Barbican Gallery presents Isamu Noguchi: artists, designer, philosopher

Isamu Noguchi, Peru, 1983. Photo Michio Noguchi, Noguchi Museum Archives © INFGM / ARS – DACS

‘I’m interested in space and the movement of people and objects within space. There is a certain magic to it. It is as if you are inventing an order of things. I believe there is a secret relationship between space, objects and perceptible and imperceptible movements. Every artist working in this field tries to interpret that relationship in his or her own way. It is the composition and balance of those elements that give rise to the essence of drama and – why not? – the essence of life itself.’ These are the words of Isamu Noguchi, one of the most lyrical artists of the last century.

Known today mostly for his much-copied 1944 Coffee Table (an early edition of which sits here before me) and Akari paper lights, Noguchi tirelessly pushed the boundaries of art and sculpture. Working across almost seven decades and with a multitude of materials and mediums, his carved stones, stage sets, paper lanterns, portrait busts, mobiles, and playgrounds were collectively designed to be tools for understanding our place in the cosmos, and our relationships to history, nature, and one another.

The Barbican gallery in London is hosting ‘Noguchi’, the first of a touring European exhibition which sets out to document the work of this visionary creative. Thematically organised and curated to feature only the words of the artist himself, the exhibition successfully immerses the viewer in the mind and the world of Noguchi. The stripped back béton brut halls of the brutalist Barbican and the advantage of the two levels, allow the 150 works to breathe freely, and with the absence of excessive curation, the viewer is left in an almost meditative state to observe and absorb.

Isamu Noguchi ‘My Arizona’, 1943. Photo by Kevin Noble, Noguchi Museum Archives © INFGM / ARS – DACS

Born in Los Angeles in 1904, Noguchi’s mother was an Irish American writer and his father a Japanese poet who had abandoned the family on his birth. At the age of two, his mother took him to Japan to reunite with his father, sending him back to the US and onto Indiana for schooling for fear that the biracial child would receive racism in Japan. Noguchi eventually settled in New York where he trained in traditional sculpture, but his real break came while on an internship at the Paris studio of Constantin Brancusi. Here Noguchi gained a seminal introduction to the modernist principles of abstraction and presumably met the international avant-garde who were gathered in Paris in the 1920s. It was thanks to Brancusi that he became passionate about materials and craft – elements that remained fundamental to his work throughout his career.

By the end of the decade Noguchi was back in New York sculpting portrait busts, mainly to make a living, many of which are on display at the Barbican. They are a curious mix of expressionist and whimsical. He later referred to them jokingly as ‘headbusting’ since it was a useful way to make money and meet people. It seemed to have worked as they attracted the attention of the pioneering choreographers Ruth Page and Martha Graham for whom Noguchi went on to design sets using an interplay of his sculptures. He also befriended the architect and theorist R. Buckminster Fuller, who he referred to as the ‘messiah of ideas’. The two shared a vision for shaping a more equitable world through technology, innovation and design, collaborated on several projects including a futuristic car.

By the 1940s, Noguchi was working with manufacturers Knoll and Herman Miller. He continued to explore the possibilities of material and form with his interlocking marble slab sculptures and Lunars lights, created after his devastating experience of ‘voluntary’ internment at a camp for Japanese Americans in Poston, Arizona in 1942. The Lunars went on to influence some of his best-known works, the sculptural and ethereal Akari light sculptures – a contemporary take on traditional chochin paper lanterns using washi paper and electric bulbs. After the war, Noguchi travelled to Europe and Asia to understand the different uses of sculpture in a spatial and cosmic sense. He wrote at the time, ‘I find myself a wanderer in a world rapidly growing smaller. Artist, American citizen, world citizen, belonging anywhere but nowhere.’

Installation from ‘Noguchi’ at the Barbican Gallery, London © Barbican Centre

Noguchi went on to complete over twenty public works around the world – gardens, fountains, playgrounds, plazas – using space to challenge civic and social life and its intersections with nature and time. His final contribution was Moerenuma Park. Located on a reclaimed municipal dump outside of Sapporo in Japan, it included play sculptures, fields, and fountains, and a revised version of his first-ever play rejected concept, the monumental, stepped pyramid he called Play Mountain (1933). Moerenuma Park was realised two years after Noguchi’s death in 2000.

