For the Architecture Festival in London the  V&A hosted seven buildings amongst  some of the most impressive collection rooms in the museum. Nineteen architects were originally invited to submit proposals for the project, curated by Abraham Thomas, to create spaces that examined refuge and retreat. All of the buildings are accessible to the surprise of visitors- The Fujimori Beetle House rocks every time one of the allocated six spaces is climbed into. The buildings are both secretive and bold in presence. Studio Mumbai Architects built ‘In Between Architecture’ in the Casts Court, a space full of enormous figures and replicas. The building camouflages itself with a divoted plaster treatment, distinguished only stylistically yet remaining unobstrusive and affectionate towards the looming study replicas of David and company.

Studio Mumbai Architects in the Cast Courts

Cast Courts with SMA

David

From the inside

Interior with plaster cast tree

SMA Cast Courts

Terunobu Fujimori’s Beetle House was hosted in the Medieval & Rennaissance Room. The structure, in keeping with Fujimori’s style, possesses many dreamlike and spiritual sensitivities. This one in particular is a close replica of another Beetle House that he created in Japan, spanning two tree’s in the forrest. He built the structure from pine trees, and the exterior was charred onsite in the museum. The interior is grained with smaller bits of the charred wood, adorned with sparse belongings, a small bicycle to represent transport to the home, and a teaset designed by the Danish artist Malene Hartmann Rasmussen. Fujimori, since the opening, has hosted several tea ceremonies ( for six) in the miniscule structure. The whimsical nature of the structure is further enhanced by the wooden medieval spiral-staircase-to-nowhere, and the menacing  grid of clay heads mounted onto the nearby brick wall.

Terunobu Fujimori's Beetle's House

Beetle's House in the Medieval & Renaissance Galleries

Descent

Malene Hartmann Rasmussen with her teaset designed for the Beetle House

Charred Walls

Foot Traffic

In the John Madejski Garden lived a literal treehouse designed by Helen & Hard Architects from Stavanger, Norway. The house, titled ‘Ratatosk’ was built from splayed trees, becoming more basket-like and woven as the structure developed in height.

Ratatosk in the John Madejski Garden

Ratatosk

Ratatosk Proposal Model

At the bottom of the National Art Library stairs lived the “Ark” built by Rintala Eggertsson Architects from Oslo and Bodo, Norway. The building allowed three people in at a time to browse books at leisure. The books themselves acted as the interior walls, spine-in, and also as the exterior shell of the building, striating the structure with faded pages.

Ark designed by Helen & Hard

Reader

Ark Detail

Interior

From the entrance to the National Art Library

Top Floor

The gooooorgeous National Art Library

On the second floor entering the main architecture galleries lived the Inside/ Outside Tree designed by Sou Fujimoto Architects from Tokyo. This was a large faceted structure of plexi-glass which created a semi-enclosed looking glass for one viewer.

Inside Outside Tree

Inside/ Outside

Sou Fujimoto Architects

Last Thursday a gaping pair of ostrich-leg boots patiently awaited a recipient at the closing reception of Christian Gonzenbach’s show at Gallery S O titled “Domestic Wildlife Collection”. It was here that a discussion started earlier in the day at the RCA continued; a discussion on his theories of whales. The Swiss artist studies histories and processes, how an animal or object achieves its identity through physicality and material composition.  This is done in the language of nature and animals, with the use of skins, addressing and asking questions of the interior and exterior, of material and spiritual possessions. When does an animal become and animal, and how much needs to be removed before it attains a new purpose, perhaps a functional marketable skin? What is the molecular and spiritual composition of identity?

Gallery SO, Domestic Wildlife Collection

Inside-Out Pets

Ostrich Leg Boots

Gonzenbach was recently working on a mold of a whale, coating the inside surface with a self-formulated skin of clay and plaster, painted black. While the whale would never exist, the mold became a fossil.  He stated that for him whales were imaginary, that he was from the mountains, not the ocean, and since humans no longer have a (legal) trade relationship with these creatures, we justify them in our minds based on modern mythologies instead of first-hand informed practices. When whaling was a valid business, people had to accomodate themselves to this size, creating machines and tools based on a mammoth scale, solidifying their existence.

