Design Talks

Observations on design

Lee Ufan’s Relatum – Stage opens at Serpentine Galleries

Posted on February 6, 2018 by Nargess

Once-upon-a-time ‘Rock on Top of Another Rock’ lived in Kensington Gardens Hyde Park outside the Serpentine Galleries. The public sculpture by Swiss artist Fischli & Weiss stayed here until a few years ago, its public life prolonged for its popularity, and it made me smile every time I walked, jogged, or ran past it. It was so simple and so perfect for this magical little corner of London. As seasons changed so did these seemingly hovering Rocks – their mood, their light, their character. One day as I ran past, the two rocks has gone leaving a sad empty space. I changed my running route.

Today I was so excited to see South Korean artist Lee Ufan’s ‘Relatum – Stage’ which went live this morning and will be here until July. It recalls Fischli & Weiss’s work and is a nod to the neolithic monuments in the British countryside – Stonehenge etc. Ufan’s minimalist work uses only two materials – steel and stone – as is characteristic of the Japanese avant-garde Mono-ha group of which he was one of the main proponents in the 1960s. Meaning ‘object school’, the group rejected Western notions of representation, instead focusing on the relationships between materials and perceptions.

Here in Hyde Park the two cold, angled, mirrored, steel sheets and tactile Welsh stones together reflect and blend in with the surroundings. In focusing on the precise conceptual and spatial juxtaposition of the natural and industrial materials, Ufan seeks to find a balance that heightens the moment of encounter, allowing us to see ‘the world as it is,’ he says. ‘The highest level of expression is not to create something from nothing, but rather to nudge something that already exists so that the world shows up more vividly.’

Relatum – Stage will be at the Serpentine Galleries, Kensington Gardens until 29 July.
Photographs © Lee Ufan, Photograph © Ian Gavan/Getty Images.

Nargess Banks

Read my interview with the Serpentine Galleries chief executive Yana Peel here.

Exploring the dark, cute and magical world of Yuko Higuchi

Posted on September 4, 2017 by Nargess

‘Magical Colouring Museum’ is a beautifully-illustrated picture book of sorts – cute, dark, surreal, funny, frightening at times. ‘Cats and Other Creatures’ features 24 stand-alone illustrations. Published by Laurence King, together they explore the imaginative world of the celebrated, cult Tokyo artist Yuko Higuchi.

Higuchi is the voice behind the kawaii trend, sketching whimsical illustrations of anthropomorphised characters that fuse cute picture-book style illustrations with dark and surreal elements. In her imaginative universe, cats look like ogres and foxes transform into astronauts. So, I caught up with the artist to see what inspires her wonderfully magical and at times dark world.

Your characters are at once cute and dark. What inspires you?

I can’t pin-point what would be considered cute and what would be dark in my artwork. But, I can tell you that I draw what I love (creatures, etc.) spontaneously.

What attracts you to kawaii?

I am not conscious of creating things that are kawaii. I think that the more intentionally you seek out kawaii, the more intentional your artwork becomes. And in the end, it will just look deliberate or calculated. I don’t have a high opinion on these kinds of kawaii.

Do you base your characters on reality?

Not all of them. I usually just draw as ideas pop into my head, much like how children scribble. Some of my drawings are imaginary characters, and in some cases I base those characters on reality. But, I also add a touch of my imagination to them when I draw.

And the surreal storylines, are these based on real or imaginary events?

I draw from things that pop up in my head. Sometimes an actual event can ignite my storyline, but often my imagination takes over and the story develops as I draw.

What medium do you work in?

I use pens, pencils, hemp paper and watercolours.

Your books can be appreciated by both children and adults. Who do you have in mind when creating?

When I create a book, I don’t have any target age range. Although, honestly, I feel that more adults like my books than children.

