In the basement of Somerset House Studios, through a warren of white corridors littered with cardboard boxes and similar detritus, John Costi’s studio is an explosion of colour and creativity. On the floor is a taped-together collage of images of citrus fruits and eye-popping balloons, while the walls jostle with artworks and found objects: between two bright abstract paintings, there’s a gold Gucci logo on a piece of a faux-leather watch box.

Thanks to his tumble of silvery, shoulder-length corkscrew hair and multicoloured cap, you’d have no trouble matching the artist to the space. The remainder of the watch box, the 38-year-old explains, 'houses incense which has olive leaves from my village in Cyprus that my ancestors would have planted – we burned them in Cyprus to keep away the evil eye'.

Costi’s latest show, ‘Bapou’s Bubbles’, due to open at Somerset House Studios later this month, finds the multimedia artist grappling with his Irish and Greek-Cypriot heritage – or, rather, his displacement from it. Born to a working-class family in Finchley, north London, he’s always felt at a remove from these cultures. Soundtracked by fractured grime beats, the performance-art piece takes the form of a TV talk show, with Costi and several other actors playing different aspects of his psyche. Across the two events, he’ll also interview different artists and experts from a cross-section of society (such as social justice advocate Lord Hastings).

Ultimately, it’s a journey of self-discovery. Bapou derives from the Greek word for grandfather; bubble is Cockney rhyming slang for both a Greek person and having a good time. 'I think that I make art to get closer to my family and those that came before me,' Costi says. 'The splitting and hybrid versions of me come from being part of a diaspora. The version of Cypriot culture that I have isn’t the version that you get in Cyprus. It’s via north London. It’s a language of distortion.'

‘Bapou’s Bubbles’ features an onstage exchange between Costi and his mother, Bridget, as they recite the letters that they wrote to each other during the artist’s prison term for armed robbery from 2007. At 18, Costi received a six-year sentence at west London’s Feltham Prison and Young Offender Institution (last year it was named the most violent prison in England and Wales, with a report finding that inmates had refused family visits to protect relatives). He’d targeted five branches of William Hill, the bookmakers, with a 9mm handgun.

While he was away in Feltham, it was suggested that Costi partake in art therapy, as he’d previously attended an art and design course for students who’d been expelled from mainstream education. This meant he was granted access to the institution’s art room, where he discovered a colourful book on Jean-Michel Basquiat, who was similarly interested in street art and marginalisation. 'There was a kind of mania that I recognised,' Costi says. 'There are a lot of Basquiat copies now, but I had never seen it before.'

Inspired, he created a huge-scale abstract artwork that drew on the muddy red and black hues of Untitled (Angel), the painting that appeared on the cover of the Basquiat book. Costi shows Wallpaper* a photo of his younger self posing next to his artwork, which was displayed on the wall of Feltham’s healthcare wing. Arms outstretched, he’s grinning for the camera. In the bottom right-hand corner of his painting are the words: 'Tick tock.'

It's an image that makes you think of the young people in your own life. Full disclosure: Costi was briefly my next-door neighbour and, to the delight of my children, once decorated the pavement outside our houses with chalk drawings of paw prints that grew bigger and bigger, as if some unseen creature had magically reached gigantic proportions. This playfulness runs through Bapou’s Bubbles, though Somerset House’s online listing for the show also carries a content warning for references to 'sexual violence and suicide'.

At 13, Costi was subjected to a terrible act of violence in an underpass, an incident he describes as a catalyst for his subsequent criminality and 'risky behaviours.' As an adult, he returned to repaint the inside of the tunnel bright white, like the walls of a gallery. He documented the project in a short film and has on his phone a 3D scan of himself standing in the underpass: 'The place of complete pain and upset is now in my pocket and I can go there whenever I want. I call it a museum of injury.'

During his first year at Feltham, Costi discovered Koestler Arts, a charity that helps inmates to nurture their own creative talents. When the organisation’s annual awards rolled around, he submitted two poems, for which he received a Commended Certificate – a prize recognising their quality. This was a sign, he says, 'that I was doing something right for the first time in a very long time.'

