Coldplay went viral recently after a certain indiscretion at one of their concerts was caught on camera – leaving the hapless suspects feeling blue, perhaps. But this year also marks the 25th anniversary of the band’s seminal hit Yellow, first released in the UK on 26 June 2000 (feel old yet?). In celebration, Wembley Park – the north London district that’s home to Wembley Stadium, which will host Coldplay’s ten upcoming shows as part of their ‘Music of the Spheres’ world tour, beginning 22 August – has teamed up with Pantone to unveil a new public art installation: Yellow 25.

The large-scale artwork transforms the neighbourhood’s Spanish Steps into a giant Pantone colour chip (the brand’s swatch system). The location is not accidental: the 58 ascending steps mirror the melodic progression of Yellow. Each of the steps has been matched to a specific shade of yellow using the Pantone Matching System (a colour reproduction system used across visual industries). It starts with pale, muted tones and builds to deeper, more luminous golds – a graduation which, again, reflects the song's melodic arc. Jane Boddy, creative director at the Pantone Colour Institute, explains that Pantone was ‘inspired to explore how… the emotional journey of the song could be visually represented’.

Yellow is associated with optimism, warmth and creativity – all emotions the installation is intended to spark in visitors. ‘Wembley Park is shaped by music and shared experiences, a place where energy is always in the air. So this felt like the right fit,’ says Claudio Giambrone, head of cultural programming at Wembley Park and curator of Yellow 25.

The Spanish Steps – a pedestrian link between Wembley Stadium and the OVO Arena Wembley – have become a kind of cultural stage. In 2024, they were transformed with a mural by Frank Styles to celebrate Taylor Swift's ‘Eras’ tour. Now, Yellow 25 joins the free Wembley Park Art Trail as its latest (and brightest) addition.

Yellow 25 turns music into something tactile and immersive – it is a celebration of Coldplay's legacy, but also of the enduring power of art and community.

An artistic endeavour

Bill Prince, Editor-in-Chief

Last week Wallpaper* joined the artist Shezad Dawood for the unveiling of his latest work in the public realm, Cascade, two vertical 6m ceramic panels on the restored façade of the original Gaumont Palace on London’s King’s Road. It's been reimagined as The Gaumont, a new creative hub for Chelsea developed by Cadogan as a 220,000 sq ft mixed-use facility featuring a rooftop bar, a cinema, an office, and a residential and retail space that includes a bookshop and hi-fi bar. It's a location Dawood knows well, having been taken there as a child to see Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. The artist constructed an artwork in fired terracotta that encapsulates the area’s history of creative endeavour, from early experiments in cinema, through to Led Zeppelin, Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood – a masterclass in memory and materials.

A Mexican escape

Anna Fixsen, US Editor

It may be peak vacation season here in the US, but it was blissfully quiet in Mérida, Mexico, from where I’ve just returned after a ten-day holiday. Unlike the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, home to traveller hotspots like Cancún and Tulum, Mérida isn’t plagued by over-tourism, meaning the city’s pastel-washed streets and points of interest are unhurried and uncrowded. In fact, we were among just a handful of guests at Hotel Cigno, an elegant and intimate boutique property located in Mérida’s historic heart. After a few days’ soaking up the city’s rich history (not to mention xtabentún, the local firewater), we ventured further afield, paying visits to the dazzling Uxmal, one of the Mayan world’s most important archaeological sites; taking dips in a cenote, the naturally occurring limestone sinkholes filled with azure fresh water; and ultimately, flopping on a white-sand beach at Casa K’u, a tranquil property an hour’s drive to the coast. Perfecto.

Back to school

Nick Vinson, Contributing Editor

Last week I went back to school, enrolling at Hermès’ Academie du Dessin at the Lycée Chaptal in Paris. On arrival, I was given a green coat, placed in the ‘emerald' class and then asked to make my own diorama. I named the work 24 ways to wash a cornichon. We then headed to the playground for a break (it was adults only, so we were served ‘horses-d’œuvres’). After a quick assembly, we learned the art of print, using stamps that were dipped in ink before making their mark on silk. We were then treated to a lecture from Professor Pierre-Alexis Dumas, before dinner – me sandwiched between the artistic directors of Hermès Maison. After dessert, it was the awards ceremony, and I was presented with a diploma. I offered to donate my diorama, which I considered to be a masterpiece, to the maison’s conservatoire, and my diploma was upgraded to a degree with honours in conceptual stage design. Hermès’ introduction to its themes for the year ahead – for 2025, it’s ‘Drawn to Craft’ – was charming.

A Michelin-starred meeting

Ellie Stathaki, Architecture and Environment Director

A work meeting earlier this week brought me to Benares, the Michelin-starred Indian Mayfair restaurant that reopened earlier this year following an extensive refurbishment and full menu revamp. The combination of warm, fresh interiors by Dale Atkinson of Rosendale Design and a mouthwatering culinary experience by executive chef Sameer Taneja made the visit a treat. Offerings included elevated street snacks, contemporary dishes such as oyster vindaloo, and a range of scrumptious, traditional curries.

An evocative exhibition

Gabriel Annouka, Senior Designer

Opening night of ‘LMK WHEN YOU REACH’ by Bernice Mulenga felt like diving headfirst into a collective memory already in motion. At first glance, the gallery feels chaotic: images pinned at unexpected angles, discordant shots. But resilience builds curiosity, and as you lean into the space each photograph emerges on its own terms: powerful, tender, defiant. These aren't rehearsed images, but breathing, living moments charged with care and visible solidarity.

A neighbourhood mooch

Charlotte Gunn, Director of Digital Content

The week was mostly spent bobbing around my neighbourhood of Golborne Road/Ladbroke Grove peeking at all the new openings. There's Frankie's, a cute little wine and charcuterie bar that's just popped up at 331 Portobello Road. Then there's Thomas Straker's new outpost Acre (just across the road from his eponymous restaurant) which I'm eyeing up for weekend brunch. Marvee's Food Shop offers elevated Caribbean food with some truly spectacular sauces, whether they're smothering goat or banana blossom, in an unassuming spot under the Westway. And Eel Sushi – new on Talbot Road – has been packed since opening, I'm told because the sashimi and nigiri is excellent.

The Vaillancourt Fountain may be demolished as part of a redevelopment of the Embarcadero Plaza in San Francisco, where it has stood for 54 years. The controversial public artwork, officially named Québec libre! and designed by Canadian artist Armand Vaillancourt, is missing from plans for the new plaza.

City officials maintain that renderings are merely illustrative and no decisions have been made regarding the fate of the fountain. Nonetheless, Vaillancourt, now 95, and his family are applying pressure to local politicians to preserve his work.

The artist has rallied the support of various groups, including modernist architecture preservation group Docomomo; The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF); and proponents of public art and brutalism, as well as local skateboarders (the site has been a popular skateboarding spot since the 1990s).

Completed in 1971, the Vaillancourt Fountain is a modernist sculpture made of precast concrete tubes; members of the public can interact with the monument via bridges, walkways and stairs. It formed an important part of the Embarcadero Plaza, which was designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, who described the fountain as a ‘modern-day Trevi Fountain’.

The outdoor art installation has, however, been a source of controversy. It is meant to have water flowing, but it was drained in June 2024, leading some to question its purpose.

The significance of the Vaillancourt Fountain also changed when the Embarcadero Freeway was demolished in 1991; the fountain’s concrete tubes were originally meant to obscure and echo the freeway. Additionally, not everyone is a fan of its brutalist architecture aesthetic; architecture critic Allan Temko compared the fountain to ‘something deposited by a concrete dog with square intestines’.

The redevelopment of the Embarcadero Plaza will create a five-acre park that integrates the waterfront with the financial district, and is estimated to cost $30 million. Restoring the fountain would cost an estimated $3 million, according to San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department.

Is it worth it? The answer will depend on how you see the Vaillancourt Fountain: modernist gem or ailing monument, icon or eyesore.

Artist and activist Ai Weiwei – known for his provocative exploration of human rights, as seen in an ongoing retrospective in Seattle, as well as his ability to capture the imagination with large-scale works, such as a Lego take on Claude Monet’s Water Lilies – is set to unveil a new public outdoor installation in New York this September, at Franklin D Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park.

The installation is part of a new project by Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, titled Art X Freedom, which sees artists commissioned to create site-specific works that investigate issues around social justice and freedom.

Ai Weiwei’s new public installation coming to Four Freedoms State Park

Ai’s installation, titled Camouflage, will launch the project on 10 September 2025, aligned with the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, and the 80th Session of the UN General Assembly.

The artist looked to the park’s location and history for inspiration. It was designed by American modernist Louis Kahn, and is located on Roosevelt Island, a stone’s throw from the UN heaquarters, just across the river. The park was built to commemorate the legacy of president Roosevelt through a lens of contemporary art and culture.

Ai’s installation is intended to provoke thoughts around vulnerability and protection, while questioning the relationship between truth and concealment. It will take the form of a large structure draped in camouflage netting in an open sanctuary. Howard Axel, CEO of Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, said, ‘Artists have paved the way in activism and advocacy throughout history. Art X Freedom amplifies this work by inviting contemporary artists to re-envision FDR’s freedoms for future generations by realising major new public artworks.’

Camouflage by Ai Weiwei will remain on view at the park through 1 December 2025, fdrfourfreedomspark.org

Nothing beats the Christmas installations in London. In the run-up to the festive season, the city provides an illuminated offering for every mood and taste. And beyond the optical overload of garish Christmas lights, faux snow, and Santa’s grottos, there’s an art and design wonderland to be found. Explore our pick of the best festive art installations to bring you comfort, joy and creativity this holiday season.

CHRISTMAS INSTALLATIONS TO SEE IN LONDON

1. Christmas at Kew Gardens

2022 marks the 10th anniversary of the beloved Christmas at Kew winter light trail. Long a beacon of the winter months, the light festival will this year offer a new route, illuminating the biodiversity and world-renowned botanical treasures of Kew Gardens. As well as some returning favourites, this year sees five new installations turn Kew into a futuristic festive paradise. Among them is an immersive animation at Holly Walk by design studio Novak, and Illusion Hole by UxU Studio, which optical illusion that plays with the ripples on the lake.

kew.org

2. The Winter Light exhibition at Southbank Centre

This year’s edition of The Southbank Centre’s free, open-air exhibition ‘Winter Light’ will illuminate the art centre, its adjacent buildings and Riverside Walk with 11 low-energy LED light works from ten acclaimed contemporary artists. The installations utilise light, colour and mixed media to playfully explore topics critical to contemporary society. Featured artists include Emily Mulenga, Fred Tschida, Conrad Shawcross and Caiwei Tang. 

3. Kings Cross’ Granary Square winter installation 

For the 2022 Granary Square winter installation, Berlin experimental art and architecture practice Raumlabor has illuminated Kings Cross with a 33ft-high totemic structure titled elsewhere: a place to think about the world. As its name suggests, the installation offers visitors a space to reflect on the beauty and complexity of the world through kaleidoscopic lights and heat maps that demonstrate our changing planet. The work forms part of a series of winter installations and festive trees commissioned by King’s Cross, which include Liliane Lijn’s Temenos, 2021 (on view again this year), and architect Sam Jacobs’ The Electric Nemeton, 2020. 

4. Louis Vuitton collaborates with Lego for festive store installations

In collaboration with Lego (which celebrates its 90th birthday this year), Louis Vuitton has unveiled a new series of playful window installations for its global store windows and in-store holiday displays, including at the brand’s New Bond Street London flagship. Lego blocks form the material for enchanting Christmas art installations that celebrate creativity, colour and imagination. Developed by the Louis Vuitton Visual Image Studio and realised by Lego Certified Professionals, these compositions follow on from a creative exchange that began with the Louis 200 project, for which the Lego Group was among the visionaries, contributing a colossal birthday cake formed of 31,700 bricks.

5. Claridge’s Christmas Tree by Sandra Choi 

Iconic hotel Claridge’s has enlisted the vision of Jimmy Choo’s creative director Sandra Choi for its annual Christmas tree. Titled The Diamond, this sculptural creation comprises reflective mirrors and light that pulses and undulates through its form. The tree will be topped with a giant, shimmering bow – a nod to one of the key motifs in the brand’s winter collection. As Choi commented: ‘Claridge’s is a London jewel, it’s multifaceted, like the diamond that inspired our tree, like Jimmy Choo.’

6. St Pancras Christmas Tree in partnership with The Prince’s Trust

St Pancras International station has unveiled a striking Christmas tree in partnership with The Prince’s Trust. Standing 33ft tall, and comprising 80 hand-illustrated buildings, the design features iconic silhouettes of the London skyline, which the station has been part of since 1868. Including terrace houses, department stores, concert venues and more, the design concept draws on the 1955 film On the Twelfth Day, based on the receiving of all the gifts from the eponymous song. The installation also spotlights the work of The Prince’s Trust, which is offering support to young people at what is a critical time, during the cost of living crisis and the aftermath of the pandemic. 

7. The Connaught Christmas Tree by Suzie Murphy 

This year, The Connaught Christmas Tree has been designed by London-born artist and sculptor Suzy Murphy. The striking, playful and thought-provoking creation comprises a British-sourced Nordmann fir tree dappled with 34 neon dogs, for which she was inspired by Toby was a girl, a series of sketches inspired by her childhood pet. In neon on the tree’s base, Murphy deploys her creative and philosophical mantra, ‘solitude, truth, passion and peace’, to describe the various stages one must pass through in order to achieve ‘peace’. 

Ai Weiwei is staging an art performance at London’s Hyde Park this Saturday (10 December 2022), signing blank sheets of A4 paper with invisible UV ink and distributing them free from 2-4 pm at Speakers’ Corner. 

The event is the renowned Chinese artist and dissident’s way of recognising Human Rights Day, which marks the anniversary of the drafting of the University Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It’s an occasion ‘to review and re-understand the meaning and value of human rights’, he explains in an interview with Wallpaper*.

The issue of human rights is personal to Ai. ‘My father [the eminent poet and activist Ai Qing] was exiled as a dissident since my birth. When I was born, I was already a political refugee in my home country. It was only when I was forced to leave China in 2015 and move to Europe that I fully understood this,’ he explains.

His arrival in Europe coincided with a new global refugee crisis, largely prompted by the Syrian civil war. The events inspired him to make the 2017 documentary film Human Flow, shot in over 20 countries to convey the staggering scale of forced migration. ‘In this time of uncertainty, we need more tolerance, compassion and trust for each other since we are all one,’ he wrote in his director’s statement.

While Ai has been steadfast in his championing of refugee rights, producing two further documentaries (2018’s The Rest, about the disintegrating humanitarian aid system in Europe, and 2021’s Rohingya, focusing on the eponymous ethnic group forced out of Myanmar), and speaking about the issue worldwide, he observes that the plight of refugees has only exacerbated.

‘In 2017, there were around 65 million refugees worldwide. Today there are more than 100 million refugees.

‘The refugee issue, once in the media spotlight, has become marginal nowadays. Very few people are concerned about the political situation in Afghanistan [following the Taliban takeover]. Meanwhile, the continuing Russian invasion of Ukraine has made Europe the place of origin for refugees for the first time [in many years].’

Asked if there are reasons for optimism, Ai appears despondent. ‘With ongoing wars, poverty aggravated by the Covid pandemic, food crisis, and all kinds of political instability, the refugee crisis will only get worse.’

Still, he is insistent on doing his part to alleviate the situation. That Refugee International – a Washington DC-based non-profit that advocates for lifesaving assistance, human rights, and protection for displaced people around the world – appointed Ai to its board this November is a reflection of the artist’s stature as a humanitarian. ‘For me, this is an honour and a spur, prompting me to do more things for the same ideals,’ he explains.

The event this Saturday will take place at Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner, the oldest living free speech platform in the world, where the likes of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and George Orwell have publicly expressed their political opinions. It’s ‘a place that is related to history,’ says Ai.

The blank sheets of paper that Ai is distributing are an homage to recent protests in China, prompted by the persistence of stringent Covid restrictions at a time when most of the world has reopened, but also expressing frustration at a general lack of freedom under the rule of President Xi Jinping, who secured an unprecedented third term as the country’s leader this October. The absence of text on these sheets offers a silent but powerful critique of a harsh censorship regime. 

‘A blank piece of paper as a symbol of resistance is ironic,’ describes Ai. ‘It appeared in protests in Russia, in Hong Kong, and now in China. It is almost not saying anything, but there is a strong moral power; under the condition of not saying anything, everything has been said.

‘Expression has become an extremely difficult thing in authoritarian societies. In China, those students and young people who stood up and resisted were arrested and disappeared. In a society without judicial independence, they are in a dangerous situation.’

The UV ink is likewise a comment on the difficulty of political expression. ‘Even if you do express, it is like you have not expressed. The state of free expression is extremely fragile at the moment; if written under unusual circumstances such as UV ink, it is almost not existing,’ adds the artist. 

He is pragmatic in his assessment of the impact that this event can have: ‘I don’t think my act can change the world in any real sense, but it is an attitude and a direction. I am very concerned with the resistance and turmoil in China and share the same feelings of anxiety and confusion with any kind of resistance. It is only through a symbolic act that I can be part of it.’

Following Saturday’s event, Ai will sell further editions of his UV ink signature on blank A4 paper on Maybe.art, the independent display and retail space run by his partner, Wang Fen. These are available for £100 until 20 December 2022, with full proceeds going to Refugee International.

In Ai’s view, that many parts of the world are going through difficult times, thanks to rapidly rising costs of living and an impending recession, is reason to double down on activism. ‘Today in the UK, in Europe and in the US, we are at a moment that might be a turning point,’ he concludes. ‘If we are not concerned about people’s basic rights and insist on free speech at this moment, we are all in the process of becoming refugees and losing our basic rights.’

Ai Weiwei is at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London on 10 December 2022, from 2-4pm. Following the event, the signed edition (£100) will be available for sale on maybe.art until 20 December 2022, with all proceeds donated to Refugee International.

 refugeesinternational.org ; maybe.art

Daydreamer places a chorus of deep hums and light song in a park, emanating from a trio of lit arches, hovering at each end above the ground, as if floating. The harmonies created on the spinning, singing benches in Indiana are designed to connect people in public spaces. The goal of the designers at Canadian ‘placemaking collective’ Daily tous les jours is to create enriched social spaces through everyday interactions, which they do at a thoughtful intersection of art and design. 

The collective has previously created singing, wobbling boards, musical pavements and water-play hubs in the name of bringing people together, and its projects feel delightfully close to public play therapy. The team’s ability to ‘enchant the post-covid city’ is proudly demonstrated on its website, and in its integration of the senses in sound, touch and movement. 

The white oak benches and powder-coated aluminium arches sit in Plaza Park in South Bend, Indiana and feature as part of the space’s redesign, now a permanent interactive installation. Song from the benches is triggered by their user’s movements and, in configuring them in a circle, Daily tous les jours hopes to encourage a shared experience, creating a mutual space for connection in the community. 

LED lights create a glow in the arches over the benches, introducing calming details to the form alongside the curved edges and round base. Each bench is fitted with a slow pivot mechanism, akin to a rocking motion, and seats four people, allowing for a group of 12 to swing, sing and climb to their hearts’ content. 