Nargess Banks

Interview Yana Peel: Serpentine Gallery CEO discusses arts and ideas

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Nargess

The Serpentine Galleries hold a unique position. They are nestled in Kensington Gardens in London’s glorious Hyde Park. They occupy discreet spaces and you may not even notice them walking by. Yet the two boutique galleries – Serpentine and Sackler – have held some of the most exciting exhibitions in the city. Then there is the annual commission for the Serpentine Gallery pavilions – one of the most anticipated events in the architecture calendar since its launch in 2000 showing work by Zaha Hadid, Frank Ghery, Bjarke Ingels and now Diebedo Francis Kéré.

Yana Peel became chief executive of the organisation over a year ago when she took over the position from its founder Julia Peyton-Jones. She has an extraordinary record of service to the arts, co-founding the contemporary art fund Outset, co-chairing the public debate forum Intelligence Squared Group; she sits on many arts advisory boards, and still appears to have time to write children’s books.

Peel also brings a very different approach to the Serpentine programme which I discovered when I met with her in March for an article for Weatherbys Private Bank Magazine. Below is an edited version of our interview.

Nargess Banks: You’ve spoken passionately about making exciting art and ideas available to a broad audience, and there is something egalitarian about the Serpentine Galleries being accessible and free, which also relates to your background at Outset and art philanthropy.

Yana Peel: I am incredibly excited about this open landscape for art and ideas. What we are trying to do is lure in the visitor who would normally not come in, for instance with the Pavilion, whether it’s the wireless access in terms of the mobile app, or virtual reality with Zaha Hadid. It is about creating programmes around art, architecture, fashion and music. It is about collapsing these universes and being a hub for these kinds of multiple discussions which are so relevant in the world today.

NB: How do you see the Serpentine expanding on its mission to bring these visions to an even wider audience?

YP: Well, as with all things we do at the Serpentine, it starts with the art and the artists we work with. Take our 2017 Summer season – we are excited to present Grayson Perry, the first solo UK show of the American filmmaker and artist Arthur Jafa, and our Summer Pavilion by architect Diebedo Francis Kéré.

As you can tell by the show’s title ‘Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!’, Grayson addresses front on the question of popularity and populism – who comes to an art gallery and why. AJ is someone with a cult reputation for work with Spike Lee, Stanley Kubrick and Solange Knowles. Here he reinvents the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, taking his message right across London with a series of interventions in unexpected places. And Kéré is a marvel, and perhaps the nicest man you will ever meet, with community at the very heart of his practice. All these artists are excited by the opportunities the Serpentine presents and we’re excited to work with them. We are a small gallery in terms of our footprint, but with a local, national and international reach.

NB: I’ve read you admire creatives with disruptive ideas, a vision you share with the artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist. Given our current political climate, how crucial is the role of galleries like the Serpentine to provoke open debates, explore how the arts can help shape society, agitate even?

LP: Essential! And it is the artists who are best place to do this. That’s why everything we do is artist led. The late John Latham (who exhibited at the Serpentine at the time of our interview) believed powerfully in the artist’s role in society. His Artist Placement Group put artists in industry long before the concept of residency became cool. At Sackler, we showed four contemporary artists picking up this radical mantle.

NB: The younger generation consumes art in different ways, perhaps in a less linear fashion. How do you see the organisation responding going forward?

LP: It is a given that we must be where they are. This mean across all social media platforms, those we know and those we don’t yet know about. Technology is a key focus for me, and something Hans Ulrich and I work closely on with our curator of digital. How can we use technology to give bigger and wider audiences access to our art? More importantly, we need to make sure we are listening as well as talking. It has to be a dialogue, always. Whether that is Hans Ulrich’s 89+ project (co-founded by Simon Castets), our educational outreach on the Edgware Road, or our fantastic Future Contemporaries fundraising board. To be meaningful, the dialogue must reach across all areas of the organisation.

NB: Events such as the summer marathons, although open to all, can be intimidating for some. How can they be made to be more inclusive?