Ultimately his was a life dedicated to sculpting the world he wished to inhabit. With a deeply humanist perspective, heightened by his prison experience, Noguchi understood the power of art and artists to make sense of the world. His work was political art. Wandering the exhibition, immersed from above and below in his delicate paper lanterns, colourful furniture, architectural playgrounds, and expressive and often funny abstract and figurative sculptures, you get the sense that in life and work, Noguchi remained an explorer with a philosophical and playful eye. In his own words: ‘Art for me is something which teaches human beings how to become more human.’

‘Noguchi’ is at the Barbican Art Gallery in London from 30 September 2021 to 9 January 2022

Gallery images in order: Noguchi assembling his Figure in his studio, 1944. Photo Rudolph Burckhardt, Noguchi Museum Archives © INFGM / ARS – DACS / Estate of Rudolph Burckhardt; Noguchi’s Memorials to the Atomic Dead is an unrealised model originally proposed in 1952 for Hiroshima Peace Park © Barbican Centre; Noguchi’s Sculpture To Be Seen From Mars, 1947. Photo Soichi Sunami, Noguchi Museum Archives © INFGM / ARS – DACS; Noguchi’s Octetra Play Equipment, Moerenuma Park, Japan. Photo Toshishige Mizoguchi © Toshishige Mizoguchi / INFGM / ARS – DACS; Samrat Yantra, Jantar Mantar, Bollingen Travels, New Delhi, India, 1949. Photo Isamu Noguchi, Noguchi Museum Archives © INFGM / ARS – DACS; Installation from ‘Noguchi’ at the Barbican Gallery, London © Barbican Centre.

Sudo Reiko explores material’s possibilities at Japan House London

Making Nuno, Japanese Textile Innovation from Sud? Reiko

‘Some things disappear, some things have to disappear, but some things live on using different materials and technologies,’ says Sudo Reiko. The visionary Japanese textile designer’s work is anchored on exploring the possibilities of textile. Often fusing ancient and modern techniques, and involving unusual materials, her studio Nuno’s fabrics are almost always unexpected and imaginative. Now, Japan House London is hosting an exhibition dedicated to her work.

Making Nuno, Japanese Textile Innovation from Sud? Reiko

Making Nuno, Japanese Textile Innovation from Sudo Reiko (17 May ? 11 July 2021) is an immersive study of the artist and her studio’s creations. ‘Textile gives us the knowledge about our past, present and future,’ says Takahashi Mizuki. ‘I want to bring visitors to the journey of the textile through experiencing the production,’ adds the curator and executive director at the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile in Hong Kong, where a similar show was displayed two years ago.

Making Nuno, Japanese Textile Innovation from Sud? Reiko

Sudo’s fabrics tell infinite stories of time, place and people. She says in Japanese textile making, there is a tradition of handing down knowledge and knowhow through generations, and so the human factor, the people and their personalities, are central to the work at Nuno. Working with artisans around Japan, the studio also helps preserve skills passed on through generation.

Making Nuno, Japanese Textile Innovation from Sud? Reiko

Five large dynamic installations offer Japan House visitors a chance to see some of Nuno’s experimental processes in action. The Kibiso Crisscross fabric, for instance, takes the discarded protective outer layer of silk cocoons to make yarns from the tough remnants in tailored machines. Or, to celebrate of textile’s industrial process, discarded punch cards, which control the movements of the warp yarn on the programmable Jacquard weaving looms, are roughly stitched together for a screen that projects ethereal shadows onto a wall.

'Making Nuno, Japanese Textile Innovation from Sud? Reiko' at Japan House London explores the work of the visionary textile designer

There is a poetic energy to Sudo’s work that make her objects feel timeless. And her sustainable approach to product and production are extremely timely as consumers become more environmentally aware and expect greater accountability from brands they invest in.

‘I grew up in a small country town, where every spring and autumn we looked forward to the arrival of the travelling salesman and his bundle of kimono fabrics,’ recalls Sudo. ‘Hiding behind my mother, aunt and grandfather, I would watch spellbound as he presented these beautiful textiles, one after the other, on the tatami mats. That was probably when I first dreamt of one day becoming someone who makes beautiful fabrics.’

