Not for Sale

I realised yesterday that I never wrote anything about my most recent SALON show, Not for Sale, which is now over and done with.

It was probably the strangest show I've ever done: some of the strongest work I've shown in the weirdest space I've ever worked in. My (now ex) flatmates decided a week before the show was to open that they didn't want it to happen in our flat, so I was incredibly lucky that the big bossmen at Spoonfed were happy for me to use the top floor of their lovely Georgian office building in Angel.

Not that the circumstances were ideal, but I think I more that made the best of a peculiar situation and I was really happy with the way everything turned out. Sometimes a happy accident turns out to be better than what I'd intended. I think it's just about getting to the stage - especially for a control freak like me - where you can recognise the accident results in something better. Like Tessa's painting, which I planned to put upstairs but it was too big to get up the stairs to the top floor. I just left it on the third-floor landing and it looked so much better there than it ever would have on the top floor. Gregoire's posters were witty and, again, also worked well on the top-floor landing, while Ross' video poems were far more of a hit than I expected. Two girls who came to see the show one afternoon spent about 40 minutes watching every single video. I've never seen anyone watch that much 'video art' in my life. They said that if every exhibition was like this one, they'd go to a lot more art exhibitions. Amazing.

The dinners in lieu of a private view were even better than I hoped, so much so that I don't think I'll ever go back to the old way of doing things. The ever-inventive Blanch and Shock conjured up a brilliant menu, one that seemed to delight most of the guests, and we just sat down and talked. I invited a lot of people I'd never met, but always wanted to - academics, scientists, journalists, artists, writers, thinkers - and got them to come to dinner with me. There were a few glitches on the first night, but all in all I was extremely pleased. It was exhausting and a lot of work, but the guests were wonderful, the atmosphere was brilliant, and the food was delicious. Also, I think the dinners allowed guests a far better opportunity to look at the exhibition than a traditional private view where you can hardly see anything for being so crammed in. The only thing I wish I'd done was take better pictures. But I had such a good time at the dinners that I forgot to take any photos until everyone had left, which is no bad thing at all.

And finally, Tom's written some lovely words about the exhibition and dinners over on Spoonfed.

Ryoji Ikeda, datamatics [ver 2.0]

I'd been working at the AJ for about two weeks when I got to go on my first press trip. I don't even think I really knew what a press trip was at that stage. Obviously, I knew that journo types flew to Zimbabwe for free to stay in lip-smackingly snazzy tents in the middle of nobutwhoacheckoutallthestarsyoucanseeherewhere, but I didn't really realise that an admin assistant could get a lovely weekend stay in Paris swanning around the most amazingly inventive art installations during Nuit Blanche. But along I went to Paris - thanks to ever-brilliant Forma - where I was introduced to Ryoji Ikeda and his incredible work. I've already written about what I saw in Paris, which still stands as one of the best pieces of installation art I've ever seen.

I'd heard about but never seen Ryoji's other works, his audio visual/music works, and so I was thrilled to hear that datamatics [ver 2.0] was being performed at the Barbican as part of the SPILL Festival. As far as I know, this is the first time it's been performed in London since the prototype version was performed at the Tate Modern in 2006. Since I'd seen some of his other work I had a vague idea what to expect, but I tried to forget what I knew and go in with an open mind.

I've seen a few other projects (wi-fi light painting is a good one) that try to use data as a source for sound and visuals, but no one does it with half as much finesse as Ikeda. It's that moment when you know what you're looking at, like intellectually know what you're looking at, and that it's data and that the date is literally the source of the sound, but your brain just doesn't know how to process what it's seeing and how to reconcile what it's seeing with what it's hearing with what it knows it's seeing. 