Daily tous les jours Daydreamer benches are now on permanent display at Plaza Park in South Bend, Indiana

dailytouslesjours.com

Sydney has welcomed some endearing new arrivals on its sunny shores. Three pairs of giant long-limbed fantastical creatures by New Zealand artist Francis Upritchard are now inhabiting the entrance court to Sydney Modern, a soon-to-open glass building designed by SANAA, a new addition to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. 

Embodying inspirations that mix Quentin Blake, mythology, folklore, science fiction, and the local Moreton Bay fig trees, it’s as though these enchanting beings have stepped out of a magical storybook with an invitation to all, to play. As curator Justin Paton says, ‘we wanted there to be a sense of humour, humanity and heart to welcome the visitor’.

From a distance the coloured bronze sculptures are monumental, reaching to the underside of the 7m-high undulating glass canopy. Figures with elongated arms sit on the backs of long-legged figures, entwined in action – one gripping the slim canopy column, another building a tower of boulders, the third playing with a dinosaur-like creature on the ground. Up close they prove intimate and captivating, with fleshy, textured skin that invites touch. Hands and feet are expressive with long toes and defined toenails; small reptilian-like creatures make homes on a foot or a buttock; an outstretched hand offers a palm for children to sit. There is fun everywhere, but the co-dependence of the figures is also a more serious reminder of the state of humanity. 

For London-based Upritchard the commission for the large-scale public work ‘felt like an enormous and scary task at the beginning’ especially as handcrafting is central to her work. But with the support of project manager Donna Walker, studio assistants and collaboration across the globe, she found a ‘process that I can really keep my hands involved at most levels’. 

Upritchard has been working with balata rubber since discovering it in a market while on a residency in Brazil in 2004. A precious natural material that is sustainably harvested, it is malleable when heated and quickly hardens in a cold-water bath requiring more than two hands to manage. After working on a 1:20 sketch model she moved to 1:5 balata maquettes where the figures could gain form and character, through a material process where hands, imagination and intuition all combine at speed. These were then 3D-scanned and scaled to create 1:1 versions in foam onto which balata is hand-moulded to give the final texture to be cast in bronze. It was a process that she mastered with a bronze-foundry team and as she says ‘the feeling of joy and fun with the material is much more apparent’. 

It is one of nine commissions across the Sydney Modern project that as Paton says ‘each tells a different story of place and the potential of art’. A large panel set in the niche above the entrance of the late 19th-century sandstone building by Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens speaks of the ongoing trauma of colonialism and patriarchy. Seen from the new entrance court is a 20m collection of narrbong-galang (many bags) made from salvaged metal by Lorraine Connelly-Northey. On a wall in the vast internal court, fellow New Zealander Lisa Reihana has created a monumental sci-fi moving-image work that speaks of the deep connections across the Tasman Sea. And to open later next year is bíal gwiyúŋo (the fire is not yet lighted), a space of performance and cultural engagement in the territory between the old and the new building, by Wiradyuri and Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones. 

Many of the works, including Upritchard’s, can be seen from the surrounding neighbourhoods, promontories, and expressway.  As the title of her work Here Comes Everybody attests, accessibility is vital to Upritchard. ‘Everybody should be welcomed everywhere, especially to a gallery’, she says, adding of the artwork, ‘no one should feel that they don’t understand’ – it can mean ‘whatever you want it to mean’. These new sculptures are a gift to people and the city.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales' Sydney Modern Project will open to the public on 3 December 2022. artgallery.nsw.gov.au

As Qatar gears up for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which will be hosted in Doha from 21 November –18 December 2022, anticipation is in the air.

As part of the run-up, Qatar Creates — the year-round movement promoting cultural activities in the nation – has announced a new wave of 40 public artworks, which will be unveiled in Doha and across the nation. Over the coming weeks, a total of 100 artworks will be on view for residents and the 1.5 million international visitors expected in the capital for the World Cup, transforming the city into an ‘outdoor museum experience’.

Among the show-stopping new additions are Jeff Koons’ Dugong (2022), a colossal polychromatic steel sculpture depicting the marine mammal that inhabits the waters surrounding Qatar; commissioned desert installations by Ernesto Neto and Olafur Eliasson; a potent light installation by Shilpa Gupta at Stadium 974 and a collection of ephemeral sculptures and installations by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Other international regional and native artists include Daniel Arsham, Lawrence Weiner, KAWS, Faye Toogood, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Rashid Johnson, Ahmed Al Bahrani, Monira Al Qadiri, Franz West and Shouq Al Mana. 

‘The addition of 40 new, major works of public art this fall is a significant milestone for Qatar’s public art programme. Public art is one of our most prominent demonstrations of cultural exchange, where we present works from artists of all nationalities and backgrounds,’ said Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, chairperson of Qatar Museums, in a statement. ‘From the arrivals at the best airport in the world — Hamad International Airport — to every neighbourhood in our nation, public art is there to make your experience unique.’ 

Sculptures and installations will be located in populated public areas and those off the beaten track, from the expansive Qatari desert to the bustling Souq Waqif. 

‘These works vary in size and form, and they encompass a wide range of subject matter, but all further our mission to make art more accessible, engage our publics, celebrate our heritage, and embrace the cultures of others,’ Sheikha Al Mayassa continued. ‘More importantly, artists from every corner of the world – representing all continents – have been invited to express their artistic creativity with our very own diverse population. Our longstanding commitment to public art is visible across Qatar, and we hope these works will be welcomed by locals and enhance the experiences had by the millions of visitors we expect to welcome to Doha this year.’ 

INFORMATION

qm.org.qa

Hew Locke’s work – anchored in past events but jarringly contemporary – asks us not to romanticise our history but to question it. The London-based artist, who spent his childhood in Guyana, received widespread acclaim for his epic commission at Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries. The Procession comprises a wave of nearly 100 masked, costumed, life-size figures in a carnival-like collision of colour and theatre. Lurking beneath this sheen of celebration are more complex themes that Locke has long explored: racism, war, migration, capitalism, nationhood, empire, colonialism, and its lingering residue.

For the Birmingham 2022 Festival, the artist installed a reimagined sculpture of Queen Victoria in which the monarch herself is shipped off across the empire. Commissioned by Ikon gallery, Foreign Exchange is Locke’s first temporary public sculpture and will be in situ until 15 August 2022. In September, the artist will take on the hallowed façade of New York’s Met Museum with a series of sculptures that respond to the museum’s collection. 

Locke’s work is static but appears to move; is silent yet cacophonous; attractive yet deeply uncomfortable. This is human history and culture in its rich, complex and ‘messy’ variety – and not necessarily how we know it. 

Wallpaper*: Where are you as we speak?

Hew Locke: Sitting in the lime green front room of my attic flat (a difficult place to live for someone who is tall). I can see old photos of parents and my in-law's 1950s wedding photos. Over the radiator hangs a mirror and frame my brother made, using a pre-historic Guyanese design called Timehri. There are two frames full of Guyanese stamps. My mother’s impressionist painting of the Oxford Hotel in Georgetown hangs on a wall behind me. From the open window, I can hear young children and teenagers heading for Brockwell Park.

W*: What’s the last thing you read, watched, or listened to? 

HL: For the last couple of months, I’ve been working my way through every episode of the 1980s-90s sitcom Desmond’s, which is being repeated on Netflix. Set in a barber shop in Peckham, it follows a Guyanese-British family and stars groundbreaking Guyanese actor Norman Beaton. It’s well written and uniquely captures a slice of the 1990s, often focusing on the tensions between the original Windrush generation, their UK-born offspring, and racism. But mainly, it’s just really funny! It cheers me up every day.

W*: What’s the most important object you own? 

HL: My UK passport. This document affords me access to the world, in a way many people cannot.

W*: What was the first piece of art you remember seeing, and how did it make you feel? 

HL: A stoneware model house made by my mother, Leila. She loved drawing and painting and modelling the beautiful wooden Guyanese houses – a love I have inherited. I was fascinated to see how a very detailed, everyday object – a house – could be simplified and abstracted, but still remain a house. I had never seen clay being used for anything other than plates and cups before.

W*: You spent a portion of your formative years in Guyana. How did this period inform your work? 

This is seen in my use of heightened colour, and my subject matter; for example, my boat and house sculptures and paintings draw directly on my childhood in Guyana. When I arrived aged six, the country was preparing for Independence – and I was fascinated by all the new symbols of nationhood that were being created. This included the currency, stamps, flag, coat of arms, and national anthem – all from scratch. I was literally entering a new world, and this interest in national symbols has stayed with me. 

W*: Your work is rooted in global histories and geographies, specifically those associated with colonial and post-colonial power. Why is exploring, and reclaiming past events so important to our present?

HL: The past informs the present. Every time we forget, we are reminded of this fact. The history and war in Ukraine is just one example of this. It is interesting to see the last few Caribbean countries thinking about removing the Queen as Head of State – there has been a shift recently in the way certain countries see themselves. And statues are tumbling there too. It’s important that we don’t romanticise the past – for example, the history of the British Empire.  

Unfortunately, British society seems to have become divided into different and opposing camps on whether we should talk about these histories at all. I would say, there is no reason for a person to be afraid of having their ideas challenged. History is complex and messy, and that is OK.

W*: Your Tate Britain Commission, The Procession, has been widely acclaimed and struck a chord with many. What did it mean to you to have such a response? 

HL: This piece was very difficult to produce, starting in lockdown, and the response means a lot to me. I have had very emotional people coming up to me to talk about the piece and it is a very emotional piece for me too. For this piece, in particular, I was trying to make something that would reward a visitor who had got up, and paid money to travel to the Tate, to see something. I wanted to make sure their effort was worth it. And I also wanted to make something that would reward repeated viewings – to encourage people to come back again and again. As an artist, you never know how work will be received, so it was humbling to get this type of feedback. Not just the press, but strangers I bump into on the street. I always wanted to take on the Duveen Commission, but it was very scary. I could have failed badly – that is the risk you take.

W*: Can you tell us about Foreign Exchange, your recent public installation in Birmingham’s city centre? 

HL: My interest in statues of Victoria again goes back to my youth in Guyana, where a statue of her stood outside the High Court. During its lifetime, it has been dynamited by independence protestors in the 1950s, pulled down and thrown in the back of the Botanical Gardens in the 1970s, re-installed in front of the Law Courts in the 1990s, and had red paint thrown over it three years ago. In the UK, by contrast, there has been a series of romantic imaginings of Victoria’s life, such as The Young Victoria, Mrs Brown, and Victoria and Abdul, to name just a few.  

In Foreign Exchange, I show statues of Victoria being shipped off across the Empire – as copies were in reality; she symbolised the stability of the Empire. Though made by different, highly skilled artists, they all mainly look the same. Foreign Exchange is part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival, which is part of the Commonwealth Games. I wanted to make something that not only resonated with local people, of all backgrounds but also with the athletes and visitors who have or had statues of Victoria in their own cities. As always, even when talking about contested subjects, I like to make the work as beautiful as I can. 

Each statue wears a helmet, like Britannia does, and a medal relating to some of the many colonial wars that expanded the Empire and kept it together. Though not well known in the UK, in the countries where they happened, they are very important and I think we should know more about them. The medals mark the capture of Trinidad and Tobago, the battle of Seringapatam, the Ashanti Wars, the Benin medal, and the Second Afghan War.

W*: How would you define the role of public art now? 

HL: It can be anything.

W*: What piece of advice would you give to the next generation?

HL: It’s a bad idea to give advice to the next generation! But, the only thing I can think of is ‘enjoy what you do’. A good piece of advice I was given by a tutor was ‘always leave the studio excited about coming back the next day’. I.e. leaving work just at the stage of exciting un-finishedness.

W*: What’s next? 

HL: At the moment, I am looking forward to the opening of ‘In the Black Fantastic’ at the Hayward Gallery. I have a whole room of photographs and a series of equestrian sculptures called The Ambassadors, which were started before lockdown, put in storage, and have only just been completed. I’m also making some boats for a solo show at PPOW gallery in New York, and am working on a public art commission to be erected on the façade of the Metropolitan Museum there too, both in the autumn. The Metropolitan piece is a series of sculptures made in the likeness of trophies, entitled ‘Gilt’ and drawing on their collection. I’m not allowed to say anything more about it at the moment, I’m afraid! You will just have to wait.

INFORMATION

The Procession, on view at Tate Britain until 22 January 2022. tate.org.uk

Foreign Exchange, until 15 August 2022. ikon-gallery.org

Spanish sculptor Cristina Iglesias is having a Mayfair moment this summer, with a large-scale commission for the Royal Academy’s Annenberg Courtyard and her first solo exhibition with Gagosian, where she is presenting new and recent works. The first non-architect to be awarded the Royal Academy Architecture Prize in 2020, Iglesias has created site-specific installations and immersive environments that sit in dialogue with buildings by some of the world’s most renowned architects – among them, the Renzo Piano-designed Centro Botín in Santander and Norman Foster’s Bloomberg Headquarters in London. Her organic formations are crafted in pitch-perfect medleys of metals such as bronze and steel, stone, ceramic and concrete, often combined with running water.

Ahead of the unveiling of her site-specific installation for the Royal Academy and commission for New York’s Madison Square Park, we spoke to the Madrid-based artist about how the pandemic has shifted perceptions of public spaces, the parallels between art and architecture, and creating places of refuge in cities.

Wallpaper*: How has the pandemic changed your relationship with public spaces and the work you create for them?

Cristina Iglesias: The experience of the past two years has not changed but rather reinforced my belief in the need to create public places where people can meet with people they know or encounter strangers and have different experiences. Some public places where my works are installed have become more integral than ever to the daily social life of towns and cities, such as a plaza, a park or an island. Consequently, the ways in which the works influence people's interactions with one another are as important as the ways in which individuals react to the works.  

During the pandemic many people moved away from their physical working environments into remote conditions – sometimes permanently – so the areas where my public works are situated became less populated for a while, such as the Square Mile in the City of London, where the Bloomberg Headquarters commission is located. That my work was being seen by far fewer people during that time probably created a completely different resonance.

W*: What parallels do you see between the way artists and architects create?

CI: We all share the sense of proportion, we all think about space and some of us about time. Our practices are rooted in aesthetics combined with a consideration of human behaviour and response. But while architects have to think more about being functional in a physical way – for example, employing protocols and processes with regard to safety and practicality – artists can approach questions from any perspective and art can function psychologically and poetically.

W*: How do you approach creating work for public space and ensuring there is harmony between your installation and its surroundings?

CI: Well, that’s always the main challenge. There is where the sense of proportion has to work – at every level. The brief is all-important as that sets certain initial parameters. One must listen attentively to the given brief, looking carefully at how the space is currently used and imagining how that could be transformed by the presence of sculpture. Active dialogue with the site and the involved parties – local people, urban planners, architects, engineers – is crucial. 

As an artist, I am seeking to create a counterpoint between what exists and what I want to put there. I’m not trying to recreate nature.

W*: Tell us about your site-specific commission for the Royal Academy

CI: Wet Labyrinth (With Spontaneous Landscape) is a play with perception. It creates an experience for the viewer entering inside where the real (the structure and the outside world), the fiction (the cast walls), and the reflection (the mirrored panels) intertwine in an intense way. The sense of humidity inside the structure together with the sound of water falling on the ground adds other dimensions: even in the heart of a bustling city, these visual, sonic and textural qualities can provide the viewer with a sense of refuge and respite. And the idea of flowing water has been employed across centuries to create a sense of transcendence, embodying the feeling of being transported to a place beyond the actual. Around the wet labyrinth with its mineral (slate) external skin, the ‘spontaneous landscape’ adds a vibrant notion of nature.

Generally, my artistic language concerns the play between interior and exterior, concealing and revealing through visually porous structures, controlling sight-lines, and introducing uncanny or unfamiliar elements into a given environment to signal the presence of art. And given that many of my works can be installed both indoors and outdoors, I like the idea that viewers find their own way of interacting with them. 

Similarly, for the Gagosian Davies Street exhibition, designed to complement the Royal Academy commission, the space appealed to me because the very wide plate-glass window frontage in the middle of Mayfair offers street-level visibility for the work, creating a dynamic between interior and exterior and allowing public engagement at any time. Even when the gallery closes in the evening, it remains lit and so it is visually accessible to passers-by – like a film frame. 

W*: What did it mean to you to win the 2020 Royal Academy Architecture Prize?

CI: It was a beautiful surprise! It provoked in me a sense of complicity with architecture, which was always present, but it was essential for me to know that the architects felt the same.

W*: How do you bring the experience of intimacy and refuge to a public space, especially in a city?

CI: Wet Labyrinth was to have been presented two years ago, before the pandemic and the mandate of social distancing. I work with panels and screens to enclose space and render it interior and intimate. Now intimacy is an issue and so we had to give this serious consideration when designing the work. With Wet Labyrinth, I ask the viewer to spend time experiencing it as they pass through from one end to the other.

W*: What role do texture and materiality play in your practice? 

CI: I am very interested in all the nuances that happen in vision both close-up and from a distance – the details, the evolving patinas and organisms that time adds are essential. I am a sculptor so texture and materiality are key. I mould with wax and cast from life and from my imagination to create hybrid surfaces and forms. The look and feel of my work is very important, what the sculptures represent and how the environment around them reacts. For example, in the case of my underwater installation Garden in the Sea, in Baja, California, we spent years working intensively with marine scientists to ensure the materials and structure positively encourage coral growth and biodiversity.

W*: At the same time as your London moment, you have another major public artwork opening in New York

CI: I created Landscape and Memory working with the knowledge of the ancient Cedar Creek that coursed beneath what is now Madison Park. It is a project that talks about geology and landscape: water – via a hydraulic mechanism – runs through the cast bronze elements embedded as a parcours in specifically excavated areas and grasses grow higher along the line that traces the underground river. Hopefully, this scenography creates a connection and fluidity that makes visitors to the park consider the importance of the life and its history that exists under our feet and the cities we construct.

INFORMATION

‘Cristina Iglesias’, until 30 July, Gagosian Davies Street, gagosian.com

‘Wet Labyrinth (With Spontaneous Landscape)’, early June through summer, royalacademy.org.uk

‘Cristina Iglesias: Landscape and Memory’, until 4 December, Madison Square Park, madisonquarepark.org

Few places rival the intensity of Doha. Even in late November, your face is cocooned in heat; the horizon wobbles, sizzles and steams. Somewhere between England and Qatar, the colours have turned from green to gold. Doha emerges like a gilded, water-encircled canvas, primed for anyone with a creative vision as vast as its landscape. 

I’m with a small group of journalists at the invitation of Qatar Museums. We’re here to witness the fruits of the country's cultural transformation; one born with the discovery of oil in the mid-20th century, and that has since evolved into a contemporary Renaissance that has the attention of the world. 

Day 1 in Doha: Jeff Koons, lunch at the Culture Pass Club, Christian Dior

At Qatar Museums’ Gallery Al Riwaq, we find Jeff Koons: ‘Lost in America’. This is the artist’s first show in the Gulf, and its significance is not lost on Qatar.

Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, the show is presented as part of the Qatar-United States 2021 Year of Culture. Koons has conceived it as an expanded self-portrait of sorts. We’re greeted by a photograph of him aged five, earnest, doe-eyed, and with that unmistakable, ready-made beam that’s followed him throughout his career. He wears the same expression at the press conference, where he quotes The Beatles’ ‘I am the Walrus’: ‘I am he as you are he as you are me’, and reasserts his well-trodden principles: transcendence, transformation and self-acceptance.