Thus began an ongoing correspondence with Koestler, who assigned him a mentor upon his release. A former textiles tutor at Central Saint Martins, she was 'the first posh person that I’d ever really interacted with', Costi explains with a smile. Through a combination of the tutor’s guidance and his own tenacity, he successfully applied to study fine art at Saint Martins. He graduated with a first.

Nowadays, Costi works with prisons and probation offices, encouraging men to see 'that they’re allowed to engage in art practice', a pursuit he previously believed to be for people 'with loads of books in their house, or who went to museums'.

The UK’s prison population has doubled in the last 30 years, with overcrowding a critical issue and associated violence on the rise. Costi, though, says the system isn’t ‘broken’: 'I would argue that it’s meant to do that. Does anybody honestly think that if we get all the most – and I use this term sensitively – damaged among us and put them all together, they’re going to get better on their own? Logically, that would never happen. And then you have bad newspapers that get wind of some kind of drama therapy happening in prison and call it a “holiday camp”.'

Last year, in an implicit riposte to this way of thinking, he joined Jeremy Deller to co-curate ‘No Comment’, the Southbank Centre’s exhibition of over 200 artworks submitted to the Koestler Awards. The pair had struck up a friendship in Venice in 2013, when Deller and the British Council invited six artists with lived experience of prison to attend the Venice Biennale. Costi was already a big Deller fan, having admired The Battle of Orgreave, a 1,000-person reenactment of a 1984 clash between police and striking miners that the Turner Prize winner staged in 2001: 'I thought that was a real mass act of group therapy. I was into how he managed to heal a social wound.

'In the same way that [Jeremy’s] interested in people that aren’t artists in the traditional sense, I’m interested in convincing people that they can make art too. One thing he said to me, which I still live by, is that when you’re working with groups of people, they will always surprise you.'

This, he explains, is why ‘Bapou’s Bubbles’ is such a collaborative show, a personal interrogation that is reliant on its disparate players and interviewees. Like The Battle of Orgreave, it’s also a testament to the healing power of creativity. 'In the system at large,' says Costi, 'including mainstream education, art is the least prioritised thing – but it’s the thing that can really save you.'

‘Bapou’s Bubbles’ takes place at Somerset House Studios on 30 and 31 January 2026. Tickets are available here

Bill and Cecilia Poon opened their first restaurant in London’s Chinatown in 1973 and went on to win a Michelin star for the Covent Garden Poon’s in 1980. Half a century later, their daughter Amy is continuing the legacy of the family name by opening her first solo restaurant. Poon has been cooking at pop-ups around town since 2018; here at Somerset House, she is putting down permanent roots in one of London’s most impressive Grade I-listed showstoppers.

Wallpaper* dines at Poon’s at Somerset House, London

The mood: homely grandeur

The idea behind the Somerset House interiors is that the two rooms – dining room and library – should feel like a home from home, though given the grand surroundings and the fact that the Poons are London restaurant royalty, it’s definitely dream home territory. Pieces from the Poon family collection – a piano, club chairs, side tables and cookbooks – sit in interiors designed by Janet McGlennon, an old friend of Poon who recently relocated from Singapore to London.

‘All the Chinese cookbooks are my own, and many of the other books on China have been gifted by friends who have lived in Hong Kong and China, so it’s all very personal,’ Poon says. ‘At the same time, there’s a bit of fun, wit and whimsy both in the decor and the food – the mural of mahjong-playing rabbits mirrors the crudités with whipped furu (fermented tofu) on the menu.’

The food: elevated Chinese home cooking

Poon’s home deliveries of pillowy won-tun dumplings stuffed with juicy pork, and jars of umami-packed crunchy chilli sauce, were cult foodie hits for lockdown Londoners. Both are on the menu here, but so too are family recipes taught by her dad, such as zha jiang noodles (thick wheat noodles topped with pork and fermented soybeans) and claypot jasmine rice with a choice of steamed toppings.

