Open for business until 19 March, Plinth is an innovative new retail-cum-gallery space located in Bloomsbury.
Set within the elegant confines of 44 Great Russell Street – a listed 18th century Georgian building opposite the British Museum – the initiative was conceived by co-founders Chloe Grimshaw and Paul Franklin as a means of presenting a carefully curated selection of design, homeware, original work and new editions by a range of artists and makers.
Plinth's offering sees affordable products juxtaposed with design classics and work by celebrated artists, many of which are designed for a domestic setting; Yinka Shonibare's intricately illustrated crockery, Julian Opie's 'Sheep' blanket and a candle – 'redolent of libraries and woodsmoke' – by Perfumer H's Lyn Harris sit alongside silk scarves by the lauded Chinese abstract artist Ding Yi and a striking monochromatic umbrella by art-focussed fashion design Duro Olowu.
Those products represent a neat marrying of form and function, but more abstract, decorative and conceptual limited edition pieces are also in abundance; from Richard Wilson's ceramic 'Still Life Jug', Liliane Lijn's technicolour polyester resin 'Liquid Koan' and a weighty, 14cm high brass tooth by David Shrigley (the work, he states, 'could be used for cracking nuts' with).
If the superlative selection of wares wasn't enough, Grimshaw and Franklin have also painstakingly filled the space with candles, flowers – supplied by F.Bombe – and vintage furniture by the likes of Arne Jacobsen and Alvar Aalto.
The pop-up's gallery – a double height space in the property's courtyard – will host talks by artists and curators such as Wilson, Richard Deacon, Nicholas Grimshaw and Dr Gilda Williams (which will be open to the public and subsequently available to view online), as well as workshops with makers such as Nathalie de Leval and site-specific works by contemporary artists including Susan Collis – who will be in residence on the third floor in a collaboration between Plinth and Birmingham's Ikon gallery – and Jacques Nimki, who will install 'invisible' botanical vinyl designs across the space's ceilings and walls.
'Plinth is not only about providing a new platform for unique artist-designed products and limited editions,' say the founders of the initiave. 'It’s a project centered on a spirit of openness, and creating a means by which a wider audience can access and own contemporary art.'
The pop-up’s offering sees affordable products juxtaposed with design classics and work by celebrated artists, many of which are designed for a domestic setting
Grimshaw and Franklin have painstakingly filled the space with candles, flowers – supplied by F.Bombe – and vintage furniture by the likes of Arne Jacobsen and Alvar Aalto
The pop-up is spread across three full floors of the listed 18th century Georgian building
Plinth’s offering sees affordable products juxtaposed with design classics and work by celebrated artists, many of which are designed for for a domestic setting – but more abstract, decorative and conceptual limited edition pieces are also in abundance. Pictured: ‘Liquid Koan’, by Liliane Lijn, 2003
These include Richard Wilson’s ceramic ’Still Life Jug’ and a weighty, 14cm high brass tooth by David Shrigley. Pictured left: ’Brass Tooth’, by David Shrigley, 2009. Right: ’Still Life Jug’, by Richard Wilson, 2015
Pictured left: ‘Liquid Koan’, by Liliane Lijn, 2003. Right: ‘Love and Peace’, by Beatriz Milhazes, 2015
Plinth founders Paul Franklin and Chloe Grimshaw
INFORMATION
For more information, visit Plinth’s website
ADDRESS
Plinth
44 Great Russell Street
London, WC1B 3PA
-
The Stuff That Surrounds, episode three: Inside the home of architect Glenn SestigIn The Stuff That Surrounds, Wallpaper* explores a life through objects. This episode, we’re invited inside an architectural gem – just what you'd expect from one of the most distinctive voices in the field today
-
Germane Barnes just transformed a humble Indiana parking garage into an enormous sub-woofer systemWith Joy Riding, the Miami-based designer’s installation at Exhibit Columbus, Barnes celebrates togetherness by evoking Black car culture
-
The best Ruth Asawa exhibition is actually on the streets of San FranciscoThe artist, now the subject of a major retrospective at SFMOMA, designed many public sculptures scattered across the Bay Area – you just have to know where to look
-
Out of office: the Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the weekThe Wallpaper* team immersed themselves in culture this week, attending theatre, music and art performances and exhibitions at some of London’s most esteemed establishments. Along the way, we may have discovered the city's best salad…
-
Out of office: the Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the weekIt’s been another week of Wallpaper* being first through the door – visiting, sampling and reporting back on the freshest in art, design, beauty and more. Highlights included a new rental development, skincare residency and Edinburgh hotel…
-
Get the picture? A new exhibition explores the beautiful simplicity of Japanese pictogramsThe simple, minimalist forms of a pictogram are uniquely Japanese, as new exhibition 'Pictograms: Iconic Japanese Designs' illustrates
-
From Snapchat dysmorphia to looksmaxing, have digital beauty standards made us lose sight of what's real, asks a new exhibitionAI, social media and the ease with which we can tweak our face mean we're heading towards a dystopian beauty future, argues 'Virtual Beauty' at Somerset House
-
Take a rare peek inside eighties London's most famous clubFrom George Michael to Boy George, photographer David Koppel captured a who's who of celerities at Eighties nightclub Limelight
-
Thirty-five years after its creation, Lynn Hershman Leeson’s seminal video is as poignant as everLynn Hershman Leeson’s 'Desire Inc', at 243 Luz in Margate, blurs the boundaries between art and reality
-
Shop the gloriously mad inner workings of Gary Card’s brain in London’s SohoSet designer and artist Gary Card has taken over London's Plaster Store – expect chaos and some really good accessories
-
Meet the New York-based artists destabilising the boundaries of societyA new show in London presents seven young New York-based artists who are pushing against the borders between refined aesthetics and primal materiality
