Jasmine Kee

Writer / Curator

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A garden of Eden brought to life: Inside Alexander McQueen’s new ‘Roses’ exhibition.

Alexander 'Lee' McQueen once said, ‘everything I do is connected to nature’, and it is nature which inspires the latest exhibition on display at the brand’s London flagship store. As with its predecessor Unlocking Stories, Roses is a tale of two halves. Incorporating both past and present Alexander McQueen looks, half are archival pieces from collections conceived by the late designer, and half, designs by current creative director Sarah Burton. 

The exhibition is structured, principally, around two finale centrepieces - Burton’s Red Rose dress (from which the exhibition takes its name) and the crinolined gown made from real flowers that ended Lee McQueen’s 2007 Sarabande show. The latter greats visitors as they ascend from the store’s spiral staircase: shells of silk organza, shaped with boning and embroidered in abundance with fresh roses and hydrangeas, which fell and wilted on the runway. A live orchestral rendition of George Frederick Handel’s Sarabande, from the film Barry Lyndon, can be heard throughout the space from a circular booth in which the 2007 finale plays on a loop. 

Nature was a powerful incentive for Lee McQueen. Sarabande cited as its inspiration artist Sam Taylor Johnson’s photographic compositions of dying fruit - bringing further credence to the overlaps between McQueen’s fashion and art. Indeed, in their craftsmanship and composition his creations are art, particularly where they draw on countless sources of artistic inspiration, but I digress. Since McQueen’s passing in 2011, Burton’s collections have routinely paid homage to, and drawn inspiration directly from, her predecessor’s work. The brand’s archive is, thus, constantly in use as a creative resource under Burton, whose practice of taking artistic references and fashioning them around elaborate narratives mirrors McQueen’s. The purpose of the store’s second-floor installation space is to bring to life connections between archival pieces by McQueen, the designer, and the creative processes behind McQueen, the brand, as it exists today. The corseted skirt suit, with exploding neckline and sleeves filled with roses, hydrangeas and silk organza flowers, from Sarabande, sits alongside ‘exploded’ flower dresses from Burton’s Autumn/Winter 2012 campaign. Furthermore, two hand-cut and spiked flower dresses inspired by the ephemeral blue flax flower from Burton’s most recent collection, recall the same pleating and shredding techniques of those from 2012. 

A voluminous, black taffeta shaped dress from 2006’s Widows of Culloden is evidently the dramatic inspiration behind the rose dress, but one can also clearly see connections between McQueen past and present where the draped, overlapping troupe l’ceil petal jacket from 2008’s A Girl Who Lived In The Tree campaign, predates its drapes and folds. Other vintage McQueen offerings include garments from Scanners (Autumn/Winter 2003) - an under acknowledged collection that imagined tribes of women struggling against extreme climates - and two wool embroidered, needlepoint dresses from #13. Displayed next to yellow, honeycomb pattered and bee appliquéd garments by Burton (Spring/Summer 2013), both are architectural in ways.

Technique and artistry are synonymous with Alexander McQueen, so it is only right that the exhibition focuses on the design process. Visitors are openly encouraged, for example, to pick up the labels attached to each look which explain how they was made. In a step-by-step video, current head of the atelier Judy Halil demonstrates the process and inspiration behind Burton’s rose dress, and a public programme of workshops and events organised in collaboration with universities and collages, gives budding young fashion students the opportunity to learn about craft and design direct from the McQueen team. 

Roses functions across multiple platforms - as an exhibition, an archive and a workspace. It is a true treasure trove of McQueen from across the decades to the delight of fans such as myself. 27 Old Bond Street is my new home from home. Excuse me while I just move in here.

Roses is open during Alexander McQueen store hours at 27 Old Bond Street, Mayfair. Admission is free.

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Exhibition review: Lucien Freud: The Self-Portraits at the RA.

‘My work is purely autobiographical. It’s about myself and my surroundings’ - Lucein Freud 

Lucien Freud is my favourite artist. Renowned for paintings of dramatic intensity, produced through a process of scrupulous observation, his works possess a cryptic quality which I find fascinating. Organised in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Lucien Freud: The Self-Portraits brings together more than fifty paintings, drawing and prints for the first time, in an exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. It makes undeniable just how much Freud pushed the boundaries of a practice made popular in the 15th century. 

The exhibition provides a captivating insight into the psyche and artistic evolution of one of the most celebrated portrait artists in modern times. The work spans almost seven decades. From his first self-portrait in 1939 to his last, painted sixty four years later. Many of the works come from private collections, and include paintings and drawings from Freud’s teenage years. What the exhibition does best is highlight the centrality of Freud’s self-portraiture to the development of his artistic practice. 

Viewed chronologically, the works on display chart how Freud’s style moved from a linear and graphic one, in the early part of his career, to a textured and more painterly approach. This change in technique - we are informed - came from Freud’s switch from delicate sable brushes to those made of hog hair which he was able to load with thick paint. The exhibition's third room - Transition - does what it says on the tin. In it, a series of watercolours demonstrate how Freud’s handling of paint began to open up. The fine and delicate aesthetic of earlier pen and pencil works are replaced with loose and thicker brushstrokes and washes. Prior to the mid-1950s, Freud had focused on drawing; but soon abandoned this in favour of painting and even stopped drawing altogether for a period of seven years. 