The presumption of what makes the world we inhabit as it is, remains a human condition that he investigates and humorizes. We cant possibly experience or see the instigations of all form but we wonder. It wasn’t until after attempting to recount my experiential whales, I realized that with the exception of rather small beluga whales in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the famous, undying Shamu at Seaworld in 1993, I had never actually seen a whale in its habitat. Even on a whale watching boat off the coast of Maine, I spent hours with my parents and sisters imagining that each little white-capped wave would manifest into a fin or blowhole, to the point where it was a hallucinatory game- there were beyond doubt whales under the surface but none to be seen!

This presumption of experience is normal, and it made me assess how much of my knowledge is physically uninformed- the answer being most of it. Something as ancient as a whale is a poetic example of how severe this condition may be, and there is certainly the psychology of the oceanic unknown that renders it a beautiful example of loss. The philosophy of this thought is hundreds of books deep – my notion a miniscule particle topping an iceberg that I’ve heard is mostly submerged.

Inside-Out Donkey

Inside-Out Donkey

Gallery Detail

Stop animation of Chicken and Weasel exchanging skins

Eraser Arrowheads

Clay bear shot with gun

Meteor

Similarly to the whale mold, Gonzenbach creates his own meteors, not by sculpting a meteor but by creating the matter that would violently and gradually deteriorate a substance; Throwing rocks at clay. When I think of meteors there are massive rocks hurtling themselves towards our stratosphere, but of course I assume this is what happens, based only on the knowledge of huge blemish-like craters in the midwest and the shards of specimens in Natural History museums.

This work made me think of these two projects- which while being slightly different in conception, still represent the solidification of imaginary experience and the replication of an iconic source of greed and commerce.

Photo by Damon Winter for The New York Times

“The artist Duke Riley does some last minute work before launching his replica of a Revolutionary War-era submarine, built of plywood and fiberglass and ballasted with lead, off Pier 41 in Red Hook, Brooklyn on Friday August 3, 2007″ Quoted from the New York Times article.

Balaenoptera Musculus by Tom Sachs. Photo is copyright of Tom Sachs

“For the other installation, Balaenoptera Musculus (2006), a life-sized reconstruction of an 18-metre long blue whale, Tom Sachs took his inspiration from the whale model hanging in the ocean life hall at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York. The whale, which, for its size, Sachs calls adolescent, is made in foam core, cardboard, and white polyurethane foam, a material often used or architectural models. ” Quoted from the Fondazione Prada Press Release.

This past week I took some work and travelled for the first time to Stockholm for the furniture fair. I was fortunate and thrilled to hear that Jasper Morrison was exhibiting his specimen collection of jugs, jars and pitchers, having missed it at London Design Week last September. Tucked away in the century-old, basement kitchen of  art collector Wilhelmina von Hallwyls’ antique-laden residence, the show was a great relief to the peripheral week of modern scandinavian furniture.

The kitchen seemed to be the only room in the house that wasn’t surfaced in decorative collections, appropriately so for Morrison’s ideology of “super normal”, purely function-based design.  The collection is a hand-picked group, plucked from thrift stores, flea markets and Morrison’s own home. Representing everyday life, which is the circumstance of pure function, the collection has a wonderful lack of pretention about its proposition of what makes vessels function as they do. The presentation is made without added context,  the purpose is to simply observe typologies of jugs, jars & pitchers.

As I am studying ceramic design, I found this collection to be a pop-up text book of function. An imperative question for design is why a new form should exist to serve the same purpose as millions of existing specimens are floating around in the  object stratosphere. Morrison is a designer who observes his predessesors, and offers new proposals, combining functional success and removing hindering qualities of form and material.  In the end his objects are equal in their visual anonymity, adding to the progressive timeline of industrial function. This could not be done without this level of observation.

