success of two sold-out late-night parties at the Barbican in 2025, hosted by Rinse FM and Club Stamina. The new series builds on the centre’s expanding nocturnal programme, reflecting its unique position at the intersection of heritage, experimentation and subculture. As one of Europe’s largest multi-arts centres – housed within Chamberlin, Powell and Bon’s famously divisive brutalist landmark, set for a revamp in 2028 – the Barbican has long balanced institutional gravitas with a commitment to artistic risk.

While its programme spans classical music, theatre, cinema and visual arts, the Barbican has also cultivated a reputation for platforming contemporary and hybrid culture, from underground club scenes – 2025’s In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats offered a virtual reality trip in an illegal Acid House rave – and experimental sound to diasporic storytelling and youth-led movements.

Anyone Can Dance promises nights of escapism, community and joy – championing emerging artists, new sounds and the shared experience of the dance floor.

Tickets for ‘Anyone Can Dance’ are now on sale via the Barbican’s website

The Barbican is to undergo a huge renewal – and the plans have finally been approved. The City of London Corporation has green-lit the programme, which is part of a long-term plan to ‘future-proof’ Barbican Centre, ensuring that the brutalist Grade II-listed site is fit for generations to come.

The Barbican Renewal Programme focuses on four core design principles: 'Repair and conserve'; 'Design for all'; 'Reactivate space' and 'Focus on sustainability'.

As well as infrastructure upgrades, the programme hopes to make the Barbican a place for all, focusing on inclusivity and accessibility with a new multi-faith room, increased bathroom provision, improved wayfinding, and full accessibility in the Conservatory.

Further plans include enhancement of the Barbican’s brutalist foyers with improved lighting, finishes and public art; the restoration of the lakeside terrace architectural features, and the conservatory, which will become a free daily public garden.

London-based Harris Bugg Studio is working on refreshing the Barbican Conservatory as part of the brutalist icon's ongoing renewal. The landscape designer and co-founder Charlotte Harris, spoke with Wallpaper* earlier this year, saying, ‘We’re really turning up the dial of those eco-brutalist principles: how the landscape frames and enhances the architecture and vice versa’.

The renewal works will be done in stages, starting with adaptations to the theatre in January 2026.

Major construction works won't begin until 2027, followed by full closure of the main Barbican site in June 2028 for a year.

The aim is to have the Renewal Programme complete by 2030, in time for the Barbican’s 50th anniversary in 2032.

Since its opening in 1982, the Barbican has become one of the world’s most notable art venues, with its architecture receiving mixed reviews from brutalist aficionados. It has welcomed millions of visitors each year, however after four decades of use, the building has deteriorated.

Philippa Simpson, Barbican director for Buildings & Renewal, told Wallpaper*, 'For almost half a century, the Barbican has brought bold, world-class creative experiences to life within an iconic space designed to inspire. As we look toward the next 50 years, this announcement signals a vital step forward, ensuring the Centre will be renewed, revitalised, and fully equipped for the generations that will follow. These essential upgrades will protect the Barbican’s legacy while giving it the modern foundations it needs to thrive long into the future'.

Sir William Russell, chair of the Barbican Board, says, ‘Today marks a huge step into the Barbican’s future. We’re not just preserving the centrepiece of the UK’s largest listed site but unlocking the full potential of a cultural icon – a new dawn has begun.’

barbican.org.uk

Since its inception in 2013, Doc’n Roll festival has sought to provide a platform for some of the music and art world’s most niche and underrepresented figures, putting the stories of marginalised voices and new documentary-makers onto the screens of some of the UK’s most respected cultural institutions, from the BFI to the Barbican.

Co-founded and programmed by Vanessa Lobon-Garcia and Colm Forde, what began as a low-key attempt to help screen a handful of subcultural films outside the capital has turned into a year-round project, with premieres up and down the country alongside screenings around the globe, from New York to Dubai. At the centre of it still, however, is Doc’n Roll Festival: a programme of 20-plus films, including world and UK premieres, which will show at cinemas in London, Brighton and Dublin from 23 October to 9 November.

Though the project has scaled up, the idea at the heart of it remains the same. ‘We're looking for things that aren’t the classic, cookie-cutter stuff that would go straight to Sky Arts, that’ve been made by the labels to help sell records,’ explains Forde. ‘It’s about showing people that wouldn’t normally get a look in, like the Big Mama Thornton film this year. I'm really happy to bring that to the Barbican because I know there's an audience there for it, but that kind of thing really flies under the radar of other film programmers. They look at these films and think they’re too much work to market. But that's where we really found our niche: giving a break to subjects and filmmakers that really deserve it.’

Doc’n Roll aren’t trying to compete with the current London Film Festival, or any of the circuit’s major players; instead, they’ve carved out a space of their own based on intense fandom – the kind that’s willing to travel. Last year, they had people fly over from Ireland to the capital just to watch a 23-minute short about punk band Fat White Family; he’s already been messaged by one fan this year who is planning on driving 238 miles to get to a screening of Felix, Dare To Dream – a doc about tattooist Felix Leu. There are bigger names amongst the 2025 programme – the UK premieres of Glenn Matlock’s Sex Pistols documentary, and another about Boy George and Culture Club – but it’s in the embrace of the true underground that Doc’n Roll stands apart.

They operate independently, without corporate sponsors – Forde would be open to working with the right people but has also readily turned down the wrong ones, who’ve tried to put restrictions on their decidedly leftfield programming. ‘If you look at the medium to large festivals across the world, they're all sponsored by banks who are art-washing all of them,’ he says. ‘I would love to be working with a brand that I really believe in, that isn't a bank or an insurance company. But the silver lining of not currently having a sponsor is that we don't have to bend the rules to accommodate any bullshit.’

Instead, Doc’n Roll’s ethos remains impressively pure: to create, as Forde describes, ‘a bit of a vibe for people to meet like-minded people who are into weirdo stuff’. In a saturated market of big-budget Hollywood biopics, Doc’n Roll is the antithesis – a decidedly DIY-minded festival creating a space for the misfits. ‘Those biopics are so drained of the real spirit of it all,’ Forde says. ‘Whereas we just wanted to put our love of leftfield alternative music and independent documentary film together in this crazy thing.’

Colm Forde’s picks of Doc’n Roll Festival 2025

Big Mama Thornton: I Can’t Be Anyone But Me

'Big Mama Thornton influenced people like Elvis, but she would play what they called the Chitlin’ Circuit back in the day, when Black artists couldn’t stay in the same accommodations as the white artists they were touring with. She’s doing what she loves, but as a queer, butch, Black woman, even within her own community, that would have been pretty daunting. It’s a real story of resilience and survival, and then unfortunately, the classic story of white artists coming in and making money from her art and her brilliant songs.'

A Way To Die: The Short Films of Coil

'It’s a collection of seven short films that were all shot in Hackney in the late ’70s/early ’80s, showing the deindustrialisation of the area but through quite a heavy, queer, sadomasochistic point of view. It was shot in Super 8 and 16 by the band – Peter Christopherson and John Balance – back when they were art school kids and just starting out, filming the antics of what they were getting up to behind the scenes of their gigs. There’s a hilarious short film in it that shows the industrial extraction of semen to be sold on; it’s some mad, weirdo shit but it’s hilarious if you’re into dark humour.'

Move Ya Body: The Birth of House

'It’s coming from the political aspect of the birth of house, and the gerrymandering within the southern Chicago ghettos where the music came from, which is still a deeply deprived area. The film isn’t just an A–Z of how house music then spread into London and Manchester and Ibiza; it’s told from a very political angle, in terms of the Black voter and the lack of access to real democracy that the Black voter still has.'

Rockers Don’t Stop: The Revival of Rockers Revenge

'The film is a production by record producer Arthur Baker, who was their key patron back in the mid-to-late ’80s when he found the band working in a record store. The band influenced a lot of early house music; they had a great break in the UK on Top of the Pops but couldn’t afford to fly to London for four nights, so they passed on it and petered out. It’s an interesting story about second chances, and about working-class voices.'

Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt

'The documentary sets the scene for the legendary Texan punk band and through the perspectives of other musicians, comedians and people that got swept up in the whole buzz of their live shows. As well as the music, there’s the context of them going against the grain of Reagan and Reaganomics, which paralleled what was going on at the time in the UK with Thatcherism.'

The 120 objects on display at the Barbican’s latest show are all immaculately out of place. From dresses that have been buried in the banks of the River Thames to a collection of separates that have emerged from a bog, ‘Dirty Looks’ asks us to resee fashion as an interdisciplinary artistic practice. This is not fashion as art, but rather fashion approached with artful thinking.

Its curators, Karen Van Godtsenhoven and Jon Astbury, posit that dirt and decay have been used by designers since the 1970s to antagonise the mass-production cycle of industrial fashion. Titillatingly, they also gather a number of younger makers, offering them a space to crunch and pick at the norms of glassy digital perfection.

‘This show is about fashion as a deeply material practice,’ Astbury says, gesturing to the central gallery walls swagged in raw, unbleached calico. ‘So many of the ways in which it is currently consumed are about image and surface. It's all very glossy and machine-like. This is a reminder of the material craft that goes into all of it.’

The poetic works of Hussein Chalayan were an obvious starting point. Seven looks from the designer’s collections between 1993 and 2002 set the scene for thinking around time, archaeology and transformation. The practice of burial is often associated with Chalayan’s Central Saint Martins graduate collection from 1993, titled ‘The Tangent Flows’, for which the process of interring and exhuming clothes, often with metal filings, was central. It is a technique Chalayan often revisited over a ten-year period, folding it into themes about excavation and travel.

In Astbury’s mind a very early working title for the show was ‘Nostalgia of Mud’, a phrase coined in the 18th century by French playwright Émile Augier. ‘This is a sensibility of being drawn back to a more rural role that Malcolm McLaren and Alexander McQueen referred to as a primitive form of existence. It’s demonstrated through clothing with motifs of wornness or even sometimes just through colour palette and, sometimes, literally muddy landscapes,’ he says.

The design of ‘Dirty Looks’ is captivatingly spare. Throughout, Studio Dennis Vanderbroeck conceptualised the nicks and cracks that counter the smooth perfection of the archetypal white cube. Plinths become gradually more and more destroyed, walls have spidering fissures and hunks of plaster have gone amiss, emulating the laborious nature of tromp l’oeil decay. There are no works attached to the walls, and hardly any screens. The staging is a provocation towards a close reading of the objects on display. ‘It’s about wanting to believe in something again, about really engaging with the material in a way that I think a lot of people feel quite detached from,’ Van Godtsenhoven says.

A floral lace dress from McQueen’s controversial ‘Highland Rape’ collection for A/W 1995 lies in a glass vitrine. It is today too fragile to be mounted to a mannequin due to its DIY materials. It is a fascinating, quiet moment in the show; a brittle object of fashion lore decontextualised from its catwalk photograph and out of sorts.

‘This in-built decay creates a different situation for the conservators too, because oftentimes the garments are extra fragile. Many of the works here could just flake apart. There is a sense with some of the pieces that this is about a kind of archaeology or recapturing,’ Van Godtsenhoven says. ‘With the Chalayan pieces, for example, they are so delicate. The nature of the burial essentially petrifies the cloth, so it becomes incredibly rigid, but also the dirt is dirt. It just brushes off.’

In the lower part of the gallery are six newly commissioned works from young designers. One – by biomaterial specialist and artist Alice Potts – explores the notions of shame and propriety that govern so much of the clothes we are shown, even within the context of an institutional museum exhibition. ‘A number of archives have a large collection of Madam Grès gowns that are never publicly presented because they are stained with wine or sweat – they were worn at parties!’ Van Godtsenhoven explains. ‘The work that Alice is perhaps best known for is with the crystallisation of human sweat; we gave her a Grès gown which she then treated in a solution created by harvesting her own perspiration,’ she says. ‘Her work is as much about the beauty that can be found through materials like this as it is about trying to remove some of the shame around body fluids.’

In the centre of the downstairs galleries, Solitude Studios takes its most recent Copenhagen Fashion Week collection, entitled ‘Before The Orgy’ and reimagines it as a vast orgasmic spectacle of bog-drenched clothes shaped to ghostly forms with scattered heeled shoes, and evening bags hovering mid-air. ‘There’s a philosophical story behind it tied to [sociologist and philosopher] Jean Baudrillard, who talks about the orgy as being a moment of mass consumerist culture, but there's the question of after the orgy; what do we value when we can have everything whenever we want it?’ Astbury says. ‘One thing that unites a lot of these designers is that they don't think about what they do as fashion design just for the selling of clothes.’

Paolo Carzana has created a display of looks from a sequence of three collections that have never been presented together before. Piled up, they form an altar of crinkled cloth in shades of rhubarb, ochre and soil. ‘Paolo’s aesthetic of what you might call decay and dishevelment is not about trying to make something look worn. It springs from ideas of strength and fragility, with a conscious use of natural materials and dyes. It’s incredibly romantic,’ Astbury says.

This band of younger talents is looking for a path of regeneration, Van Godtsenhoven says: ‘They’re seeking a way forward that is not pretending that everything is fine, but they are still seeing a beauty in transformation. There’s this idea of a darker place that we must go through to revitalise the status quo. What we want to stress with these installations is that creativity and new artistic practices can come out of decay.’

‘Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion’ runs from 25 September 2025 – 25 January 2026, barbican.org.uk

I’m bombing up the motorway in the wee hours in a mate’s boxy red Peugeot, following cryptic instructions to meet in a layby near an industrial estate. We’ve got our chewing gum, our sweets, our whistles, our well-thumbed AtoZ map. Our night is soundtracked by Joey Beltram’s Energy Flash and Orbital’s Chime. Our destination: a large-scale party somewhere on the outskirts of Coventry.

This is what I was doing yesterday morning when, in the bowels of London’s Barbican Centre, it was simultaneously summer 1989 and spring 2025. My trip to the light fantastic was made possible by In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats. It’s a new immersive virtual reality experience that, with the aid of headphones, goggles and haptic vests, takes users, in groups of four, back to the future. To a time when 1000s of British youngsters were congregating weekly in fields, warehouses and industrial estates to dance till dawn to repetitive beats – a time when these 'illegal Acid House parties', and the authorities’ attempts to curb them, were the lead item on the Nine O’Clock News.

The 45-minute piece – part Acid House documentary, part really trippy experience, all killer dance music – is the brainchild of Darren Emerson. He’s not the DJ Darren Emerson who was a member of electronic music dons Underworld. But, with his brilliant deployment of tomorrow tech to recreate an analogue time pre-mobile phones, this Darren Emerson has an equal grasp of the magic of the dancefloor.

'It’s about that night out where you take a chance on something, where you get in the car and see what happens,' the 48-year-old artist and director says of his piece, which was commissioned by Coventry City of Culture. We’re talking a few minutes after I’ve emerged, genuinely buzzing, from the basement Pit space in the arts centre. A veteran of music television (he worked at MTV), Emerson explains that he wanted to make something that celebrated the Acid House era – but not anything reminiscent of a trad music doc based round a bunch of talking heads wanging on about the good old days.

'I wanted to be there. So this was an attempt to make a living documentary, something you could be in. Be present in. Have agency in. Feel like you’re on a journey. But all the while, the doc element is around you.'

That means finding yourself in a late-Eighties living-room where, using hand controllers, your avatar can 'pick up' a cassette of a mixtape, or pluck a record from a DJ box and put the needle in the groove – and then you’re actually in the record, your head spinning at 45rpm and 138bpm. Throughout this and subsequent 'scenes' – in the car, ducking police, at the rave, through the post-party dawn – the testimonies of I-was-there ravers bleed in from all directions.

'We can do that with all the affordances that VR allows: interaction, immersion, spatial sound, moving your body, multi-sensory [stimuli]. All these things that can really take you down the rabbit hole.'

In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats is part of the Barbican’s new, summer-long Frequencies season. That programming also includes Feel the Sound, an exhibition comprising immersive installations positioned around the building (including in the underground carparks) that promises to 'rearrange' our perception of sound. There are also DJ events, workshops, talks and record label takeovers.