So what do you see? There's a gradual build up from 2D sequences of patterns created from studies of software code and hard drive errors to rotating 3D views of a star map of the universe to a four-dimensional space created by mathematical processing. The soundtrack is built up through layers of sounds created (or inspired?) by the data and is sometimes intense and powerful (the bass is AMAZING! - good sound system at the Barbican, too), sometimes hypnotic, sometimes a little bit annoying, but always very interesting. Which is basically how I like my music. It's good to be challenged. I like having to really pay attention to what's going on. It makes my brain feel good. Having said that, I found a little bit of James Turrell behind the eyes seeing syndrome creeping in while I watched, though strangely I was able to see the visual patterns of the data more clearly when my eyes went a little bit out of focus. It made it easier to look at the big picture instead of just the individual components.

There was one point about a third of the way through the concert, just after an incredibly loud and rather prolonged burst of sound, when a guy in the audience shouted "whooooooo" and everyone in the hall started laughing. When Ikeda came down from the control deck on to the stage after the concert was over, everyone was clapping and cheering. I've seen a lot of performances at the Barbican, but I've never seen anyone get that kind of reception. Amazing stuff.

Milan Salone 2011

So I've had a few days to digest and reflect since coming back from Milan last Wednesday evening. Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind this time around, but I found the whole experience of being in Milan for the fair a lot less fun and interesting than last year. There are only so many times you can look at another flying bird bookshelf or a "whimsical, yet revolutionary" chair before wondering whether design - and the fair in particular - isn't suffering from a severe identity crisis caused by repressed thoughts of complete and utter irrelevance. A lot of people I spoke to felt much the same, but everyone said the same thing: it's good for networking. Sure, ok, Milan's great for networking.  But why do so many designers and manufacturers go to the enormous trouble of creating truckloads of crap if what everyone really wants to do is network...

There wasn't anything as enjoyably meaty as last year's Tutti a Tavola exhibition at the Villa Reale, and there was a lot of crap. And I mean A LOT of crap. There's also an enormous amount of people wandering about looking at all the crap and the number of times I walked in to some hideously atrocious installation only to hear someone walk in behind me and squeal with glee, "oh my god, it's like soooooo beautiful", made me start to think that there's very little point in even attempting to discuss good design or bad design, good taste or bad taste given that so many people are just clearly wrong about what constitutes good and bad. Okay, so I'm kidding...mostly. Actually, there's a very good interview with Luis De Oliveira of De La Espada in last weekend's How to Spend It magazine on roughly the same idea.  Oliveira says that the reason DLE works with such a diverse portfolio of designers is because it's impossible to predict people's tastes or which products will become best sellers.  Better to have as wide a range as possible to accommodate as many potential customers as possible. I'm not entirely sure I agree, but it's an interesting notion nevertheless.

Anyway, Milan. Though my brief sojourn was comprised of an awful lot of nonsense, I saw one incredible installation, a handful of beautifully designed objects, one sublime private villa, and an awful lot of delicious gelato. Here's my top 10 from Milan 2011 (in no particular order).

1. Natura Morta by Studio Toogood: To put it simply, Faye Toogood rocks my world. She led me to Arabeschi di Latte, she has an amazing eye and designs entire experiences, not just furniture. Natura Morta was staged in a beautiful apartment and featured Faye's second collection of furniture as well as a series of lovely photographs of food specially designed by Arabeschi di Latte (and eaten by guests at midnight feasts!), some of the food, and these incredible visor hats and dresses also designed by Faye which were worn by the servers at the dinner. I went twice - once for a dinner and once during the day - it was so good. 

2. The RCA show in Ventura Lambrate: I didn't really rate the RCA show last year, but this year was like pop rocks all over the place. Lots of brilliant projects, some of the best object things I saw in Milan. I stayed in the space for well over two hours; spoke to many of the students; felt delighted, excited, amazed, and amused. Great stuff, especially from Azusa Murakami (slow fast food), Kieran Jones (who built a chicken coop for a neighbour on the condition that she gave him one chicken per year which he proceeded to transform into a chicken skin bomber jacket and a chicken bone china egg cup!), Greetje van Helmond (sugar jewellery), Alon Meron (box light), and Shi-Kai Tseng (light-printed ceramics). Though it does feel slightly ridiculous that I went all the way to Milan and some of the best stuff I saw was from London.