These days, the locations of Koons’ exhibitions feel just as significant as their contents. As a concession to regional norms, the show is devoid of the raunchier facets of his work, yet it doesn’t feel deprived. 

The sheer enormity of the museum means the pieces are socially distanced. Until now, I had never quite appreciated the extent of Koons’ calculating precision, his ability to optically toy with the viewer and suspend disbelief. He metamorphoses materials: bronze resembles vinyl, plaster looks like a cotton-covered inflatable, and, in his newest works, marble is dressed down as though an oversized ceramic trinket. These replicas of replicas reflect just how easily we fall for artifices; rather than critiquing consumerism, they celebrate it. 

At lunchtime, we head to Qatar’s first members-only arts club, Culture Pass Club. Think Soho House, but if every house consisted of multiple houses encircling an idyllic courtyard and had interiors by the likes of India Mahdavi, Rossana Orlandi and leading local designers including Aisha Al-Sowaidi and Wadha Al Hajri. 

Next on the itinerary is M7, Qatar’s 312,000 sq ft hub for fashion and design innovation. Earlier in November, the fashion world elite gathered at the art centre for the Fashion Trust Arabia prize, recognising emerging talent in the Middle East and North Africa region. 

Following a momentary distraction from a thorny Isa Genzken sculpture in M7’s atrium, we shift our focus to ‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’. It’s a reinvention of a resoundingly successful exhibition that previously showed in Paris, London, Shanghai and New York, and features pieces from the private collection of Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, mother of the Emir and long-time Dior client. 

In the evening, we head back to Gallery Al Riwaq for the ‘Lost in America’ reception. It’s disorientating and refreshing to mingle at an art world vernissage unaccompanied by flutes of champagne (In deference to Sharia law, the Qatari government places strict restrictions on the availability of alcohol). But what it lacks in booze, Qatar makes up for in juice, offered liberally, and in most shades of the rainbow. Armed with hyper-real sobriety and tripping on a sugar high, we’re all ready to focus on the art. 

It’s dinnertime, and presumably owing to good behaviour, we’ve been invited by Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa Bint Hamad Al-Thani, chairperson of Qatar Museums (and cultural arbiter of the nation) to attend the official dinner for Koons. I’m sartorially ill-prepared for the occasion, but manage to dress up my practical desert-wear to a passable standard. 

We’re ushered to a palatial first-floor courtyard at the IM Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art – which is officially closed for renovation. The architect, who was 91 when he was coaxed out of retirement for the project, was given free rein to choose any spot in Doha for the museum, and he insisted that future buildings could not encroach on its space. The solution? Qatar gave the building its own island. 

There’s more multicoloured juice on silver platters, and American-themed food on the menu. There’s also a photo booth for the star-studded guest list. (Photo booth is an understatement, I mean a self-contained studio where Brigitte Lacombe, portraitist to superstars, is taking the photographs).

After dinner, we’re taken to the underground conservation laboratory. An expert restorer shows us to his workstation, where the magic is happening. We swarm like insatiable magpies around a falcon from 17th-century India: solid gold and laden in rubies, emeralds, diamonds and sapphires. It’s impossibly beautiful, priceless beyond comprehension, and shimmers to the point of hypnosis. Suddenly, this begins to feel rather familiar – Jeff Koons would be all over this! Right on cue, he arrives at the lab for a closer look. 

Day 2: Sport, Virgil Abloh, a history of Qatar

I have a hangover. Not the post-alcohol kind, but a juice-induced sugar comedown of epic proportions. But enough whining, it’s time for sport. 

Today is the first day of the inaugural Qatar Grand Prix Formula One and sport is on the agenda. Around Doha, construction is in abundance as Qatar spruces up to host the 2022 World Cup, which will kick off in precisely one year. It’s a palpably exciting crescendo, but has not been without controversy. Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers responsible for World Cup-related infrastructure has been under intense scrutiny. The Qatari government disputed a 16 November 2021 report by Amnesty International claiming that labour reforms have not translated into changes on the ground, but also stated that ‘Qatar has never shied away from acknowledging that its labour system is still a work in progress.’ 

We are treated to a preview tour of the soon-to-open 3-2-1 Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum, sited adjacent to the Khalifa International Stadium. As an arts journalist, I’m a little out of my depth, but nonetheless an eager student. The museum aims to educate and entertain, offering a history of Qatari sport while providing family-focused interactive games to encourage physical activity. 

Next, we head to the W Hotel for another dose of Jeff Koons. This time, he’s in conversation with Sheikha Al Mayassa as part of the Art for Tomorrow Talks, in association with The New York Times. Just as I reflect on how, in the last three months, I have spent more time in the physical presence of Koons than I have my own mother, it’s time for art by Virgil Abloh. 

Like Koons’, this is Abloh’s first museum exhibition in the Middle East. Held at Fire Station, an arts hub and artist residency centre, ‘Figures of Speech’ offers a deep dive into Abloh's pioneering media practice spanning visual arts, music, fashion, architecture and design. (Since our visit, the show – a mid-career retrospective  – has taken on a new poignancy. On Sunday 28 November, in a moment that shook the world, the celebrated artist Virgil Abloh passed away from a rare cancer, aged 41.)  

The next stop is the Jean Nouvel-designed National Museum of Qatar, which blooms from the landscape like a desert rose. This extraordinary building comprises flying saucer-like discs of varying diameters, which engulf the restored palace of Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani, son of the founder of modern Qatar.

The galleries tell us about the history of Qatar, without following the conventional museum formula. Here, everything from the natural history of the Persian Gulf to the establishment of the Qatari state, and to the discovery of oil is narrated via innovative audiovisual elements, seamlessly integrated into Nouvel’s design. The museum celebrates the heritage of Qatar, but also puts a spotlight on its rapid modernisation, growth and extraordinary cultural change. 

We head back to the hotel on Doha’s gleaming new UNStudio-designed metro. Completed in 2019, the network is divided into three travel sections: Standard, Family (for solo women and anyone commuting with children) and Gold (for Goldclub Travel Card holders). Boasting rapid speeds, onboard Wi-Fi and USB charging for Goldclub members, this is surely the envy of the subterranean world, and makes most of the London Underground look and smell like Dante’s Inferno. 

Day 3: Kader Attia, a palace of books, and the desert sun set on Richard Serra

We arrive at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. Following a momentary malfunction of the Ehteraz app (Qatar’s mandatory Covid-19 contact-tracing service), I’m soon in the clutches of ‘Kader Attia: On Silence’, a show of staggering scale, depth and intensity. Attia turns his focus to the complex histories of the Middle East and North Africa, and Doha itself, a multicultural global city of migration and constant social and political evolution.

At the centre of the show is the title work, On Silence. One of two new commissions for the exhibition, it comprises a room filled with prostheses suspended from the ceiling. Though unsettling in their number, they are presented as objects of restoration and optimism for those who have lost limbs in conflict. Attia uses silence as a vehicle for communication: silence to cut through the noise of human suffering (colonialism, political oppression and environmental devastation), enforced silence as a catalyst for trauma, voluntary silence as a conduit to reckoning and repair. 

In the 1970s, Doha was but a few modest buildings surrounded by desert. Its statement piece was the spaceship-esque Sheraton Hotel, a striking example of modernism by architect William L Pereira (who also designed San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid) that perfectly straddles utopia and dystopia. These days, the skyline is a tapestry of architectural delights, particularly in the Education City.

We’re here to visit the Rem Koolhaas-designed Qatar National Library, a vast, tiered, glass-clad palace of books and artefacts fit for the digital age. This high-tech sanctuary for research also functions as a custodian of Qatar’s heritage by preserving and making accessible the country’s recorded history. 

As the sun sets on our tour of Doha, there is one final stop, the middle of the desert. Our Jurassic Park-style off-roaders jiggle over the undulating dunes through the Brouq Nature Reserve. After 20 minutes of dizzying motion, we reach our destination: a natural corridor formed by gypsum plateaus, home to one of the most triumphant examples of public art: Richard Serra’s East-West/West-East (2014). The installation comprises four vertiginous slabs of Corten steel, each 14m high, with rusted-matte surfaces absorbing the ethereal orange sun.

Spanning more than a kilometre, East-West/West-East slices up the sky like an oversized game of dominoes being played by some higher, much larger power. If an epiphany could occur anywhere, it’s surely here.

INFORMATION
qm.org.qa

Coinciding with World AIDS Day 2021, a new art film by AA Bronson and General Idea will be ‘virally transmitted’ on screens around the world. VideoVirus, a hypnotic, text-based video animation will poignantly mark 40 years since the HIV/AIDS disease was first recorded in 1981, and has been created in collaboration with UNAIDS and Terrence Higgins Trust. Presented by Circa on billboards in London, Seoul and Tokyo, the project comes as international health organisations continue to strive towards achieving zero new HIV transmissions by 2030.

The film will be presented daily from 1–30 December 2021 on London’s Piccadilly Lights (20:21 GMT), Seoul’s Coex K-Pop Square (20:21 KST), and Tokyo’s Yunika Vision (09:00 JST), as well as on the Circa website. 

General Idea, an art collaboration between AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal, was first formed in Toronto in 1969. The group’s provocative, activist imagery confronted social power structures and experimented with traditional creative formats. 

The installation reimagines their seminal work, Imagevirus, first initiated in 1987 for a global audience. The project was a powerful reworking of Robert Indiana’s iconic Love design of 1966. In sculptures, paintings, videos, posters and shows, General Idea famously substituted the word ‘LOVE’ for ‘AIDS’, rendering starkly visible a then largely ignored crisis. In 1994, both Partz and Zontal passed away from AIDS-related causes. 

‘General Idea first developed the concept of viral images in the early 1970s. In the mid-1980s that work became prophetically and tragically true, with the appearance of the HIV virus. In 1987 we exhibited our first AIDS painting and papered lower Manhattan with AIDS posters in the hope of making the image indeed viral,’ said AA Bronson, an artist, healer, curator and sole surviving member of the General Idea art group.

‘Thirty-five years later, and marking the 40th anniversary of AIDS first being recorded, I am honoured to join the Circa platform with this reimagined VideoVirus. General Idea's VideoVirus replicates the spread of HIV to the four corners of the world; it expands General Idea's signature theme of ‘image as virus’ for a global audience.’

Alongside the film, two new prints by AA Bronson + General Idea will be available to purchase via the Circa website. Sales proceeds will be invested in the #Circaeconomy, a circular model that supports their free public art programme and creates life-changing opportunities for the art and culture community.

Harnessing art as a catalyst to reduce stigmas and minimise the risk of people contracting HIV, Circa will also seek to educate audiences online via a programme of talks and informative videos guest-curated by new LGBTQ+ charity and new London-based arts hub Queercircle. To honour the collaboration, a #Circaeconomy grant of £5,000 has been awarded to Queercircle who will deliver an artist-led participatory residency and exhibition with an HIV positive person during their Winter 2022 season.

INFORMATION

circa.art

Brazilian artist Alexandre da Cunha has just unveiled his largest work to date in London’s new Battersea Power Station Underground station. The vast kinetic sculpture, titled Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset, is a new permanent fixture for the new Northern Line Extension, to be viewed by millions passing through the station’s ticket hall. 

The nearly-100m work, commissioned by Art on the Underground and conceived before the pandemic, comprises more than 3,500 individual panels and marks the first time the artist has used kinetics in his work. Da Cunha has utilised an outmoded advertising mechanism – the rotating billboard – to create two friezes inspired by the former Battersea Power Station control room and its system of vertical bars that regulated the output of electricity into London.

Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset will shift its shape throughout the day, with each of its three faces fading from one colour to another in response to London’s sunrises and sunsets. The piece reflects the rhythmic flow of daily life, routine, and the passing of time. ‘Although the core of this piece is colour and its reference to landscape, the work focuses on the idea of movement, cycle and repetition,’ says da Cunha, who is known for modernist works that imbue everyday objects and readymades with spiritual narratives. ‘The analogue aspect of the panels function as an antidote to our constant relationship with digital media, a counterpoint to screens acting as an extension of our bodies.’

‘This meditative sculpture brings a wholly different perspective to Battersea Power Station Tube station, far beyond the visual language of digital screens that surround us,’ says Eleanor Pinfield, head of Art on the Underground. ‘Da Cunha’s monumental kinetic frieze will become synonymous with the station, drawing people through its ticket hall with its rhythmic daily flow.’

Da Cunha’s work is the latest in a series of permanent commissions by Art on the Underground sited across the transport network, including Daniel Buren’s Diamonds and Circles, works in situ, at Tottenham Court Road station (2017). Details of new permanent artwork for Nine Elms station will soon be announced.

INFORMATION

art.tfl.gov.uk

With recent restrictions only increasing the appetite for outdoor art consumption, Frieze Sculpture 2021 has already drawn quite the crowd to London’s Regent’s Park. On until 17 October 2021, the exhibition will marks an end to Frieze London festivities, following a mighty return to the capital. 

This year’s striking sculptural offerings confront themes including architecture, displacement, geopolitical power structures, environmental concerns and endangered futures. Participants are international and intergenerational, including Rasheed Araeen, Daniel Arsham, Anthony Caro, Gisela Colón, José Pedro Croft, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Stoyan Dechev, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Divya Mehra, Annie Morris, Isamu Noguchi, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Solange Pessoa, Vanessa da Silva, Tatiana Wolska, Rose Wylie and Yunizar. 

‘Sculptural conversations across time and geography’

‘Each Frieze Sculpture installation brings such a different picture of sculptural practice and it’s heartening that this year is especially global, including artists who herald from South America, South and North Africa, Indonesia, Pakistan, the USA and Canada, and from across Europe, says Clare Lilley, director of programme at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, who is creating Frieze Sculpture for the ninth year. ‘Although the artists span three generations, I see exciting sculptural conversations across time and geography, and while many sculptures here relate to social and environmental concerns, there is much-heightened colour and dextrous handling of material, resulting in an overall sense that is celebratory.’

In an exciting new addition, Serpentine Galleries and Sumayya Vally, founder of architectural practice Counterspace (profiled in Wallpaper’s May 2021 issue) will present Fragment of Serpentine Pavilion for Frieze Sculpture Park, 2021, marking the first time a public institution has participated in Frieze Sculpture. As Lilley concludes: ‘As we learn to live with the pandemic and emerge into public spaces, Frieze Sculpture 2021 allows people to come together in safety and with pleasure and is a tonic for the mind, body and soul.’

Frieze Sculpture 2021: in pictures 

Sumayya Vally, Counterspace, Fragment of Serpentine Pavilion

Isamu Noguchi, Play Sculpture

Vanessa da Silva, Muamba Grove #1, #3 & #4

Annie Morris, Stack 9, Ultramarine Blue

Rasheed Araeen, Lovers in The Regent’s Park

Rose Wylie, Pineapple

Yunizar, Induk Monster

Tatiana Wolska, Untitled (module 1 and 2)

INFORMATION

The 2021 edition of Frieze Sculpture will be on view from 14 September – 31 October, 2021 in Regent’s Park, London, frieze.com

Those passing through London’s Covent Garden are about to see the iconic market building in an entirely new light. In the same spirit as her monumental outdoor takeover of Tate Britain’s facade in 2020, British artist Chila Burman’s bold new multi-part installation, Do you see words in rainbows celebrates love and identity in the modern world, while drawing on the area’s rich history.

Burman’s is the latest in Covent Garden’s series of large-scale commissions, which has featured work by the likes of Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Anya Hindmarch.

As well as lifting moods with vast light sculptures, bold colours and optimistic messages, the installation will also offer tangible support to the LGBTQI+ community, following the recent cancellation of Pride London 2021 due to Covid-19. For every Instagram post (and there are bound to be many) snapped underneath the neon wonderland, Covent Garden will donate £1 to the Albert Kennedy Trust, a youth homelessness charity.

For those unable to visit the commission physically, the installation will be available via an interactive portal on the Covent Garden website, through the 3D platform Matterport. We speak to Chila Burman about the inspiration behind her kaleidoscopic new project. 

Wallpaper*: What appealed to you about the idea of creating a piece for Covent Garden’s historic Market Building?

Chila Burman: Initially it was my connection to Covent Garden that appealed. Since moving to London in the 1980s I’ve been drawn to the area; I attended the Slade nearby, would swim every morning at the Oasis Sports Centre, and have always loved its vibe. From the entertainers on the streets to the fantastic shops and restaurants, Covent Garden has always retained a sense of magic for me. And it was this idea of magic that I wanted to capture in my piece. I want to bring joy and wonder to the public in much the same way, particularly as our lives remain impacted by covid.

W*: What inspired the themes and motifs in the installation?

CB: Like in much of my practice, key sources of inspiration in this installation include identity, memory, feminist perspectives, mythology and my Hindu Punjabi heritage.  

I’ve used bright colours throughout the installation in honour of the images and messages I associate with life memories from my childhood. I specifically wanted to honour the magic of entertainment and was particularly inspired by my parents, who were both entertainers. My dad, a magician in India, would entertain his colleagues, friends and family in our house at parties. My mum would entertain everybody at our temple and at weddings. I felt honouring them, and their love of entertaining through this bright, engaging installation and all its elements made a perfect link with Covent Garden’s rich history of street performers and magicians.

Inspiration from my Hindu Punjabi heritage also takes the form of illuminating neon sculptures, some of which will be reused from my Tate [Britain] winter commission to help reduce the environmental impact. You’ll see familiar pieces along with new ones I’ve been working hard on, and of course, the tiger motif which I’ve used widely throughout my practice. 

The shape of the suspended octagon at the centre was chosen because of its symbolism in different cultures. It has been used throughout history to represent rebirth, regeneration, transition and direction. From the Eightfold Path to enlightenment, to the points of a compass, I felt this shape would remind us to think about where we are going, the next steps in our new post-pandemic normal, and how to live to the best of our abilities.

W*: What was the most enjoyable part of the creative process, and the most challenging?

CB: The most enjoyable part is always figuring out how I can make my installation the most representative of my practice. Ensuring that it communicates an uplifting message is important, but I also want to highlight the significant role that my heritage and the contributions of Black and Asian British artists have made to this country. More now than ever we need reminders of the value diversity brings to our world and the strength in uniting together to overcome some of the inequalities that impact so many.

W*: What message do you hope those who experience the work will take away from it?

CB: This installation is a celebration of my Hindu Punjabi culture, it is bright, exuberant, colourful and kaleidoscopic. I have designed it to bring joy, positivity and a sense of magic to the public. It will be a real experience for anyone who comes to see it, whether that’s in person or virtually, I hope people will feel uplifted and inspired.

INFORMATION

Chila Burman’s installation at Covent Garden market will be on view until October 2021. coventgarden.london

Coinciding with the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, London-based Jason Bruges Studio has unveiled a new outdoor art installation blending art, sport, computing and the ancient tradition of the Japanese Zen garden. 

Staged in Ueno Park, Tokyo, The Constant Gardeners is a performative piece that sees a team of four robots create illustrations by raking patterns into a canvas of crushed black basalt. Analysing past video footage from across a wide range of sporting disciplines and events, The Constant Gardeners communicate and celebrate the motion and physicality in professional athletics. 

