Yesterday's post was dedicated to an art and fashion comparison, so let's continue the thread for another day to look at the "Britain Creates 2012: Fashion + Art Collusion" event.
Announced last September and conceived by the BFC/Bazaar Fashion Arts Foundation, the project - part of the London 2012 Festival, a cultural event celebrating the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games - is a collaborative effort involving Britain's artists and designers (check out the complete list of collaborations here) teaming up together to create new artworks.
The results, unveiled this week during a fundraising event, were radically different as the artists and designers were given an open brief based on a dialogue between the two disciplines with some connections with fundamental Olympic values.
Some projects are actually wearable: Giles Deacon and Jeremy Deller came up with a a body suit and cape with a print derived from a William Morris stained glass window and described by the pair on the British Creates site “an Arts and Crafts suit of armour for an athlete” (the duo will also apply the same print to items such as marathon blankets and badges that will be handed out during the Olympic Games).
Other works, such as “The Four Minute Mile”, Hussein Chalayan's recording on a bronze copper master and on vinyl (symbolising in their shapes and grooves the Olympic rings) of an interview with Gavin Turk with special effects of running feet in the background, are more conceptual.
Colours and the power of light seemed to be the starting point for Jonathan Saunders and Jess Flood-Paddock's installation of 200 colourful screen-printed plastic sheets (based on Saunders' graphic jumpers) hanging on a rail, and for Stephen Jones and Cerith Wyn Evans's luminous halo-like “Celestial Bonnet” installation, featuring five rings shining with LED lights.
As it happens at the best contemporary art fairs/exhibition in the world, while some pieces are very gratifying from a visual point of view, they also have the same alienating effect modern art can have on museum visitors and make you wonder what's the final meaning and aim of modern art (think about Nicholas Kirkwood and Simon Periton's steel rings with cast resin scalpels and dismembered parts of Kirkwood's shoes, Mary Katrantzou and Mark Titchner brilliantly coloured video installation based on Olympic values such as courage, ambition, passion or strength and inspired by a line in an Emily Dickinson's poem or Peter Pilotto and Francis Upritchard's arched figurine clad in an embellished body suit by the design duo).
The artworks will actually go on display at London's Victoria & Albert Museum from next week while Selfridges will use them as window displays in August and eventually host a charity auction of two of the pieces.
If you think you're going to miss the event, fear not, it is also possible to buy a boxset with two books that feature essays, posters of the artworks and an accompanying CD.
The volumes also provide an insight into the inspirations that led specific designers/artists to the creation of their works with sketches, notes and explanations about each piece.
Britain Creates 2012: Fashion + Art Collusion, 6 – 29 July 2012, V&A, London.
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If you combine those two, it would be the most amazing piece.
Posted by: sustainable architects | July 08, 2012 at 04:02 AM