From the 28th of September 2010 through March 13th 2011 Anish Kapoor, the Serpentine Gallery and The Royal Parks present four large scale, stainless steel sculptures in Kensington Gardens; Sky Mirror in the round pond, C-curve, Sky mirror on The Longwater and Non-Object (Spire). These have become part of my morning and evening commute and through this I’ve been witness to their states throughout different times of day. The highly polished surfaces change the presence of the objects, camouflaging them almost completely at night and producing a cinematic surface by day. This creates frenzies of viewers on the weekends, children observing their relationship to the pieces, especially the C-curve as it flips the reflection upside down on one side. Vanity is not necessarily accounted for as one of the aims at staring into these pieces- they distort any qualities and incorporate them into a larger reflective surface pattern and many people seem to stand aimlessly assessing the constantly shifting, surreality of their interaction.

Sky Mirror in the afternoon, Round Pond

Sky Mirror in the afternoon, Cloud Detail, Round Pond

Non-Object (Spire) in the afternoon, Kensington Gardens

C-Curve in the afternoon, Kensington Gardens

C-Curve in the afternoon, Reflection Detail, Kensington Gardens

C-Curve in the afternoon, Kensington Gardens

C-Curve in the afternoon, Kensington Gardens

Sky Mirror in the afternoon on The Longwater, Hyde Park

Sky Mirror in the afternoon, Cloud detail, The Longwater, Hyde Park

Sky Mirror in the evening, Hyde Park

Sky Mirror and the Statue of Energy in the evening, Hyde Park

Sky Mirror in the evening on The Longwater, Hyde Park

C-curve in the evening, Kensington Gardens

C-curve in the evening, Kensington Gardens

C-curve in the evening with visitors, Kensington Gardens

Non-Object (Spire) in the evening, Kensington Gardens

Sky Mirror in the evening, The Round Pond, Kensington Gardens

Sky Mirror in the evening, The Round Pond, Kensington Gardens

Non-Object (Spire) in the morning, Kensington Gardens

Sky Mirror in the morning, The Round Pond, Kensington Gardens

Sky Mirror in the morning, The Round Pond, Kensington Gardens

C-Curve in the morning, Kensington Gardens

C-Curve in the morning, Kensington Gardens

Sky Mirror in the morning, The Longwater, Kensington Gardens

Sky Mirror in the morning, The Longwater, Kensington Gardens

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.