If you don’t fancy a full-on feast, small plates such as pan-fried wind-dried sausage and house pickles are served in the library (which is dog-friendly too), plus there’s a pre-theatre set menu of three dishes and a soup.

The wine list leans towards cool-climate vineyards with a focus on female and biodynamic producers, with 20 available by the glass. There are non-alcoholic cocktails, too, and single-origin whole-leaf teas, supplied by Plantation Teas in Hong Kong and sourced from family farms in China and Taiwan. Family is everything, after all.

Poon’s at Somerset House is located at Lancaster Pl, London WC2R 1LA, UK.

There’s a saying circulating on the internet that we’re never meant to see our faces as much as we do now. Our ancestors from days of old saw their blurry reflections in water. Later came the invention of the mirror, then the camera, and now there’s social media, exposing us to countless faces every day. Some are edited and distorted, pushed by algorithms telling us what’s trending and should be considered beautiful. You might have come across terms like looksmaxing or Instagram face – a specific aesthetic with full lips, cat-like eyes, high cheekbones, long lashes, and a small nose. Often racially ambiguous, borrowing beauty aspects from various ethnicities, it has a cyborgian essence, a homogenised look that can be achieved through makeup, aesthetic procedures, or good photo editing tools.

It is a distorted view which can be traced back to endless exposure to selfies, leading to a kind of Snapchat dysmorphia – a social media phenomenon fuelled by unrealistic beauty standards. We're hyper-aware in how we present ourselves.

These complex changes to beauty in the digital world are explored in Virtual Beauty, a new exhibition at Somerset House featuring the work of over 20 international artists working across photography, video, installations, and sculpture. They explore our new online reality, questioning who holds the power in defining beauty when social media filters, AI, dating apps, and biometrics are reshaping our understanding of identity, race, gender, and sexuality. The works delve into dystopian themes, nostalgia, and the surreal, shifting between past, present, and future.

'Virtual Beauty is trying to bring more questions than giving answers. We talk a lot about self-representation, thinking about the key factors that define beauty today. Not only how different technologies play a role, but also how social media and popular culture influence us on both psychological and physical levels,' says Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, who co-curated the exhibition with Mathilde Friis and Bunny Kinney.

Part of Somerset House’s 25th birthday program, the show addresses urgent issues from a unique perspective. 'If we started curating Virtual Beauty today, the results a year from now would look different because everything is constantly changing, especially with technology and how many artists are using new tools to express themselves and create work,' Kinney says.

The new generation coming of age has grown up in a world where curating virtual identities is a constant part of daily life. 'We’re noticing that young people on Instagram and TikTok are using these digital tools in new ways and redefining what beauty looks like. It doesn’t resemble the traditional idea of beauty. It’s a more radical, weird, and fantastical version, breaking away from the industry-driven standards set by a bunch of white men in suits sitting in the boardroom deciding trends,' Kinney adds.

The exhibition is divided into three sections. The first covers the last 20 years and traces the early stages of digital self-representation – on display in a glass case is a relic of modern times: a silver Samsung flip phone from 2003. It’s one of the first mobile phones with a built-in camera, paving the way for front-facing selfies. The selfie’s power is now undeniable, as Kim Kardashian can attest, having capitalised on her selfies in her 2015 book Selfish. Like other members of her family, the Kardashians have influenced contemporary beauty standards and aesthetic trends despite their scandals.

In the same room are works by ORLAN titled Omniprésence (1992). Four photographs and a video of an operatic nature document her seventh medial performance, broadcast publicly in galleries and museums, asking viewers for feedback. The plastic surgery was intended to challenge Western beauty ideals and raise questions about social taboos and unreachable aesthetic standards. It reveals a grim reality of cosmetic procedures, foreshadowing how plastic surgeons now post before-and-after images or videos of surgeries to millions on social media, even creating memes like Dr. Miami.