YP: The Marathon is an annual joy, and last year’s Miracle Marathon was our best yet. The second day was held just off Brick Lane, mixing our West London magic with East London cool. The atmosphere was fantastic and the audience definitely younger than ever. We also broadcast the entire event on the Serpentine Radio, opening it up to a whole new audience, giving people the chance to engage with the material on their own terms.

NB: The annual Serpentine Pavilion commission has become one of the most respected events in the architecture calendar. How do you see this project pushing the envelope even further?

LP: (The 2017 Pavilion winner) Francis Kéré’s work is so exciting and a way of bringing his village of Gando, Burkino Faso into Kensington Gardens. The Pavilion has such a history and Hans Ulrich and I, in making our first joint selection this year, were so mindful of that. Equally, we did want to push things forward. Kéré’s practice is rooted in community and sustainability. He is also the most wonderful storyteller. His design, based on a tree which is the focal meeting point in his hometown on Gando, is the inspiration for a new piece of programming that will bring even wider audiences in to what we call an open landscape of art and ideas.

Watch this space as we are going to bring in different groups. We’re looking at how we can use our privileged position, use our platform to bring in dissenting voices. Always better to debate a question than to answer…

Nargess Banks

‘Grayson Perry: Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!’ and Arthur Jafa ‘A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions’ are on at the Serpentine and Sackler galleries until 10 September. Francis Kéré’s Serpentine Pavilion will be at Kensington Gardens until 8 October.

Switch House opens at Tate Modern

Posted on June 17, 2016 by Nargess

This week saw the opening of London’s latest gallery dedicated to the display, screening and performance of contemporary art. Switch House at the Tate Modern is designed by Swiss architect Herzog & de Meuron, and is the result of a twelve-year scheme. The £260m extension to Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s former Bankside power station is the largest cultural project in London since the British Library was opened in 1998.

Switch House is big, huge on this media unveiling day – visitors are made almost invisible by the sheer scale of this twisting and distorted, somewhat awkward, textured pyramid, clad in perforated lattice of brick and reaching high up into the sky. Inside is visually striking too, with its contrast of sensuous swirling concrete and sharp defined angles and edges. The robustness of the concrete used inside is softened by light elements entering through the perforated exterior brickwork. We recommend walking the ten floors to the viewing gallery – the journey itself is part of the charm as the staircase alters in form and proportion with the open platform offering panoramic views over London’s architectural past, present and future.

‘You don’t build museums for tomorrow, you build them for generations,’ said Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota at the inauguration. ‘This is going to be here for decades.’ He feels the aim of the gallery is to be local as well as global, and to forge relationships with communities here and worldwide. Tate Modern is a phenomenal success – with some five million annual visitors, it is the most visited modern art gallery in the world and Switch House will no doubt add to visitor numbers.

In an emotive speech that followed, new London Mayor Sadiq Khan pledged to create affordable artist studios throughout the city, clearly grasping the value this soft power offers London and the UK. ‘I’m putting culture at the very core of my policies, up there alongside housing,’ he followed. Khan said the gallery will inspire new audiences and add to London’s cultural pull. ‘I want to apply the Tate Modern thinking to how I approach my plans.’ Compelling words, and it will be interesting to see if he can achieve this.

Herzog & de Meuron’s intriguing space offers unexpected opportunities to exhibit art in new ways and for visitors to engage with art in a less formal manner with plenty of benches and quite spaces to hang out. ‘The horizontal configuration of the classical galleries in the Boiler House is now enhanced with the vertical boulevard of the new extension,’ explains Pierre de Meuron, ‘creating a kind of architectural topography through the building that will offer unexpected opportunities for both artists and curators to present art outside the official display areas of the gallery.’

This works well for Frances Morris, director of Tate Modern, who is keen to continue her mission in transforming the gallery’s collection to embrace other mediums – film and performance – and widen the international and gender representation. ‘I am delighted to now have the space to show this broader story of modern and contemporary art to the public for free.’