The Constant Gardeners draws on the aesthetic and craft of the traditional Japanese Zen garden, and from the sportspeople who meticulously hone their movements to reach the top of their game. 

In daily performances, the ‘gardeners’ will collaborate to create 150 unique illustrations throughout the Olympics. Some will showcase the story of an event unfolding over time, while others will shine a light on a single spectacular movement or sporting moment. 

The robotic performances are linked directly to the schedule for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, using data read from video clips athletic performances. The aim is for the artwork to complete at least one illustration for every discipline.

‘By developing new paradigms in robotics and performative arts, we hope to show how innovative technologies can be used in storytelling, offering audiences in Tokyo an accessible, meaningful experience that celebrates the Tokyo 2020 Games and the incredible skill and achievements of its athletes,’ explains Jason Bruges. 

Forming part of the Tokyo Festival Special 13, the installation was commissioned by The Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Arts Council Tokyo and is delivered in collaboration with the British Council as part of the UK/Japan bilateral season.

Top: Content development, pattern generation from video, vertical Line Distortion. Above: content development, pattern generation from statistical data, differential growth, layered. Courtesy Jason Bruges Studio

The robots used in Bruges’ installation were reclaimed following a lifetime in industry, working to produce cars in a BMW factory. Each was reconditioned and repainted for its new role, but it didn’t come without hurdles. The robots were originally designed to perform minimal, industrial, and endlessly repeating movements.

Using the robots to undertake complex choreographed tasks they are not designed to perform is a different ball game. To harness this technology for creative and experimental purposes, Jason Bruges Studio had to create a custom control program to ‘hack the system’.

INFORMATION
The Constant Gardeners by Jason Bruges Studio, on view in Fountain Square, Ueno Park, Tokyo until 5 September 2021. theconstantgardeners.art

The iconic, bulbous blue and silver facade of Selfridges Birmingham has been transformed into something altogether more otherworldly. This is the work of multidisciplinary artist

Osman Yousefzada, whose vast new installation, Infinity Pattern 1 measures in at 10,000 sq m, and weighs five tonnes.

The piece – co-commissioned with Ikon gallery – comprises an endlessly tessellating pattern of angular pink and black shapes, addressing themes of migration, race and labour. Beyond a striking public art installation, and a dramatic new landmark for Birmingham’s Bullring, Infinity Pattern 1 is also a record-breaker, taking the title of the ‘world's largest canvas’. 

For Yousefzada, who is Birmingham-born, and the son of Pakistani-Afghan migrants, the work is steeped in biography but also holds universal resonance. In its infinitely tessellating pattern, it imagines a world without borders. ‘The work is entrenched in autoethnographic elements of migration, community formation and how they happen, interact and settle,’ says Yousefzada. ‘The work reflects my personal story and more widely my ethnic history and some of the symbolism inherent to my culture.’

Continuing Selfridges’ commitment to creativity in the cities its stores inhabit, the commission – in situ until the end of 2021 – is accompanied by an in-store art exhibition, shop and art trail all co-designed and co-curated with Ikon. These elements and expand on the subjects raised by Infinity Pattern 1, featuring further new works by Yousefzada, and pieces by Birmingham artists Hira Butt, Farwa Moledina and Maryam Wahid. 

Yousefzada's additional work – anchored by a series of mixed-media works on paper – was developed through a recent residency at Birmingham's School of Art in Fine Art Printmaking and Sculpture. The new pieces challenge the stereotypes of ‘The Model Migrant’ and the perception of Brown Bodies in the Western world. 

Selfridges creative director, Hannah Emslie said: ‘Selfridges is celebrating the communities of Birmingham through a unique art commission that represents both optimism and transformation. This new work by Osman Yousefzada is uplifting but also meaningful and deeply connected to the fabric and culture of the city. By changing the skyline – at a time when the city itself is changing – we hope to make the world brighter through creative expression, and the people of Birmingham even prouder of their iconic city.’

Osman Yousefzada shares his ode to Birmingham, the city that shaped him

INFORMATION
selfridges.com/osman

ADDRESS

Selfridges Birmingham
Bullring & Grand Central
4 Moor St, Birmingham B5 4BU

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Located a short train ride from London in the rolling Oxfordshire countryside, newly opened sculpture park Albion Fields promises open vistas, secluded woodland and, above all, a world-class line-up of outdoor sculptural treats. 

The first show, conceived in partnership with Goodman Gallery, Marian Goodman Gallery, König Galerie and Lisson Gallery, will present works by 26 leading contemporary artists including David Adjaye, Kader Attia, Daniel Buren, Claudia Comte, Ryan Gander, Jeppe Hein, Cristina Iglesias, Alicja Kwade, John Pawson, Eva Rothschild, Joana Vasconcelos, Xavier Veilhan, Bernar Venet, Ai Weiwei, Rachel Whiteread, and Erwin Wurm.

Highlights include Wurm’s bulbous metallic Fat Convertible, 2019, which mirrors the surrounding environment, and David Adjaye’s Horizon Pavilion, 2017, which looks at home in the agricultural landscape. In more variations on a theme of reflection is Ryan Gander’s More really shiny things that don’t mean anything, 2012, and Alicja Kwade’s Big Be-Hide, 2019, an edition of which is also currently on view at the 2021 Helsinki Biennial. Ai Weiwei, who was recently interviewed for Wallpaper’s At Home With series, presents a deceptive sofa, which resembles leather, but is in fact solid marble. 

Interspersed among flora and fauna, the pieces will cohabit the landscape with deer, badgers, green woodpeckers, hares and owls that have all taken up residence since the land retired from agricultural use. The first installation of artworks at Albion Fields will be on view until 25 September 2021, after which works will be rotated biannually.

The park was the brainchild of art dealer and collector Michael Hue-Williams, who owns the 50-acre farming estate in Little Milton. ‘Walking through these beautiful grounds during lockdown, I realised I have a unique opportunity to share the experience,’ says Hue-Williams. ‘Having access to this land, combined with my numerous years of experience working with contemporary sculpture, made the decision to open an outdoor sculpture park really compelling.’ 

Entry to the park is free of charge, and each work on view will be for sale. ‘There is very considerable interest from the public in seeing sculpture, particularly in the countryside in southern England, where there are such limited opportunities. In the current pandemic situation it would be of even greater benefit,’ says Lord Rothschild, who supported the project alongside Nicholas Serota, Lord Vaizey, Richard Long and Anish Kapoor, as well as the local MP John Howell, with permission from the South Oxfordshire Council.

INFORMATION

albionbarn.com

ADDRESS

Albion Barn
Church Hill, Little Milton
Oxford OX44 7QB

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

From Margate to Southend-on-Sea, the south east coastline of England is currently boasting an abundance of outdoor art installations to explore this summer. ‘Waterfronts’, launched by England’s Creative Coast is a landmark collaboration between seven arts organisations – Cement Fields, Creative Folkestone, De La Warr Pavilion, Hastings Contemporary, Metal, Towner Eastbourne and Turner Contemporary (which has recently had a minimalist revamp). Brought together by the Waterfronts commissions and the world’s first art GeoTour, the project invents a new outdoor cultural experience that connects art with the landscape and local stories with global perspectives.

With summer in full swing (and temperatures reaching new highs in the UK – grab your sunscreen), hop on our curated coastal tour.

Artist: Michael RakowitzLocation: Margate, Kent

April is the cruellest month is a sculpture modelled by Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz after Daniel Taylor, a young soldier who served with the Royal Artillery in Basra, Iraq, during the 2003 Iraq War. Formed from concrete, calcite, sand and earth from Bosra with chalk from Margate, the sculpture is embedded with fossil-like items that embody trauma: military medals and personal donations by Taylor, members of Veterans for Peace UK and residents of Margate. Standing in solidarity with the Iraqi people, Rakowitz – who contributed a ‘Basra Kiss’ recipe to our Artist’s Palate series – explains ‘The history of poets and rescuers looking out at the sea for inspiration and life has informed my project.’

Artist: Holly HendryLocation: Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex

Holly Hendry’s sculptural commission Invertebrate made in partnership with the De La Warr Pavilion is a consideration of edges. ‘Edges seem to be definitive, a beginning or an end, a perimeter of sorts, and a line that highlights contested notions of ownership and free movement,’ said Hendry. Depicting a worm, Hendry’s work is a three-part sculpture that delves into the environmental effects of waste materials, dinosaur fossils in the Bexhill brickworks and the wreck of the Amsterdam on Bulverhythe. Invertebrate digs beyond the surface world.

Artist: Jasleen Kaur Location: Gravesend, Kent

Jasleen Kaur intertwines the past with the present by layering social histories within the material and immaterial. Her refashioned objects are based on instinct and resourcefulness, national customs and a reconsidering of materiality and everyday routines. Kaur – who was brought up in a traditional Sikh household in Glasgow – focuses her work on the histories of migration to Gravesend. Her commission, The first thing I did was to kiss the ground, includes a sculpture of a head with hair tied up in a topknot protruding from waves made of marble. This is accompanied by a sound piece made in collaboration with Ain Bailey and Saheli women’s group. Kaur’s artistry highlights the importance of community groups as forces of resistance and alternative knowledge. 

Artist: Mariana Castillo DeballLocation: Eastbourne, East Sussex

Mariana Castillo Deball’s chalk geoglyph began with the harrowing story of two women whose remains were found in Eastbourne. The artist converted their stories into a giant imaginary female character through imagery drawn on the floor and objects relating to the archaeological findings embedded on the concrete along the Eastbourne coast. As Deball describes: ‘Walking through the town I follow the pattern on the pavement that becomes the magnified silhouette of a woman’s profile’. Her kaleidoscopic approach explores the ideologically constructed conditions under which artefacts appear in contemporary culture. 

Artist: Pilar QuinterosLocation: Folkestone, Kent

Influenced by Janus, the god of beginnings, endings and transitions in ancient Roman religion and myth, Pilar Quinteros’ new multifaceted work is located on the cliff-top overlooking the town. Quinteros’s sculpture, which presents two faces – one faced inland and the other gazing at the sea – embodies the duality of borders of looking outwards while protecting inwards, a rigid division the pandemic has exemplified. She said of the commission: ‘Folkestone makes me think of its history as an important border, as a place of simultaneous entries and exits. It is a precise place to think about the supposed opposites and what can be in the middle. Art, I think, opens that possibility.’

INFORMATION

The England Creative Coast outdoor cultural experience runs until November 2021. englandscreativecoast.com

The wild waters of the Basque coast, a lighthouse in critical condition, the peculiar geology of Santa Clara Island: these are ambitious ingredients for a sculptural recipe, but one that Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias (who won the 2020 Royal Academy Architecture Prize) has combined to staggering effect. 

For the location of Hondolea (Marine Abyss), Iglesias chose a lighthouse on the cusp of dereliction in which she created vertiginous sculptural environment deep in the island’s rock. Now open to the public, the sculpture is set to become part art, part site of pilgrimage – a recurring combination in Iglesias’ work. 

Found everywhere from inner cities to remote landscapes, the artist's horizontal fountains, submerged rooms and tropical mazes bring together literature, architecture, geology and botany to create immersive spaces that meditate on the relationship between humans, nature and how the two intersect.

Hondolea is no exception, but what can intrepid visitors expect? Iglesias has excavated the entire floor of the lighthouse. Below, cascading rock-like formations in bronze resemble the geology of the bay and surrounding coastline. Rhythmic, mesmerising water flows create the illusion of crashing waves. Aside from its artistic merits, the work is a feat of engineering and logistics, using a complex system of hydraulic machinery. 

From its conception, Iglesias had planned to donate Hondolea to Donostia-San Sebastián and has worked closely with the City Hall over the last four years to create a striking work that incorporates the distinctive geology of the Basque coast and its rough waters. Iglesias explained on Instagram: ‘The piece is a place that represents the remoteness within the city, a meeting point for citizens to observe, think and reflect on nature and the importance of its conservation.’

In conjunction with the Donostia-San Sebastián commission, a new book, Liquid Sculpture: The Public Art of Cristina Iglesias, edited by Iwona Blazwick and Richard Noble, has been published by Hatje Cantz. The text sees an international roster of curators, art critics, philosophers, architects and scientists weigh in on the social and ecological potential of art in urban and rural space, informed by the themes in Iglesias’ work. 

INFORMATION

cristinaiglesias.com

As the sun rises over Manhattan tomorrow, Mexican artist Bosco Sodi will begin to install 439 small-scale clay spheres at Washington Square Park. Each about the size of a grapefruit, these pieces are the building blocks of his new public artwork and performance, titled Tabula Rasa. Over the course of the day, Sodi will invite members of the general public to claim a piece of the installation, until, at dusk, the last piece will be taken away.

The clay spheres won’t exactly offer a visual spectacle, but behind their humble appearance is a message of hope. The number 439 refers to the number of days since New York City was first struck by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the installation takes place just as the city roars back to life, with the giveaway element highlighting how solidarity and mutual assistance have been vital to survival and recovery. 

The choice of location, too, is significant – Washington Square Park has long been a locus for activism and social justice in the city, having hosted everything from protests against Nazism and the Vietnam War, to demonstrations against the Trump Administration’s immigration policies, and to the Black Lives Matter rallies of 2020. It was here that Sodi presented his public installation Muro in September 2017, a wall of 1,600 made-in-Mexico clay bricks that passers-by were invited to dismantle and take home, a symbol of how political and mental hurdles can be overcome by a united community.

Artist Bosco Sodi, photographed in his Brooklyn studio on 18 September, in front of an untitled white painting now on view at his solo exhibition, ’Vers l’Espagne’ at Kasmin Gallery, New York

Then as now, Sodi created his artwork using clay from his Casa Wabi art centre in Puerto Escondido, Mexico. Whereas the clay bricks used in Muro (and the monumental sculptures for which Sodi is known) are fired in a traditional kiln to achieve terracotta-hued, cracked and scorched surfaces, the constituent clay spheres of Tabula Rasa have been left deliberately unfired. Instead, each contains three types of seed – corn, squash and bean, symbiotic species that have a special place in Central American agriculture. The spheres’ new owners are encouraged to plant them in soil, so the seeds will germinate, nourish one another, and continue on into the cycle of life and death.

As the title Tabula Rasa (Latin for 'clean slate') suggests, this is a time for New York to start afresh, unencumbered by the scars of the past. Though transitory, Sodi’s installation will live on in the backyards and balconies of New Yorkers, celebrating transformation and creative possibility, and offering a poetic reminder that life will always prevail. 

INFORMATION

Tabula Rasa is at Washington Square Park, New York from dawn to dusk on Sunday, 23 May 2021, kasmingallery.com

Lurking deep in an alleyway in Kingston is a curious, and possibly even enlightening sight. The subject of Echolocation, Mat Collishaw’s first permanent public installation in the UK is Kingston’s All Saints Church, a site that has borne witness to many a milestone moment in English history. 

The original chapel, now long gone, was the coronation site of several Saxon kings including Athelstan, who, in 925, was crowned the first king of a unified England. ‘These kings weren’t crowned because they were nice guys, [people] assumed that they were divine,’ says the British artist via Zoom from his Camberwell studio and home, a former pub. ‘I wanted to interrogate the space and its spiritual allure.’

The church survived Henry VIII’s reformation and witnessed Kingston’s evolution from scattered settlement to modern-day town. Collishaw’s task was a multifaceted one: to excavate almost a millennium of Kingston’s history and create something, as he puts it, ‘coherent, accessible and engaging and not didactic or information heavy.’ 

The result is an eleven-meter-long, three-channel video installation now on view at the Undercroft, a long alleyway that runs between the river Thames and All Saints Church.

Collishaw used architect-grade 3D laser scanning (Lidar) to resurrect the church in an eerie, spectral haze. Like an X-Ray, these skeletal white shards, rendered in microscopic detail and toying with negative and positive space, feel simultaneously tangible, and not of this world. ‘You can see the architecture, but you can also see through the architecture,’ says Collishaw, who meticulously scanned the interior and exterior of the modern-day church building, now an amalgam of architectural styles. 

In the process, the artist drew on yet another parallel with the town - a bat conservation area - the mysterious echolocation method used by the nocturnal animal to navigate. ‘It’s a high-tech way of reading, navigating and plotting out space, so there is a synergy between those things,’ he says. Collishaw casts a translucent bat as his animated protagonist in this otherworldly tale, gliding through the deserted church in eerie solitude. With video recordings of bats mid-flight few and far between, 3D-modelling its body, recreating its distinctive movement and plotting its journey through the church’s interior was easier said than done. ‘I’m constantly looking at frames of people or animals moving and how that can break down,’ says the artist, who collaborated with Kingston University’s animation department on the project. ‘Bats are so quick, so they are the worst possible animal to track.’

Accompanying the perpetually-looping installation is a composition comprising solo cello overlaid with a virtual choir and a soundtrack of bat noises. Ordinarily, when the flying mammals use echolocation, humans are only able to discern the occasional, very faint click. Slowed down, as Collishaw has done here, these clicks become perceptible to the human ear; endearing chirps with distinct tonal progressions.

Beyond its technical feats, the piece is a commentary on sacred space, a theme the artist’s work has long explored. Growing up in a highly religious environment, Collishaw talks of the similarities between the roles of gallery and church: ‘[in a gallery] everything is just pushed to one side and you can meditate on Carl Andre’s pile of bricks, or whatever you're there for. You have a relationship with the artwork, whether it sings to you or not, or resonate or not.’

Collishaw also took Kingston’s prodigal son Eadweard Muybridge as his muse, the pioneer of stop-motion photography and whose work laid the groundwork for motion-picture projection. Muybridge was born in 1830 and christened Edward at All Saints, only later assuming the spelling Eadweard after the Saxon kings. He died, aged 74, a mile from the site of Collishaw’s installation.

The final piece of this complex web of sound and vision is the projection itself, cast onto a semi-transparent net-like mesh, another deft nod to Kingston’s history of fishing. 

Best experienced at dusk, Echolocation is a homage to Muybridge’s meticulous breakdown of physicality in motion, the rich history of Kingston, the mysterious prowess of bats and the ethereal beauty of sacred space.

INFORMATION

Echolocation, open daily until 11pm, was commissioned by Canadian and Riverside Estates Ltd, owners of Riverside Walk, Kingston. 

matcollishaw.com

ADDRESS

6 Riverside Walk
Kingston, KT1 1QN

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JR, Homily to Country, 2020, a live procession in Menindee Lakes, New South Wales, Australia on Saturday 27 February 2021. Courtesy: NGV

French artist and photographer JR’s Homily to Country is a multi-part work that draws attention to the ecological decline of the Darling/Baaka river system in south-eastern Australia. The impact of this is both environmental and intensely human, the result of intensive water extraction due to irrigation, climate change and drought. 

Composed of three distinct parts involving documentary, portrait photography and installation, JR’s project is a poignant reminder of the local and global effects of human behaviour. 

The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), in Melbourne, hopes that JR’s artwork will stimulate necessary debate in Australia, and emphasise the ecological priorities of the Darling/Baaka river system. ‘This is a real situation playing out around us, affecting real people in various communities including regional towns, farming families and Indigenous community members,’ says Ewan McEoin, senior curator of contemporary design and architecture at the NGV, who worked with JR on this project. ‘It’s no accident that we’re releasing this film with JR on Earth Day, a moment to reflect on our relationship to and reliance upon natural systems.'

