Cynthia Rose
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colour© C. Rose
Updating the past tense
One wonders if memory has a colour. When we consider our work, for instance, do we sometimes do so in monochrome? Or is the past just perhaps a slightly faded part of our spectrum? Held in an 18th century residence on the Mile End Road, the installation Romilly’s Tools suggests many questions of tone.
Romilly’s Tools is both an artist’s book and an exhibition of photographs. In both, elegant black-and-white...
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object© Eley Kishimoto
Wearing the Wayback Machine
The archive of husband-and-wife design team Eley Kishimoto is, to put it mildly, extensive. For two decades, Mark Eley (from Brignend, Wales) and Wakako Kishimoto (from Sapporo, Japan) have launched an ocean of pattern from their south London headquarters. Whether designing women’s fashion, wallpaper or crockery, these days their name is synonymous with masterful surface design.
Paris, London and Tokyo are home to thei...
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memory© S.Calle
Meeting Monique, obliquely
The installation “Rachel, Monique” by artist Sophie Calle deals with the death of her mother, after whom it is named. Her struggle to wrench something positive out of this loss drives the production.
Opening just after Toussaint, that annual moment which honours the departed, Calle’s installation is everything but traditional. This may be what one has come to expect from the artist. But here, even for her, ...
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object© Silvy
Warhol of the Victorian Age
The objects called carte-de-visites created the biggest collectible craze of Victorian Europe. These tiny cards (named after the visiting cards they resembled) were photographs pasted onto stiff cardboard. It was a French photographer, Louis Dodéro, who first enhanced visiting cards with portraits. It was another, André Adolph Eugéne Disdéri, who created the technique that their manufacture feasible.
Exposing small image...
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Well WORTH a fresh look
The comeback of the House of Worth began in 2010 with a handful of delicate tops, then proceeded to sculptured redingotes, plus a ‘heritage remix’ of the famous fragrance Je reviens (“I’ll be back”). For spring and summer 2011, a series of lavish tutu dresses followed. In historical terms, more than merely a label has been re-awakened. Worth has a unique fashion history, one equally shared between London and P...