Qualeasha Wood’s large and striking embroidered tapestry, It’s All For U (If U Rlly Want It) (2024), blends traditional textile techniques with digital aesthetics. It questions how the identity of the Black femme body is portrayed in digital spaces, often misrepresented or erased. Challenging the commodification of the body, she includes a webcam selfie of herself to highlight the tumultuous relationship between self-expression and social media's extensive influence.

Elsewhere, AI is considered, as a tool to enhance, alter and refashion the body. Works in the collection explore how such technologies have gone mainstream, including what can be considered harmless in AI photo editing apps. One work that’s impossible to miss is Arvida Byström’s installation A Daughter Without a Mother (2022), featuring a female sex doll lying on the floor. The artist equipped the discarded doll with AI speech-generation software, modifying it to operate outside domestic and sexual contexts. While analysing how AI can reinforce the sexualisation and objectification of the female body, Byström encourages viewers to reflect on the complexities of identity and intimacy linked to human-shaped mechanisms.

The three-channel film Past Life (2021), created by Ben Cullen Williams in collaboration with visionary makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench, was made as a result of a public open call. Participants posed in certain ways and applied makeup from specific instructions, after which their images entered a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). The AI generated a series of films featuring distorted, altered faces, pushing beyond traditional beauty standards into a new, unsettling aesthetic of the human form.

What might beauty and desire might look like in a technologised future? With the rise of portable devices, gaming, streaming environments, and social media platforms, one space in the exhibition acts as a microcosm of a future digital world. More people are developing alternate personas through 3D-scanned digital bodies and modeled avatars in virtual spaces, and these advancements are transforming perceptions of beauty and identity. 'The exhibition completes a circuit between the virtual and the real world. It's an exploration about how digital culture and technology affect us in everyday life,' says Dr. Cliff Lauson, Director of Exhibitions at Somerset House.

Both profound and thought-provoking, Virtual Beauty leaves one wondering if in the the relentless pursuit of beauty, we are more vulnerable online than ever before.

Virtual Beauty is at Somerset House until 28 September

Paper Clouds, Kengo Kuma’s installation for the London Design Biennale 2025, floats through the grand geometric space of the Nelson Stair at Somerset House as if someone had scattered wafers from the top step. Around 70 panels of washi paper are suspended by gold thread and cascade around the interlocking stone steps, which were designed by Sir William Chambers in 1790. The combination of Japanese lightness and craft with classical solidity and verticality is pleasing for Kuma, who says that ‘dialogue between East and West’ is the central theme of the work.

The installation is a collaboration between London-based Clare Farrow Studio and Sekisui House – Kuma Lab, the Tokyo University research department founded by Kuma in 2009. In 2020, at the official retirement age of 65, Kuma handed over to co-director Toshiki Hirano, a Kobe-born architect who specialises in post-digital architecture. This is Hirano’s third collaboration with Farrow in London, following Bamboo Ring in the V&A Courtyard in 2019 and Reinventing Texture at the 2021 London Design Biennale.

Step inside Kengo Kuma’s ‘Paper Clouds’

Described as a ‘poem’, Paper Clouds is deceptively light in meaning. Its design refers to the Japanese notion of Suyari-Gasumi – the trailing mist that is depicted in traditional paintings – but its purpose has weight: to further ongoing research into the use of washi paper in construction.

In order to produce elements that would combine strength and lightness, Hirano worked on a new technique using the same kōzo plant fibres as a traditional washi paper. Instead of creating a slurry that is drained on a screen, he made a thick paste, which he trowelled over a series of CNC-cut moulds. Using his fingers, he pressed the paste into a lattice texture that would produce structural stiffness. Once dry, each ‘wafer’ was peeled away from the mould, leaving a shallow-bowl shape with minimal weight and maximum strength.

Over time, Kuma and Hirano hope that the research may result in permanent buildings and they are working on coatings for the paper that could allow it to be used outdoors. The next step for Hirano will be to use the washi paste for 3D printing.