This is a project that has its roots halfway around the world in Italy, where JR, alongside Italian film director Alice Rohrwacher, felt compelled to address the destruction of the local agricultural landscape. The resulting film was Omelia Contadina, which depicted a farming community gathering on a plateau on the border of Umbria, Lazio and Tuscany, for the ‘funeral for traditional agriculture’.

Similarly, Homily to Country comprises aerial-view footage of a live procession in the dry bed of Lake Cawndilla, in Australia’s New South Wales. The event, which took place in February, features four 30m-long portrait photographs transported through the arid Menindee Lakes district by the subjects of the portraits themselves. This poignant, provocative piece brings into sharp focus the plight of individuals affected by the Darling/Baaka river’s decline, and those fighting to save it. It also spotlights the tensions that often exist between Indigenous peoples, ‘family farms’ and multinational agribusinesses.

Above: Installation view of JR’s work Homily to Country 2020 during NGV Triennial 2020, which ran from from 19 December 2020 – 18 April 2021 at NGV International, Melbourne © JR. Below: Aerial view of Homily to Country 2020 during a live procession in Menindee Lakes, New South Wales, Australia on Saturday 27 February 2021. Photography: NGV

In the NGV Grollo Equiset Garden, the artist installed an open-air chapel, which was on display as part of the NGV Triennial. Stained-glass windows feature photographic portraits honouring those who have close connections to the river. These include senior elder of the Baakandji people and respected spokesperson on the Darling/Baaka river, Badger Bates; orchardists Rachel Strachan and Alan Whyte, who have both had to remove their once highly-productive commercial orchards due to lack of irrigation flows; and Wayne Smith, a sixth-generation farmer whose family have lived and worked along the river since the early 1890s. As McEoin says, ‘JR’s artwork draws attention to one of Australia’s most pressing ecological challenges and reveals the potential of contemporary art to tell important stories of our time.’

INFORMATION

jr-art.net

ngv.vic.gov.au

The work of Emma Talbot is part art, part poetry. Much of her ideas are autobiographical, yet also confront some of society’s most pertinent structural issues, from gender inequality to environmental collapse. Her work eschews pessimism and cynicism in favour of hope, a timely sentiment as spring emerges and the world begins to recalibrate in response to one of the bleakest periods in recorded history. 

Coinciding with International Women’s Day earlier this month, Talbot became the latest Circa artist, staging work on London’s iconic Piccadilly Lights screen following projects by the likes of Patti Smith and Ai Weiwei.

For the commission, Talbot created four animated films in collaboration with Whitechapel Gallery, Collezione Maramotti and the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. Titled Four Visions for a Hopeful Future, the films follow a woman at the gateway between an old and new world. Mirroring the year, the screens light up with Talbot’s work at 20:21 each evening, disrupting the usual advertising on a rolling four-night schedule throughout March. ‘I really wanted to make some work that spoke of our times, to narrate the extraordinary zeitgeist,’ she tells Wallpaper*. ‘In lockdown, I’d been struck by the way a lot of contemporary thinkers (e.g. Valarie Kaur, Rebecca Solnit, Isabelle Stengers, Starhawk) were articulating the need to take time to reconfigure the ways we act, to build a more equal, considerate, sustainable, responsible, caring future.’ 

Talbot’s influences for the piece are wide-ranging – from Arundhati Roy’s article, The Pandemic is a Portal to the work of medieval visionary Hildegard von Bingen. Her work is anchored in the here and now, observing the bleakness of recent times, while also harnessing the transformative and cathartic power of springtime. The films, comprising hand-drawn landscapes of dreamlike natural beauty, rich with floral and bodily forms. ‘The four animations come at the subject from different perspectives – they ask various questions; what a city is, how have power structures have been constructed, how powerful can communities be, what voices get heard, how can we connect with nature,’ says Talbot, who taught herself how to translate her drawings into animation during the first lockdown.

Last year, Talbot became the recipient of the eighth Mara Art Prize for Women, a biannual award established in 2005 in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery. As the sole visual art prize for women in the UK, it aims to promote and nurture female artists who are yet to receive a major solo exhibition. Talbot’s winning proposal focused on the perceived shame attached to female ageing, a feminist response to Gustav Klimt’s painting The Three Ages of Woman (1905). Klimt’s work depicts a baby, a young woman and a nude elderly woman seemingly stooped in shame. ‘I was fascinated by the painting on a personal level, thinking about the ways ageing is considered negatively, but I also had a sense there was more to the subject,’ Talbot explains. 

In response, Talbot will turn the concept on its head, reframing the woman as someone with agency. ‘The elderly woman will be a future survivor, who learns permaculture and sustainable living, relearning ancient practices and she will go back to the past and reconfigure the roots of power. To do this, she will perform the twelve trials of Hercules. Instead of resolving the tasks by killing, capture, theft and trickery, as Hercules did, I imagine the wise elderly woman would use more considered, benevolent means, such as commensalism and mutualism.’ 

When travel restrictions permit, Talbot will embark on a six-month residency organised by Collezione Maramotti. On her trip, she plans to research Etruscan pottery depicting the Herculean myths in Rome, visit permaculture sites and the ruins of the Temple of Hercules in Sicily, and explore the history of hand-painted silk in Italian fashion houses and learn intarsia knitting in Reggio Emilia. This will result in a new body of work to be shown first at Whitechapel Gallery and then at the Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy in 2022.

INFORMATION

Four Visions for a Hopeful Future will be on view in Piccadilly Circus, London until 31 March, 2021. circa.art

emmatalbot.org.uk

maxmara.com

collezionemaramotti.org

whitechapelgallery.org

The calls for change that have been bubbling across the country have been escalating. Among the most noteworthy of these efforts is a recently unveiled billboard campaign from People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy organisation that has been fighting right-wing extremism and working to implement the ideals of freedom, equality, opportunity and justice for almost 40 years.

The group’s Enough of Trump campaign presents its goal plainly. Featuring the works of more than a dozen American artists ranging from Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra and Carrie Mae Weems to Jeffrey Gibson, Christine Sun Kim and Hank Willis Thomas – all conveying the simple message that enough is enough, the collaborative project aims to galvanise voters in several of the country’s key swing states, such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida, through the power of public art.

‘The idea of “Enough” really came from [founder, and renowned television producer] Norman Lear himself. When they first brought it up, I thought, “enough?” I’m not sure if “enough” is enough. I really had my doubts about it,' says Weems, who played a major role in putting together the roster of artists and has been involved with People for the American Way for many years. 'But in the months that have followed, just the elegant simplicity of its meaning, that a simple word has the ability to encapsulate so much, I’ve really fallen in love with it.’

‘Everything that we’ve seen: from the waters that are raging, the fires that are burning, the killings that are taking place, particularly the endless series of assaults on Black and brown people, the changing of our climate. This is absolutely it. It is so succinct: enough of this. We are going to make a change. It really came to epitomise all that I am so fed up with across the board. As is the country.’

While the messaging of the campaign is clear, Weems asserts that ‘enough’ has broader goals beyond a change of presidential leadership. ‘Enough doesn’t just carry a Democratic [party] message. Trump simply epitomises the vast levels of corruption [at the root of things]. He is the epitome of the worst of the worst, but they were there long before he was and they’ll be there long after.’

Since the campaign debuted on Kickstarter on 11 August, it has surpassed its initial funding goal of $150,000. As proposed, four billboards will be placed in each state along busy highways and downtown centres in October and November to draw the most eyeballs. Should it reach its extended goal of $250,000, the campaign will be expanded to include the states of North Carolina and Arizona.

‘One of the most important things to do, when you’re doing this kind of work, is you ask people who are [already] doing this kind of work to just give you what they’re doing,’ says Weems of the artists she recruited for the line-up. ‘These are people who care about the political process and are engaged in [it]. They’re already there, they’re already out front.’

She continues, ‘The billboard campaign is one of the ways that we can be in the public eye consistently. [It’s a way of] using public space in order to have a public discourse and dialogue about the issues that matter.’

The works that make up the billboard designs are a mix of old and new. Weems’ own piece – a piece of sky encouraging viewers to remember to dream – stems from another project she developed 10 years ago, while Hank Willis Thomas’ piece, which features ‘Enough’ spelled out repeatedly in different typefaces, was made especially for the campaign.

The billboard campaign will be further supported by picket signs, town hall banners and digital ads to amplify its message as broadly as possible. As added incentive to contribute, campaign donors will receive rewards (as part of Kickstarter’s crowdfunding structure) including face masks printed with the campaign logo, tote bags designed by Weems, yard signs featuring Kim’s art piece, as well as posters from Shepard Fairey and limited edition prints from Ruscha and Serra, amongst others.

‘Any time art is used anywhere, it elevates the conversation,’ Weems concludes. This campaign ‘elevates not only conversation, but it elevates awareness because it’s so outside the norm. Normally billboards are trying to sell us a commodity, so when you see something beautiful, different and out of context, you’re drawn to it and want to understand it. You engage with it more emotionally and critically than if it were just trying to sell you whatever it’s advertising. That’s its power and strength.’

INFORMATION

Billboards will be on public view in swing states throughout November. enoughoftrump.org

Conceived as a commemoration to those lost in the fight against terrorism along Niger’s southern and western borders, Le Mémorial des Martyrs – the Martyrs' Memorial – is a new public monument for the West African country's capital that has just been unveiled by Adjaye Associates. 

The concrete structure is designed as a symbol against extremism combining the sculptural memorial with new urban plaza and a multi-use civic gathering space. The 4000 sq m project is set on a triangular plot that is gently sloped, guiding the gaze upwards through the incline and the design's verticality – while remaining connected to the land through tactile, robust materials, such as bronze-toned frames and perforated steel panels. 

The concept is dominated by a forest of 20m tall columns, arranged over a plinth that conceals an abstract labyrinth. This is sheltered responding to the region's frequent intense heat and the local Sahelian climate, says the architecture team, continuing to explain how the cool air from this part of the structure help maintain a pleasant atmosphere for this new civic space. ‘The underground cooling labyrinth provides air to the main space with the pillars acting as thermal chimneys that mitigate heat build up.'

A grid of trees flanks the composition. A play of transparencies, views, light and shadow define the design. This continues at night, when the memorial transforms with beams of light shining upwards from every column towards the sky – to a design by lighting and sustainability specialists Steensen Varming – creating a beacon of remembrance and hope for Niamey.

‘Through an interplay of absences and voids, the Martyrs Memorial becomes a sacred space – an in-between moment for meaningful reflection on the past and a signaling for a peaceful future,' says firm founder Sir David Adjaye.

INFORMATION

adjaye.com

The Lungomare Falcomatà seafront is a historic promenade in Reggio Calabria, Italy. Overlooking the narrow Strait of Messina, and with sweeping views across the Sicilian coasts, it has been branded ‘The most beautiful kilometre in Italy.’ 

This forms the enchanting backdrop for Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi’s latest public intervention, Opera, which was commissioned by the city’s local Municipality and the Metropolitan City two years ago. 

‘The first thing that touched me about Reggio Calabria was the Strait of Messina, in my opinion, the city’s real eternal “monument”. I realised that I wanted to celebrate its contemplative quality,’ Tresoldi tells Wallpaper*. 

The permanent installation, which sees 46 towering columns arranged in a mix of configurations, is created in Tresoldi’s signature medium: wire mesh, or what the artist refers to as ‘Absent Matter’. These structures - peaking at eight metres tall – are spectral, translucent and have a ‘shy and delicate physicality,’ as they frame their ever-shifting backdrop. 

In 2013, Tresoldi staged his first public sculpture. The wire mesh piece, Il Collezionista di Venti (The Winds Collector) in nearby Pizzo Calabro sees a human figure, ghost-like in its gauzy skin and contemplative in its gaze. It looks out to sea, towards the Aeolian Islands, a landscape that in turn looked directly through it. In 2016, Tresoldi created Basilica di Siponto, which earned him the Gold Medal for Italian Architecture from the Triennale di Milano and the Italian Ministry of Culture. The monumental structure saw a 12th-century Christian basilica, which had occupied the same space, resurrected through wire mesh in a marriage of contemporary art and archaeology.

In 2018, the artist created Etherea for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, a monumental temporary composition of three wire mesh buildings inspired by neoclassical and baroque architecture. Tresoldi’s ability to give new life to classical architecture and simultaneously forge new narratives gives his work an arresting quality with seemingly few physical limitations. 

Opera is a ‘tribute to Western cultural heritage’s founding archetypes’ and one Tresoldi hopes will become a new landmark for the region. Nestled in the 2,500 sq m via Giunchi park on the seafront, the installation, which is illuminated by night, sees a dialogue between organic forms and the strict rigidity of the columns.

The combination of Tresoldi’s ‘Absent Matter’, the constant environmental movement and the language of classical architecture gives Opera both a sense of permanence and ephemerality. The formation of the installation is intentionally at odds with the layout of the surrounding park. This is a tension the artist likens to music; a melodic and rhythmic counterpoint with each architectural system operating independently, yet coexisting in harmony. 

In Opera, Tresoldi suspends viewers in a web of contradictions: reality and representation, presence and absence, static and kinetic energy. ‘The installation monumentalises the relationship between people and place by favouring simple actions like observing, listening and contemplating’, the artist reflects. 

As for what’s next, Tresoldi can’t tell us much ‘out of superstition’, but he has just launched two new creative labs: ‘Tresoldi Studio’, a design studio inspired by the artistic language of his art, and ‘Studio Studio Studio’, an interdisciplinary project creating and supporting contemporary art endeavours.

INFORMATION

Opera is on permenant view in via Giunchi park in Reggio Calabria, Italy. edoardotresoldi.com

In the City of London five new colourful public benches have popped up. These designs are the finalists of a London Festival of Architecture (LFA) design competition for young architects and designers. The benches are refreshing islands of creativity in the heavily built up financial district of the city.

Usually running through June, the LFA saw itself following a more digital format due to the pandemic this year. The new benches are a great opportunity to show how people are slowly returning to the public spaces and the central areas of the city safely.

The annual competition aims to showcase new design talent, and the benches encourage people to stop, observe and spend time thinking about the city in new ways. This year there has been a particularly international cohort of designers involved with studios from Denmark, Belgium, Italy and the UK.

Ellie Stathaki, Wallpaper* architecture editor, joined the judging panel, alongside Tamsie Thomson, director of the LFA, and Dieter Kleiner, director, RCKa Architects, and others, to select the most striking and original designs exploring this year's festival theme of ‘Power'.

In front of the Royal Exchange, Studio mxmxm's bench made from laser-cut powder coated steel plates and titled 51°30’48.6” N 0°05’17.9” W challenges people to locate the bench through coordinates. The Two-Seater Rule by Iain Jamieson with Dave Drury features two facing chairs, positioned at a safe two metre distance, to encourage conversation. While Oli Colman's colourful eyeball bench encourages people passing by to look up at the surrounding architecture.

Two of the benches were inspired by the history of architecture in the City of London. A concrete pineapple bench by Hugh Diamond, Archie Cantwell and Cameron Clarke was inspired by Sir Christopher Wren's original plans for St. Paul’s Cathedral which featured a golden pineapple atop the dome, and the fruit's connotations with hospitality, trade and power. While PROFFERLO drew on the typical Victorian house chimney, designing a backrest to the bench from traditional chimney pots.

Thomson said: ‘City Benches is a fantastic programme, giving opportunities for fresh design talent to respond to the streetscape of the City of London, and to engage with the thousands of people who will encounter their creations. This year, creating new seating in the context of Covid-19 restrictions was an additional challenge, and one that this year’s cohort have risen to brilliantly with benches that can brighten any day while allowing more socially distanced outdoor space.'

INFORMATION

londonfestivalofarchitecture.org

cityoflondon.gov.uk

At a time when London’s art institutions and galleries are tentatively coming back to life indoors, the Breath is Invisible public art project is taking urgent discourse on social injustice and inequality to the outdoor stage. 

The three-month long initiative was founded by London-based patron and businesswoman Eiesha Bharti Pasricha and is curated by Sigrid Kirk. Kirk, who is co-founder of the Association of Women in the Arts, explains how the project was conceived from an urgent need to address issues of social inequality in London that have been exacerbated since the outbreak of coronavirus.

The project's West London location is particularly significant; its community has endured a great deal of trauma and change in recent years, namely the tragic Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 and the cancellation of Notting Hill Carnival this year – one of the city's biggest cultural events, which celebrates Caribbean cultures and beyond – for the first time in its history.

Breath is Invisible's first exhibition, which ran from 7 July - 7 August, saw the 236 Westbourne Grove location host nine powerful prints on its exterior walls by late British-Gambian artist, Khadija Saye. The monochrome silkscreen print series titled, in this space we breathe, spoke about the migration of traditional Gambian spiritual practices and honoured the artist, who, aged just 24, was a victim of the devastating Grenfell Tower fire. This first installation marked the launch of the Khadija Saye IntoArts programme, which confronts the lack of diversity in the UK arts sector by providing opportunities for young people from ethnic minority backgrounds and disadvantaged communities across the country.

The second instalment of the series, to be invisible, sees the building’s facade adopt an emotive and immersive soundscape and digital rendering. The windows of the building will be lit up with artists Martyn Ware and Zachary Eastwood-Bloom’s projections, which act as a visual and aural experience responding to the Black Lives Matter movement. The piece comprises a 3D rendering featuring actor Haroun Yamou, accompanied by a soundscape inspired by Curtis Mayfield’s song To Be Invisible layered on top of an audio contribution from the young musicians of Amplify Studios, which champions young creative talent. Some of the sounds sampled include birdsong, buses passing by, protestors, sirens and a heartbeat.

Eastwood-Bloom, who originally trained as a sculptor, has specialised in 3D technology for the last decade. For this installation, he has taken a 3D scan of Haroun Yamou and used bio-feedback from the composition to create a generative digital 3D rendering. Martyn Ware, who is considered a pioneer in sonic muralism and expert in immersive design, created the soundscape with the aim of conveying an emotional state of the body. The emotive lyrics are intended to create a ‘fever dream’, a sort of meditative experience communicating the psychological effects of racism through sound and vision to all who pass by. 

Next month, the third and final installation, Invisible Life Force of Plants, will see the photographer and artist Joy Gregory’s prints take to the building's walls, exploring the narrative and origins of plants and their relationships with humans and ecology.

to be invisible, Martyn Ware and Zachary Eastwood-Bloom, soundscape and 3D generative video, 2020. Soundscape composed and arranged by Martyn Ware, Charles Stooke and Elena Ware. Video by Zachary Eastwood-Bloom. Inspired by the song ‘to Be Invisible’ written by Curtis Mayfield. Lyrics performed by Haroun Yamou. Additional sound by Amplify Studios at Rugby Portobello Trust. Mixed and 3D spatialised by Martyn Ware and Asa Bennett for Illustrious

INFORMATION

to be invisible, 11 August - 11 September

Invisible Life Force of Plants, 8 September - 9 October

breathisinvisible.com

ADDRESS

236 Westbourne Grove
London 
W11 2RH

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With many parts of the United States hovering in different stages of reopening, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver has fortuitously been able to welcome visitors back in person with a very timely unveiling of a major retrospective of the artist Nari Ward. Entitled ‘Nari Ward: We the People’, and over a year in the making before the pandemic hit and postponed the opening for yet another three months, the exhibition brings together some of Ward’s most iconic sculptures, paintings, video and installation works from the last 25 years, exemplifying his ongoing commentary on being Black in America.