Every strand will be attempting to foster something at the heart of In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats: a sense of community, a collective experience forged by a shared passion for music and dancing. More than one clubbing veteran interviewed by Emerson hymns the magic of the quasi-religious oneness they felt on the dancefloor – a sweaty, you’re-my-best-mate feeling of, yes, ecstatic togetherness.

'We live in a time when we feel very connected by our devices, GPS, CCTV everywhere,” he says. “But at the same time we’re lacking human connection. So it’s an interesting juxtaposition to use all this cutting-edge tech to try to bring people back to a space where they were just with each other.'

The result is a truly transporting adventure back to the heart of Generation Rave, one without the risk of arrest or comedown. As Emerson puts it: 'This is a cinematic experience that has moments of abstraction and transcendence. That tries to get you to that moment of excited feeling of ‘I’m going into a club’ – or ‘I’m coming up a little bit…’'

In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats runs at Barbican until 3^rd August, then tours Leeds, Warwick and Cardiff. Frequencies runs until 31^st August

Welcome to the first instalment of the new Wallpaper* video series, The Stuff That Surrounds You. Watch as we're invited into the intriguing and idiosyncratic homes of creatives and makers, catching a glimpse of their interior lives via the objects they surround themselves with, all of which tell a story.

In this episode, Wallpaper* visits creative director and graphic designer Veronica Ditting. Argentine-born, German-raised and London-based, Ditting collaborates with an international roster of fashion houses, artists and cultural institutions, from Hermès, The Row and Louis Vuitton to Pirelli, Somerset House and Het Nieuwe Instituut. She designs campaigns, branding, magazines and exhibitions with a distinctly editorial quality. Ditting wouldn’t necessarily call her work ‘artistic’, she says; it’s more about ‘communication and how something sits on a page’.

The creative director spent 12 years at The Gentlewoman magazine, overseeing its vision from its 2010 launch through 24 issues. From 2020-2021 she served as guest artistic director of Monde d’Hermès magazine. Her work has received numerous accolades, including from the Design Museum’s Design of the Year, D&AD and the Dutch Design Awards, while in 2024, the Kyoto exhibition ‘Folio Folio Folio: Print by Veronica Ditting’ looked back on her career so far.

Her London flat is a modernist treasure trove. ‘Physicality, tactility and object-like quality’ are a big part of the designer’s work, and you can feel this in the space. Different shapes and textures abound; a bright green Pirelli rubber floor, for instance, is laid throughout – the perfect contrast to the building’s greyscale.

Ditting rarely thinks about her home holistically. Instead, she collects individual objects that, somehow, work together. ‘I was very lucky that there were a lot of shelf systems. I do have a lot of things,’ she confesses. Among her favourite pieces is an odd, self-published book that she found in Milan. A selection of wobbly Juliette Teste vases also speak to her love of ‘imperfection’, as does a blanket embroidered by her grandmother.

In one corner is a collection of mis-matched silverware mixed with postcards from a show that Ditting did in Japan, as well as a bunch of Murano glass grapes that snap and crackle satisfyingly when you pick them up. ‘This is something that a lot of people, if they come to my place, gravitate towards,’ she says.

Ditting collects vintage publications, specifically the old art magazine Derriere le Miroir, and loves comparing ‘how they’re printed, how they’re edited, how they’re bound’. She also has stacks of iconic orange Hermès boxes (‘Maybe it’s a bit cliché to have, but they do inspire me’), from which she produces an invitation that she created for the launch of Hermès Beauty in 2020.

Ditting’s studio, nearby within the Barbican, is a continuation of her home, with shelves bursting with books and boxes. Here, graphic design materials from her Kyoto show, with DDD Gallery, are displayed in a three-dimensional way, mounted on stands to give them height and shape, alongside a miniature magazine she created for the ten-year anniversary of Gentlewoman.

We hope you enjoy getting lost in Veronica Ditting’s rich, vivid and multifarious ephemera as much as we did.

studioveronicaditting.com

Film credits: Featuring: Veronica Ditting. Director of Photography: Peter Butterworth. Camera assistant: Curtis Blair. Sound design and mix: Indústries Sòniques. Interviewer: Dal Chodha. Head of Video: Sebastian Jordahn

Set across the ground floor of a former linoleum factory, Ibai aims to bring a flavour of the French Basque Country to the City via a live-fire kitchen and a focus on Txuleta beef from the region’s retired dairy cows. This is a joint venture between Richard Foster – former executive head chef at Chiltern Firehouse – and beef importers William Sheard and Nemanja Borjanović, and in the seven months since it first opened its doors, the buzz around Ibai has been notable and justified.

Slick but not stuffy, with a clear point of view and a succinct menu that knows what it does and does it very well, Ibai is the perfect addition to EC1, nestled between Smithfield Market and the Barbican – institutions culinary and cultural that, you suspect, would both approve of their new neighbour.

The Mood

Mixing the practical, industrial sensibilities of the location’s previous factory guise with an eye for earthy tones and understated elegance, designers Box 9 (who also created the interiors for acclaimed east London Italian Manteca and SE1 Greek restaurant Oma) have created an ambience that manages to make Ibai’s sizeable, 80-cover space feel vibrant yet relaxed. With tables predominantly centred within semi-circular, open booths of dark wood and brown leather, the layout keeps each party in their own bubble without closing the room off: a clever piece of restaurant feng shui. Predominantly lamp-lit, the open kitchen and its roaring, high flames add a flash of theatre and a focal light source; all nestled beneath a network of exposed pipes and vents that give the venue a harder, more masculine feel, the effect is of somewhere slick and City-appropriate but also impressively welcoming.

The Food

Ibai is a place for carnivores. Even before you broach the central steak offering, the standout morsels from the starter menu come festooned with slivers of beef or draped in ham. The signature Croque Ibai is decadence personified: a French hot sandwich, souped up beyond recognition with carabinero prawns, unctuous boudin noir (a traditional blood sausage) and Tomme de Brebis cheese, and then slathered in hot honey. It is perhaps a relief to remember that St Bartholomew's Hospital is within spitting distance, should it all prove a little too much. A plate of Le Noir de Bigorre ham and crisps, studded with piquant smoked piparra peppers has become – justifiably – one of Ibai’s talking points, arriving as it does like the ultimate bar snack, while a special of crab and wagyu pintxos is as intoxicating as that A-list combination sounds: rich, flakey crab meat piled on top of crisp baguette and housed beneath a just-seared slice of glistening beef.

The steak, however, is the thing, and at Ibai they keep it simple. There are three options – a Black Angus, a Fullblood Wagyu and a Galician Blond – all available as either T-bone, rib or sirloin and uniformly cut (wagyu aside) to 1kg servings. Utilising a French cooking method involving a three-level grill and a resting cage, it takes around 45 minutes for each steak to be cooked – a lengthier piece of ceremony that means that, when it does arrive, perfectly charred and yet gleaming pink inside, the effect is borderline theatrical. Buttery and soft, a 1kg T-bone might seem a monstrous amount for two but it goes down surprisingly easily. There are fries on the menu, should you wish, but a simple, mint-studded green salad and a bowl of plump tomatoes should suffice. Do not skimp, however, on the adornments: though meat of this quality more than holds its own without any help, an anchovy and herb salsa is a fragrant, palette-awakening treat, while, for those of a more fromage-based persuasion, an Ossau-Iraty cheese and black pepper sauce is a pleasing twist on a standard peppercorn.

The wine list is extensive and surprisingly varied in terms of price point, ranging from more-than-drinkable glasses at £10 through to bottles far into triple digits. With a succinct cocktail menu and an array of desserts that beg to be found room for, including a house special Ibai Gateau Basque with poached rhubarb that is equal parts buttery richness and zingy clarity, you’ll leave Clerkenwell looking to book a French Basque holiday before the year is out.

Ibai, 90 Bartholomew Close, London EC1A 7BN, ibai.london

Whether you love or loathe the concrete geometry of the iconic Barbican estate, it tends to inspire strong feelings: for every Londoner charmed by its sharp Brutalist architecture, you’ll find another person just as eager to brand it an eyesore.

First constructed in post World War II London by architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, the sprawling complex aimed to revive an area of the capital that had been devastated by bombing, but was originally the site of a Roman fortress, marking the gateway passage through London’s walls, and into the ancient city. Created with a Utopian vision in mind, and inspired by the fortress that used to stand here – both in name and its construction – this city within a city now contains a huge performing arts centre, a tranquil, one-hectare lake, and a hidden conservatory packed with tropical plants.

And for the last two years, British-Iranian experimental composer and turntablist Shiva Feshareki has been drawing on the Barbican’s hidden history as a gateway for her new piece, 'Bab-Khaneh: Gatehouse of Memory'. The work’s title refers to the ancient Persian word ‘Bab-Khaneh’ – thought to be a possible origin of the word Barbican – and Feshareki has imagined the project as a sonic survey of the Barbican Hall’s acoustics and design.

If you’re not already familiar with Shiva Feshareki, her work is part of a rich lineage of experimental composition, drawing on everything from musique concrète pioneer Daphne Oram to warped, acid-flecked dub. In essence, the Ivor Novello-winning artist offers up a fascinating exploration of how sound moves through space, incorporating turntables, orchestras, cutting-edge ambisonic technology, choirs, and bespoke art installations to bend, morph, and reshape sound as we know it.

On February 23, Feshareki will perform 'Bab-Khaneh: Gatehouse of Memory' within the complex’s wooden-panelled concert hall, accompanied by her trademark turntables, the BBC Symphony orchestra, and the building itself: which will be used as a kind of instrument during the intricate live performance. Ahead of its world premiere, Wallpaper* caught up with Feshareki to learn more.

You’ve been developing Bab-Khaneh: Gatehouse of Memory since 2023. Could you walk me through the concept for the piece?

SF: 'All the elements of the sounds [in Bab-Khaneh: Gatehouse of Memory] are reacting and responding to the acoustics and architectural design and material of the Barbican Hall; the hall itself is the starting point of how the sound manifests live in the moment.

One of the first things I noticed when I went for the first site visit at the Barbican Hall were the wooden panels that stretch across the sides of the walls; I just thought straight away that if we can actually put speakers inside, and directing into, the holes of these wooden pipes, I can literally play the hall [as a kind of instrument] by firing electronic sound into the walls and ceiling, and sounding the acoustics, material design and architecture of the space. It's almost like an orchestra of speakers, positioned geometrically all over the space, in corners, in between materials and in crevices. On stage, we’ll also have an IKO; a 20 sided speaker projecting 360 degrees outwards from the stage... so that it really absorbs the acoustics of the hall and all of its qualities from the stage. All of this will both surround the audience in ambisonic sound, but also reflect and deflect off the material design of the hall. During the performance, I’ll compose electronic sound live, in response to the acoustics, and what's happening in the space, and then build up the sound from there.

I'll also be responding to the orchestra's performance, using a variety of analogue electronic instruments, from Vintage Space echoes and tape echoes to turntables, and CDJs; I’ll be repurposing DJ technology to create this live electronic sound. And then finally, there's the full BBC Symphony Orchestra; a really large orchestra made up of about 70 orchestral members. The way it’s composed, every single member of the orchestra is essentially playing a separate composition, kind of like they're each following their own trajectory. The idea is to enhance the sculptural perspective of sound, so that instead of everybody playing one composition, which then becomes linear from 0 to 50 minutes, there are 70 compositions happening, all at the same time.

When you're experiencing the composition as an audience member, you'll feel how all of these different strands are at one with each other, interacting in the same space. And the heart of it is the architecture and design of the hall, which brings everything together.'

Every audience member will also perceive the piece differently, whether that is to do with their own physical hearing, their positioning in the room, or the memories and preconceptions they project onto the music as a listener. That must add an additional layer to the idea that this is a very collaborative experience, too?

SF: 'Yeah, it plays on everybody's unique perceptions; that is a fundamental element of the composition. Wherever you're sitting in the space, you're receiving a completely unique and different experience of the work. It's a bit like if there’s a physical sculpture, and you're just standing at one point and viewing that sculpture from that one perspective; it's going to look very different to the person who is only viewing it from the other side. What I've been trying to do is to capture that. I think there's a real magic to the intangibility of sound; while you can't tangibly see it, you can feel the vibrations, and everybody receives a different sonic, sculptural perspective, wherever they're sat. That's what this piece is all about, really.

The way that I have composed it is also, in a way, trying to juxtapose two ideas: it's highlighting individualistic expression, but it's also highlighting how everything is predetermined in a moment, in a way that is outside of our control. This piece is very much playing on that: inwards into the soul, and outwards into a space and beyond. And that idea is very much a part of my Iranian upbringing. Most Iranians will be able to say that they have been brought up with festivals like Spring Equinox, Winter Solstice, and the Persian New Year. Geometry is such an important part of our culture; our upbringing is very connected to trance, and spirituality, and the universe, and how everything is interconnected through this kind of geometry and flux.'

The Barbican itself is a divisive building: it really seems to split opinion. How do you feel about it?

SF: 'I'm obsessed with it! I wanted to do this project because I was brought up coming to the Barbican as a child, as a teenager, and I have a real personal connection to it. I’ve seen so many events here, both as a child, and as an adult. I have a real love and passion for its very unique take on Brutalism and I often go on the Barbican architecture tours. I actually came up with the idea for this project, and proposed it to the Barbican, after being inspired by the last tour I went on.'

You have always used turntables as part of your practice; something that most people probably associate much more closely with dance music culture and DJing. Where did that curiosity around repurposing that kind of technology come from?

SF: 'In my late teens, I started to go to parties with really great scratch DJs, just as I started composing in quite a committed way. At the time, anything that was interesting to me, I was thinking: "Well, how do I involve this into one of my compositions?" I remember being really fascinated by the turntable as a moving sculpture. I was watching the DJ scratching, and I was just thinking: "wow, that's such a visceral thing". They speed up, slow down, and reverse and manipulate a physical record with this motion-based manipulation, and these moving circles. That was the starting point, and I think my instrumental composition grew side by side with my turntablism. Whereas my kind of acoustic composition was something that was really refined and academic, and painstaking, I felt that my turntable has always been this really playful element, kind of at the opposite end. What has been amazing about the turntables is how many interesting cultures I've been let into.'

For most people, turntablism is an essential part of genres like early hip-hop, and dub. Did you draw on either of those genres initially?

SF: From the very start, my work was inspired by dub culture; that was the starting point, and from there, it expanded into different realms that I never would have really imagined. I was brought up in Notting Hill as well, so that’s another really important element of my upbringing.

Prior to dub, the history of turntablism also goes way back to the late 1940s, and the experimental pioneer Daphne Oram – who I know is a hugely influential figure for you. Do you remember when you discovered her work, and the effect it had on you?

SF: 'It was a little bit later on in my turntabling life, in my mid-20s. It was through a bit of research that I came across her work, and I was just blown away; it had such a massive impact on me, and it inspired me so much that I wanted to delve deeper. I went to the Daphne Oram collection at Goldsmiths University to research, because I wanted to do a radio show on her music, and that's where I came across Still Point, which is a piece she composed when she was 23, in 1948. The score actually specifies live turntable manipulation of recorded discs, in duet with orchestral writing. She was working as a sound engineer during the World War when she composed it, and it preempted so many developments in music technology. I think the reason why [women such as Oram] were coming up with all these radical and unique ideas was because they were working so independently, and they weren't actually working with orchestras or other musical forms in society. It meant that they could work in a very individualistic way, a more free and playful way. These ideas were so forward-thinking, and it's only decades later that we’ve caught up with them.'

Suzanne Ciani, another hugely influential artist who did very pioneering, early work with synthesisers in the 1970s, told me that she discovered Daphne Oram through watching your BBC Proms performance of Still Points in 2018, and found it so moving that she cried...