Hallwyl Museum Kitchen

Detail

Watering Can

Teapot Specimen

To see this exhibition which is essentially pure research, without the glamour and pretention of a gallery was an interesting contrast to another show in London curated by designer Konstantin Grcic, titled ”Design Real” at the Serpentine Gallery. The work of both designers is exclusively function-based, although Grcic perhaps implies more biographical form to his work than Morrison.  The show at the Serpentine presents functional design as sterilized gallery work, by having plinths, white walls and minimal description; It proposes function by the standard of art, removing the observers inclination to get extremely close or touch. Morrison’s show on the other hand eliminates the gallery logic entirely, and uses a functional space to display functional objects- it could potentially be mistaken for the work of a neurotic house-keeper. The designer/curator is something that is being seen more and more as disciplines aggressively and publicly use one other in collaborations. Based on these two shows, what the designer, or maker, presents is seemingly more valuable in the aspect of proven observation, of what designers are competing with and what they deem successful.

Stove Detail

Specimens

Detail

Detail

Hallwyl Kitchen

Hallwyl Museum: Hamngatan 4, 111 47 Stockholm

The exhibition “Jugs, Jars & Pitchers”  is presented by Forum magazine and Henrik Nygren Design.

Forum is the Magazine for Scandinavian Architecture, Interiors and Design. Issue no.1 for 2010 includes an excellent article based on discussion with Morrison in regards to his new show.

The other week I saw the Stuart Haygarth show titled “Found” at Haunch of Venison. Having only seen one of his chandelier pieces at the re-opening of New Museum in NYC a few years ago, it was great to see his newer furniture projects alongside a collection of his lighting. The furniture is successful by his process, re-purposing meticulously curated collections of found objects, but there is a quality to his lighting that literally and conceptually elevates objects beyond their industrial disposition. The lack of this relationship in the furniture is perhaps because we are already adept to accessing and using objects at these proximities, in these positions. Objects, functional or not, are experienced by being picked up, turned, thrown away, packed, stored, displayed…  Adversely, the chandeliers force us to look up through the lenses and eyeglass frames used in the collection, effectively displacing the viewer and the objects an equidistance from their utilitarian relationship, revealing new emotional typologies.

Cabinet Detail

The lens-frame chandeliers, called urchin lights, are so evocative in their possession of  historical reference, I felt they were the most successful pieces in the show. Displayed in the only darkened room in the gallery, they loom over the  viewer in an unmatched cluster of three, initially ocean-like in their presence. Once under them, they attain more robotic and skeletal qualities. Seeing so many tiny clavicle-like frames is instantly reminiscent of described holocaust remains, personal objects that were indefinitely part of daily life, an enabler, a dis-abler, a by-product. In grouping such an immensity of frames, the objects are considered on levels of dispossession, the sinister suggestion of an object’s ability to persevere beyond the life of its owner. This possibly is an objects greater life, from the time of abandonment to reincarnation.

Urchin Light

Urchin light detail

Urchin light detail

Lens Chandelier

Lens Chandelier Detail

Conical Lens Chandelier

Detail from center

Other favorites were the table lamps whose bases were adorned with the obsessive cat and dog collections often thrown to the second-hand shop.

Ceramic Figurine Lamps

Cat Detail

Bottle Cap Floor Lamps

The Stuart Haygarth show “Found”, will be up at Haunch of Venison, 6 Burlington Gardens
London W1S 3ET, through 30 January.

http://www.haunchofvenison.com

http://www.stuarthaygarth.com/

http://www.newmuseum.org/

For the first term project at the Royal College of Art we were asked to choose an object from the Victoria & Albert Museum’s new ceramic gallery, create a replica and produce an interpretation. Nearly a week after considering hundreds of objects, which are displayed in a stunning strand of spaces on the third floor, I finally landed on a French porcelain cosmetics jar, originating from a factory in Mennecy, outside of Paris in pre-revolutionary 17th century France. My initial attraction was due to its hundreds of seemingly identical flowers coating the surface. Any object oriented between the typologies of industrial production and delicate craftsmanship usually catches my eye, and this piece in particular, despite my feeling that it was too simple of an object ( which I now retract entirely), became my focus for the past 8 weeks.