Small experimental projects continue to be important for Kengo Kuma & Associates (KKAA) even though the practice is prolific, with more than 400 staff working on projects in 50 countries. Kuma somehow manages to combine a pragmatic way of working with clients, who, he says, are usually ‘very safe and only wish to repeat the previous design’, with smaller projects that allow him to introduce a challenge or to test out a new material.

A recent example is the CS Somme café in the southern Japanese prefecture of Fukuoka, completed earlier this year, which combines an arched steel truss for earthquake resistance with a delicate fabric mesh for shading. Lightness and ethereality are also the themes of a tent structure in the West Bund of Shanghai, completed in 2023. KKAA wrapped two ventilation towers by manually winding lightweight, 2mm aluminium wire in spirals onto a base of stainless-steel cables.

Elsewhere in Shanghai, KKAA is working at a completely different scale with very different materials. At the former Jiangnan Shipyard on the Huangpu River, construction has started on a major new museum to document and celebrate the history of industry in Shanghai. Located on the site where steel was first produced in China in 1891, the building will be made from steel and aluminium, a significant break from Kuma’s recent work, with his recent work celebrating craft and nature.

Paper Clouds is at Somerset House as part of the London Design Biennale, until 29 June 2025.

kkaa.co.jp

The London Design Biennale has returned to Somerset House in the UK capital, with a host of exhibits on show to the public until 29 June. With multidisciplinary designer Dr. Samuel Ross MBE as the artistic director, this year’s event adopts the theme ‘Surface Reflections’, prompting participants and visitors to look both inward and outward in the endeavour to imagine a better future through design.

Now in its fifth edition, the biennale continues to present itself as a vehicle through which to explore how design can engage with and respond to some of the world’s greatest challenges. This is achieved through a number of ‘pavilions’ – a sequence of discrete exhibits within the large Somerset House venue.

These pavilions (35 this year) are presented not only by nations – including countries from Japan to Argentina – but also by organisations, cities, regions, individuals and transnational collectives, reshaping the traditional idea of how creativity is organised and classified at an international biennale.

Accompanying the exhibition is the Global Design Forum (10–12 June), a three-day series of events and talks from figures including architect Kengo Kuma, economist Mariana Mazzucato and curator and cultural historian Gus Casely-Hayford, exploring the ‘invisible forces’ shaping design.

Ross, the founder of fashion label A-COLD-WALL* and design firm SR_A SR_A, is driven by an optimism for how design can play an active role in delivering social and environmental good. He is dedicated to platforming underrepresented or overlooked voices – both at the biennale, as is demonstrated by multiple examples of pavilions centring the work of Indigenous communities, and through the Black British Artists Grants programme he established in 2020.

Regular visitors to the London Design Biennale might be surprised to see no courtyard installation this year in Somerset House’s grand entrance space, and the event is smaller than past iterations - 35 pavilions compared with 47 in the 2023 biennale. This is perhaps a reflection of the challenges inherent in producing and transporting design work in an increasingly tumultuous world.

Ross explains that the event is a ‘contemplation of the times we’re in’, and that sense of thoughtful consideration underpins all the exhibits, though sometimes at the expense of tangible takeaways.

While there may not necessarily be clear calls to action, the biennale focuses on and displays a pluralism that has its own significant value. As London Design Biennale director Victoria Broackes said at the opening: ‘The act of coming together every two years to share ideas and cultures feels important.’

At this year’s event, there are many stories to explore, many voices to be heard, and it is up to the visitor to reflect – and choose what resonates. Here are some highlights that resonated with us.

Chile

Chile is one of the world's largest exporters of lithium and copper – minerals that have vital in the expansion of our digital world. As such, the country’s natural landscapes have been fundamentally reshaped through the forces of extraction, which have in turn affected the lives and traditional practices of communities. The Chile pavilion delves into this reality, showcasing a film alongside a material display. Discarded rock, salt and tailings – waste generated by the mineral mining industries – shed light on the environmental impacts of digital economy-driven human practices, while a selection of composite rock produced by T2CM (an initiative from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile) shows how some of this waste can be integrated into new building materials.