SF: 'That’s amazing, I’m so touched that she felt that way. I also remember when I first came across the score; all these loose pieces of paper, and it had never been performed. I also burst out crying. I remember just being like: ‘how can this have happened?’. I just felt like I needed to find a way to get that piece performed. I really felt so emotional about it.'

Ciani also shared a saying which she keeps in mind when things go wrong during performances: 'the bigger the disaster, the better the outcome'. Do you relate to that in any way?

SF: 'I've had so many experiences of things going terribly wrong beforehand, and me just being like: I'm just going to go for it and just use it. It's actually really defined lots of things that are happening in this Barbican piece. I had a concert last year where the sound system completely malfunctioned, which meant only, like, an eighth of the sound that I was producing was coming out of the speakers. What happened was that I was able to start working with the sound by spinning it really, really, really fast in the space, which I normally wouldn't do because it would be dizzying. Instead, because there were so many silences, it was creating what I call now a sonic strobe. Because there was this malfunction, it was really interacting with the acoustics of the space and the choir who were involved in the piece. It was extremely trippy.

This entire Acousmonium that I've designed with my colleague Dan Hulme, for the Barbican performance, is completely inspired by that. The entire sound system is loads of different sound strokes, occurring at different angles, and at different positions in the hall, be it in the ceiling or at the back or on stage side panels. It’s kind of a misuse of the technology, but when the sound cuts out, that's when you hear the hall.'

Shiva will perform 'Bab-Khaneh' at Barbican on 23 February 2025. Get tickets.

At every show across the world, the gallery attendant is on permanent display. They are, along with their functional chair, as much a part of the furniture of the art gallery as its meticulously positioned frames or silent white walls. Since the invention of the exhibition, these workers have kept a close eye on the works that surround them, handed out literature, offered visitors impromptu art history lessons and ensured that Do Not Touch signs are adhered to.

Or not adhered to, perhaps. After all, in recent years, climate activists have glued themselves to displays, as well as launched a Warholian tin of tomato soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and slashed ancient masterpieces. Elsewhere, a banana on display worth £90,000 was eaten and an 18ct gold toilet was stolen. The art gallery has never been more infiltrated.

But, more strikingly, there’s also been a change in the way we see art. With a collective attention deficit thanks to our phones, demand for more immersive experiences and the strange social hangover of the pandemic, our general interaction with exhibitions has changed. Visitor experience workers get to experience this experience; looking at people who are in turn looking at art. It makes for a surreal chain of perception.

Many gallery attendants are also artists in their own right, working at exhibitions to finance their own creations in the hope that, one day, their own work will be displayed. But what is it really like staring in silence for hours on end, a sitter without a painter? We spoke to gallery attendants currently working at London’s Tate, Serpentine, Barbican and V&A to hear more about the role.

Assaf Hinden's photography, viewed throughout, is exhibited at Braverman Gallery in Tel Aviv until July 6 2024

bravermangallery.com

Gallery attendants on watching you looking at art…

Eleanor, Tate

Eleanor: I started at Tate Modern in December 2022 after studying Art History at University. At Tate, we're ‘visitor engagement assistants’, so there's a focus on creating a safe environment and talking to visitors. Having conversations with visitors who are enthusiastic about art is a genuine pleasure at work. Some of the art on display really evokes strong reactions in people, especially impressive large-scale ones like those in the Turbine Hall.

Tastes may have changed over time but big names have always attracted a lot of interest, with many visitors still asking for Picasso, Warhol, Rothko or Pollock. Social media may have had an impact on the increase in interest in immersive or interactive art exhibitions. Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms was hugely popular and Yoko Ono's new exhibition is also proving to be busy due to visitors activating the art themselves.

You can become somewhat indifferent to the works after seeing them so often. But reading the wall text for a piece of art that you have seen thousands of times and never really been interested in can sometimes end up in you finding out something that you didn’t expect to learn. 

Attention spans really vary, with some people rushing through the galleries barely stopping to look at anything and some spending hours reading every piece of text available; apparently, on average, people look at a work on display for just eight seconds.

Laura, Barbican

Laura: The gallery is a space that shows the absurdity of life in the most delightful of ways. It's not for everyone. Many people quit within a few months. You have to be comfortable with your own thoughts and endure visuals and sounds for a long period of time; one piece, from Rangar Kjartansson, featured the same song for seven hours; another, in the Carolee Schneemann exhibition, featured a mop consistently dropping onto a TV. These might interest, inspire or amuse you, but also irritate, shock or bore you.

Interacting with the visitors can be very rewarding, but people frequently don’t acknowledge an invigilator’s presence, which means you can often be a fly on the wall to some entertaining conversations and behaviour. I’ve witnessed crying, laughing, screaming and, one disturbing day, a couple being overly amorous believing they had the gallery to themselves!

Often visitors feel like they need answers from you. Some come purely to take photos, never truly taking their eyes off their screen. Lots of people use it as a space to catch up with family and friends, dipping in and out of rooms and occasionally muttering comments about the work but mainly focusing on conversations with the people they’re with.

One of my most challenging moments was when a member of the public broke a very delicate sculpture right in front of me by suddenly slapping it with their hand. After seeing my shocked expression, she said, ‘I don’t think it’s art‘, and then walked away as if nothing had happened. You learn quickly that people have a natural desire to touch or get closer to things they’re not meant to.  

Some of my best ideas have come from my role here, from fictional exhibitions I've designed to stories I've written about anthropomorphised works of art. As an artist as well as an invigilator, I fully appreciate the importance of protecting artists’ work, but sometimes a little voice inside of me thinks: ‘It’s just things, made by people, that someone decided were important.’

Hazel, Serpentine

Hazel: You truly know it’s a successful exhibition if people are engaging and asking questions, and as gallery attendants we spend a lot of time researching to help with this.

For the first couple of weeks of an exhibition, I tend to focus my mind on the artworks, trying to understand each decision and each outcome made by the artist. After a while, my mind will wander and I find myself thinking about my own art practice. It’s an obscure skill to house a studio in your mind and I’ve definitely acquired it from my time as a gallery attendant.

Staring at the same artwork for hours can really change the meaning of the work and theoretically it is a privilege, but I think there’s something poignant and ephemeral about visiting an exhibition once.

Eleanor, V&A

Eleanor: The job sits at the intersection of visitor experience and security: we have to ensure that the millions that come to the museum have an amazing experience and get the very best out of their visit, all while keeping a watchful eye over the collection so millions more may enjoy it for years to come. We inspect the condition of the collections like a gardener tending their flowerbeds – constantly aware of any little changes or warning signs. 

Over the years I have learned so much from visitors. Sometimes, being asked very specific questions that I couldn’t answer was the impetus to go home and study so that I wouldn’t be caught short again – in some cases starting new passions of my own.

One enquiry about one of the smallest, most humble pieces of pottery sparked a fascination that led me to sift through archives, import books from abroad, and eventually, develop a talk that I still give to visitors to this day. I’ve even taken pottery classes since. 

There is so much to consider when walking through a gallery. The art of the objects, of course, but the curation, too: after a while the stories and the links between pieces and displays leap out and illuminate themselves, gradually weaving together in a magnificent tapestry of art and design history. You begin to imagine all the hands that each object has passed through on their individual journeys to their modern home. It’s a magnificent illustration of the enormity of human creativity.

The act of looking, and continuing to see, requires effort. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to let the art fall away and the objects just become things you happen to be walking past. To continue to engage with them is to keep them alive – engaging with the visitors is an excellent way of doing this. Perhaps, in a glance, they see something you have never noticed in years and share it with you.

People like to make conversation too, and I have noticed recently how the chat has swung away from the objects to the big picture: what’s the point of museums? Who do they serve? Who do these objects really belong to? This type of questioning about inclusivity is really healthy. After all, it’s the same questions museums are asking themselves.

It’s hard to miss Ibrahim Mahama’s monumental work on the day I see it - on an unusually and alarmingly windy day, it is flapping and rippling across the Barbican’s Lakeside Terrace as it is installed - but then that is the point. 

For Mahama, the opportunity for bystanders to engage with his art is key in a practice so far defined by a spirit of democracy. In his home country of Ghana, his contemporary art centre provides the social infrastructure for arts education; in his exhibitions internationally, he cultivates a collaborative focus.

Now, Mahama has unveiled possibly his greatest collaborative work - and certainly his largest scale public commission - in the UK yet. Purple Hibiscus, named after Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2003 novel, encompasses around 2000 square metres of billowing panels of pink and purple fabric, woven and sewn in collaboration with hundreds of craftspeople from Tamale in Ghana. On the panels, around 100 batakaris have been embroidered - robes traditionally worn by both ordinary people as well as northern Ghanaian royals - which Mahama has been collecting over the years, without at first knowing for what purpose. 

The project is a natural extension of his fascination with materials, building on previous work which saw him reflect on global exchange, communism and colonialism through jute bags. He became interested in their physical journey - originally created in India and Bangladesh, they became useful for the transmission of cocoa and became a commodity themselves, becoming stained and ripped and stitched back together. The transformation began a new life cycle triggered by human intervention. 

 ‘I was looking at it thinking it almost became like an extension of the human body,’ says Mahama. ‘And I started thinking that many other things could also be extensions of the body. So that's when I started collecting these [batakaris]. It's very commonplace material, people buy it, or inherit it. There's elements of time traditions trapped within the material. I was very much interested in this sense of history within them. But people will not just give you these fabrics, because they feel very strongly attached to it. So normally, what they will do is have to either put pee, or some kind of human excrement, on to them, I believe as a way of detaching the soul, of the body away from the material. If you took the material, because they feel like their souls are connected to it, you could go and harm them spiritually, or come at them from a place of superstition.’

 By placing the material in a new context, Mahama is interweaving the stories and the memories with a new life, also stepping away from the personal through the process, which saw him work with around 1,000 people in sewing everything by hand. 

In a vibrant pink hue, it’s hard to miss amongst the brutalist grey lines of the Barbican. ‘That started as a joke,’ Mahama adds. ‘When I was asked about this commission, I said, Wouldn't it be interesting because I always say the UK has shitty grey weather. Wouldn’t it be good to do something that is contradictory to the weather? Like pink! And then I was like, okay, why not? And that's where it came from. And I never went back.’

By displaying the work outside, Mahama is encouraging the next stage of life for the textiles, uniting the deep-rooted traditions of the past with the unpredictability of the future. 'It will change and weather over time. But that's the whole point of the work, the work is supposed to change. If you leave a fabric out in the rain for a year, it will not be the same when you pick it up. There might be rips and tears within aspects of the work. But then we repair and fix as we go along. And that is one of the most important things politically about work that is meant for the public.’

Ibrahim Mahama: Purple Hibiscus is at the Barbican Lakeside Terrace from 10 April – 18 August 2024

barbican.org.uk

Textiles have often been saddled with restrictive definitions around craft and gender stereotypes, when in fact, they have formed some of the most radical and progressive works of the last century. Many artists have played with these definitions, creating subversive feminist works and expansive sculptural forms. ‘Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art’, a show of 50 intergenerational artists at the Barbican Centre in London, explores quite how far the medium has evolved in the last sixty years. 

“It’s a really capacious, expansive view of what textiles are,” says assistant curator Diego Chocano. “I hope viewers are surprised about what we are considering to be textile practice, because a lot of the artists are trying to push those boundaries and expand.” The works address issues of violence and colonialism, as well as ideas around love, hope and resistance. The show brings together long-established and emerging names from around the world, including Faith Ringgold, Cecilia Vicuña, Billie Zangewa, Louise Bourgeois, Ghada Amer and Tracey Emin.

The 1960s is a key starting point, when many artists were experimenting with the political power of textiles in line with second wave feminism, the ongoing civil rights movement, protests against the Vietnam war, and the hippie subculture. “Although we’re not talking specifically about the hippie movement in the show, I do think that influenced a lot of the artists,” says Chocano. “Using tapestry to protest was a big thing in the 1960s. This is something Violeta Parra was doing. She was very aware of what was happening in the US and was also inspired by Latin America’s rich history of using textiles. The 1960s was a moment when textiles as an art movement was coming off the walls and becoming three-dimensional.”

The power of textiles not only to protest but also to protect is an unexpected angle in the exhibition. Throughout history, fabric has been used to wrap both new-born babies and dead bodies, offering warmth and comfort, respect and shielding. In his lifetime, Feliciano Centurión worked with blankets found in markets, which he would write poetic refrains onto. These pieces embodied ideas of shelter and refuge, at a time in which the artist was dying from AIDs-related complications. Chocano tells me that the act of sewing in this part of the artist’s life was healing in itself. For many included in the show, the slow and methodical process of stitching is an act of self-care.

There is a section also exploring the idea of wounds and repair, where the stitch might be used to bring together pieces of fabric or parts of flesh. These ideas are expanded out in some works to explore the idea of repairing communities and countries. Chocano highlights the work of Angela Su, who addresses the divides between Hong Kong and mainland China, with stitching and repair as a metaphor for scarring. “We look not just at this beautiful, romanticised version of it, but also how to repair and stitch means puncturing a hole, piercing,” he says. “To repair or mend can actually be a very painful thing.”

Of course, for many contemporary artists, the ethics of fabric production within the context of environmental collapse is an important one. In many cases, the medium is the message, with artists choosing sustainable, traditional methods to work with. Their processes often go against the neo-liberal idea of producing in the quickest way possible. Yee I-Lann, for example, works with a community of weavers in Borneo, creating woven mats that would have been used in pre-colonial times to eat and sleep on. 

While the exhibition highlights the recent history of textiles in art, Chocano has one eye on the future, recognising that the medium is only going to keep expanding. “We are beginning to see how much textile work is in museum programming now,” he says. “At Frieze London last year, there was so much textile work. That’s not to say it still doesn’t carry this baggage. Less and less so, but there is still this idea that it’s women’s work. A lot of what we’re trying to do is look at how artists have harnessed this baggage for their own subversive ends.”

'Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art’ at the Barbican Centre is on until 26 May

barbican.org.uk

Fashion has well and truly infiltrated Frieze Week, with a slew of happenings across the city to coincide with the arrival of Frieze London 2023, which opens to the public tomorrow (12 October 2023). Whether fashionable new sponsors for the fair itself or the numerous other happenings across the city – from a blockbuster Gucci Cosmos exhibition to Dover Street Market’s annual Frieze takeover, as well as relaxing gong bath courtesy of Birkenstock, Tekla and Matches – there is plenty to keep both art and style aficionados amused throughout the week. Here, we run down the fashion-and-Frieze crossovers that aren’t to be missed.

Best fashion moments at London Frieze Week 2023

Stone Island and Dunhill become Frieze partners

The year’s Frieze in London welcomes two new principal partners: Italian streetwear label Stone Island and British heritage house Dunhill, the former supporting Frieze’s ‘Focus’ and ‘Frieze 91’ projects, the latter Frieze Masters. As part of the multi-year deal, Stone Island will give participating ‘Focus’ galleries – younger, less established institutions – a special bursary which is equivalent to 30 per cent of the stand fee. ‘Stone Island is built on community and creative energy inspired by research and innovation, characteristics that define the Focus section of Frieze’s art fairs,’ says Robert Triefus, the brand’s CEO. ‘Through this partnership, Stone Island will offer foundational support to some of the world’s most significant emerging galleries and artists for years to come.’ The partnership will be celebrated with a club night at Koko in Camden on 12 October, as well as a special collaborative collection with Dover Street Market, which will launch at the store the same day. 

Dunhill, meanwhile, will support this year’s edition of Frieze Masters Talks, a celebrated programme of conversations between various art world figures – this year’s participants include Sarah Lucas, Maggi Hambling, Rachel Whiteread and V&A East’s Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, among others. There will also be a dedicated Dunhill space at the fair, whereby the current collection from the house will sit alongside archival pieces, curated by Nick Foulkes, author of Dunhill by Design. 