In a deft, complementary move, Ward and MCA Denver have partnered with Orange Barrel Media, IKE Smart City and the Denver Theatre District on a companion public art project for the duration of the exhibition. Curated by Diana Nawi, images of Ward’s recognisable wall drawings, which he creates by drilling shoelaces into architectural walls, now appear on digital billboards and on the screens of Orange Barrel Media’s IKE Smart City pedestrian kiosks, located around downtown Denver.

Projected for several hours on most evenings in both black and white and colour, the arresting digital works convey the urgency and political energy that is sweeping the country. From images of protest signs and the Black Power fist to textual extracts that include song lyrics like ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’ and the last words of abolitionist John Brown, who declared ‘This is a Beautiful Country’ before his execution, the public project not only facilitates interaction and engagement with art in a time of social distancing, but also enables art to be accessed more equally across the board.

‘I'm interested in the random nature of the way that viewers will encounter these images; I like that they will happen upon them,’ shares Ward, about the significance of the digital partnership. ‘I also like that the work is repositioned into a digital space where the capacity for a larger collective experience is extraordinary.’

As powerful as the billboards are, the project is anchored by a new site-specific work being projected onto the Daniels and Fisher Clocktower. Lazarus Beacon, a digital adaptation of an eponymous wall-based work in the MCA Denver retrospective, is based on the 1883 sonnet ‘The New Colossus’, written by the poet and activist Emma Lazarus, that is inscribed on a bronze plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Ward’s iteration graphically extracts the subjects of the poem – the poor and downtrodden whom the country has promised to offer safe harbour – by selecting keywords that eerily float up the multi-storey tower for all to see.

‘This piece was inspired by the anti-immigration rhetoric coming from the current White House administration; it seems out of touch and contrary to what the US represents. I want the Clocktower light to amplify and make present the idea of welcoming others,’ Ward emphasises. ‘It is a reminder that America’s greatness comes from her promise of liberty and justice for all, no matter their circumstances.’

INFORMATION 

Lazarus Beacon will be projected on Daniels & Fisher Clocktower, 16th St. & Arapahoe Street, Denver from 1 August  - 30 August, 8:30pm - 10:30pm. 

'Nari Ward: We the People', until 20 September, MCA Denver. mcadenver.org; nariwardstudio.com

ADDRESS

Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
1485 Delgany St
Denver, CO 80202

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The town of Telluride, Colorado (population 2,479), nestled in a lush canyon and surrounded by snowy peaks, is best known as a skiing destination. But when Tavares Strachan first visited five years ago, he found himself drawn to the people just as much as the slopes. ‘I like small-town America, where community is really the organising principle. I felt very welcomed and inspired by the place, and their values,’ he recalls.

The Bahamian artist, who splits his time between New York City and Nassau, has since returned repeatedly to Telluride, so much that he refers to his sojourns as ‘an informal artist’s residency’. Now, alongside local philanthropic and cultural organisation, the Telluride Foundation, he has revealed plans for a community engagement project, titled ‘Together’, with a text-based neon sculpture at its heart.

Slated for later this year, the artwork will be installed in the landscape, along a gondola route that connects Telluride to the neighbouring town of Mountain Village. Its text will read ‘We are in this together’. While a catchphrase of the Covid-19 era, used by governments and businesses alike to reassure an anxious public and justify exceptional measures, Strachan had in fact settled on the phrase five years ago. ‘I’m interested in the organisation of human effort,’ he explains to Wallpaper*. ‘I think Telluride is a microcosm for the rest of the world. All the problems we have – hunger, joblessness, illness, natural disaster – they are here too. And people rise to the occasion and try to take care of each other.’

Of the phrase’s contemporary relevance, Strachan points out that it is not so much a description of the state of things, but rather an appeal to the reader – to identify with fellow humans and extend a hand to those in need. He’s well aware that the phrase is often steeped in hypocrisy. ‘If we are truly in this together, my question is, why is the phrase necessary?’ he asks. ‘The artwork is to get us to think about the meaning of it, which might be separate from the rhetoric.’ 

The positioning of the artwork – under a free gondola system that is used by both tourists and locals – is very much in line with its message, as is its warm pink glow, which envelopes the rider and contrasts with the tree-lined route in all seasons. For Strachan, who had once lit up a stretch of Mississippi River, in New Orleans, with a floating neon piece that read ‘You belong here’, there is power in putting declarative statements in the public realm: ‘It occupies a similar vernacular to advertising. It takes on the ethos of the people viewing it, and they take ownership of it. And so, it’s one way of making an artwork that ends up belonging to the people.’

Video detailing Tavares Strachan’s ‘Together’ project, due to be installed along a gondola route in Telluride, Colorado later this year. Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery

INFORMATION

The ‘Together’ project is a collaboration between Tavares Strachan and The Telluride Foundation, in partnership with the Ah Haa school in Colorado. A selection of neons and silkscreen prints relating to We are in this together is available through Marian Goodman Gallery’s online viewing room. mariangoodman.com

The Royal Academy of Arts in London has announced that Madrid based installation artist and sculptor Cristina Iglesias (b.1956) has been awarded the 2020 Royal Academy Architecture Prize, supported by the Dorfman Foundation.

The esteemed jury, which included Sir Norman Foster, Royal Academician and founder of Foster + Partners, selected Iglesias for her contribution to the culture of architecture. Her organic and poetic sculptures have inspired many architects’ work and discourse and her public art plays an important role improving the quality of open civic spaces in cities.

‘I am interested in the crossings between architecture and sculpture, creating spaces and moments for contemplation and reflection in the midst of contemporary urban life,’ says Iglesias of her work and mission.

The Dorfman Foundation, a charitable foundation set up by Sir Lloyd Dorfman CBE in 2007, also supports the Dorfman Award, which aims to champion global architectural talent. Along with the announcement of the 2020 Royal Academy Architecture Prize winner, the finalists for the Dorfman Award award have also been announced.

The same jury selected a diverse, international group of finalists: AAU Anastas (Palestine), AOR Architects (Finland), BCKJ Architects (China) and WHBC Architects (Malaysia). The winner of the Dorfman Award will be announced on 17 March 2020, during the Royal Academy Architecture Awards Week.

INFORMATION

royalacademy.org.uk

cristinaiglesias.com

The swimming pool isn’t a new motif in the work of Scandinavian art duo Elmgreen & Dragset. From a diving board sticking out of a window at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in 1997 to a silicone mannequin floating face down at the 2009 Venice Biennale or, more recently, a deserted public pool at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, the artists’ fascination for all things aquatics has been a driving force across their multi-faceted, witty oeuvre.
 
This time, the subversive pair take to Miami Beach with an ambitious installation erected outside of the Convention Center, seasonal home to Art Basel Miami Beach. Titled Bent Pool, the 20ft tall curved swimming pool draws on minimalism’s geometric forms as much as on pop art and conceptualism’s use of readymade objects and imagery. But it also pays homage to the city’s architectural tradition, while providing a commentary on luxury in the age of climate change. ‘Swimming pools are woven into the very fabric of Miami Beach,’ Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset said of their site-specific work, ‘what they represent is actually something in danger of becoming frivolous, rather than remaining iconic.’

Indeed, it is no secret that, while extravagant condominiums continue to rise along its shores, Miami Beach is, in fact, drowning. In recent years, the growing threats associated with rising sea levels and stronger tropical storms have cast uncertainty over the coastal city’s scenic, pastel-tinted streets and art deco buildings, leading to rampant climate gentrification across the surrounding county. ‘You have this illustrious legacy of iconic hotels and swimming pool design, luxury and leisure, which is nowadays juxtaposed with this undeniable fragility that comes from the city’s very geography,’ said the Berlin-based duo, who are currently enjoying a solo exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas.
 
The sculpture, which mimics the frame of an otherwise oval swimming pool, bent in an inverted U-shape and standing upright on a two-tier plinth, is reminiscent of the monumental architecture of a triumphal arch. Such structure traditionally marks historical battles or the ceremonial entrance to a city – here, suitably greeting the art crowds as they march into Art Basel Miami Beach and neighbouring Design Miami, where they’ll put their bet on the next hot thing. But the artists explain that the piece ‘creates a more intimate and everyday kind of arch’, one which can only be crossed by one person at a time; perhaps a nod to the relentlessly fast-paced and speculative nature of the art market.

Officially inaugurated during Art Basel Miami Beach, Bent Pool is the final in a series of six site-specific public art works, permanently installed in and around the Miami Beach Convention Center. Other artworks launched earlier this year include a ceramic-tile installation by British artist Sarah Morris, a mural by German artist Franz Ackermann, outdoors garden sculptures by Dutch artist Joep van Lieshout and hand-painted glass panels by British-American artist Ellen Harvey. They were selected by the City of Miami Beach’s Art in Public Places programme in concurrence with the $620m revamp of the 1950s Miami Beach Convention Center, completed last year by American firm Fentress Architects. Having cost $7m (the programme allocates 2 per cent of all capital costs for City projects), the series represents the largest public art project of its kind in American history installed on a single site – that is, while it’s still afloat.

INFORMATION

elmgreen-dragset.com; miamibeachfl.gov

ADDRESS

Miami Beach Convention Center
1901 Convention Center Drive
Miami Beach

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In the wake of receiving a prestigious Australian National Award earlier this month for Hawthorn House, the Melbourne-based studio Edition Office has erected a soaring cylindrical monolith of radical cultural significance within the Grollo Equiset Garden of the NGV International. It is the realisation of the firm’s winning submission for the NGV Architecture Commission competition (now in its fifth year), created in collaboration with Kokatha and Nukunu artist Yhonnie Scarce, whose practice explores the ongoing effects of colonisation of the Aboriginal peoples.

Rising 9m high and straddling 10m in diameter among verdant shards of kangaroo grass, the imposing steel framed tower clad in black stained and rough sawn timber comprises two interfacing ‘C’ shape forms that visitors can enter to confront its darkened chambers. On the timely eve of the 250th anniversary of captain James Cook’s landing at Botany Bay, Sydney, the temporary sculpture invites us to better understand the fallacy of terra nullius, which declared Australia as an empty continent awaiting ownership.

The work ‘consciously acts as a vehicle and carrier for forgotten Indigenous histories; to stand these consciously forgotten stories up within the grounds of one our most celebrated architectural icons, the NGV, and to say that they too exist, and that they too must form our shared history and inform our shared future’, states Edition Office’s co-director, Kim Bridgland.

Addressing the misconception of the Aboriginal peoples being solely a ‘hunter-gatherer’ civilisation, In Absence acknowledges the aquaculture infrastructure and agricultural sophistication that existed long before colonisation (including sowing crops, irrigating, harvesting and storing goods).

Scarce’s clusters of hand-blown black glass yams cling to the internal chambers like leeches – a colossal 1,600 in total. Symbolically representing harvested food, and more abstractly the history and memory of the artist’s ancestors, they slowly secrete a murky substance. Marking the walls with their tears, while staining them with truths, their ‘unveiling’ is made all the more poignant as the sun filters down amongst them from the oculus above.

‘In some ways the physicality of the project can be understood as a Trojan horse for the sharing and normalising of Indigenous knowledge and culture,’ explains Bridgland. The void that visitors experience upon entering the tower acknowledges the false absence of a complex society that was never acknowledged by historians.

‘On an aesthetically abstracted level, the C-shaped chambers also reference the function of traditional Indigenous stone eel and fish traps as they funnel people within the twin inner chambers,’ adds Bridgland. Their arced footprints also reference the shape and scale of traditional stone and timber roofed permanent dwellings, despite the common belief that Aboriginals were a nomadic people.

Both Edition Office and Scarce have developed a programme of public events together with the NGV to provide a platform for stories to be told and discussed from an Indigenous perspective, enabling the tower to act as an uplifting space for cultural exchange that draws from a difficult past. ‘For me it is a prolific work that is symbolic of the infrastructure that was built thousands of years ago – and it is still standing strong today. It is a keeper and guardian of knowledge,’ reflects Scarce. §

INFORMATION

In Absence, until April 2020, NGV International. ngv.vic.gov.au; edition-office.com

ADDRESS

NGV International
180 St Kilda Road
Melbourne VIC 3006

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‘Cars have been a symbol of autonomy and freedom, but we are not necessarily moving forward when we drive,’ reflects Leandro Erlich on his newest artwork, Order of Importance, commissioned by the City of Miami Beach and due to be realised in time for Miami Art Week next month. The Argentinian artist will bring Miami Beach to a standstill with a colossal installation that recasts the modern traffic jam as 66 life-sized sculptures of cars and trucks in sand (albeit not entirely so, as Erlich looked for the most sustainable and ethical way to produce the intervention).

The largest work produced by Erlich to date is a timely and poignant reflection on the current climate crisis. Climate change is first addressed where it’s most easily perceived. Miami is a front-row witness to climate change,’ says the artist. ‘The environment is offering us plenty of information.’ Taking shape on the beachfront at Lincoln Road, a short walk from the Miami Beach Convention Center, the installation continues Erlich’s preoccupation with the natural world.

‘Reflecting on the dynamism of traffic itself, perhaps the most interesting question would be, “Quo vadis?” I would extend this question not only to the individual driver but to human society and our ambitions,’ says Erlich, who is based between Montevideo and Buenos Aires – the latter notorious for its choking traffic. ‘We persevere in the production of an industrial reality despite the disruption it unleashes on the natural order of this world.’

Erlich’s first major work on climate was Maison Fond (2015), a permanent installation created for Paris in the context of the Climate Change Summit. Pulled by the Roots, a temporary work with a similar theme, was exhibited that same year in Karlsruhe, Germany, and more recently in Beijing at CAFAM a few month ago. The artist’s interest in the intersection between the ‘human-made world and the climate crisis’ dates back to 2008, when Erlich participated in the first edition of Prospect New Orleans, as part of an artistic response to Hurricane Katrina.

The project has been curated by Ximena Caminos, who met Erlich in 1992 when she produced his first exhibition at Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires. The pair joined forces again in 1999, after Caminos commissioned his seminal Swimming Pool for the Venice Biennale. Of this latest public art project, they are optimistic that site-specific interventions like Erlich’s beachfront backup can have a powerful influence on communities. ‘Order of Importance, like an image from a contemporary Pompeii, or a future relic, alludes to our fragile position in the large universal canvas,’ Caminos says.

‘Public art has the power to become part of the complex ecosystems of cities and can be utilised to establish a dialogue, which anticipates and welcomes rapid change,’ adds Caminos. ‘More than ever we’re relying on our cities to be at the forefront of social innovation, and the City of Miami Beach, with its inclusive and innovative spirit, is playing a strong leadership role in commissioning public art, which addresses these important conversations.’

Life in the slow lane is all-too-familiar for US commuters: the average American spends 17,600 minutes (around 293 hours) behind the wheel per year, according to the most recent findings from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety’s American Driving Survey. ‘The beach has been a symbol of leisure and prosperity for so many years, and in particular for Miami,’ says Erlich. ‘But now there is a frontline feeling about the beach. It has become a different kind of stage.’

INFORMATION

Order of Importance, 1 – 15 December. leandroerlich.art

Today, we hold more photographs in the palms of our hand than ever before, yet we physically touch next to none. In this Insta-age of post-physical-photos, London-based artist Idris Khan asks us to consider the spatial volume these many thousands of images would fill, stacked one on top of the other, should they be printed. Shaped like a tapering exclamation mark, his public sculpture – 65,0000 Photographs – officially announced its presence in One Blackfriars square this morning, 5 November.

Commissioned by St George City Ltd with London Borough of Southwark, as part of its One Blackfriars residential development transforming the South Bank, the artist had full creative flexibility. ‘They initially had a much smaller sculpture in mind, but they allowed me to build much higher,’ he says of the soaring 8m sculpture, which escalate skywards, its constituent blocks growing in size in relation to dimensions of standard photographic prints: 5x7, 10x7, 12x16 inches and so on.

We’re speaking at the artist's enviable north London studio, which he shares with wife and fellow artist Annie Morris. Together, to understand the inspirations behind the work, we flick through albums of family photographs nestling for space on the computer screen. It’s easy to see how the artist has amassed a personal collection of 65,000. Indeed, the whole studio is bursting with life, family and colour – traces of the bright blue from Khan’s famous abstract paintings (the latest iterations of which are currently on view at Victoria Miro Venice) leave blue fingerprint smudges on the coffee mugs. I come away with a stained blue palm, branding everything I touch across the city an Idris blue.

Fabulous as his space is, it's no place to have created the monumental aluminium structure (which wouldn’t fit through the doors of Khan’s workspace). Instead, Khan joined forces with fabricators and international design studio UAP, whom he previously partnered with on his vast Wahat Al Karama centrepiece to the UAE Memorial Park in 2016. Somewhat fittingly, the work for 65,000 Photographs was largely managed photographically, with virtual images bouncing back and forth between Khan and UAP’s foundry, which the artist visited just once.

As such, Khan does not see 65,000 Photographs as a negative comment on today’s progressions in digital photography, and the artist acknowledges the value that a platform like Instagram holds as a communication tool. ‘I choose not to have an Instagram presence myself,' he explains, ‘but I have created an account for the artwork, in the hopes that the public will enjoy interacting with it. I think they'd be more interested in seeing this, than seeing pictures of me!’

Rather than scrolling through a million images at a dizzying rate, the sculpture itself asks us to pause for a moment in quiet contemplation. Its textured surface, which appears almost frayed, echoes the delicate edges of each photographic print. Together, these lines create a dynamic rhythm that relates to much the artist’s other works, in which lines – sometimes of text – are overlaid hypnotically.

The sculpture distills Khan’s photographed life into a physical column. Despite its long-distance production method, and initially austere physicality, this is an immensely personal project for Khan. ‘I feel like a Londoner,’ says the Birmingham-born artist, who moved to the capital in 2002 to nurture his career and family. ‘This is my way of giving something back to the city that has given so much to me.’

ADDRESS

One Blackfrairs
Southwark
London SE1 9GD

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For more than 25 years, South Korean artist Kimsooja has focused her practice on a specific element in her country’s visual culture: the bottari, a colourful bundle of cloth used to wrap and transport items by hand. It is a traditional and timeless component of life in Korea, where bottari fabrics are often recycled from old silk bedcovers, a repurposing that inverts domestic and public spheres, conventional gender roles and power structures. It is in this context that Kimsooja began using this material in her work: ‘I’ve always started from my own reality and my own culture,’ she says. ‘It’s not that I like them, necessarily. I use them because it’s my reality.’

Kimsooja (who goes by a single-word name, in defiance of cultural conventions) has spent the better part of the past two decades peripatetically, based between New York, Paris and Seoul, and realizing projects around the world. Her meditative works explore the self, the other, and the narratives woven through life’s journeys. ‘The whole world I was viewing has been, in a way, wrapping and unwrapping the bottari,’ she reflects. Across sculpture, installation, performance and video, the bottari has served as a visual metaphor for the artist’s own decentred existence and a longer history of human transience, migration and now displacement in a globalized society.