Images © Japan House London

V&A takes on the car as a design object in new exhibition

Robert Bosh electronic control unit and wiper blade, 1926 (c) Bosch

The motor car has shaped our modern world and is about to define its future. In its 130 years, this object of desire and destruction has been critical in enforming our lives – from the design of our cities and our relation to the countryside, to how we work, live and communicate with one another. In its golden age, the motor car conjured up such strong visceral feelings, yet it remains a disturbing symbol of our current climate emergency.

This is the premise behind the V&A’s latest exhibition ‘Cars: accelerating the modern world‘. Together with the accompanying book, the show is a fascinating overview of the motor car’s complex past, and acts as a useful tool for navigating the second stage of the automobile. What’s apparent is that, just like the beginnings of the motor car revolution, the future clean, autonomous, shared drive will need greater cooperation and coordination with urban and country planning. It needs to be a global effort, and performed well and without profit at its very core, it can be an exciting future. Read my full story here.

Enter photographer Tim Walker’s fantastical world at the V&A

Image maker, explorer, wanderer, dreamer – Tim Walker’s photography is about elaborate staging and romantic motifs. He creates fairy-tale worlds, magical sets, then turns them on their heads. Spanning some 25 years, his is a fascinating body of work captured in an enchanting exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Tim Walker V&A (C) Design Talking
Tim Walker at the V&A (c) Design Talking

Tim Walker: Wonderful Things’ is as much about Walker’s work as his relation to the gallery hosting this exhibition – for he has formed an intimate conversation with the V&A. Walker once called the museum ‘a place for dreams’, noting that the eclectic collection here has long resonated with him. ‘The V&A is the most inspiring place in the world,’ says one of the most successful fashion photographers of his generation.

Tim Walker: Wonderful Things (c) V&A

For 25 years Walker has photographed models, celebrities and artists. His work appears in Vogue, W, i-D, AnOther and LOVE. He certainly has some favourite muses – Tilda Swinton features frequently and the photographs of the actress are some of his most powerful.

This is the largest-ever exhibition of Walker, though don’t expect a straightforward retrospective. There are plenty of his well-known photos here, but more exciting are the new works informed by the V&A’s collection. In preparation, Walker spent a year exploring the archives, rummaged through the maze of the V&A’s 145 galleries. He scaled the roof of the west London site, and the labyrinth of Victorian passages below in search of arts, ideas and objects to inspire a new body of work.

Tim Walker, 'Tilda Swinton', Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire, 2018 (c) Tim Walker Studio
Tim Walker, ‘Tilda Swinton’, Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire, 2018 (c) Tim Walker Studio

Amongst his finds are stained-glass windows, vivid Indian miniature paintings, jewelled snuffboxes, erotic illustrations, golden shoes, and a 65-metre-long photograph of the Bayeux Tapestry. This curious collection, also on display, have informed his narrative to form ten of the main installations in the exhibition.

Walker believes what happens in his artificial, staged worlds have to seem as real as possible for the photograph to be believable, and to resonate with us on a visceral level. His is, therefore, a very human brand of fantasy. Yet these are grand ideas and the complex production requires creative help. For the V&A, Walker worked with one of his frequent collaborators, the set designer Shona Heath, to form these ethereal settings.

Tim Walker: Wonderful Things (c) V&A

‘Each new shoot is a love letter to an object from the V&A collection, and an attempt to capture my encounter with the sublime,’ says Walker. ‘For me, beauty is everything. I’m interested in breaking down the boundaries that society has created, to enable more varied types of beauty and the wonderful diversity of humanity to be celebrated.’ Preparing for this exhibition, he admits, has pushed him into new territories. ‘It is very exciting, and I’m at a stage in my life where I feel brave enough to do that.’

Access to a decent smartphone and an Instagram account has made photographers out of many of us. And we need talents like Tim Walker to remind us all that great image-making isn’t a matter of a good lens and photoshop skills. Timeless photographs – from Man Ray to Lee Miller to Cecil Beaton (whose work inspired Walker) and Richard Avedon (for whom he was an assistant) are about constructing images, choreographing a stage, narrating a story. These are moving images captured in a still moment.

Ultimately, ‘Tim Walker: Wonderful Things’ is a meditation on the beauty of the imagination. And much like the V&A, each room unravels a new and wondrous world.