Burberry supports Sarah Lucas at Tate Britain

Though it opened just prior to Frieze, British artist Sarah Lucas’ latest exhibition ‘Happy Gas’ at Tate Britain (until 14 January 2024) will no doubt attract those travelling to London for the fair (Lucas will also participate in Dunhill’s Frieze Masters Talks on 13 October at 3pm). The exhibition is sponsored by British fashion house Burberry, which under latest creative director Daniel Lee is hoping to forge greater links with Britain’s arts and culture scene. To coincide with the exhibition, Burberry released a special portrait of Lucas photographed by Anton Gottlob at Tate Britain and will host an intimate private dinner during Frieze Week to celebrate the partnership.

‘Humour, desire, domesticity’: read our review of ‘Sarah Lucas: Happy Gas’.

Gucci Cosmos takes over 180 Studios

Brutalist landmark 180 Studios plays host to Gucci Cosmos, a travelling exhibition that celebrates the Italian house’s archive and opens to the public on 11 October to coincide with Frieze Week. The immersive exhibition – comprising a number of garments and accessories that date from Gucci’s founding in 1921 to the present day – features dramatic set pieces from British artist and set designer Es Devlin. These include a pair of enormous white resin figures project with archival looks (an ode to Gulliver’s Travels), a luggage conveyor belt, and a surreal, futuristic imagining of the house’s archives. The exhibition will run until December 2023. 

Take a look inside Gucci Cosmos.

Dover Street Market launches ‘Frieze 2023 Happenings’

Dover Street Market’s London outpost continues its tradition of hosting a series of installations, activations and product launches to coincide with the arrival of Frieze Week. Beginning with a celebratory evening on 12 October – complete with food and drink from its in-house Rose Bakery – these include a special collaborative collection with Stone Island, the arrival of a slew of new Comme des Garçons collections, as well as various special projects with the likes of Mary McCartney, Jake Chapman, Dauphin x The Serpentine Galleries, Susan Nemeth, Angela Hill and Seana Gavin, among others. 

Tekla, Birkenstock and Matches provide a relaxing pit stop

Those seeking escape from the hustle and bustle of the Regent Park tents should head to Mayfair, where Matches is hosting a series of relaxing crystal-bowl gong baths in its Carlos Place townhouse. The occasion is Birkenstock’s recent collaboration with Danish lifestyle brand Tekla, a series of loungewear, clogs and sandals designed to capture the serenity of home. Attendees will also be able to shop the collection, launching exclusively at Matches, while the pieces can also be purchased online.

Gong baths will take place on 12 October 2023 at Matches Townhouse, 5 Carlos Place. Places can be booked here.

Thom Browne celebrates 20 years in business

American designer Thom Browne has arrived in London this week to celebrate 20 years of his theatrical collections, as documented in a new Phaidon-published tome. Browne hosted a dinner on Monday night (9 October) at London‘s V&A to mark the book’s launch – preceeded by a talk alongside critic Charlie Porter – as well as a special lunch on Tuesday alongside department store Harrods. A capsule collection – available on the brand’s website and in flagship stores around the world – will also celebrate the anniversary, featuring its year of founding, 2003, adorning a series of Browne’s iconic pieces, from varsity jackets and sports coats to a classic wool flannel pleated skirt. 

The Row hosts new work by jeweller Ana Khouri

Ana Khouri’s creations have long straddled sculpture and jewellery – Khouri had a background in fine art before starting the eponymous jewellery brand – making Frieze Week the perfect moment to reveal a new collection. Hosted by The Row in its London Carlos Place outpost, Khouri will reveal a new collection of pieces titled ‘Raw’, part of her ‘Edition’ line, which is released every two or three years. Mining Khouri’s fascination with gold – ‘its simplicity, the way it reflects the light and illuminates the skin’, as she describes – the various pieces are inspired by the process of digging in the dirt for gold. ’I was overwhelmed by a sense of reverence for the care involved in procuring such a gift from the earth and how that care can yield something so exceptional,’ she says. ‘Unearthing even the smallest fragment of raw gold, holding it in my hand, I felt enveloped by something larger – as if nature’s creative energy and my own had merged.’

Margaret Howell hosts exhibition celebrating Architectural Review’s memorable covers

Opening on 13 October 2023, Margaret Howell will host a new exhibition in her Wigmore Street store (featured in a recent behind-the-scenes film), celebrating two decades of Architectural Review covers spanning the 1960s and 1970s (eras of design that have long been a fascination for Howell). The exhibition follows a show hosted by the brand during the London Festival of Architecture 2023, whereby photographs of Britain’s cooling towers – ‘sculptural giants’ – were celebrated in a mesmerising display in the brand’s flagship store.

The Architectural Review Covers Exhibition runs at Margaret Howell, 34 Wigmore Street from 13 October – 5 November 2023.

Vestiaire Collective supports the Barbican’s new exhibition on ecology and gender

Fashion resale platform Vestiare Collective – which aims to provide a sustainable, circular way of buying and selling luxury fashion – sponsors a major new group exhibition at the Barbican, titled ‘RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology’. Across various mediums – including photography, film and installations – the expansive exhibition sees 50 women and gender-non-conforming artists explore ‘the systemic links between the oppression of women and the degradation of the planet’. A particular focus is placed on work from indigenous communities, while several of the artworks look towards a brighter future: ‘a roadmap for creative forms of civil disobedience and protest: a lesser explored, cautiously optimistic route to reconsidering our relationship to the Earth’, as the institution describes. To celebrate the launch, Vestiare Collective will host a private view and dinner on 11 October 2023. 

‘RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology’ runs from 5 October 2023 – 14 January 2024 at Barbican Art Centre

Theory ‘Shades of Fall’ 

To celebrate the launch of a new campaign, ‘Shades of Fall‘ – based on the idea of colour theory – American brand Theory hosted an exhibition of work by Wanda Koop and Kenny Rivero at No. 9 Cork Street Gallery (a partnership with Frieze, it was celebrated with an intimate dinner on Friday evening). The two artists offered their own colour theories as part of the campaign; ‘red is the most powerful and passionate,’ said Koop, while Rivero posited that ‘black is the uniform, the armour and the camouflage that lets me be everywhere and nowhere at once.’

Discover the best of Frieze London 2023 in our ongoing round-up.

In the heart of London, the Barbican Centre’s Conservatory – a 1980s brutalist oasis filled with tropical plants – is hosting an immersive and site-specific exhibition from Indian artist Ranjani Shettar. The striking space, resembling a film set, boasts luscious greenery spilling over concrete balconies and labyrinthine pathways. Shettar’s exhibition, ‘Cloud songs on the horizon’ (10 September – 31 December 2023), adds five suspended sculptures to the Conservatory, drawing on the influence of nature and craft.

Shettar, who grew up in Bengaluru but now lives and works in a remote village 400km from the city, has made a name for herself through intriguing, abstracted and often biomorphic sculptures that employ natural and manmade materials including beeswax and steel, drawing on traditional craft techniques.

Her works are often inspired by nature – ‘it can be the littlest things, even a shrivelled flower’, she says of her influences – but in layered and complex ways. ‘I take elements from nature, but they’re not direct. I’m more of an abstractionist.’

‘Cloud songs on the horizon’ was commissioned by Shanay Jhaveri, the Barbican’s head of Visual Arts, with whom Shettar worked previously on a solo show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2018. The free-to-visit Barbican exhibition is the first in a series of site-specific commissions Jhaveri has envisioned as a way to connect contemporary art more responsively to the unique setting of the centre, designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon in the brutalist architecture style (a book, Building Utopia: The Barbican Centre, marked its 40th anniversary in 2022).

Shettar describes experiencing the Conservatory for the first time following the commission: ‘It was totally unexpected for me. It just felt like an urban oasis – it’s beautiful.’ 

She was initially ‘a little daunted’ by making works for the 2,137 sq m space. ‘But when I spent more time with it, it felt like there are little pockets, almost like little galleries, that I could use and create a journey for the audience,’ she says. This sense of bringing visitors on a journey to discover various artworks in different settings across the Conservatory is key to her vision.

The scale wasn’t Shettar’s only challenge: her works typically rely on precise lighting and shadows, which was impossible in a daylit room packed with dense natural foliage. ‘Making an artwork for a green space is so different to showing in a white cube,’ she says. ‘It’s a very new environment to be showing my work in.’

The exhibition’s five projects vary in size, and use materials including muslin, stainless steel, and teak. Shettar describes the works as having ‘multiple perspectives’. She hopes they will encourage visitors to dwell, pause and think – and even come away feeling optimistic. ‘I’m trying to do something that’s projecting hope and joy,” she says.

‘Cloud songs on the horizon’ is at the Barbican, London, 10 September to 31 December 2023

barbican.org.uk

The Barbican Conservatory is a botanical oasis in the heart of a brutalist behemoth, boasting 1,500 species of plants and trees housed within its concrete and glass walls. For that reason, the Barbican’s head gardener, Marta Lowcewicz, is perhaps one of the most reliable sources you could find for advice on indoor plant care. Here, she shares her definitive guide to houseplant health, covering everything from how to plant a cutting to where to find the best botanical bargains. 

Marta Lowcewicz on caring for indoor plants:

Stick to the basics

Houseplants need nutrients, light, and water. How much of each of these they need will differ from plant to plant, but if you notice that your plant, whatever it is, might not be looking too happy, try giving it more/less light or more/less water before trying anything else. It’s usually one of these!

Know your environment

There is a houseplant for everyone. Whether your home is shady, or usually in bright sunlight, whether you like it warmer or cooler, and whether you live in a humid or dryer place, there will be a plant that can thrive in this environment and researching them is easy enough. More on this later!

Try to keep to a routine (with flexibility) 

Looking after houseplants can be difficult if you’re time-poor, especially if you have a lot of them (like me… 70 and counting, and that’s a lot less than some of my Barbican Conservatory colleagues!). It doesn’t need to be difficult. Routines can be flexible when it comes to watering, repotting, or feeding, but my advice would be ‘You can delay until tomorrow, but probably don’t delay until next week’.

There is lots of advice online, if you know where to look

With the surge in interest in botany and horticulture over the last few years, the amount of information online can seem extensive. The Royal Horticultural Society website is a great place to begin. The information is simple, clear and they are very good at advising treatments for disease or pests if your plant is looking unwell, or if attempts to adjust water and light haven’t helped. Try to avoid pages with conflicting information, as well as websites based abroad – they will usually be giving advice for different planting conditions to your own.

Feeding and repotting are worthwhile

To get the best results from your houseplants, it can’t hurt to feed them. Most garden centres will sell houseplant feed, or you can order it online. Simply follow the instructions on the package. As for potting plants – this is also a good thing to get into the habit of. There are three different types, broadly speaking:

Some houseplants, like Ficuses, and shrubs, can also benefit from pruning in late winter/early spring. This will take back some foliage to keep the plant looking healthy, keeping its size under control, as well as encouraging more new growth come late spring. Always check to see whether your plant can be pruned, though, before diving in with your secateurs (or kitchen scissors!)

Plants usually come back, with the right care

If your plant is looking sad, there are lots of things that can be done to address this. Sometimes it might just be down to the time of year. Around September time, plants might be beginning to slow down, to hibernate over the winter before coming back bigger and better next year. You should expect to see plants looking a bit droopier in the autumn, but generally speaking, this is nothing to worry about. They are hardier than you might think, with the right attention and care.

Botanical bargains

If you are prepared to take your time (which is, I think, part of the enjoyment of gardening and plants), then buy small, and grow them over a number of years. You will pay a premium for plants that are already large – so bear this in mind. Growing a plant from small to large is very rewarding. The clearance shelves and sale sections of garden centres are also good places to look. Usually speaking they can be brought back to a healthy, attractive state again.

The same goes for orchids in supermarkets. I have lots of sale orchids (and their pots!) that I’ve bought over the years for under a fiver. As well as plants, you can get some absolutely incredible deals on horticultural books in charity shops. Be persistent as they won’t always be there, but older books (like a lovely Alan Titchmarsh number I have from the 1980s that cost 50p), tend to be so much more detailed and useful than any of the modern books I’ve bought over the years. They might look less coffee table-friendly but they’re worth their weight in gold!

Plant swaps

Another way to get hold of new plants is to buy a selection with some friends and swap cuttings. Just be mindful that sharing cuttings also means you might be sharing diseases or pests – so try to (sensitively) ask your friends if they are aware of anything like this before introducing them to your own collection. 

How to manage space

Once bitten by the houseplant bug, it’s very easy to begin accumulating more than you have space for. A handy way to solve this is to think about different places they can go, and different approaches. Some plants look great on the floor, and hanging plants look fantastic too – especially trailing plants. Many garden centres are now selling very nice hanging pots.

There is a plant for everyone

Finally, it’s important to say that whatever your situation, whatever your diary is like, whatever your level of knowledge, there is a plant for you – do your research, take it slowly, don’t be overwhelmed and you will have years of enjoyment and a home full of beautiful, interesting, and healthy plants. Remember, this should be fun!

INFORMATION

barbican.org.uk

The much loved Barbican Estate in London comprises many parts and elements – from its famed performing arts centre, a key cultural hub in the City of London and beyond and the largest of its kind in Europe, to its iconic residences, outdoor spaces and brutalist architecture environment. Its scale means that there are many smaller areas, however, which often remain lesser-known, yet are no less important to the Barbican experience. Part of the Grade II-listed Barbican Centre Theatre, the Barbican sunken bars are two hospitality corners of the seminal modernist development, constructed between 1965 and 1971 and located under the steps of the theatre. The spaces were in need of a refresh, so London architect Kam Bava was asked to lead a careful restoration and interior redesign to breathe new life to the complex's much-loved leisure offering. 

The bars’ facelift was not just about aesthetic fixes and a superficial polish. The architect ensured a technical upgrade was incorporated as well, because, after years of intensive use, the listed fabric was in dire need of an update. Seeking to maintain the interior's original character, as well as emphasise reuse and recycling as an approach, Bava cleverly redeployed elements found within the Barbican campus. ‘The steel bar structure is made from the handrails on the [Barbican] centre, and the ceiling comes from the art gallery. The handling of these pieces together with the use of mirrors creates a very different scale of experience, using very familiar design cues,' he explains. 

He continues: ‘We wanted to intensify this interesting play on scale whilst highlighting the forgotten qualities of the spaces. With the use of improved lighting focusing on elements of the bar, key walls and the use of original Barbican colours, we have struck a balance between conservation and recognising the intensive and varied use of these spaces in a modern institution.' Existing furniture was reupholstered, while any new features were conceived to respect the spirit of the existing design. 

Cleaning up the interior included practical yet necessary gestures, such as asbestos removal, reworking of the lighting, security, visitors’ facilities such WC, bar operation facilities such as washing, serving and refrigeration, and improving storage. It all results in a set of spaces, the new Barbican sunken bars, that feel respectful and celebratory of the estate's long and important history, while at the same time are fit for 21st-century use.

INFORMATION

kbava.com

A new show at London’s Barbican Centre takes us inside a tree and under the earth to encourage us to marvel at the biosphere and rethink our place within it. ‘Our Time On Earth’ urges us to demote ourselves from the top of the species hierarchy and consider how what we design could be attuned to the needs of all beings, not just our own.

The journey begins with Sanctuary of the Unseen Forest, a hypnotic animation by Marshmallow Laser Feast and Andres Roberts that shows nutrients pulsing through a Ceiba pentandra (kapok) tree and rivers of carbon pouring into the earth. Further on, environmentalist George Monbiot and digital agency Holition surround us with a multi-screen installation evoking the plants, microbes and animals that live in soil, which we consistently abuse with chemical-heavy farming. Both soil and trees play a vital role in storing the carbon we exhale, and these works emphasise how all living systems are connected.

Rather than fill us with fear about an environmental apocalypse, guest curators Kate Franklin and Caroline Till, of creative agency FranklinTill, believe wonder is a more mobilising emotion. ‘We want to evoke a sense of awe to encourage people to care,’ says Till. ‘By making an issue tangible, bringing it to life and immersing people in it, we can nudge [them towards] new behaviours.’ These installations certainly enthral. 