This year, the 62-year-old artist has translated the handheld bottari to an urban scale, wrapping the French city of Poitiers in a bundle of public art installations that activate its medieval architecture and foreground its rich history. Traversées is a sprawling contemporary art event in this old Roman town southwest of Paris, where Kimsooja inaugurates a new ten-year cultural and urban heritage initiative. More than a dozen works by the artist transform the city’s historic sites into sensorial experiences.

‘We wanted to put the city in motion, starting from its iconic sites of memory while looking to the future, which Kimsooja understood perfectly,’ explains the event’s co-artistic director Emmanuelle de Montgazon. ‘This constellation of works resonates together and allows visitors to chart their own course.’

As the birthplace of Michel Foucault, Poitiers is an apt locale for an in-depth presentation of Kimsooja’s work. The influential 20th-century philosopher’s premise of heterotopia – a socio-cultural space of otherness theorized as a self-contained ‘world within a world’ that exists in parallel to our lived experience – seems a fitting description of Kimsooja’s bottari. The organizers of Traversées were drawn to the duality conveyed by Kimsooja’s works: ‘They exist only in relation to the places they take over, but they come with a very strong introspective dimension, says de Montgazon. ‘They belong as much to their own history as to the history of the places and people to which they are addressed.’

Kimsooja was originally drawn to bottari in 1992, during an artist residency in New York at PS1 Contemporary Art Center. She adopted it as a colourful, readymade, three-dimensional canvas and alternative platform for art-making that she quickly expanded in multiple directions. ‘I also started working in video, considering the video frame as a wrapping method – wrapping the world or wrapping nature – rather than image-making,’ she recalls. A representative series of her video performance works, collectively titled A Needle Woman (1999-2001), depicts the artist standing motionless in the midst of busy pedestrian thoroughfares around the world, with her back to the camera. In these simple yet compelling works, her body acts as a needle, the unceasing flow of passers-by serving to wrap her stationary form. For Kimsooja, video offers ‘an immaterial way of wrapping the reality of the world’.

In 2006, Kimsooja received a commission from the Museo Nacional de Reina Sofía in Madrid in which she introduced a different approach to wrapping reality: a site-specific installation at the city’s iron-and-glass Crystal Palace, built in 1887. Titled To Breathe: A Mirror Woman (2006), this large-scale architectural intervention covered the building’s glass exterior with a translucent film that diffracts white light into a spectrum of colours, swathing the interior space in an ethereal prismatic environment. A floor-covering of mirrors multiplied the refractions, completely enveloping the audience in her luminous bottari.

Similar bottaris of light and sound were subsequently unveiled at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 (where Kimsooja represented her country at the Korean Pavilion) and earlier this year at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. In Yorkshire, Kimsooja transformed the art centre’s 18th-century chapel into a vertiginous space of reflection, both literally and metaphorically, softening the solid interior surfaces of its historic masonry, to convey a lightness that contrasted with its rigid exterior. In Poitiers, she unveils her first mirror installations to be exhibited in France, including one that reveals the stunning vaulted ceiling of the Maubergeon tower in the medieval Palais des Ducs d’Aquitaine.

Traversées also marks the debut of several new works by Kimsooja, including the latest chapter in her ongoing video series Thread Routes (2010-2019), which contemplates the intersection of craft, architecture and landscape through the lens of regional weaving practices. Whereas previous chapters brought the diverse textile traditions of Peru, Europe, India, China and indigenous peoples of North America into focus, Thread Routes Chapter VI (2019) explores the practices of Moroccan artisans working in leather-dyeing, tile mosaic-making, embroidery and weaving. As with earlier chapters, this work interrelates the natural landscape and aesthetics characteristic of the region with these traditions, creating a poetic portrait that weaves the routes and threads of local history and culture in dialogue with their surroundings.

For Traversées, Kimsooja approaches the city of Poitiers as a tapestry, its medieval streets and historic sites forming paths that intersect, converge and separate as visitors trace their own journeys while traversing its contours. Not only are her works installed throughout the city, but she has invited an array of other creators – among them composer Myriam Boucher, choreographer Min Tanaka, and artists Subodh Gupta, Tadashi Kawamata and Rirkrit Tiravanija – to contribute to the project, incorporating their own threads to the warp and weft of Kimsooja’s cultural fabric.

As originally featured in the November 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*248) – on newsstands now

INFORMATION

‘Traversées / Kimsooja’, until 19 Janaury 2020. traversees-poitiers.fr; kimsooja.com

A fundamental breathing exercise is poised to become a global art movement, thanks to the efforts of the Danish-born, Berlin-based artist Jeppe Hein. Hein, who began the practice of conscious breathing about ten years ago after he suffered an emotional breakdown, has been steadily incorporating the technique in his work – first through a series of Breathing Watercolours, where the lengths and depths of his breathing guide the execution of his paint strokes, and subsequently, inviting visitors to his exhibitions to do the same.

‘After just two exhales of drawing these strokes, they would just look at me and say, ‘I have never felt my breath like this in my life,’ Hein recalls. ‘I’d been doing it for five to six years on my own, but to see other people reacting very strongly, when many just take for granted that we’re breathing, really made an impact on me.’

Inspired by that reaction, Hein unveiled Breathe With Me, a weeklong global art action in New York that invited audiences from around the world to paint their individual breaths. Launched together with Art 2030, a non-profit organisation that works with art to inspire action for a sustainable future, and achieve the UN Global Goals, Breathe With Me kicked off at the United Nations’ Youth Climate Summit over the weekend, with the participation of dignitaries and diplomats who painted their breath on a undulating canvas wall weaving its way through the lobby of the UN headquarters.

Painted in ultramarine blue, which the artist chose for its a universal appeal, each linear brushstroke represents the exhale of an individual’s breath. Largely variable, due to each participant’s height and lung capacity amongst others, the result is a wonderfully diverse set of simple lines that powerfully stand together as a whole.  

The UN presentation is to be followed by a larger installation in Central Park opening today – the first major public art installation being staged in the park since Christo and Jeanne Claude’s The Gates in 2005. From 25 – 27 September, Breathe With Me will welcome public participants to paint their breath with brushes and paint supplied by Hein and Art 2030 over six large canvas waves, spanning 600ft, that will wind their way through the heart of the park.

Breathe With Me takes the form of Breathing Watercolours painted by the public that visualise the invisible – our breath and the resulting relation between us – reminding us to cooperate if we want to share this world together, today and in the future,’ Hein explains. ‘Ideally, it will encourage people to conspire, as in Latin “conspirare” means to breathe together.’

In the planning for over two years, Breathe With Me is a worldwide initiative that knows few limits. In addition to the two installations in New York, Hein has created a downloadable Breathe With Me manual that can be accessed by individuals, organisations, institutions, schools and communities around the world. Intended as an inspirational kit that can be subject to interpretation and achievable with whatever materials are available to hand, the art piece has already attracted great interest from technology companies, museums and educational bodies worldwide.

Hein has also enlisted a group of ambassadors, who he calls First Breathers, to drum up support for the project. By documenting the participation of figures ranging from architect Bjarke Ingels to artists Tomás Saraceno and Pipilotti Rist, musician Michael Stipe and chef Daniel Humm, in the form of short, intimate videos, he proves just how simple and impactful the act of conscious breathing can be.

INFORMATION

‘Breathe with Me’, 25 – 27 September. breathewithme.world

ADDRESS

Central Park Center Road
Frisbee Hill (located between the Sheep Meadow and Naumberg Bandshell)

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

This autumn, the Swiss art interventionist Klaus Littmann is filling a football stadium in the Austrian town of Klagenfurt with a full-grown forest. It is a free-access public art installation of Christo-like proportions that has had much of Austria buzzing for months.

Littmann is not new to large-scale public projects. In 2018, for example, he floated 12 giant ‘art planets’ by a range of international artists above the city of Basel, visible from miles around. Born in 1951 in Riehen, he studied in the 1970s at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Joseph Beuys and had his own gallery in Basel during the 1980s and 1990s, before turning his attention to ‘theme-oriented art exhibitions and interventions in the public arena’. He calls himself a ‘freelance mediator of contemporary art’, but actually prefers not to be pinned down by definitions: ‘When someone asks me: “Are you an artist?” I say: “No”, but if you don’t think like an artist, you couldn’t do these things.’

The Unending Attraction of Nature by Max Peintner, hand-coloured by Klaus Littman

Architect Max Peintner is a key figure of the Austrian environmentalist movement, who represented his country at the Venice Biennale in 1986 and whose work is in the collection of MoMA, New York. He created a pencil drawing in 1970/71, showing a crowd of onlookers gazing at a forest in a sports arena. Here, the original artwork has been hand-coloured by Klaus Littmann, setting the foliage in sharp contrast with the heavily industrialised cityscape in the background. ‘Peintner had the futuristic idea that what has been happening for centuries with animals in zoos could also happen with nature, that we might one day have to come into special spaces to observe it,’ says Littmann. The image continues to resonate half a century on, appearing in over 20 German textbooks, as well as publications in France, Denmark, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Hungary

This installation, his largest to date, was a long time in the making. It began 30-odd years ago when a friend showed him a book by the Austrian artist and architect Max Peintner containing a series of futuristic drawings from the 1970s. One of these images was The Unending Attraction of Nature (see above), picturing a stadium packed with spectators looking, spellbound, towards a fully-grown forest. ‘I was fascinated by this drawing and went to visit the artist,’ says Littmann. ‘I told him that I found it an unbelievable image and that it should be realised – I think he thought I was crazy.’

But the image stuck in Littmann’s mind and whenever a potential stadium came up for discussion in Switzerland or nearby, he pitched the idea. Finally, six years ago, he came across Wörthersee Stadium, a state-of-the-art facility with 32,000 seats in the Austrian town of Klagenfurt. After much negotiation, the local council agreed to let him have the use of the stadium for two months in 2019, free of charge. The€2.2m funding for the project he generated himself, almost exclusively through his own contacts and art patrons in Switzerland, including the Fondation Beyeler, but also through the sale of ‘tree adoptions’ at €5,000 each, which came with hand-coloured original graphic prints signed by both Littmann and Peintner.

Littmann enlisted the services of the highly acclaimed Swiss landscape architect Enzo Enea to bring Peintner’s vision to life. The biggest challenge was to find 300 trees from 19 varieties to make up the typical central European mini-forest on the pitch. ‘We needed to use what are called “schooled trees”,’ says Littmann. ‘That means mature trees that are about 13-14m tall, so about 30-40 years old, that have been repotted every four to five years, and don’t get stressed by moving.’ The trees will fill the confines of the pitch and their bases will be covered with a fine net, over which Enea’s team will construct a natural-looking forest floor. Around the edges will be a meadow area that goes right up to the stands. The whole thing will be floodlit at night and the foliage will change colour as autumn progresses.

Visitors can enter the stadium, at no admission charge, and move freely around the stands to see the work from different perspectives, but the forest is not accessible. ‘What is really important to me in all my projects in public spaces is perception,’ says Littmann. ‘I want people to stand and look at it and ask themselves: “What am I seeing? What is it about? What does it mean for me?” I want it to provoke their sense of sight and what they are used to seeing. If that happens, then for me is the whole thing a success.’

Victor Hugo’s statement ‘Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come’ could hardly be more appropriate in the case of For Forest. ‘This project triggers a great deal of discussion and raises a lot of questions,’ says Littmann. ‘How do we treat nature? How are forests managed? One criticism, for example, is: “Austria is full of forests, why do you need to put one in a stadium?” To which my answer is: “Yes, that is true, but what kind of forests are they? They are monocultures. The native mixed deciduous forest, which is incredibly important, is completely marginalised, although we depend on it, especially now in the context of climate change. The same problems as in the Amazon are here right on our doorstep. Immense areas of forests are dying out and being destroyed by disease and commercial forestry. This image brings these issues into focus.”’

Littmann says that, although he never set out to be deliberately radical with For Forest, the project has experienced a considerable amount of opposition, particularly from the far right (the local region is a stronghold of the populist Freedom Party of Austria), with verbal abuse and calls to ‘get the chainsaws out’. His original fascination with Peintner’s image was this ‘futuristic’ idea that ‘what makes us put animals in zoos could also happen to nature. But the current focus on climate change has given the drawing a new dimension. Perhaps it really had to take 30 years before it could be realised.’

A version of this article originally featured in the October 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*247)

INFORMATION
Until 27 October. forforest.net; klauslittmann.com

Lucas Cantu and Carlos Matos, the duo behind the Mexico City-based art and architecture studio Tezontle, were the first foreign invitees to arrive in Havana for this year’s Biennial. They were also the last to leave. In fact, their large-scale sculpture, titled Tenaza, wasn’t yet erected on 12 May when the arts event officially came to an end.

Cantu and Matos had originally designed Tenaza as a site-specific work that would sit in between the ocean and the Malécon, a public promenade along the waterfront. ‘We imagined it as an extension of Havana,’ reflects Matos, ‘an extra pocket of space in a city that, for a long time, hasn’t seen a lot of development.’ When the final permit necessary proved impossible to acquire, the artists were forced to readjust. They ultimately settled on a nearby park in the Centro Habana neighbourhood.

Adaptability, they will tell you, is fundamental for executing a project of this scale in Cuba. Limited access to supplies, for example, led Cantu and Matos to source the unlikely. ‘We used probably ten cubic metres of residue material, cast inside the base, from crumbled houses,’ Matos says. ‘It’s a nice poetic gesture, but it was also a necessary one.’ In addition, they employed locally-sourced bamboo to create a formwork for the sculpture’s foundation.

‘The struggle of building the piece became a part of it,’ explains Cantu, and fittingly, the only element of the work that was visible during the Biennial was its construction. For Cantu and Matos, however, timely completion was secondary to creating something that would leave a lasting impression. The artists were given a rare opportunity on the island: their work would be one of a handful of permanent installations by foreign artists. Though Cantu and Matos held an informal groundbreaking ceremony at the end of June, it will be officially inaugurated this coming autumn.

Tenaza’s cultural and historical significance doesn’t stop there. The piece, which measures 4m in diameter and 6m tall, is the first architectural use of an ecological concrete called LC3. Dr Fernando Martirena developed the material, the production of which pollutes 40 per cent less than its traditional counterpart by replacing clinker that comes from coal mining with an organic clay. Paired with forms inspired by the city’s art deco architecture, the concrete’s unique texture and colour allows it to blend seamlessly into its environment. ‘It’s a bizarre looking piece,’ Matos admits, ‘but I think that the people of Havana find it beautiful because they are already somehow familiar with its aesthetics.’

Ultimately, he says, ‘The most interesting thing is how the piece gets appropriated.’ Located in front of the Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital and adjacent to the Malecón, the sculpture’s location is also home to a fried chicken stand and a busy bus stop. ‘It’s a very alive, raw part of the city,’ adds Cantu. ‘Thousands of people pass through it each day.’

Tenaza has quickly become a meeting place in the bustling plaza. ‘I think that we’re missing a lot of the more abstract architecture that can be just that,’ Matos says. The sculpture’s staircase leads to eight seats in a circular formation, which when used, naturally foster the feeling of being at a table and according to the artists, generate conversation.

Cantu and Matos otherwise leave Tenaza’s function up to its users. Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel gave it the official stamp of approval as a national monument and as such, the sculpture is now a formalised and permanent addition to the city. Since its completion, Tenaza has transcended its role as a public art installation – it is a play structure for neighbourhood children and a spot to drink rum, practice rituals from the local religion Santería and, in its shadow, escape from the intense Cuban sun. ‘It’s beginning to have a life of its own,’ Cantu muses.

INFORMATION
@tezontle_studio

A year-and-a-half in the making, and a collaboration with New York’s New Museum, Apple’s [AR]T Walk magics up new augmented reality public art projects from Nick Cave, Carsten Höller, John Giorno, Nathalie Djurberg, Hans Berg and Cao Fei. The new pieces will appear (to the properly equipped) in London, San Francisco, New York, Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Launching on 10 August and running until at least the end of the year, ten people at a time, armed with an iPhone, the [AR]T app and headphones, will be lead by an Apple team member in each city around six interactive displays or pieces, each lasting five to ten minutes. Viewers will also be able to take still and video imagery of the pieces.

None of the artists involved in the project had worked in AR before, bar a little dabbling here and there. But Apple and the New Museum hope the project will alert artists and the wider public to AR’s full creative potential. ‘Augmented reality is a medium ripe for dynamic and visual storytelling that can extend an artist’s practice beyond the studio or the gallery and into the urban fabric,’ says the New Museum’s Lisa Phillips.

Nick Cave has created another immersive AR piece, Amass, with will be viewable at Apple’s stores in 20 countries and launches on the same day. As does [AR]T Lab, free Today at Apple workshops created by Sarah Rothberg, a New York-based artist and professor at NYU already working with AR and VR. The sessions will guide attendees through the creation of AR art using simple Swift Playgrounds coding.

INFORMATION

Registration for the [AR]T Walk and [AR]T Lab sessions will be available at apple.com/today

Once a river so polluted it was declared biologically dead, the Thames has become an inspiring example of how liquid infrastructure can be detoxified and turned into a popular tourist destination and a source of civic pride. Now the historic London waterway is to form the backdrop for an ambitious public art project that will see 15 of its bridges lit up in a unified scheme by the artist Leo Villareal, who has collaborated with local architects Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands.

The Illuminated River project’s first four completed crossings – London Bridge, Cannon Street Bridge, Southwark Bridge and Millennium Bridge – are being unveiled this July, while the remaining bridges will be revealed in four phases over the next few years.

The project aims to create visual cohesion between the Thames’ multiple crossings, built between 1862 and 2002, replacing the bridges’ currently disparate lighting with a more energy-efficient system, while supporting the river’s ecology and encouraging public interaction.

Villareal and Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands were announced as the winning team in 2016, beating more than a hundred other submissions in the process. Both have notably worked on bridges: Villareal had lit up San Francisco’s Bay Bridge with 25,000 LED lights in 2013 (known as The Bay Lights, the installation has since become permanent), and Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands had designed the 2002 Golden Jubilee Bridges, a pair of pedestrian footbridges that flank London’s Hungerford railway bridge.

‘I think we were selected due to the simplicity of the idea, that really respected the history and nature of the bridges and tried to enhance them,’ recalls Villareal. ‘In London, there are so many different types of bridges. Some are very humble, like rail bridges that just do their work, others are more ornate, and then you have the iconic bridges like Westminster and Tower and Albert Bridge. Each one has its own qualities.’

Together, the duo’s respective expertise has helped shepherd Illuminated River into being. Not only does each bridge have architectural and historical features that require careful consideration, they also lie within the jurisdiction of seven different city councils, and involve rail, port, conservation and city authorities. Of their working relationship, Alex Lifschutz says, ‘We came at things from slightly different angles: we’re interested in the effect we’re trying to create, and the technicalities, while Leo is interested in the poetry of light. His art doesn’t just use the bridges as an incidental backdrop. He understands that the bridge isn’t just a plain canvas, it has its own texture.’