Oman

A jury of design professionals selected three medal winning-pavilions at this year’s biennale, and Oman won the ‘Design’ medal, artfully blending an immersive design installation with a thought-provoking topic. Visitors enter a corridor bathed in moody blue and yellow lighting, where structures resembling shelving units hold transparent moulds of ceramic vessels. A meditation on storage, culture and what we choose to value in changing societies, the installation uses the aesthetics of data centres – corridors of illuminated grids – to represent the ancient Omani objects designed to hold water and food. We may now store data the way we once stored sustenance – but what is lost in the process?

Nigeria

Like the Omani pavilion, the Nigerian pavilion melds ideas of digital technology with traditional manual craft, but this time through a place-specific lens. Focused on the region of Lejja, a community of 33 villages in southeastern Nigeria thought to be the oldest iron-ore smelting site in the world, the curators undertook in-depth research to map clusters of makers, understand the cultural objects that are collectively crafted there and chart the heritage of material culture. Alongside this mapping and research, the pavilion presents an interactive display where through the collective efforts of participants – holding objects and tapping hands – digital renderings of new, collaboratively generated object designs are visualised on a screen instantaneously.

Northumbria University and UCL

This is one of the biennale pavilions that moves beyond meditation to tangible solutions, bringing together research from Northumbria University and University College London (UCL) to explore the role that bacteria and other living material can play in sustainable architecture. Can structures be grown rather than built? Prototypes on display include bacterial-produced cement, the integration of mycelium (the root-like structure of a fungus) into timber architecture, and a bioactive ceramic wall supporting bacteria that is beneficial for building occupants.

Poland

Poland’s pavilion won the biennale’s ‘Theme’ medal, for its interpretation of Ross’s ‘Surface Reflections’ prompt, which feels apt: the exhibit uses the medium of surfaces to reflect on deeper issues. A series of wooden panels carved with patterns of different symbols – a decorative and craft-driven installation in itself – takes on new depth when decoded. Each symbol represents a period of time, and through repetition on a panel they amount to the time spent waiting in different situations, showing how the act of waiting can reflect social inequality. One panel represents a Polish farmer waiting for rain during a drought (25,200 minutes), while another represents the time it takes for a migrant from outside the EU to get a residency permit (131,400 minutes).

Malta

Malta’s pavilion won the overall London Design Biennale medal for most outstanding contribution. As Wallpaper* recently explored, the project proposes large-scale limestone spheres as monuments to life and death through the integration of cremated human remains. It is both sombre and beautiful, terrifying and serene – a physical manifestation of the sublime.

London’s biggest and best-loved photography fair is turning 10. To mark its anniversary, the curators behind Photo London have united a global array of galleries and publishers – many of which have shown since its first iteration, others for the first time – under the stately neoclassical roof of Somerset House for its most special programme yet (14–18 May 2025).

The jewel in the crown of these celebrations will unfold across the Embankment East and West Galleries – an exhibition meditating on London life in all its various guises, curated by critic and author Francis Hodgson. Bringing together 30 renowned photographers who have forged their careers in the city, the show includes contributions from greats of the medium like David Bailey and James Barnor, fashion favourites Miles Aldridge and Nigel Shafran, and documentary pioneers Hannah Starkey and Mary McCartney, to name a few.

Striking notes of both personal and collective resonance, the exhibition roves freely through decades and across London’s sprawl of neighbourhoods. There’s late-night love on dancefloors and gentle introspection at inner-city mosques; rebellious 1990s east London teens and 1960s Lewisham hospital workers; reflections on the aftermath of Grenfell and epic fantasies enacted on the River Thames. Together, these perspectives reveal London to be a city like no other – a place of unique freedom and struggle, where history and the new constantly collide.