Cosmetics Jar, Mennecy, France, 1755. Soft paste porcelain with hand-pressed decoration. Approx 16 cm x 13cm(left) Mennecy II, London, 2009. Slipcast porcelain, casting wax, graphite, plaster. Approx 28cm x 18cm (right)

Aside from the technical challenges I was particularly interested in the life of such an object and its user. This jar would have been part of a set, living on an impressive vanity where the ritual of beautification would occur. Both the 17th century french royalty and the bourgeois court were heavy subscribers to the cosmetics industry. Ointments and powders were used to make the skin appear more fair and white, which was a visual proclamation of the luxury of service, situated well beyond a sun-cast, agrarian means of living. Despite the privilege, cosmetics at the time used arsenic as an ingredient, which lead to skin disfigurements and fatalities.

I love that an object can possess such a dichotomy, sourcing beauty and disfigurement, and inherently also be a decorative particle of another surface. When developing an interpretation, my focus was derived from the temporal quality of cosmetics as a surface device, and how it might integrate an object abstractly with a person and their environment.

The form itself became an exaggeration of the original Mennecy jar, but now coated in a series of residual materials that will fade and deteriorate on the vase, while making marks on the person and their habitat. Consequently the object will become a record of its use, questionably more unsightly or constantly cleaner, more deteriorated or progressively beautiful with age.

Here is a visual time line of the project showing varying stages of the process.

First attempts at throwing porcelain

The original jar and lid would have first been thrown in a soft-paste porcelain on a wheel, then turned by hand to create the decorative marks and shape. The flowers are hand made and immediately applied.  For my attempt I experimented with different templates to accommodate the form of the original, and also created a plaster tool to aid in the production of the flowers.

Base form with and without floral application

Original Mennecy Jar ( left) and replica ( right)

Details of the replica object

One of my earlier reactions to the form and use of decoration was to invert the expectation of flourish by creating the texture/subject/interest on the inside of the vessel. While I was also contemplating the final direction of my interpretation, I made a test study for this concept ( which was also used as a glaze test). I will definitely be developing this concept further for another project called secret fauna@ secretfauna.com

Inverted Mennecy with hand applied flowers and horses. Hard-paste porcelain. Approx 13cm x 9 cm

Detail

Detail

Below are some sketches that were made from the original thrown forms which began to dictate the forms of the final interpretation. These were thrown spontaneously  and after living with them in my studio  I began to see them as small sketches of how I might go forward.

Thrown sketches

This led to more refined forms turned in plaster for casting.

3 form developments in plaster

Porcelain Casts

Porcelain casts and color sampling

Porcelain casts

When considering materials to coat the surface of the vases, I experimented with colors and textures that I felt had a notion of cosmetics and that historically related to objects and object-making. One of my first thoughts was to use red wax because it  reminded me of the body, blood & femininity. It also works as a nod to lipstick & rouges.  I was very attracted to the residual quality of wax, in that despite the color, if you are to touch it, you end up repelling other kinds of matter, rather than obtaining a visual mark. Contrary to that I also started testing graphite mixed with binders, which makes it a bit harder and slightly less transferable, reminiscent of an eyeshadow or pencil. Finally I tested plaster with different gradients of tint, to reference a finely pressed powder.

Porcelain sample dipped in wax

Tinted plaster swatches and porcelain samples dipped in plaster

Porcelain samples dipped in varying consistencies of liquid graphite

Final prototypes:

Slip cast porcelain with wax, plaster and graphite coatings

Graphite and plaster transfer

habitats

Detail

Here is an article about the renovations of the new V&A ceramic galleries:

http://www.septemberindustry.co.uk/?p=2985

The Anish Kapoor exhibit:

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/anish-kapoor/