Tim Walker: Wonderful Things is on at the V&A from 21 September 2019 – 8 March 2020

Highlights of 2016 London Design Festival

Urban life requires a little creative navigation. We benefit from the vibrancy of the city, and experience its diverse communities. Yet city living is noisy – physically, emotionally, mentally it can be a chaotic cocktail at times. Added to this, with many of us working away from the office desk, our work/life patterns have evolved to be so much less linear than they used to be. Then there is the high price of housing in cities like London which inevitably means shared living for so many, especially the young. A quite spot is thus essential – a space that allows us to gather our thoughts, one that encourages us to connect and helps us to create.

Forests offers exactly this. Asif Khan has envisaged a trio of ‘spaces within spaces’, according to the British architect – pop-up sanctuaries dotted around dense urban settings. They include an interactive workspace to promote creativity, an elevated hideaway to switch off and meditate, and a space designed to meet, make friends, share food. The project for the London Design Festival (17 to 25 September) forms part two of MINI Living, an initiative by the car marque to explore the future of urban life, which began at the Milan design fair earlier this year.

Whereas the Milan installation was a physical example of an innovative shared living concept, in London Khan is exploring the relationship between public and private space through the use of plants, in this case a gorgeously exotic selection by London horticulturist Jin Ahn for mini green jungles in this urban jungle. Khan explains, ‘There is a Japanese phrase shinrin yoku, which literally means forest bathing. It means every sense switches to absorb the forest atmosphere, what you hear, what you smell, even the feeling underfoot.’

Popped up amongst the housing estates and crowded office blocks of Shoreditch, east London, they are a welcome sanctuary, especially on the day of my visit as my guide greets me with news that her mobile phone was snatched en route. It certainly highlights the less tasteful sides of urban life. Yet as we climb into the meditative sanctuary ‘relax’ surrounded by exotic plants and the sound of silence, all our worries seem to wash away. MINI Living will continue is exploration later this year with A/D/O in Brooklyn – a long-term initiative to introduce a diverse programme of resources for creative professionals, including a prototyping studio, in-house accelerator and open workspace.

Elsewhere at LDF one of the main visual highlights is The Smile, a 3.5m high, 4.5m wide and 34m curved tubular structure, its two ends raised high in the sky, outside Chelsea College of Art. Here architect Alison Brooks has worked with engineering firm Arup using hardwood CLT – the engineered timber used by architects as an interesting replacement for steel – to push the limits of timber and explores an alternative material for construction. The installation is on until the 12 October and really worth seeing for the sheer scale and engineering craft.

Every pocket of the city seems to have come alive with LDF. A visit to Clerkenwell London and we were excited to see this innovative concept store champion creativity with a host of pop-up exhibitions, talks and workshops throughout the week. We particularly enjoyed graphic artist Camille Walala’s colourful takeover of the vinyl lounge, a space where incidentally I’ll be participating in a talk on our latest book The Life Negroni next month.

Over at the LDF hub at the V&A there are a number of exciting site-specific projects too. Foil is an immersive installation by British designer Benjamin Hubert of Layer in the Tapestry galleries – a room that seems to respond so well to contemporary conceptual design projects. Created for the German electronics brand Braun, and as a nod its famous shavers, Foil is made of 50,000 hand made metallic panels that dance slowly creating a sort of wave motion whilst LEDs splash small blades onto the rooms walls and corners for an incredibly hypnotic effect.

Other highlights include Elytra, a growing shelter in the V&A courtyard by the University of Stuttgart as part of the museum’s engineering season. Inspired by beetles, the robot housed inside this intriguing structure creates new components as it responds to our presence thus exploring possible futures for architecture. Whilst Beloved, by Istanbul-based architect Tabanlioglu, is a seductive introduction to Madonna in a Fur Coat. Here on the bridge of the Medieval & Renaissance Galleries we peak through tiny cracks in the 13-meter long mirrored black box to glimpse and hear teasing moments from the classic 1943 novel by Sabahattin Ali.

I always enjoy the V&A exhibits for they represent how contemporary creative work can interact with the treasures in this amazing space. The building holds a very special place for me too for it has been my urban sanctuary since childhood when I first stepped inside and was seduced by the incredible collection, seeing the power of art, of craft, of design, of creativity to help shape the world.

Nargess Banks

#LDF16

Read our previous reviews of London Design Festival here.

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