Seven exhibited photographers tell us the story behind their portraits of the city

Hannah Starkey

'I’ve lived in London since 1995, when I moved from a BA in Edinburgh to study postgrad at the Royal College of Art’s Photography department. Since then, it has been a lucky city for me, offering a continuous flow of inspiration. While the images I have on display are of women, in a way it is London that’s my muse. Using Virginia Woolf’s term, I think of myself as a street hunter, forever chasing the narrative in the rhythms of everyday life. My timeline in the city and my consistency in subject matter mean I am constantly looking at the experience of being female at different stages of life – student, young mother, mother of teen daughters. I live in Hackney, London Fields, and have done so for 20 years. It’s a place that people flock to from all parts of the world, where everyone is free to be themselves. I love it here. If ever I have a creative block, I just go for a walk.'

Nick Turpin

'I shot this series between 2015 and 2017 over three winters in Elephant and Castle. They're commuters returning from the financial district to places like Tooting, East Dulwich and Clapham. I guess what I loved about them was that it felt like I was seeing these people in their natural state. London is such a huge city – of like eight and a half million people, or whatever it is – and it's a very anonymous place. People leave work, where you have acquaintance with all your colleagues, and head home to their flatmates or family. I was fascinated by this journey – a sort of no man's land where you can read, nod off against the window, or look at your phone. You can just be. The windows were often covered in rain and condensation, showing just the presence of a person behind the glass. I realised that if I could find a way of photographing just that – removing the bus itself – I could make something very beautiful and painterly. In street photography, your task is really to find something extraordinary in the everyday.'

Mary McCartney

'I had a casual birthday party to celebrate turning 26 in West London, in the room above the pub Paradise on Kensal Green. I love London pubs as they have so much history, each with its own special character. This venue for my birthday party had space for a DJ and dancing, and the theme was to wear something red. Looking around the room, these two caught my eye. I noticed how they looked comfortable, draped together in a natural way. She was stylish in her red top with a cardigan over her shoulders and a pair of red heels, her bag on her lap. They were both in their own world, looking at a message or something on her phone. There was just something I loved about how they were sitting to the side of the dance floor – the décor looking like it could do with a refresh, and at the same time adding to the character of the moment.'

Mitra Tabrizian

'This work was made in 2010, initially as a critique of the representation of the Muslim community as a ‘threat’. It focuses on the reality of the everyday and the ‘ordinary’. Some of the mosques in this project have been active in teaching and promoting more harmonious aspects of Islam, and openly condemning ‘Jihad’. I shot this on a 4x5 camera; these are analogue photographs printed directly from the negatives. The work was selected by Francis Hodgson, curator of London Lives. Now, with the widespread rise of Islamophobia, the current crisis in the Middle East, and the broader fear of migration, the selection of this particular work feels especially apt, significant – even courageous.'

Miles Aldridge

'My portrait of Cara Delevingne was shot in The Victory, a pub on Vyner Street in East London. I had created a series of preparatory drawings and spent a weekend with my assistant scouting pubs across East London and the Isle of Dogs until we found the perfect setting. The landlady agreed to rent the pub for the shoot, with the only condition being that one of her regulars couldn’t be turned away. The taps were made available for props, and many drinks were consumed by the crew over the course of the day. The image was inspired by my years living in East London in the 1980s, when pubs often featured cabaret singers or strippers and formed a unique social fabric. Cara brought the right energy to embody that atmosphere. I chose it for the London Lives exhibition because it speaks to the theatricality and rawness of London’s social spaces – the eccentric beauty of its everyday rituals.'