Villareal’s concept for Illuminated River highlights each of these structural links in all of their idiosyncrasy. Each bridge exhibits an individualised sequence inspired by the social activity at that specific site. The patterns, which will be created using LED bulbs fixed onto each bridge’s structure, range from the organic to the abstract, the stationary to the kinetic, respecting its architecture, even revealing oft-overlooked features, while moving in a gentle, progressive rhythm. Villareal will finalise the programming of each sequence when he’s on site. ‘I’m not English, I’m an outsider, so I approach this in a very humble way. It’s about working with what’s existing and shifting the way people see the bridges through a simple gesture.’

The artist’s designs for the inaugural bridges include enhancing the ironwork on the underside of Southwark Bridge, and creating a blade of light along Foster + Partners’ Millennium Bridge. The industrial aspects of Cannon Street Bridge, a rail bridge, will be enhanced with colour, while the monochromatic line of light already raking down the sides of London Bridge will be supplemented by a colour and lighting scheme placed under its concrete form. Villareal says, ‘We’re focusing light really only where it should be; the precision of the new LED fixtures is amazing.’ Lifschutz agrees: ‘In many cases, the bridges were poorly lit or overlit, the lighting was falling into the water, which has a negative effect on the creatures living there.’

For those who use the bridges, Illuminated River is set to cast the familiar structures in a new light. ‘You’ll notice them in a way you’ve never seen before,’ says Lifschutz. ‘You’re going to be looking at the next bridge along, rather than the one you’re on. Leo’s work is mesmerising.’

‘The Thames itself is the inspiration. It’s almost like a living thing, that rises and falls five metres twice a day,’ says Villareal. ‘It’s amazing to observe. I’m not sampling things, or using sensors; it’s not interactive. It’s very much based on observations and about me responding to the site, in the same way that artists have for hundreds of years.’

As originally featured in the June 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*243)

INFORMATION

illuminatedriver.london; villareal.net; lds-uk.com

For two weeks in July, a mirrored sphere is taking flight above the eastern US coastline and western Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts. Reflecting back the sun, clouds, and natural surroundings, the nomadic piece of public art is Doug Aitken’s response to many of the most beautiful places in Massachusetts protected by The Trustees of Reservations. The Trustees is a non-profit conservation group, which commissioned Aitken’s project, New Horizon.

Of the natural spaces protected by The Trustees, Aitken first visited the Longpoint Wildlife Refuge on Martha’s Vineyard. It is an ecological wonderland where dirt pathways snake through a dense forest that opens up to a marshland estuary feeding directly into the nearby Atlantic Ocean. After visiting many of The Trustees’ properties thereafter, Aitken imagined a simple idea: a hot air balloon sheathed in shiny, silver mylar that could be weightless, untethered to the landscape, simply showing onlookers, in an albeit distorted fashion, what is already there.

Aitken created New Horizon after he made Mirage, a ranch-style house clad in mirrors that he placed in the California desert in 2017. The house appeared and disappeared, changing according to the weather and sunlight. Aitken wished to push the idea to a new extreme where the work is not fixed to one place: ‘The idea is that the project can be in motion. While it is actually flying, we have designed the sculpture, the gondola, so it can be a nomadic studio. For example, maybe an electronic musician who improvises in it can create a soundscape influenced by what’s below him or her.’

To adapt the typical hot air balloon, Aitken and his studio tapped into the ballooning subculture in Albuquerque, New Mexico, home to an annual international balloon fiesta. ‘The transformation from idea to reality was a very unusual one,’ Aitken explains. ‘As an artist I’m very interested in ideas, sometimes you have an idea and you don’t know how to make it real, you’re unfamiliar with materials or process. That to me is a very interesting stage because you find yourself creating bridges, collaborating with different individuals.’ In New Horizon, the standard nylon balloon fabric has been coated with mylar, and the gondola, traditionally a wicker basket, is made from mirrored fibreglass with acoustic padding and wiring for audio and video recording equipment.

The project harks back to the land art of the late 1960s, like Robert Smithson’s Ithaca Mirror Trail where the artist dotted the landscape with mirrors. Aitken also uses the term ‘happenings’ – a piece of 1960s nomenclature describing experimental artistic performances that take place outside the boundaries of museums. Aitken’s happenings are a series of evening events at each landing site for New Horizon. Intellectual conversations on the future of creativity, climate, information, identity, and culture will be followed by musical performances. To accompany the latter, Aitken created a second balloon covered in thousands of programmable LED lights to become what he describes as a ‘generative light sculpture’, responsive to ‘sound it hears in real time or the wind speed’.

Relishing in improvisation and how a new setting or unorthodox platform may produce a moment that cannot be predetermined, Aitken’s chosen mode of flight is especially unpredictable. The schedule of flights and happenings are planned, but they are inherently impromptu affairs. The balloon can only take off if the weather conditions are just right. An errant gust of wind or increase in temperature can foil months and months of logistical work. It is fitting for New Horizon, a work that hopes to not be a singular piece of art inertly plopped in the landscape, but a multiplicity of things, changing as the world does around it.

INFORMATION

New Horizon, until 28 July, various locations across Massachusetts. dougaitkenworkshop.com, thetrustees.org

It is no coincidence that modern British sculpture was raised on strong tea and Yorkshire pudding. From Henry Moore to Barbara Hepworth, Anthony Caro to Phyllida Barlow, the 20th-century sculptural force of this region issued from the pounding heart of the art schools, welded by lineages of materiality and mentorship. Now well into the 21st century, the county’s major art institutions are to be rabble-roused by a new festival of sculpture, Yorkshire Sculpture International (YSI), presenting one hundred days of sculptural song and dance.

With presentations from 18 international artists, outdoor commissions, talks and associated programmes, embarking on the festival programme is not unlike a lesson in the art of lost-wax casting, confounding with endless processes of filling and draining, melting and recasting. For starters, the designated ‘Sculpture Triangle’ spans a fiesty foursome of locations: Leeds Art Gallery, Henry Moore Institute, The Hepworth Wakefield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

The pinnacle is found at the Hepworth: in Jamaican-Canadian artist Tau Lewis’ unsettling aquatic textile collages – advocates for ancestors lost to threadbare black histories; Nairy Baghramian’s intellectually laboured Maintainers, yielding polished wax and aluminium in co-dependency; and Rosanne Robertson’s exposition of the fluidity of queer bodies through haiku-like 1-minute looped films, Stone (Butch) and Pissing (YSP Bothy Gallery). And tempering the political with the spiritual, Wolfgang Laib’s pulsating grid of hand-sized rice ‘mountains’, exalting a humble truth to materials.

Ignited by Barlow’s observation that sculpture is ‘the most anthropological of the art forms’, the inaugural edition of YSI reveals the human impulse to connect with objects is more sentient than ever. Rashid Johnson’s Shea Butter Three Ways (Henry Moore Institute) is a luxurious study of the material coaxed into a three-phase installation, as tactile as it is aromatic. Meanwhile, the question of architectural anthropology is raised by Kimsooja’s quixotic installation of light and mirrors in Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s historic chapel, as well as Ayşe Erkmen’s site-specific installation, three of four, a floor-to-ceiling extension of the recently rediscovered vaulted glass roof of Leed Art Gallery’s Central Court.

Fulfilling its calling card ‘to inspire audiences to rethink their understanding of sculpture’, YSI looks beyond the traditional trio of bronze, stone and wood towards a more interdisciplinary genealogy of making (albeit via a thoughtful foray of the latter in ‘Woodwork: A Family Tree of Sculpture’ at Leeds Art Gallery). Cauleen Smith’s hypnotic film Sojourner, is part political history, part golden-hour feminist utopia, languishing in the seductive desertscape of Noah Purifoy. Embracing community collaboration, composer Tarek Atoui has devised performances with instrument makers in a bid to better understand sound through deafness.

What YSI seems to enact is a retracing of artistic heritage through the material present. If Barlow’s contention is to be wholeheartedly embraced, it surely calls for positive cultural contributions towards our ongoing anthropology. And just as Yorkshire pudding is to roast beef, the story of British sculpture would be a meagre without Yorkshire. Yet the question remains, how meaningful a role YSI will play in the future of sculpture internationally. Will this local treasure find its footing in the non-placeness of the art world’s international event calendar? Only time will tell: the proof is in the pudding.

INFORMATION

Yorkshire Sculpture International, 22 June – 29 September, various locations. yorkshire-sculpture.org

‘I was thinking about scale, verticality and horizontality; for some works you have to look up and some works you have to look down, and these also become strategies of engagement,’ Littman told us, adding, ‘What I didn’t want to do with this installation is fight against the urban backdrop, the architecture, and the crowds too much – that would be a losing battle in space like Rockefeller Center.’

Kiki Smith’s bronze female sculpture, Rest Upon (2009), dozes with a lamb at the plaza’s flower-lined entrance on Fifth Avenue, creating an interesting juxtaposition between the figure’s demure posture and its position amid the dense crowds. Elsewhere, Nick Cave’s Untitled (2018) morphs from a tenacious Black Power fist into a larger-than-life gramophone.

Arguably the most striking intervention is Ibrahim Mahama’s jute flags, waving in lieu of the 192 UN flags that normally encircle the Rockefeller Center’s iconic ice skating ring. The specially commissioned installation of fifty flags, crafted by the artist in his native Ghana from used cocoa bean bags, delivers a strong political punch, touching on themes of slavery, economic disparity and oppression. 

INFORMATION

Frieze Sculpture is on view until 28 June. For more information, visit the Frieze website

ADDRESS

Rockefeller Center
45 Rockefeller Plaza
New York

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Daniel Libeskind has designed an art installation for a baroque garden in the Netherlands. The Polish-American architect has splashed colour and eccentric shapes across the orderly grounds of the 17th-century palace Paleis Het Loo in Apeldoorn as a protest to climate change.

The ‘Garden of Earthly Worries’ consists of four monumental abstract sculptures that create an imbalance within the organised layout of the garden, designed in its time to represent man’s perfection of nature. ‘The gardens of Paleis Het Loo convey a symmetrical beauty that connects to the cosmic idea of time, space, and paradise,’ says Libeskind. Yet his sculptures, reaching three metres high and towering over the neatly trimmed shrubbery, are anything but symmetrical. Composed of spherical fragments of a globe, curved angles fly out carving up the air with colour.

Yet, don’t be seduced. Like a poisonous insect that attracts with fluorescent colouring, the pieces harbour a sinister secret within their concept: each represents a chemical compound that contributes to climate change. ‘The elements are placed in the garden as intruders; their imperfection is a counterpoint to the orderly landscape,’ says Libeskind, who intended them to appear as ‘toxic projects perverting and destroying nature’.

The architect has completed many powerful works of architecture across the world, notably the Jewish Museum Berlin and the masterplan for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center in New York. Echoing the strong lines and shapes of his buildings, this installation offers him an alternative outlet for his ideas.

Libeskind accompanies the installation with a bold and poetic statement that could be interpreted as a warning: ‘Humanity is at a crossroads in a world where resources and space are under attack. We are moving into a cultural shift from sustainability to viability. We can no longer distinguish if nature is culture, or culture is nature.’

It’s the first time that contemporary art has been displayed at the baroque gardens at Paleis Het Loo, but it feels like this historic baroque garden was in need of a little bit of disruption and some colourful chaos inside its cosmos. Now, it is a platform for thinking about the future.

INFORMATION

‘Garden of Earthly Worries’ is on view until mid-2021. For more information, see the Paleis Het Loo website and the Studio Libeskind website

Artists have long tried to draw a connection between our physical plane and the enigmatic beyond. A new land art work by Bosco Sodi is perhaps among the most ambitious endeavours yet – if not the most colossal. The Mexican artist has erected a 700-tonne ‘city of cubes’ along Oaxaca’s shoreline, adjacent to the Tadao Ando-designed Casa Wabi (the foundation and studio established by Sodi).

Numerical data is by no means a measure of an artwork, though Sodi’s minimalist Atlantes is a pleasing intertwining of art and mathematics. Each of the 64, two sq m cube comprises 1,600 brick ‘timbers’ handmade by Sodi and a team of local craftsmen in a traditional rustic kiln with wood, coconut shells, and jacaranda seeds. There are a total of 102,400 terracotta-hued pieces, fired in 40 batches over nearly 1,000 hours and arranged in a gridded formation.

‘The many points of contact it creates between earth and sky suggests that the heavens are so heavy the weight must be distributed,’ notes Noguchi Museum curator Dakin Hart of the installation. ‘And that human ingenuity can replace divine heroics, but not without great effort.’ Its sheer scale is a spectacle in itself – the rugged Oaxacan landscape notwithstanding – alluding to the Greek myth of Atlas, condemned to hold up the sky for eternity at the ends of the earth.

A canvas for the shifting light during the day, Sodi’s perspective-bending pavilion may not prove as immortal as the titular Titan. The structure will weather over time, tracing ‘a sense of the land’s entropy through erosion and the flora and fauna that will eventually dwell in its corridors. Each of the 614,400 brick faces will slowly succumb to the mountains, desert and ocean that frame the artwork; the fate of Atlantes hanging in equilibrium. 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit Bosco Sodi’s website

Amid the white energy windmills, wild lupines sprout up across the dry desert Coachella Valley, bringing new life and a pop of colour to greater Palm Springs. Now, the second iteration of the biannual art event Desert X contributes its invasion of mythical site-specific installations to the landscape, bringing the work of international contemporary artists to the desert during Modernism Week.

Curated by artistic director Neville Wakefield, co-curator Amanda Hunt, and co-curator Matthew Schum, Desert X explores topics from politics to the environment through installation, sculpture, pavilions and billboards. The free event attracted over 200,000 visitors in its 2017 edition. This year, many of the works dotted across the landscape – from Palm Desert to Indio – reflect on our connection to water, while negotiating the harsh desert elements and the mythology of the desert as a venerable environment. ‘Our initial mission was created for contemporary artists to be inspired, and to place an international lens on the valley, to spotlight issues we are all dealing with, while starting conversations with all our visitors,’ comments president Susan L Davis.

Specter, by Sterling Ruby

Moving through the valley, you will pass other environmental installations appearing like mirages in the desert from a large looming orange fluorescent monolith by Dutch-born Sterling Ruby, to a smoking ‘Western Flag’ projected with LED lights synced with the world’s first major oil gusher in Texas by artist John Gerrard from Ireland.

A Point of View, by Iván Argote

A Point of View is the most active installation, from Colombia-born, Paris-based Iván Argote, encouraging visitors to climb up its form and survey the landscape. Five concrete staircases blending influence from pre-Columbian and brutalist architecture were constructed and stamped with poems in Spanish and English. The messages are revealed as you ascend and when you reach the top, you'll see a view of the manmade Salton Sea. ‘It’s a reflection of the landscape and our relationship with it, while at the same time, it’s related to the ecological disaster that is going on at the biggest lake in California – it’s shrinking,’ says Argote. ‘It’s a complex situation with so many layers. Historical, ecological, geological and economical.’

Dive-in, by Superflex

For the opening night, Superflex debuted Dive-in, a film that explored global warming and rising water levels with an outdoor screen encased in a pink coral resin structure. As the camera moves closer, fish float by innocently to a vibrating sound and a slow close-up reveal of alien faces in the porous stone, before slowly fading back out again.

Lovers Rainbow, by Pia Camil

Pia Camil from Mexico City has dual exhibits in Palm Desert and Baja that echo the current immigration issues. Lovers Rainbow is a striking multi-coloured arch made out of welded and painted rebar cables set against the dramatic mountain backdrop. ‘It brings hope and possibility by connecting the two borders,’ the artist explains.

Jackrabbit, Cottontail & Spirits of the Desert, by Cara Romero

Drive down Gene Autrey Trail and you will be confronted with five billboards featuring photographs of people of the Chemehuevi, the valley's indigenous group, by Cara Romero. Jackrabbits, Cottontails & Spirits of the Desert portrays multiple generations of the Chemehuevi, countering stereotypical images, while offering visibility to Californian Indians. As Romero explains, ‘They [the Chemehuevi] are part of the landscape and ontologically tied. Their spirit is alive and they are connected to the land.’

Ghost Palm, by Kathleen Ryan

Two Bunch Palms features a towering Ghost Palm by Kathleen Ryan that sits on the San Andreas Fault path. Its steel, glass and glittering plastic fringe blows in the wind and is illuminated at night.

Going Nowhere, by Julian Hoeber

Nearby, Los Angeles-based artist Julian Hoeber uses breeze blocks as material in a nod to local mid-century architecture, geometric properties and psychology for his Möbius strip entitled Going Nowhere.

Halter, by Eric N Mack

Further east, the eerily abandoned Felix auto repair shop by the railroad tracks in Coachella has been transformed into a fluidly shifting piece by artist Eric N Mack, who worked with large swaths of donated textiles from Missoni. ‘The work is swaying in the wind and the fabric has been liberated,’ he says.

Visit us in the Shape of Clouds, by Armando Lermer

Migration and transitory images moving through the desert such as birds, snakes, seashells and rocks, are brought to life with the mural Visit us in the Shape of Clouds shown on a massive water tank on the hillside. Designed by local returning artist Armando Lermer, and sponsored by Farrow & Ball, the mural will be a permanent fixture for the Coachella Valley landscape, located near the table grape vineyards and compost station, long after the other installations are gone.

More from Desert X 2019...

INFORMATION
Desert X runs from 9 February – 21 April in various locations across the Coachella Valley. For more information, visit the website

Pantone revealed its 2019 Color of the Year – the ‘life-affirming’ shade of Living Coral – with the debut of a multi-sensory installation at the Royal Palm South Beach resort during Art Basel Miami Beach. The global authority on colour teamed up with Tribute Portfolio, Marriott International’s newest collection of boutique hotels, for the first in a series of immersive tributes to colour that will travel globally to select boltholes from the group in 2019.

Fittingly set within a beach house-like structure, the Pantone Pantry puts a whimsical spin on the typical hotel experience with a concierge desk fashioned from vintage luggage and a bellhop’s cart while a wunderkammer of coral objects awaits inside. Cabinets were dressed with books, homeware, travel gadgets and other surprises – one cupboard opened up to reveal a whirring confetti installation. A hidden door leads to a secret hotel guest room, where pop art illustrator Gabriel Alcala and supergroup LSD (made up of Labrinth, Sia and Diplo) have devised psychedelic pop animations, digital projections  and a groovy playlist to bring the colour to life.

‘Like travel, colour enhances and influences the way we experience the world,’ explains Pantone Color Institute vice president Laurie Pressman. ‘Linked to tactility and human connection, Pantone 16-1546 Living Coral is a warm and welcoming shade that fosters immersive experiences and encourages playful expression.’ The ‘sociable and spirited’ colour of orange with a golden undertone was selected as a reaction to our increasingly tech-centric lives. Effervescent and naturally vivid, Living Coral represents a fusion of our ‘natural and digital realities’.

‘Tribute Portfolio has struck a chord with those who seek out independent experiences and crave a connection with the community when traveling,’ says Amanda Nichols, global brand director of Tribute Portfolio. To wit, each iteration of the Pantone Pantry will be customised to reflect the individual character of its host city. The installation will travel to The Alida hotel in Savannah, Georgia in 2019, as well as being reimagined for Tribute Portfolio’s forthcoming property in Rotterdam, set to open in March next year inside a former printing house and artists’ studios.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Tribute Portfolio website and Pantone website