3. The Toshiba installation in Zona Tortona: I didn't think I was going to like this very much as the Canon and Panasonic installations were terrible, but the Toshiba installation was absolutely wonderful. Simple, beautiful and very effective. I'm not entirely sure how the technology worked, but it was like being in a futuristic zen garden. This gorgeous old Milanese building was set off by a minimalist and modern demarkated space of white gravel and pools of water. You walked past the water pool to enter the building which was completely dark except for a grid of lit up water falling from the ceiling. Typically other similar projects that I've seen use cables of LED lights that stretch from ceiling to floor and the water flows down the cables. This had no cables, no wires, no nothing; just the shower of water and light. Stunning and inventive. 

4. Gaelle Gabillet + Stephane Villard at VIA Design France: One of the few other things I saw in Tortona that I thought was excellent was a collection from Gabillet and Villard called {objet} trou noir. It was in part of the larger Via Design France (Via is interesting because it provides assistance to designers for the development of prototypes so long as those prototypes are authentically innovative) exhibition so I didn't notice it at first, but I saw it out of the corner of my eye just as I was leaving and went over to investigate. In terms of product design, these four products were probably the most interesting, innovative, useful and beautiful I saw. The first set of products was created using an interesting new material, Cofalit. A rather beautiful black obsidian like material, Cofalit is produced from the vitrification of asbestos-contaminated construction materials. The material is non hazardous and often sold as an aggregate for road foundations, but apparently the material also has high thermal inertia so the two designers created bricks and tiles to build a stove, heater and floor. The second set of projects is a series of minimal, muli-part, multi-function objects. So an appliance such as a vacuum cleaner can be broken down into independent parts, each of which can function alone - fan, dish, bucket, broom - or together in varying configurations - stool, lamp, or heater. I loved all of these designs. They're incredibly thoughtful and in a world where people have less space and less disposable income it seems to me that more designers should be taking a similar approach: how can we use fewer things - still beautiful things - to do more.

5. Max Lipsey's Rossignoli chair: On my last day in Milan I spent the afternoon walking around Brera - sort of like the Brompton Design District - and I walked for hours and saw nothing that interested me. I was headed back to my hotel and I saw a lovely sign outside a bike shop. I'm a sucker for a bike shop so I headed in and to my surprise around the back of the bike shop was a tiny little room with a half dozen beautiful pieces of furniture and two charming chaps. All of the pieces were inspired by the Rossignoli bikes - beautifully finished, lovely to look at, great concept, simple design. This is what I like.

6. Gelato: This is one of my favourite ice cream places in the world. I stumbled upon it by accident last time and managed to remember where it was this time. On my last visit I had pine nut ice cream (delicious) and this time I had some kind of creamy something with a balsamic syrup and another flavour made with ricotta. Deeeeeelicccciiious!!!

7. Random other things I quite liked:

8. La Maison Hermès: Hermès has been one of my favourite brands since I visited one of their stores as a horse-crazy child and realised that essentially they were a tack shop that also sold scarves. Despite my brand bias, of all the big boys at Milan, the best collection was by far and away this one. So many beautiful things - even the Shigeru Ban "nomadic house" was nice and I could care less about Mr Ban. This isn't design that will change the world or even design that's particularly innovative, but it is design that is lovely to look at and even better to feel. Given that there are very few people who will be able to afford such things, I only wish that this level of design and materials was avaiable to more people. Ikea just doesn't cut it, I'm afraid.

9. Villa Necchi Campiglio: This place is awesome. Just totally awesome. Recommended by David Kohn, accompanied by two friends, I spent my last morning at the Salone looking at furniture, yes, but of an altogether different sort. The house was built by wunder architect/designer/do it all dogsbody (he even designed the servants uniforms and the china dinner service) Piero Portaluppi in 1932 for the Necchi sisters. The house and grounds are stunning and the history of the house is fascinating. If you're ever in Milan, I highly recommend a visit.

10. Lastly, some things I didn't like ( a very, very small selection).

Ciao! Until next year...