There is criticism amongst some circles that institutions like Tate Modern are turning art exhibitions into spectacles, more concerned with attracting numbers with sensationalist shows rather than telling the story of art. Yet perhaps there is space for all kinds of creative interpretations and ventures. Tate Modern and Switch House are free public spaces designed to be inviting, choreographed to engage a wider public rather than a small elite, art lovers who frequent other galleries. This in itself is to be applauded.

Much of the success of the new Tate will be because of the building, the design, the architecture, the space. And London’s latest cathedral of culture certainly offers visual and visceral impact.

Nargess Banks

Switch House opened to the public today and will stay open until 10pm on certain night.

Shubbak and creativity in the Arab world

Posted on July 29, 2015 by Nargess

Can the arts be harnessed to forge new identities for nations and at the same time open up dialogue on race, identity and religion? This, the power of creativity, was at the heart of Dubai Next, an interesting debate held at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London.

Hosted by the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority and to coincide with Shubbak, the biennial festival of contemporary Arab culture in London, the initiative is reviewing the role of the arts in forming nationhood. The focus of the discussion here was on ‘creativity and city culture’, looking at the country’s ambition to be a creative global hub through building a cultural infrastructure.

Given Dubai’s unique geographical location in the Middle East, it will be interesting to see how a dialogue with neighbouring countries will impact on the region as a whole.

The synergies between art and politics are fascinating and increasingly relevant. In a recent interview, Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama expressed his mission to utilise creativity to exercise an influence on politics. Rama, a fascinating man and himself an artist, has been working with an international group of contemporary artists to do just that in another unlikely setting.

Rama noted that if dictators have historically controlled art, then there must be something in it that is threatening so why not unleash it and see what happens.

Nothing can change the world quite like art. And it makes complete sense to employ the experimental and exploratory language of contemporary art so as to make some sense of the contemporary world.

It is true that artists can think in a different way, perhaps in a less linear way than politicians and so the real world will benefit enormously from being exposed to it.

I like to compare it to being upside-down – your vision is completely altered in an inversion. Turn on your head outdoors and witness a familiar landscape transform into something utterly new, unique and magical. It changes your perception, your outlook on life.

Ultimately what Dubai Next is rightfully initiating is the importance of investing in spaces where culture, politics and art can happen naturally – feed off each other and learn from one another.

Shubbak Festival highlights

Politics was very much at the heart of Shubbak’s main visual arts programme In-Situ. Here Another Day Lost, by UK-based artist Issam Kourbaj, saw installations appear across five sites to reflect the geographic pattern of Syrian refugees. Made of waste materials, medicine packaging and discarded books, the camps were encircled with a fence of some 1,500 used matches, each match representing a day lost since the beginning of the country’s uprising.

Elsewhere, London’s urban landscape became the backdrop for mural by celebrated French-Tunisian calligraffiti artist eL Seed – his large-scale murals blend Arab calligraphy with graffiti techniques, fusing poetry and language with dramatic design to create large-scale work.

Dubai-based Khalid Shafar showed Nomad, an architectural re-interpretation of the traditional Gulf house Arish, inviting visitors to sit, meet, converse, study and relax.

Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist Alia Farid presented an installation created for London’s largely Arab inhabited Edgware Road. Designed for public use, the ‘urban furniture’ presented a series of performances including the Stage for Any Revolution, commissioned by the Serpentine Galleries, British Council and Shubbak.

The venue also saw the launch of a new publication Continuous City: Mapping Arab London, a collaboration between Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and the Edgware Road Project at the Serpentine Galleries to map London through its historical and contemporary Arab communities.

Finally, based on improvised carts used by street merchants in Morocco, Younes Baba-Ali’s Carroussa Sonore vehicle offered a selection of sound works from Arab and international artists, and travelled from the V&A to Portobello Road and the World End Estate.

Nargess Banks