Part of the problem with the capitalist system, the show suggests, is that viewing land as ‘property’ asserts our dominance over nature, making it ours to exploit. But ‘the land has a voice’, declares a textile banner in an installation by Indigenous-led collectives Choose Earth and Selvagem. Elsewhere, design studio Superflux‘s artwork Refuge for Resurgence – first shown at the 2021 Venice Biennale – imagines a rebalance, giving all living things nourishment in a multi-species banquet.

Our Time On Earth’ points out that many Indigenous communities around the world have developed ingenious design solutions for living in symbiosis with nature. In a work called The Symbiocene, designer Julia Watson, architect Smith Mordak, and engineering firm Buro Happold have teamed up with communities in India, Bali and Iraq to explore what cities might look like in 2040 if we incorporated Indigenous knowledge and technologies. They have borrowed the name Symbiocene from Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht, who argues we must exit the Anthropocene and enter a new era characterised by harmonious interactions between humans and other living beings.

The result is a series of architectural models, accompanied by videos in which the collaborators discuss the challenges. One draws on the living root bridges by the Khasis community in the Indian state of Meghalaya, made from the aerial roots of rubber fig trees, which the community trains to grow across rivers over many years. Watson, Mordak and Buro Happold have reimagined them as nature-based infrastructure: an interconnecting web of trees through a city centre that would improve air quality and urban heat-island effect.

Taking inspiration from Indigenous communities, whose lands have been consistently exploited by the West and disproportionately affected by climate change, comes with ethical complexities. In this case, the collaborators on The Symbiocene have taken a verbal Smart Oath of Understanding to protect the communities’ intellectual property. A speaker overhead plays a recording of it, but noise interference (a pervasive issue in this audio-heavy show) means you’ll have to strain your ears to hear it.

One film feels out of step in an exhibition that asks us to reconnect with nature. Liam Young’s fictional Planet City proposes we should all live in one giant, sustainable metropolis and let the rest of the world rewild. With its dystopian purple skies, it’s not an inviting one, however, so perhaps he intends it as a parable about our need to hide ourselves away in shame.

Elsewhere, ‘Our Time On Earth’ puts forward practical ways for us to tread more softly on the planet. It spotlights a range of biomaterial innovations in the fashion world and how locally abundant materials can be combined with cutting-edge global technologies to create low-carbon building. Nairobi-based firm BuildX Studio proposes replacing new steel and concrete edifices with cross-laminated timber frames, combined with compressed stabilised earth bricks for walls and fungi for interior panels. 

There’s irony to the show’s setting in the concrete surrounds of the Barbican. But at its opening, artistic director Will Gompertz declared upcoming renovations by Asif Khan and Allies & Morrison will explore ways to make the building more nature-positive. And the exhibition design itself – masterminded by Universal Design Studio – uses seasonal materials, such as hemp, grown using regenerative farming methods. 

‘Our Time On Earth’ is a rousing exhibition that asserts there’s no silver bullet to reaching the Symbiocene. It will take many ideas – involving all species – to get there. This new age can’t come quickly enough.

INFORMATION
barbican.org.uk

Utopia, by definition, can never be reached. When Thomas More coined the term in 1516, he imagined an ideal world, a self-contained community where people shared the same culture, values and way of life. ‘Utopia’ was also a pun, based on almost-identical Greek words for ‘no place’ and ‘a good place’. 

The Barbican Centre was, and remains, a place where utopian ideas are made tangible. Designed by young architecture firm Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, the labyrinthine complex symbolised a corner of London rising from the war-torn ashes; an example of the shifting worlds of arts and culture in the post-war era, and an icon of modern, democratic living. Under a single, 40-acre architectural vision, it encompassed theatre and dance, music of all genres, visual arts, cinema and education, setting its stages for a wide range of artists, communities, audiences and visitors. 

The Barbican Centre: ‘one of the modern wonders of the world’

When it opened in 1982, its reception ranged from scalding hot to ice cold. Some applauded its brave futurism (

even Queen Elizabeth II hailed it as ‘one of the modern wonders of the world’); others despised its brazen brutalism. Through fame and infamy, brutal name-calling and calls for its demolition, 40 years later, it remains a melting pot of international arts, and one of the most sought-after residential postcodes in Europe.  

As Nicholas Kenyon, editor of new book Building Utopia: The Barbican Centre, notes in his preface: ‘Some have hated it, some have loved it, but millions have made use of the Barbican over four decades of near-continuous activity, and have come to value its profound contribution to civic and urban life.’

Published by Batsford, Building Utopia coincides with the Barbican Centre's 40th anniversary and explores the history of this inimitable institution and the blueprint to its longevity. ‘I think the secret of the Barbican is to always be uncompromising in its search for quality and variety, believing that there’s no conflict between excellence and popularity,’ says Kenyon, who served as managing director of the Barbican Centre from 2007 to 2021. ‘The Barbican has always cast its net wide to gather in the most international of the arts, and to provide [them] at reasonable prices to the widest possible audience.’

The book contains rare illustrative material from the Barbican’s archives, some never before seen in print. ‘The biggest surprise to me in looking through the archives was not how long it took – we’d always known that the Barbican as a building project took ages! – but the number of changes there were in the design as the arts centre emerged as a priority,’ Kenyon reflects. ‘There are literally thousands of architects’ drawings of the details. I looked and looked for evidence of the Barbican myth that the building was only approved by a one-vote majority in the City, but I couldn’t find it. However, there were many close votes as the project proceeded.’

The book is bolstered with essays by eminent critics who have lived and breathed the centre’s history and art forms. Cultural historian Robert Hewison reflects on how the centre came into being, and architectural historian Elain Harwood offers a deep dive into the building’s design. Elsewhere, we find Fiona Maddocks on music, Lyn Gardner on theatre, Sukhdev Sandhu on cinema, and Tony Chambers on visual arts. 

Chambers, creative director, former Wallpaper* editor-in-chief and self-professed ‘huge Barbican fanboy’, takes readers on a journey through visual arts. He first encountered the building in 1983 on a trip to London for an interview at the Central School of Art. But his love for the place was cemented in 1994 when he rented an apartment in Gilbert House, which he bought in 2000 and still calls home. ‘I was blown away by the modernity and sheer un-Englishness of the arts centre and the surrounding residential estate: it had more in common with the Bauhaus architecture I’d recently been introduced to on my art foundation course in Liverpool,’ his essay recounts.

Chambers takes us through seminal shows, from the inaugural ‘blockbuster’, ‘Aftermath: France 1945 – 55: New Images of Man’ (1982), to epoch-capturing surveys such as photography group show ‘Through The Looking Glass' (1989), and concept-based exhibitions like ‘Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now’ (2007).

The Barbican Art Gallery has, over the years, developed a knack for anticipating future stars (Grayson Perry exhibited in 2002, a year before he won the Turner Prize); shown an ability to widen its global appeal with commercially orientated shows like ‘The Art of Star Wars’ (2000); and extended its authority not just in fine art, but in the realms of architecture, design and fashion, and everything in between.

Chambers’ essay, and Building Utopia more broadly, highlight the feather-ruffling, intersection-seeking, headline-grabbing role the Barbican Art Gallery has played over the years. A fearless arbiter of art that didn’t always get it right, but earned a rightful place in cultural history. ‘The Barbican Art Gallery at 40 is a remarkable story: of how, despite modest beginnings and a difficult environment, a long line of dedicated curators and directors with brave and imaginative programming have established a world-renowned reputation and identity,’ says Chambers. 

In 40 years, the Barbican Centre has proved itself to be not only a building complex, but a cultural microcosm where getting lost and losing yourself are both inevitable. 

Few buildings have split opinion to such extremes or made the boundaries between creative disciplines so utterly indistinguishable. It was born as an experimental multi-arts centre, and ended up as a catalyst for all conceivable arts – a creative manifesto made concrete. 

INFORMATION

Building Utopia: The Barbican Centre by Nicholas Kenyon (ed) is published by Batsford, £40, batsfordbooks.com

The words of Azerbaijani poet Mikayil Mushfig (1908 – 1938), labelled an enemy of the state by the Soviets, hover in the air. From a canopy of 100 low-hung microphones, a chorus clusters and repeats the poet’s statement. There is heavy breathing. Hums dissolve into whispers. Fingers click and hands furiously clap. An unpredictable rhapsody of disembodied voices darts around a dimly lit room, creating a dense fog of sounds that lingers over a field of metal spikes. 

Once your senses adjust, you can edge through these spines that comprise Shilpa Gupta’s sound installation, For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit (2017 – 2018). Rising up to waist height, the spears forge a constricted path. Each pierces a leaf of paper bearing fragments of the spoken verses, written by a poet incarcerated for their beliefs. It is a panoply of resistance spanning time and place, with the words of dissident writers such as Maung Saungkha from Myanmar, arrested in 2016 for his risqué claim that he had a tattoo of the president inked on his penis, melding with those of Ayat al-Qurmezi, jailed in 2011 for supposedly defaming Bahrain’s royalty. 

The enveloping piece is part of Gupta’s poignant exhibition ‘Sun at Night’ at the Barbican Curve. In a year when the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to two journalists, Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia, for their courageous advocacy and practice of press freedom, and when digital censorship is alarmingly on the rise, the show is a testament to the force of words and the fragility of our commitment to free speech.

From Gavin Bond's archival photo series 'Being There'

Gupta, however, finds a refreshingly subtle way of rallying for free expression while keeping those poets at the fore. She treats their words preciously. She has ‘preserved’ the verses of censored poems by speaking them into a collection of ostensibly empty medicine bottles that form the piece Untitled (Spoken Poem in a Bottle). 

The thresholds of expression have long preoccupied Gupta. She once built a library of stainless steel books, each a replica of a title written anonymously or pseudonymously. And on the spine she explained the reasons why, capturing a range of society’s neuroses and prejudices. Gupta’s practice is characterised by its delicate investigation of social injustices and finding pathways to empathy. As she tells me, the objective of her work is ‘speaking with you and not at you and not against you. It maybe has to do with a sense of hope that a conversation might mean something.’

Come November 2021, Gupta will continue this dialogue with her first solo show at London’s Frith Street Gallery. ‘There will be spillover from the Barbican show,’ she explains, drawing a link between the genre of isolation that has been enforced throughout the world this last year. She has created a new flap-board – the kind typically associated with airport and train arrivals – that flickers through letters and settles to find our connective tissue. It spells out ‘We are closer than you ever imagined’

INFORMATION

Shilpa Gupta: ‘Sun at Night’, until 6 February 2022, The Curve, Barbican Centre, barbican.org.uk

We non-augmented view the possibilities of artificial intelligence with a mix of fear of fascination. And pretty much always have. As ‘More than Human’, the Barbican’s new AI blockbuster exhibition, establishes by way of prologue, fictions of artificial and, more or less, intelligent life have a long history: from Golem through Frankenstein to Rick Deckard and beyond. And these fears and fascinations continue to shape how we engage with AI as it moves from fantasy to pocketable commonplace. Hi Siri. The Japanese, with no native Prometheus/Frankenstein narrative to spook them, have been quick and warm in their embrace of AI as tool and low-maintenance companion. Aibo, Sony’s adorable robo-pup, inevitably makes an appearance here.

The exhibition then breezes through analogue AIs, with actual examples of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine and Alan Turing’s Enigma-busting bombe machine. (Ian McEwan’s new novel, Machines Like Me, imagines the earlier advances AI may have made had Turing not died at 42). And then moves onto contemporary’s AI star turns; IBM’s Watson trouncing the competition on the American game show Jeopardy and – significantly ramping up that fear and fascination with AI – DeepMind’s AlphaGo beating the best human competition at the fiendishly complex strategy game, Go.

All this though is really backstory for a thorough poke around the good and bad of AI’s current performances and potentiality. The exhibition pulls together work from artists, scientists and researchers, including Es Devlin, Neri Oxman, Massive Attack’s Robert del Naja, Alexandra Daisy Ginberg, Stefan Hurtig and Detlef Weitz as well Google Arts and Culture, and MIT’s Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and looks at how AI’s advance is transforming everything from food production to journalism, healthcare – particularly diagnosis – transport and shopping.

While there is interactive fun to be had that thread of fear, fascination and some foreboding runs through the show. Joy Buolamwini, activist, scientist and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, for example, looks at how gender and racial bias have become encoded, through complacency and a lack of imagination rather than outright malevolence perhaps, in facial analysis software. But the alarm raised in the show is far more sophisticated that simple tech bro backlash and it explores – with working models – the complex relationship between AI and consciousness and creativity. And it’s potential to enhance, amplify or explain both. 

INFORMATION

‘AI: More than Human’ is on view until 26 August. For more information, visit the Barbican Centre website

ADDRESS

Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London, EC2Y 8DS

BARBICAN CENTRE 

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Merce Cunningham shifted modern dance on its axis. Now, ten years after his death, and 100 years since his birth, London’s Barbican has celebrated the choreographers legacy with a fittingly groundbreaking performance: Night of 100 Solos. The challenging work played for just one night in April, and saw sister performances in New York and LA. A total of 100 solos graced stages, many in unison, with 25 performers per location.

The Barbican event showcased important dancers on the London circuit. Siobhan Davies continues her relationship with the institution, after her fascinating installation with Glithero at Barbican in 2017, alongside standout performances from Billy Trevitt and Michael Nunn (of BalletBoyz fame) and Beatriz Stix-Brunell. In Cunningham’s distinct style, dancers became insectile and angular, while possessing a kind of intangible grace. ‘If you're not trained in Merce Cunningham it just feels completely awkward, and you feel completely ugly for the first couple of rehearsals,’ says Nunn in an accompanying film promoting the performance. ‘And then it all slowly starts to make sense. I think that’s the beauty of it.’

The Marcel Duchamp-inspired was as intriguing as the dancers. Swathing projections by late artist Richard Hamilton backlit the stage. They’re taken from Shadows Cast by Readymades – a black-and-white video collage that Hamilton made for a Cunningham performance at the Barbican in 2005, directly drawing on the works of Duchamp. Hamilton’s set design for the original performance (which took place on 14 June 2005) comprised a projected collage of film and photographs that reflected on Duchamp’s readymades; mixing images with text from his publication the Green Box. The projects reflect Duchamp’s interest in movement and gravity – an apposite theme to connect with Cunningham's performance.

An upturned watering can rotates obliquely, spilling nothing, as two dancers in pivot in uncoordinated isolation. A dancer clad in lurid pink lycra performs a simple routine of Battement frappé, under the shadow of an enormous black umbrella. All the while a corkscew descends ominously on the screen behind.

A star-cast production continues with the score, performed in part by artist and former Wallpaper* Guest Editor Christian Marclay, alongside Mira Benjamin, John Lely, and Anton Lukoszevieze, coordinated by Christian Wolff. John Cage-esque, filled with metallic riffs, tinny sequences, and the odd scream, one imagines its not the easiest score to dance to. Indeed, the performers are said to have heard it for the first when the curtain rose. Instead, they dance around the music – another Cunningham technique that’s been honoured, in order to spark a sense of organic connection between dancer, musician and audience.

INFORMATION

Merce Cunningham: Night of 100 solos was performed on 16 April 2019. For more information, visit the Barbican website

ADDRESS

Barbican
Silk Street
London EC2Y 8DS

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London-based architecture studio Archmongers has created a clever refurbishment for an apartment in the Barbican. New design solutions for the master bedroom and bathroom inject practicality into the space – tackling those classic London modern-build problems of storage and insulation – while echoing the original spirit of the building through geometry, and injecting colour.

Archmongers’ client was a couple who had been living in their ‘M3A’ type maisonette for ten years. The apartment occupies the top floors of the Bunyan Court building, built in 1972, and has a unique upper level featuring a barrel vault ceiling in the master bedroom with access to a private terrace. While there was plenty to be celebrated, there was also room for a few contemporary updates to be configured.