Alys Tomlinson

'During the pandemic, I was set to go to Italy to work on a project and couldn't go, which sparked this whole idea of the ‘lost summer’. I decided to photograph teenagers at this pivotal moment in their lives when everything had been taken away from them. Their exams had been cancelled, they couldn't go to school, and they weren't allowed to socialise with each other. Even though it's an American export, prom has become a big event culturally at schools in the UK, so I had this idea to shoot teens in their domestic settings in what they would have worn. This image is of a boy called Samuel, who lived in a flat in Stoke Newington. I shot him in the car park outside his place. He came down in this amazing white jacket and big bow tie, which actually belonged to his dad. I love this shot because there’s something about his gaze that’s both defiant and resilient. All the portraits were within walking distance from where I live in Highbury. The project made me more observant of life around me, opening up my eyes to the rich tapestry of life in my neighbourhood. I suppose it really made me realise how special living in London can be.'

Julia Fullerton-Batten

'Standing in the shadow of Tower Bridge, you might not realise that in the 18th century the area was once a popular bathing spot. Tower Beach, as it was called then, was used for paddling, sunbathing and swimming, but the poor water quality forced its closure in 1971. Drawing all classes of society, it was a particular hotspot for women and their children escaping the claustrophobia of crowded dwellings in central and East London. I chose to recreate the 1950s era, photographing women and children in vintage one-piece swimwear and period dresses, with the men going about their daily business against the iconic background of the Thames and Tower Bridge. The improved quality of water in the Thames may soon mean bathing will be possible again.'

Photo London is from 15 - 18 May

photolondon.org

Makerversity is celebrating ten years as a Somerset House resident with an exhibition showcasing its latest projects at the London gallery. Curated by co-founder Paul Smyth, 'Makerversity: designing for the real world' (until 4 February 2024) exhibits engineering and design innovations from the studio, featuring award-winning successes, ongoing research, and a diverse collection of creative voices. 

Featuring work reaching from Afro-revivalist furniture by Richard Aina, to fabrics grown using bacteria from kombucha tea by group Modern Synthesis, the current collection of projects is both aspirational and socially conscious – reflecting the ethos of the studio at large. 

Makerversity: ten years of aspirational and socially conscious design

Makerversity was founded in 2013, with a foundational belief in democratising creativity. Smyth maintains that the design world could be introduced to a plethora of new creatives and ideas if the hurdles that stunt early projects could be removed. Building off early inspirations, like educator and designer Victor Papanek, the community formed at Makerversity encourages a pursuit of utility in all its work; hoping to solve social and ecological problems with each new idea. However, despite the grand scale of its designers’ ambitions, accessibility is at the forefront of the studio’s practice.

The anniversary exhibition captures a buoyant playfulness in the early stages of design, showcasing how various works begin with humble prototypes before scaling up, and how exceptional ideas can come from unexpected places. Take the ‘Polyfloss Machine’, a recycling device, used to spin waste materials into usable plastics through a process reminiscent of carnival candy-floss makers. Likewise, The Tyre Collective has designed a module to attach behind car wheels to collect tyre debris, the cause of 50 per cent of all micro-plastic pollution in Europe, through static electricity. The idea was born from watching rubber particles stick to balloons once they were charged with electrostatic.

Other standout projects are by Amphico, designers of a waterproof, recyclable and breathable fabric developed from founder Jun Kamei’s prototype of a 3D-printed underwater lung. Inspired by water-diving insects and Kamei’s personal experience of a Japanese tsunami, the material extracts oxygen from surrounding water, making it ideal for sporting garments. Eventually, he believes it may even allow humans to breathe underwater. 

Meanwhile, low-tech but no less revolutionary, design collective El Warcha has its own space at the show, promoting hands-on education and civic action through the creation of temporary furniture. Visually striking, the many chairs, shelving and tables on display are comprised of various broomsticks and wooden planks bound together using plastic cable ties, demonstrating how creativity and making can be grasped by everyone with simple materials.

The Makerversity anniversary show is a marvellous example of community-driven design, and a straightforward display of creative ambition. Boasting an elegant philosophy, inspired projects, and a laudable catalogue of fresh ideas, it’s sure to attract those excited by innovative work and forward-thinking engineering.

'Makerversity: designing for the real world' is on view until 4 February 2024

Somerset House
Strand
London WC2R 1LA

makerversity.org