The bedroom has been transformed with a total storage system that wraps around the space. Side-stepping the rules of the Barbican’s listed status, it fixes mechanically to the walls without glue or surface bonding to allow future disassembly. It creates its own insulating linoleum wall lining, framed by a bespoke aluminium trimming. A timber bed with storage beneath balances the system, with a fabric headboard and lighting strategy to boot. Meanwhile, a new cabinet door in front of the existing roof terrace door brings further storage.

Hues of purple, orange and red represent a contemporary palette that is Archmongers’ own response to the space, the couple and the architectural history of the Barbican: ‘This is one of our preoccupations and challenges as a practice, we just enjoyed working out what would work together in combination,’ say the architects of the colours chosen.

In the bathroom, the original bathroom was the source of inspiration for the new design. Materials are mixed to reflect the era: a small off-white tiled grid, aluminium trims and terrazzo shower wall, a cast concrete sink with orange taps. Here, further references included Donald Judd’s geometric compositions for the steel storage system, and Adolf Loos’s Villa Muller for the mirrored cabinet.

Working at the Barbican for the first time, the architects got an intimate feel for the internal fit-out of the flats, the quality of the materials and detailing, which provided inspiration across the design.

Creating a bespoke folding mechanical steel blind for the top half-moon window in the bedroom was part of the mission to enhance how the apartment could be lived in. The neat solution takes advantage of the architecture of the Barbican, almost seamlessly, and also draws attention to the unique shape of the room, while also being practically operated by a counterweighted pulley, operated easily from floor level.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Archmongers website

London’s Barbican Estate is revealed through a social lens by writer Stefi Orazi and photographer Christoffer Rudquist on the advent of the 50-year anniversary of when residents first arrived. Uncovering all the eccentricities of living inside a modernist experiment, The Barbican Estate tells a story that travels between interior design and daily life through essays, residents’ experiences and photography.

The layered Barbican complex, placed on a piece of land that writer John Allan describes in his essay for the book as essentially a ‘tabula rasa’ created by aerial bombardment, was designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon and took over 30 years to complete. The residential machine, made up of 2000 apartments, gardens, water and the Barbican arts centre, has been extensively dissected by architectural enthusiasts over the years, yet, what of the people, asks Orazi, an 18-year resident of Barbican and the neighbouring Golden Lane Estate.

Exploring behind columns, front doors, communal corridors, down rubbish chutes, up to the highest balconies and into the smallest of bathroom sinks, with her study, Orazi sought to discover the human stories of the estate – and the social changes that have taken place over it’s five decade lifetime.

Orazi speaks to an array of characters; the onsite laundrette manager who started in 1999; a nine-year-old resident since 2008 who finds hedgehogs in the communal gardens and cripes about the surrounding cranes; a car park attendant who works on site and whose job triples up as concierge, security and postman. One canny former resident took advantage of the right-to-buy scheme, purchasing a flat for £40,000 and selling it in 1987 for over three times as much. The stories are revealing in many ways.

Charles Holland’s standout essay explains how the Barbican was pitched at professional residents of the middle classes – a modern equivalent to typologies such as London’s Georgian squares or Haussmann’s Paris, unlike Golden Lane, also designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon that was pitched as social housing. Holland writes that the Barbican belonged as much to the ‘emerging post-war culture of consumerism and leisure as it did to the social democratic ambitions of modernist architecture’.

The 140 different variations of flat types are an example of the Barbican’s aspiration for a set of distinguished residents – that Holland comically describes as an ‘almost Byzantine level of spatial variation’. The book lays architectural plans to pore over beside photography of the flat types, and recounts the unique characteristics of each of the 20 different blocks at the back of the book.

The bespoke interiors were all symbols of a modern, yet convenience-driven vision – the prefabricated kitchens, the compact ‘Barbican sink’ and the ‘Garchey’ a unique waste disposal system – which a current resident describes as a ‘big cauldron in your sink with a cylinder in the middle of it where you throw all your rubbish’ – prefaced by ‘The blasted Garchey!’

Yet even despite its age, today, the Garchey has gained a certain appreciation, a tenderness coupled with mysticism, similar to the status of a cassette or a rotary dial telephone. A signal that the Barbican has entered a phase of fetishisation – brutalism was back, a status symbol of pop culture, idealism and avant garde. And, there’s a market for it.

Holland describes a room tucked below the cinema complex, where they where they fix and trade original parts as an ‘unofficial salvage operation that reflects an interest and enthusiasm for authentic refurbishments by residents, ones where original door handles, locks and other details are reincorporated into flats that have previously been modified.’

‘This fetish for originality forms part of the Barbican’s canonical status as architecture and an icon of brutalism,’ writes Holland.

Orazi’s own wide-eyed fascination began with her first visit to then Wallpaper* art director, Tony Chambers’ home: ‘We got into the lift, up to the sixth floor and into his (Type 36) apartment and I was speechless. A huge double-height living space, walls painted in Corbusian bright colours, simply furnished, books everywhere, wooden open-tread stairs – it was stunning.’

Throughout her experience of the Barbican, Orazi had slowly witnessed the demographic of the residents changing – from the average city worker in search of easy walk to the City, the building began to become occupied by the design-conscious – architects, designers and artists – often with young families.

The social and visual history of the book brings us up to today, here in London, where we are in the midst of a social and lower income-housing crisis. The Barbican is a valuable case study of architectural successes and weaknesses, yet it is equally reflective of human nature too and reminds us that we are all somewhat at peril to ourselves.

Statistics, population percentages and budgets can’t predict the birth of an icon, the festering of a fetish, the status of a symbol, the tempering of taste – or the cultivating of a community, the appreciation of a colossal concrete stack, and most surprisingly, the tenderness towards a modernist rubbish chute. This book reminds us, and delights us, that we – people, designers, architects and policy makers – can learn a lot from ourselves.

INFORMATION

‘The Barbican Estate’, Batsford, £40. For more information, visit the Pavilion Books website

Diane Arbus, the photographer of people on the peripheral, famously once said: ‘A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.’

Her words ring true at ‘Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins’, the Barbican Art Gallery’s new photography exhibition in London – a group show of some 20 contemporary artists who fascinated with life on the edges of society. Like Arbus, their position, and relationship with the people they portray, is often complicated, and sometimes problematic. Arbus was driven to the edge herself by her own work, committing suicide in 1971.

The erotic frisson and illicit allure of pictures of rebels, rejects and reprobates by Larry Clark or Daido Moriyama – darkly lit, edgy, morbose – points at the perversion of peeking in, something the camera has allowed artists to do. Images they shot between the 1960s and 80s, included in the show, unearthed urban subcultures in the pre-digital age, making them visible to the masses, for better and worse.

Decades later, works like Katy Grannan’s series – inspired by Robert Frank’s The Americans – leaves the identity of her liminal subjects as ‘anonymous’ – the new kind of social outcast in the Insta-famous age.

Being cast out by society can lead to psychological and physical suffering, and representing the underrepresented often makes the personal political. Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz shot Adam’s Apple, portraits of transgender sex workers in a brothel, in the mid 1980s, during the military dictatorship of Pinochet, and as the AIDs crisis raged worldwide – but the focus of her images is the faces.

The lives of many of the photographers here – such as Walter Pfeiffer, Dayanita Singh – were intertwined with the subcultures they shot, some of them photographing close friends, their pictures a way to preserve memories for each other. Why and how people end up living on the fringes of society is a poignant question their pictures raise.

The people and places may have changed, but the pictures remain, anonymous but symbolic. Bruce Davidson’s prolific documentation of a safe haven for transvestites in the 1950s presents a history that would have otherwise been invisible today, and is a celebration above all of how people find support in one another when the rest of the world has turned them away.

INFORMATION

‘Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins’ is on view until 27 May. For more information, visit the Barbican Centre website

ADDRESS

Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London EC2Y 8DS

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Performance artist of the moment Ragnar Kjartansson presents Second Movement at the Barbican. The work is part of an extensive solo exhibition, his first in the UK. Videography: Antonio Camera

The art world can't get enough of Ragnar Kjartansson. Hot on the heels of two Venice Biennale offerings for Iceland and a host of new commissions across America, the 40-year-old contemporary performance artist is at the top of his game. It's quite incredible, then, that this summer's eponymous Barbican exhibition is Kjartansson's first solo show in the UK.

'If we hadn't done it now, someone else would have,' explains the exhibition's associate curator Leila Hasham. 'The problem is, staging something so varied and performance-based is expensive and difficult.' Galleries without the luxury of space and finance have shied away from such an extensive survey – until now. The Barbican, with its theatrical, cinematic and artistic expertise, is the ideal home for Kjartansson's varied ouevre of films, paintings and live performance.

Kjartansson thought so too. 'The interdisciplinary buffet that is the Barbican fits my unfocused practice. Seriously, I love the building, the utopian feel and the programme that has kept me coming and coming as a tourist since my parents took me here in the 1980s.'

Kjartansson grew up backstage at Reykjavik City Theatre, and his theatrical parentage shines throughout the exhibition – his actress mother even features in one of the earliest works, Me and My Mother (2000). The film depicts her spitting in his face repeatedly, in a provocative, yet laugh-out-loud take on a loving, motherly relationship.

But the work that's got more tongues wagging than any other is Second Movement (2016), a four-hour-long kiss staged on the Barbican lake every Saturday and Sunday for the duration of the exhibition. Kjartansson wanted to create something similar to his 2013 Venice Biennale performance SS Hangover, wherein a large fishing boat from 1934 swayed with a host of brass musicians. 'I told him that was all well and good, but our pond was only 50–60cm deep,' Hasham explains. He went away and thought about it, returning with a bespoke, hand-painted rowing-boat with a flat bottom that could skim the shallow pool with ease.

The resulting performance, in which two women in Edwardian dress are frozen in an elegant embrace, appears at once peaceful and obsessive, innocent yet voyeuristic. The overriding impression is how small the two girls look, performing with calm confidence while the brutalist architecture looms absurdly above them. One might assume that only jobbing actors could keep such an intimate hold with professionalism; but they were sourced through the 'Barbican Creatives' Facebook group, advertised on social media and through the trade union Equity.

Hasham asked Kjartansson why he chose to work with two women. 'He said it was down to his interest in repetition, reflection, mirror-images,' she reveals. The two girls reflect each other's gentle movements completely, which are then mirrored in the dark water below. Second Movement is site-specific to the Barbican, and cannot be recreated elsewhere. Catch the perfect embrace before it disappears forever on 4 September.

The work that's got more tongues wagging than any other is Second Movement (2016), a four-hour long kiss staged on the Barbican lake every Saturday and Sunday for the duration of the exhibition. Videography: Antonio Camera

INFORMATION

'Ragnar Kjartansson' is on view until 4 September. For more information, visit the Barbican website

Photography: Tristan Fewings. Courtesy Barbican Art Gallery, Getty Images

ADDRESS

Barbican
Silk Street
London, EC2Y 8DS

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Britain’s doyen of domesticity might be a more apt title for the photographer Martin Parr. For over forty years, Parr has chronicled every banal facet of his homeland with his Technicolor touch – from supermarkets to seaside resorts, railways to rhubarb farmers. Now, he hands the reins over to fellow artists, stepping into the curator’s seat for a new London exhibition at the Barbican, ‘Strange and Familiar’, which explores the UK through lens of photographers from abroad.

‘It is the nucleus of this idea, the notion that many people had come to Britain since the war and have photographed here,’ explains Parr of the catalyst for the show. ‘Here we are in England and in Britain and we aren’t familiar with these pictures.’ Designed by Stirling Prize-winning, London-based firm Witherford Watson Mann Architects, the exhibition brings together a medley of images by the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Rineke Dijkstra, Bruce Gilden, Paul Strand, Candida Höfer, Raymond Depardon, Shinro Ohtake, and Tina Barney.

The works are as eclectic as the countries from which the photographers originate, spanning street, documentary, portrait and architectural photography. Chilean photographer Sergio Larrain was 27 years old when he pitched up in London; here, he spent four months documenting nannies in Hyde Park, the top-hatted gentlemen of the city, pubs and more. Hans Eijkelboom, meanwhile, is presenting an anthropological visual catalogue of shoppers at Birmingham’s Bull Ring – an endless, monotonous (but intriguing) parade of women wearing ushankas, men in coated nylon tracksuits and so forth.

Japanese photojournalist Akihiko Okamura’s remarkable images of The Troubles are amongst the most compelling in the group exhibit, which occasionally feels burdened by the sheer breadth of work on show. Okamura was exiled from Vietnam in the 1960s for his provocative war coverage and found himself in Ireland, seeking out John F Kennedy’s ancestry. He eventually settled in Dublin with his family, producing a jarring body of work covering the conflict in Northern Ireland. In one image, a bouquet of pink flowers lies strewn across a pool of blood on the pavement; in another, an ominously black troop of policemen make a stand on a quaint suburban street. They’re masterful in the way they seem to embody snapshot and cinematic qualities both at once

Inevitably, similar motifs can be found threaded through the works of multiple artists. ‘Often they’re drawn in to some of the clichés that surround Britain,’ says Parr, ‘but they’ve come in and found their own little world.’ To that end, Cas Oorthuys, Okamura and Larrain – from the Netherlands, Japan and Chile respectively – all trained their lenses on the humble milk bottle. Parr adds: ‘I think you’ll see that all the photographers here have found one thing that they’ve really hooked into and that’s the thing that’s so fascinating.’

‘This is an incredible insight we can glean and learn from these photographers and often this is connected to the country’s class system,’ explains Parr. ‘You’ll find that people have honed in on the wealthy or in some cases like Robert Frank, who came to London and [captured] the businessmen there and then went down to the Welsh mines and made a complete contrast.’ American photographer Brue Davidson – who brings the first jolt of colour to the exhibition – similarly captured the mining communities of Wales.

Elsewhere, photobooks are peppered throughout the space, housed in vitrines and displayed on shelves (Parr is an avid collector). Like Parr, many of the photographers he has chosen share his innate ability to make the boring seem bold, and at times, brilliant. ‘What is it about all these photographers that we find fascinating?’ he asks, before adding, ‘I think it’s really interesting to understand and see that we are really a strange nation.’

INFORMATION

‘Strange and Familiar: Britain as Revealed by International Photographers’ runs until 19 June. For more information, visit the Barbican’s website

ADDRESS

Barbican Centre
Silk St
London EC2Y

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The Barbican is revered by historians and architecture enthusiasts alike for its distinct Brutalist character and historical significance. Yet some 34 year after the estate's completion, it is no surprise that many of the Grade II listed concrete London landmark's original interiors are in need of a refresh. 

London architect Laurence Quinn of Quinn Architects is part of the Barbican's creative community and has lived, with his family, in one of the towers since 2009. In 2015, he embarked on a series of renovation works to breathe new life to the interior, while maintaining the Chamberlin, Powell and Bon space's original spirit. 

'We were interested in researching the original concept for the interior spaces, to allow us the opportunity to consider these in a modern context and develop the concepts further,' he explains. 'We simply maintained which parts of the interior remained relevant, and retire elements that had outgrown their usefulness. Our new scheme of components will sit happily with the originals and vice versa.'

The renovation was a hands-on experience, with Quinn personally involved in redesigning key elements such as cabinetry, skirting boards and bathrooms. The materials used were carefully selected to match the originals' feel and tone; they include oak, grey terrazzo, white lacquered MDF, wool and cashmere carpet, and Grey Italian Limestone. 

The new, full height doors with solid oak floor frames echo the original design, but were brought into the 21st century; now, they do not require to be constantly painted. At the same time, the brand new kitchen was one of the project's largest interventions, with the cupboards and drawers completely replaced. 

This was not the first time Quinn was involved in a Barbican redesign - his earlier renovation work there includes a penthouse in the Cromwell Tower - and it won't be the last either; his re-imagining of a Type 1C project in Shakespeare Tower is currently underway. There, the architect is taking a slightly different approach, maintaining far more original details, he explains, and merging them with 'a select group of our new ideas'. 

INFORMATION

For more information on Laurence Quinn visit the website

Photography: Rob Parrish

The Barbican, Britain's most famous brutalist building and one of Europe's largest functioning multi-arts and conference venues, was created to reflect a new type of inner city utopia and at the same time reconstruct a large part of central London, which was destroyed during the war.
 
The world-class complex, designed in the late 1950s by young architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, spent 10 years in construction until its grand opening in 1982. The centre has since been given a Grade II listing and cemented its reputation as a cultural and architectural British icon.

In its early years, the Barbican's first director, Henry Wrong commissioned photographer Peter Bloomfield to record the stages of construction of the complex. Bloomfield's comprehensive photo collection - just recently gifted to the Barbican arts centre - consists of over 1,400 negatives, which intricately document the late construction stages of the Barbican, and its completion. 

'During my first visits to the site, I witnessed the building emerging from raw concrete to a beautifully textured finish with the help of a number of jackhammers, clouds of dust, and a lot of sweat', says Bloomfield, reflecting on his experience on site.

This rediscovered archive forms a new 96-page tome, published by the Barbican and titled Building the Brutal. The book includes more than 70 colour, as well as black and white images that cover different aspects of the build, most of which have never been released to the public before. 

The evocative photographs document everything; from the first events held at the complex, to workers hand-finishing the famous textured walls, and the impressive moment, when trees were craned into the on-site conservatory. 

All imagery can be explored on a newly launched website or within the pages of the printed book, which comes with a foreword by Jane Alison, Barbican Head of Visual Arts and includes a separate feature on the photographer. The publication is now available for pre-order and will be in store from mid-March.

INFORMATION

Building The Brutal is published by the Barbican. For more information on the book visit the Barbican website

In August it was announced that London's Blake Tower, the fourth high-rise that completes the brutalist Barbican Estate, was to be converted into 74 luxury residences comprising two and three bedroom apartments, studios and two penthouses. Purpose designed as a youth hostel in 1968 by Chamberlin, Powell & Bon, the Grade II listed, 17-storey block has been empty since 2012 and is now under the ownership of Redrow London, who are working with design studio Conran + Partners on the overhaul.

December saw the unveiling of the first show apartment, which demonstrates how the designers will fuse the building's original brutalist features, such as exposed concrete and pick-and-brush-hammered interior walls, with contemporary brass fittings, light oak floors and a warm colour palette.

Features such as a brass screen in the show apartment's reception and the bespoke terrazzo bathroom vanity units echo the curved shape of the Barbican's distinctive balustrades, while the curved ends of the door handles reference the estate’s renowned central water fountain, Frobisher Crescent.

'We have been inspired by the historical, architectural and cultural characteristics of the Barbican to create a fresh, exciting and crafted design,' says Simon Kincaid, project director at Conran + Partners, who describes the development as a collection of apartments which have ‘a modern heritage'.

'We celebrate and reveal the buildings iconic hammered concrete finish in a controlled manner, giving the apartments authenticity and character,' he continues. 'Kitchen, bathroom and joinery designs include carefully considered materiality and detailing in response to the honest innovative and modernist design principles seen in the Barbican Estate.'

While the show apartment demonstrates a two-bedroom layout, buyers can choose from floorplans that range in size from 450 sq ft to over 2,000 sq ft and that take in impressive views of London’s skyline with the London Eye and the Shard to the south. With architects Harper Downie taking on the refurbishment of the building's exterior, Blake Tower is scheduled for completion this year.

Designed by Conran + Partners, the show apartment demonstrates how the building's original brutalist features, such as exposed concrete and pick-and-brush-hammered interior walls, will be fused with contemporary brass fittings, light oak floors and a warm colour palette

'Kitchen, bathroom and joinery designs include carefully considered materiality and detailing in response to the honest innovative and modernist design principles seen in the Barbican Estate,' says Simon Kincaid, project director at Conran + Partners

INFORMATION

Prices start at £720,000. For more information visit Blake Tower’s website

Photography: Richard John Seymour

As the Barbican unveiled the exhibition on the 'World of Charles and Ray Eames', they also released a new book, published by Thames & Hudson, illustrating the exhibition and offering further insight through a vast collection of archive material. The illustrated catalogue features 320 pages of photographs, sketches, letters and film stills, and includes essays by exhibition curator Catherine Ince (who edited the volume with assistant curator Lotte Johnson) as well as the Eameses’ grandson Eames Demetrios amongst many more art and design academics, plus original texts from the couple’s time.

Featuring a folded poster as cover jacket and different paper stocks, the book was art directed by graphic designer John Morgan, who worked on the exhibition itself in collaboration with architectural practice 6a – the two studios are long-term collaborators, having worked together on exhibitions at Raven Row gallery as well as books such as Never Modern and Dust Free Friends, and Morgan’s studio is also in charge of 6a’s identity. ‘The beauty of working with Tom [Emerson] and Steph [Macdonald, 6a's founders] is that when you see their exhibition proposals it makes you want to do less,’ says Morgan, pointing out how the richness of the Eames’ displays and the depth of their work did not call for an eccentric graphic treatment or a 1960s pastiche.

‘We approached the book design in the same spirit,’ he says, ‘not exactly a neutral vessel, but a very present grid – the cropping and framing and presentation of an "image" is central to the Eames's work.’ The grid system was essential to handle the large body of work presented, and was used inside the book (for example, through several sections that featured square picture grids of varying sizes) as well as on the cover, in the exhibition posters and throughout the collateral materials.

‘However, it’s in the facsimile of the "India Report" we produced for the exhibition, in which the Eameses quote Bhagavad Gita,’ says Morgan, ‘that I find the sentiment that for me underlines their curiosity with the process and activity of designing and making: "Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the clam of self-surrender".'

INFORMATION
The World of Charles and Ray Eames, £45, published by Thames & Hudson

Opening this week, the Barbican presents a new exhibition celebrating the life and work of American designers Charles and Ray Eames. It is the first time in 15 years that a retrospective of the Eames’ work has been shown in London (following the Design Museum’s 1999 show, ’The Work of Charles and Ray Eames’).

Opening this week, the Barbican presents a new exhibition celebrating the life and work of American designers Charles and Ray Eames. Aptly titled ‘The World of Charles and Ray Eames’, the exhibition touches upon every aspect of the duo’s vast oeuvre, from their first plywood experiments to less well-known films and graphic design. A plethora of letters, photographs, found objects and creative experiments punctuate the show, offering a precious – and often poetic – insight into their universe. The exhibition serves as a panorama of the pair’s careers, and a testimony to their office’s work, spanning architecture, furniture and product design to abstract painting, film, sculpture, multi-media installations and educational models. 

‘The Eames office was an intensely interesting and busy practice that used any tool to communicate ideas and subjects of interest to them,’ explains Catherine Ince, who curated the exhibition, working in close collaboration with the Eames’ grandchildren, as well as several international art and design institutions and with the support of Vitra. ‘We have tried to really explore and highlight the types of projects that they undertook in their 45 years of operation.’ It’s not an exhaustive summary of their work, she points out, but rather an exploration of concepts that continue to resonate in the design world today. It offers visitors a ‘consciously rough sketch’ of their production, ideas and life, she notes.

Designed by 6a architects and graphic designer John Morgan (who also worked on an accompanying book, published by Thames & Hudson), the exhibition is arranged like a labyrinth of curiosities – a rapid succession of iconic furniture, architectural models and sketches, sculptures, prototypes, notes and photographs that document the projects and afford an intimate view of the pair as people.

Two elements central to the Eames office and the exhibition are their exploration of material processes – often, and famously, centered around plywood – and their focus on visual communication, from photography and painting through a selection of thought-provoking films still relevant today. ‘They used the different media at their disposal to communicate poetic, non-narrative ideas,’ says Ince, referencing their interest in technology, science and economics, all fields which the duo explored in various ways through their work.

The exhibition opens with a large-scale plywood sculpture (on loan from MoMa), part of an experimental plywood glider plane from 1943, and a video presenting their office, which Charles Eames produced for a lecture at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. ‘My grandfather Charles came to speak at the RIBA and they asked him to bring some footage of the 901 office,’ explains the Eames' grandson Eames Demetrios. ‘But he had this expression that he learned in the movie business (Eames was a close friend and collaborator of director Billy Wilder), which was ‘the blood will never show’ – so he didn’t really want to show behind the scenes. But he said yes. So he did bring a film of the Eames office, but he shot it through a kaleidoscope, maintaining the privacy and at the same time effectively delivering a tour of their office.’

Other important artifacts on display include a replica of a 1950s 'Musical Tower', a 15 ft vertical xylophone played with a marble ball running through it and reproducing a specially composed 1965 Elmer Bernstein score. (‘There were two of those towers, and us grandchildren could usually get about 40 marbles going at once, which you can imagine did not lead to much productivity at the Eames office,’ recalls Demetrios.)

A central section of the exhibition is dedicated to a reproduction of Think, one of the Eames’ most important projects, made for the IBM Pavilion at the New York’s World Fair in 1964–65. ‘It’s a fine example of what the Eameses did best,’ says Ince, ‘using every day scenarios to communicate complex ideas about the potential of technology.’ The original presentation was shown on 15 screens (here reduced to seven), and featured a combination of moving images, slides, lights and colours, narrated by Charles Eames himself with music by Bernstein. The content of the presentation was dedicated to problem-solving, focusing on the different approaches taken by the human brain and the computer.

The entire exhibition gives a sense of discovery, enhanced by the mix of whimsical and professional elements, forming a lucid analysis of the visual phenomena that shaped post-war visual culture. The rich and complex history displayed here is a brilliant design lesson, one that gives a wider meaning to the term.

On unveiling the exhibition, Ince quoted the late Labour politician Tony Benn, a great friend of the Eameses; in a speech delivered at the London American Embassy shortly after Charles passed away, he noted how the architect’s analysis and use of technology was an important instrument for history. ‘He introduced us,' he said, 'to the tools of our generation.’

Aptly titled ‘The World of Charles and Ray Eames’, the exhibition touches upon every aspect of the duo’s vast production, from the first plywood experiments to less well-known films and graphic design. A collection of letters, photographs, found objects and creative experiments punctuates the show, offering a precious and often poetic further insight into their universe. 

The exhibition serves as a panorama of the pair’s careers, and a testimony to their office’s work, spanning architecture, furniture and product design to abstract painting, film, sculpture, multi-media installations and educational models. 

A central section of the exhibition is dedicated to a reproduction of Think, one of the Eameses’ most important projects, made for the IBM Pavilion at the New York’s World Fair in 1964–65. 

The original presentation was shown on 15 screens (at the Barbican it has been reduced to seven), and featured a combination of moving images, slides lights and colours, narrated by Charles Eames himself with music by Elmer Bernstein. The content of the presentation was dedicated to problem-solving, focusing on the different approaches taken by the human brain and the computer.

The exhibition opens with a large-scale plywood sculpture (on loan from MoMa), part of an experimental plywood glider plane from 1943. 

Other important artifacts on display include a replica of a 1950s 'Musical Tower', a vertical xylophone played with a marble ball running through it and reproducing a 1965 Elmer Bernstein score. Photography: Antonio Camera

INFORMATION

’The World of Charles and Ray Eames’ is on view until 14 February 2016. For more information, visit the Barbican

ADDRESS

Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London, EC2Y 8DS

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Taking residence throughout the Barbican's brutalist warren for the next month, the American artist and film-maker Doug Aitken's 'Station to Station: a 30 day happening' is a multifaceted arts event best described as a 'living exhibition' and an 'experiment in spontaneous artistic creation'. 

Sounds nebulous? It is – but in a good way. Until 26 July, the centre will host 50 performances, 20 residencies, rehearsals, workshops and talks involving more than 100 international and UK-based artists from the world of contemporary art, music, dance, graphic design and film. 

The range of participating artists working in and responding to the complex's galleries, concert halls, cinemas and terraces is almost laughable in breadth and scope: from immersive yurts by Kenneth Anger and Urs Fischer, to a smoke installation by Olaf Breuning and a new interactive laser commission by the digital artists Aaron Koblin and Ben Tricklebank; through residencies and performances by Martin Creed, Jeremy Deller and Anri Sala; cinema installations and screenings featuring work by Raymond Pettibon, Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth, Simon Armitage and Aitken's own Station to Station feature film; and a plethora of performances from London-based community bands and choirs, talks, workshops and design interventions. 

Perhaps most intriguing of all is the event's musical offering, which features a Boredoms-led 88-cymbal-players performance and the presentation of six new modular synth pieces by Mica Levi (as well as performances and happenings by Carnet de Voyage (Rosey Chan and Mimi Xu), Charlemagne Palestine, Demdike Stare, J Spaceman and The Vinyl Factory). 

To say this only scratches the surface of the programme is something of an understatement – pulling off such an unwieldy and sprawling event will be an achievement in itself. 

Despite this, the Barbican's staging of Aitken's festival-cum-happening is just the latest iteration of a project that has already travelled the breadth of North America, taking in both major cities and off-grid locations in a 24 day, 4,000 mile Atlantic-to-Pacific jaunt in 2013. 

''Station to Station' is a platform for progressive culture and new artistic experimentation,' explains Aitken. 'It will be amazing to see [it] come to life in London in such a unique, multi-arts environment as the Barbican. This is a living exhibition with artists of all mediums, creating unique works and unpredictable encounters every day.'

ADDRESS

Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London, EC2Y 8DS

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London’s Barbican will swell and sway to the sound of modern American music this weekend, hosting a six-session marathon tagged ’Mountains and Waves’ and curated by The National guitarist Bryce Dessner.

It includes the European premier of ‘Round-Up’, a musical and cinematic take on the rodeo tradition, conceived by alternative-folk hero Sufjan Stevens and cinematographers Aaron and Alex Craig and performed by percussion/piano quarter Yarn/Wire and concludes with ‘Wave Movements’, a new orchestral work by Dessner and Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry and backed by a video work by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Also on the bill is the European premier of Black Mountain Songs, a song cycle performed by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and dedicated to the radical Black Mountain College in North Carolina (which once included Josef and Ani Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Walter Gropius, Willem de Kooning and Buckminster Fuller on its teaching staff, though not all at the same time.) There will also be performances of key pieces by the big boys of minimalism and post-minimalism, including Steve Reich’s ‘Drumming’, and Terry Riley’s ‘In C’, as well as the work of younger American composers such as John Luther Adams , Nico Muhly and Caroline Shaw.

ADDRESS

Barbican Hall, Milton Court Concert Hall and St Giles, Cripplegate

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‘Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector’, the new show at London’s Barbican Centre, is mostly about artists' stuff, their personal collections. There are a few pieces by the artists thrown in, to offer context you suppose, but mostly it is a show about stuff.

With the Stuffocation-led anti-stuff movement in full swing, there was hope that the show might prove a rousing defence of stuff: the collection of stuff, stuff as inspirational object, as biographical detail. The fear was that this would be a show full of kitsch ceramics, taxidermy and African masks, the cliched keepsakes of the 20th century creative mind (most of the artists featured here are 20th century, even if they are still working).

It seems that Andy Warhol has collected kitsch ceramics as has Danh Vō, via Martin Wong. And by the shed load. Damien Hirst and Peter Blake both have a thing about taxidermy, of course they do, and the weirder the better. Hirst’s collection includes a rabbit born with two bodies in Wales in 1912 while Blake’s includes a lamb with a leg on his head and other hybrid-taxidermy.

The show is not without its rewards. Pae White’s collection of a 1,000 scarves by American designer Vera Neumann is at least a proper collection, focused and the result of an obvious passion. Hiroshi Sugimoto, an extraordinary collector in the tradition of the 19th century gentleman scientist/explorer, has sent 18th century French and Japanese anatomical prints and books.

Sol LeWitt's display is fine, featuring Japanese prints he picked while serving in Korea with the US army,  black and white modernist photography, and musical scores from Philip Glass and Steve Reich. There are also a 1,000 pictures he took of the objects in, and architectural details of, his Manhattan loft. But this feels second-hand. LeWitt saw their value and collected them in his 1980 photo book Autobiography.

Martin Parr’s collection of postcards is fun, as you would expect, as is the display of Jim Shaw’s thrown away thrift store paintings. And Hanne Darboven’s haul from the family home in Hamburg is the most fabulous junk store. But it is far from enough. The exhibition, by the way, has been designed by London-based firm Dyvik Kahlen Architects though this design is only occasionally obvious.

Maybe it’s just that Magnificent Obsessions suffers by comparison. The show is nowhere near as interesting as Martino Gamper’s ‘Design is a State of Mind’ at the Serpentine’s Sackler gallery last year, which did something similar but with designers’ stuff. Gamper’s show felt much more actively and creatively curated and each collection had something different to offer, a unique insight. Perhaps designers are just smarter about their objects and collect smarter stuff. 

ADDRESS

Barbican Art Gallery
Silk Street
London EC2Y 8DS

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Considering that the world’s very first photograph – or rather, the earliest known photograph made with a camera, the View from the Window at Le Gras by French scientist and inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niéce – was famously an architectural one (taken in 1826 or 1827), it’s surprising that this is the first major London exhibition to focus specifically on the extraordinary, ongoing relationship between photography and architecture. ‘Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age’ opened this week at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, as an ode to architectural photography and its power to change the way we see buildings, urban environments, and even, consequently, the world.

It’s a relationship born, though, of more pragmatic impulses. ‘At first it was for purely practical reasons,’ says the Barbican Art Gallery’s associate curator Alona Pardo. ‘Buildings provided a static object necessary for long exposures. Photographers then sought to record and interpret architecture.’ Architects themselves have also understood the power of the right photographic image to communicate their ideas and concepts, with the International Style being a prime example of an architectural movement that travelled the world via the lens of a camera. Good photography can vastly influence a building’s public standing.

Co-curated by Pardo and author and curator Elias Redstone, ‘Constructing Worlds’ was born out of the latter’s research for his book, Shooting Space: Architecture in Contemporary Photography. The exhibition touches on the work of a carefully chosen group of 18 leading photographers and artists, whose work examines architecture in different ways and across the globe. Having looked through countless images, the team is presenting 250 works that show the photographers’ aesthetically striking and visually distinct portrayals of architecture, and also hint at its symbolic qualities.

‘The artists and works in the show tell a global story and look at the world with a modern gaze,' says Redstone. ‘The exhibition presents a broad spectrum of photographic approaches. We’ve also brought together our own curatorial interests.' The architectural subjects are equally diverse, ranging from Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright classics to humble vernacular buildings. Still, themes do emerge. Urban and suburban landscapes, the city and street life, the iconic and the mundane, military architecture and the architecture of authority, mass urbanisation and globalisation all figure as topics in the show. Similarly, the impact of the car is addressed in several artists' works, such as Ed Ruscha’s Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles.

Redstone explains that the exhibition – designed by Brussels architect from Office KGDVS, with graphics by Atelier Dyakova and Stef Orazi, the latter also designing an accompanying book – has three distinct chapters: the fascination with vernacular architecture in the 1960s and 1970s; responses to and collaborations with individual architects and buildings; and photographers’ takes on globalisation and urban growth in China, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. The works are shown in chronological order, starting with Berenice Abbott’s seminal Changing New York project, Walker Evans’ documentation of local building typologies in the deep south, Julius Shulman’s iconic images of the Case Study Houses and Lucien Hervé’s images of Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh.

This exhibition aims to inspire, inform but also to pose questions. ‘Why do streets look and feel the way they do?’ asks Pardo. 'What does a soaring skyscraper reveal about our society?’ So many of our encounters with great architecture happen through the printed pages of a book, magazine or the vast visual resources of the digital world, and the command photography has in shaping our perception of the built world is undeniable. A visit to ‘Constructing Worlds’ will help explore this fascinating bond.

ADDRESS

Barbican Centre
Art Gallery, Level 3
Silk Street
London EC2

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What connects 8-bit computer games, LED-embedded fashion and a twenty-foot tall singing pharaoh? The latter is actually a virtual representation of singer, entrepreneur and digital evangelist Will.i.am, just one of a host of contributors to the Barbican’s sprawling new show, Digital Revolution. We caught up with Will.i.am to talk about his installation, ‘Pyramidi’, and delved into the dense display of computer culture that makes up this fascinating show.

The distinction between creativity and digital creativity is an increasingly arbitrary one, given the almost utter ubiquity of our connected existence. From the outset, Digital Revolution’s curatorial team acknowledge that the virtual realm has been well-travelled in the past - the Barbican's own Serious Games in 1997 and 2002's Game On attempted to bring the imagery and influence of bits and bytes to a wider audience. But Digital Revolution's point of difference is that it's not just about the arts in isolation or the gaming industry, but about the way digital culture permeates every single aspect of modern creative culture, from fashion to pop to art to apps.

The exhibition also marks a key waypoint in the rapid explosion of digital creativity. We now have a culture that dreams up billion dollar apps, new means of interacting, entertaining, tracking and tracing our paths through life, together with an emerging generation that has never known a world without the internet, email and SMS. They can take every evolution or revolution in their stride.

Crammed into a sub-divided and darkened Curve gallery, the first section of the main show is dedicated to 'digital archaeology', and features a host of early computers, consoles, cabinets, machines and multimedia projects, many of which have been literally excavated from the accumulated detritus of the pop culture that followed. Sprites glow, bleeps beep and the overall effect is a dark, brooding retro-futurism, a space of wonder and nostalgia.

Guest curator Conrad Bodman has also devoted sections to the myriad ways in which modern computing can enable us to collaborate and create, as well as the multifarious and splendid realms that emerge from the world's cinema SFX houses. From here it's a short step to literally immersing oneself in a series of digital artworks, many of which have been specially commissioned for Digital Revolution. Just as the touch screen device has transformed the way we react to information, so we are entranced by large scale video displays that pump out instant graphic modifications - adding wings to arms, a swarm of pecking birds, a Boccioni-esque breakdown into a thousand shimmering lines, or a host of other objects and presentations that are part of the ongoing creation of a reactive, hybrid digital world.

One of the largest installations is the new piece by the musician Will.i.am and the artist Yuri Suzuki. 'Pyramidi' puns on the universal language of computer music, and sets three elaborate 'instruments' alongside a titanic computer-generated animation of Will.i.am singing a new composition, Dreamin' about the future. Thanks to the combination of cutting edge projection mapping and the age-old hollow-face illusion, the Pharaonic visage of Will.i.am genuinely seems to follow you around the room as the music rolls and the three instruments do their stuff.

Digital Revolution is more akin to a mini-festival, one which will evolve and mutate over its two-month run with many immersive exhibits that bring the viewer right into the artwork. Given the wealth of material on display and the sheer depth of some of the generated worlds, the show will repay repeated visits.

We spoke to Will.i.am about his involvement in Digital Revolution and his thoughts on the future of technology and creativity...

W*: How did this come about? Why are you here now at the Barbican?
Will.i.am: They asked if I was interested in collaborating and doing an installation. Yuri and I were already in the process of figuring out how we materialise this concept of robotic instruments. We just married the two roads.

So the pyramids are deconstructed instruments, creating the sounds? 
They're playing the songs, playing MIDI. Sérgio Mendes is the star of the show. That Rhodes solo is Sérgio Mendes, played just like he played it the first time - every single time that piano plays it it's exactly the same. It's similar to a player piano. When the player piano was invented, there wasn't a player guitar and a player drummer.

How did you come up with the aesthetic of the video component?
Once we'd figured out the way to do the trio, we were like 'what about vocals?' 'Oh, why don't we do projection mapping - oh yeah.' We were geeking out at the highest level of geekdom.

You basically had access to any way you wanted to do things...
My circle of collaborators is vast, from visual effects to light installations, through to gadgets and doodads and making things and then there's a whole other army of people I can work with.

How do you feel about the rest of the show?
It's awesome to be in this creative company - I couldn't have chosen a better place to have my first installation.

Is there anything in terms of technology that you want to do but are unable to because of limitations? What's the next thing?
You know what's crazy? That there's nothing in the world besides cures for diseases, that you can't manifest with the right collaboration and the right will instilled in the people you're collaborating with. Anything is possible now, for the first time in humanity. It's an amazing time.

Will this kit live on in other performances?
It opens up a whole new platform to compose for. We wanted to take yester-world, the equipment and function of a piano and blend it with the mind of a computer - a true hybrid. I would like to see Kanye West compose for this set-up. Hey Kanye, here's a projector, here are the instruments, drums, keys, guitar and backing synths for sub-bass. Create here.

What do you think this exhibition means and why is it significant?
I remember [Interscope Geffen A&M chairman] Jimmy Iovine had a quote. We were sitting in his office in 2003. The Black Eyed Peas were about to launch iTunes with Hey Mama and everyone was hollering about Napster and the fight between the entertainment industry and Silicon Valley. Jimmy said that 'you know, when the Renaissance stopped, it's not liked people stopped painting.' What we're experiencing right now is the beginning of a new Renaissance. A whole new type of artist is emerging - the makers, the coders. They're artists.

ADDRESS

Barbican Centre
Silk St
London EC2Y 8DS

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Watch United Visual Artists' installation in motion in the Barbican's Curve gallery 

United Visual Artists' 'Momentum' project comprises a series of 12 objects that slowly oscillate in the dark void of the Barbican Gallery's 90m long Curve space in London. The installation takes its cue from the idea of Foucault's pendulum - an instrument designed to visualise invisible forces, such as the Earth's rotation.
 
Every single part of the project - from the electronics to the mechanics - has been researched and custom-built by UVA over nine months. Each swinging element has its own 3D-printed acoustic-chamber, playing out a broad-textural soundtrack, and a light source that cuts a 360 degree plane through the smoke-filled void.
 
At first the modular system appears to swing in sync to the rhythm of a pendulum, holding the viewer in a state of suspended belief. However, every five minutes or so, small variations to the movement warp onlookers' perception. 'We can really play with time and slow things down very subtly,' says Matthew Clark, one of the founding members of UVA. 'We have absolute control over the mechanics.'
 
Momentum is about exploring the tension between synthesised and natural movement. But in the words of UVA-designer Ben Kreukniet: 'Physics doesn't like it when you try and take control.' And in the rafters of the Curve, a hidden battle with gravity takes place - where a system of 30kg counterweights, on two axes of rotation, utilise motors that can push and pull each element into place - an engineering project many firms 'wouldn't touch'.
 
The lean, entirely functional one kilo objects have a beauty of their own, but the near-formless space they define - through an array of light and managed Doppler-effects - becomes the artwork viewers can't ignore. 'We're constantly bombarded with visual noise,' says Clark. 'So we just want to create a place where, for a certain amount of time, people can lose themselves in a moment.'

ADDRESS

Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London EC2Y 8DS

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London's Barbican Art Centre is getting seriously Duchampian this year - if that isn't a contradiction in terms - with five months of cultural happenings under the banner 'Dancing around Duchamp'.

The season of events includes theatre, music and dance performances as well as film screenings but its centre piece is the exhibition 'The Bride and the Bachelors: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Johns'. And it's a show we've been looking forward to since the invitations arrived in envelopes printed with punchy epigrams from Duchamp and Johns.

A hundred years on from the presentation of his Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) at New York's Armory show, the Barbican exhibition looks at Marcel Duchamp's transformative impact on American art, or rather the American arts, and this quartet of acolytes in particular.

Arriving at the Barbican after a triumphant turn at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the show features twenty-five works by Duchamp, over thirty by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, as well as music by John Cage (and Duchamp) and performances of Merce Cunningham's choreography.

In turn, the artist Philippe Parreno has been charged with the mise-en-scene, choreographing the various elements of the show and mapping the complex influences and counter-influences, the cross-media collaborations, the ping-ponging references and the happy accidents, both in and behind the works.

We spoke to him briefly during the media view of show and, before charging off to fix a lighting snafu, he acknowledged the difficulty of bringing the show from the galleries of Philadelphia's vast neo-classical hulk to the tight two floors of the Barbican space. But he has pulled it off.

The short dance performances become a homing device and point of departure. You start the show with Duchamp's cubist nude and then quickly to a replica of 'The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even' (or The Large Glass if you prefer, as most do) and replicas of his two best known 'readymades', 'Bicycle Wheel' and 'Fountain'. And watching the stuttering elegance of Cunningham's routines, with Cage's elegant compositions in the background, immediately alerts you to how connections have been made.

This makes sense because it was Cage and Cunningham, his partner in work and life, who pulled Rauschenberg and Johns into their orbit and began their collective exploration of Duchampian logic and illogic. 'Duchamp made it possible for us to live as we do,' Cage said. For Johns, Duchamp 'changed the condition of being here'. The Merce Cunningham Dance Company was their collaborative space, Cage composing music and Rauschenberg and John's both serving long stints as 'artistic advisors'.

On the upper floor, works are grouped thematically, including a section on Duchamp's passion for chess. And while it demonstrates how much Cage et al looked to Duchamp for inspiration, it's also clear that Duchamp's reputation wouldn't be what it is if not for these disciples' dedication to the cause.

ADDRESS

Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London EC2Y 8DS

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TELEPHONE

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Packed with information but cleverly organised in an informal space that almost feels like a construction site, the new 'OMA/Progress' exhibition at London's Barbican Art Gallery is a fascinating portrait of the celebrated Dutch architecture practice OMA and its research arm, AMO.

'OMA buildings look like no others, and this exhibition looks like no other,' the Head of Barbican Art Galleries Kate Bush said in her introduction to the show, referring to its seemingly haphazard appearance. 'The gallery space itself became part of the exhibit.'

The seeds of the exhibition were planted a year ago when OMA founding partner Rem Koolhaas visited the Belgian Pavilion during the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale and was struck by its freshness and originality. Curated by Belgian collective Rotor - made up of Marten Gielen, Tristan Boniver, Lionel Devlieger, Benjamin Lasserre and Melanie Tamm - the show was beautiful, intelligent and captivating.

A few months later, Koolhaas and his OMA partners handed over the keys to their office and archives to the Belgian group, allowing them to gather material about the practice for this Barbican show. 'The result is very personal,' says Rotor's Marten Gielen. 'It was driven not only by our own instinct but also the result of many conversations with OMA.'

There was no place in the office that Rotor didn't have access to, and nothing went overlooked - from old models to the contents of the office bins. Gradually unravelling the everyday workings of the architecture firm, the Belgians organised the exhibition around different aspects of its design process. Exhibition areas focus on a variety of subjects, from 'view lines' and 'movement', to 'ornament', 'adaptation' and even basic categories like 'white or shiny', which simply puts the spotlight on the use of white and shiny surfaces.

The volume of material on display is staggering - a collection of around 450 items - yet it is essential in helping represent the inner workings, processes and progress of OMA over four decades of intense architectural production, each adding a little piece to the full OMA/AMO picture.

Video: hear about OMA's ambitious project to create a world driven by 100% renewable energy by 2050

A special room at the end of the show was given back to OMA to use as they wished. It now displays the firm's current preoccupations, such as the recent economic climate. 'This is a period of transformation in the office,' explains Koolhaas. Next door to this, one of our favourite displays shows building site shots of several ongoing projects (including De Rotterdam tower and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange), which will be updated throughout the exhibition, following OMA's respective site visits.

This exhibition - 'the word "retrospective" makes me nervous,' admits Koolhaas - coincides with the completion or near completion of a number of key buildings for OMA, including the Maggie's centre in Gartnavel, Scotland, the New Court building for the Rothschild Bank in London, and the CCTV tower in Beijing. So there will be plenty of opportunity to see an OMA building up close wherever you are.

And if all this isn't enough, there's another compelling reason to visit Barbican. For the first time ever, and for this show only, it has opened up its east entrance, linking the gallery directly to the Barbican complex terraces and creating a new path into the building that also provides a free glimpse into this exciting show.

ADDRESS

Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London EC2Y 8DS

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