Freud is one of very few twentieth century artists to have documented themselves with such consistency in their art, but his presence is not always obvious. Painting himself in relation to those around him, his is often looming, hidden in a corner, a shadow or his reflection. His presence, thus, serves to emphasise the autobiographical nature of his work where it provides an insight into his relationship with the sitter. Using mirrors allowed Freud to view himself from unexpected angels with a degree of objectivity. His work is compelling both in its subject matter and artistic technique. One views it almost with the same level of intensity that Freud placed on himself and his subjects. Such prolonged scrutinisation, Freud termed ‘biological truth-telling’. It was an approach he equally applied to his changing body, and his work and the exhibition also highlight the process of ageing. In his youth, Freud depicts himself as the horned Greek hero Acteon (Self-portrait as Actaeon, 1949), but by the end of the exhibition - now aged seventy-one - he is naked but for a pair of old and unlaced boots (Painter Working, Reflection, 1993). 

Lucien Fraud: The Self-Portraits is on display in the Sackler Wing of the Royal Academy, Piccadilly, London, until the 26th January 2020. Booking is advised. 

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Exhibition Review: A culture immortalised: Shot In Soho at The Photographers’ Gallery.

Soho - a Central London hot-bed for creativity, culture and community, and home to The Photographers’ Gallery since 2012. Shot In Soho, curated by Julian Rodriguez and TPG’s Karen McQuaid, is an original exhibition celebrating the rich history and culture of the area in which the gallery sits. 

Tucked away behind the grand facades of John Nash’s Regent Street, Soho remains a village at heart. A one-square mile of the capital whose rich history is one of diversity, non-conformity and resistance. Despite bordering one of London’s most commercialised areas, it has always retained its identity. Interestingly (as noted in the exhibition’s wall text) Shot In Soho comes at a time when the area faces transformation from the impending completion of the Cross Rail transportation hub. The exhibition, then, leads the way in recognising and remembering the extraordinary history of an area that is soon likely to be changed. 

Through a mix of photographs and ephemera - as well as a specially commissioned film and podcast series - the exhibition reflects Soho’s complex creative history in an engaging way. Seven photography series, ranging from the late 1960s to the present day, make up the core of the exhibition. They offer visitors a rare opportunity to view largely un-exhibited images by renowned photographs including William Klein, Corrine Day and Andres Petersen. As well as works and commissions by lesser known and emerging artists: Kelvin Brodie, Daragh Soden, Clancy Gebler Davies and John Goldblatt. Other finds include a Sergio Larrain archive photograph depicting locals at the now infamous The French House in 1959; and a John Deakin image showing artists Lucien Fraud, Francis Bacon and Frank Auerbach enjoying lunch at Wheelers Restaurant.

Older works (those by Klein, Petersen and Goldblatt) depict the historic character and creativity of Soho. Photographs taken in night clubs, strip clubs, sleazy saunas, bars, pubs and cafes, in people’s homes and on the streets at night, document the lives of individuals and communities. They capture the connections made by people; those that lived in Soho’s so-called seedy underbelly. This same spirit is captured in the gallery’s newest commission by Soden, Looking for Love (2018). Highlighting ‘the web of street corners where couples have dated, kissed and argued […] when the drink is wearing off’, it provides a contemporary portrait of an area that is as rich in character as it has always been. Gebler Davies’ black and white series taken at the infamous Colony Room Club sits against a ‘bilious-green' backdrop reminiscent of the club’s thickly painted walls. Days’ The Brewer Street Works (1990-2003) are striking in their nineties grunge-chic aesthetic. Though they are arguably my favourites, one would be forgiven for wondering what they tell us about Soho as an area other than that they were taken at the artists’ Brewer Street flat/studio.

Shot In Soho commemorates and champions the spirit of Soho. It offers a timely opportunity for visitors to view the area through the eyes of renowned photographers and contemporary practitioners alike; highlighting the myth and character of a place forever rich in both. 

Shot In Soho is on display at The Photographers’ Gallery, Soho, London, until the 9th February 2020. Entry costs £5/2.50 and is free after 17:00. 

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A tour of the imagination: Tim Walker: Wonderful Things at the V&A.

‘For me the V&A has always been a place of dreams […] and fashion photography is the dream department of photography’ - Tim Walker 

Tim Walker: Wonderful Things is certainly that. Through pictures, films, photographic sets and specially built installations, visitors to the V&A’s most recent fashion exhibition experience the impressive creative process behind one of the most inventive fashion photographers. One of Britain’s biggest names in the field, Walker is famed for his imaginative approach and fairytale aesthetic. 

Wonderful Things opens with two rooms devoted solely to Walker’s previous work, featuring those images for which he is best known. Just these rooms alone are enough for a exhibition in itself (all be it retrospective) but it is merely an introduction to the main event. Three years ago, Walker was approached by the V&A and asked to produce a series of works inspired by the museum’s collection. The result is ten new photographic series that draw inspiration from a range of art and objects found in its permanent collection. Directly influenced by the treasures Walker unearthed in the archives, each series is a love letter to an object from the V&A. An ivory skeletal figure from the 1670s inspire a fantastical photoshoot of Grace Jones in Gareth Pugh; bathed in a luminous red and blue light taken from sixteenth century stained glass. Detailed prints by Aubrey Beardsley lead to a bright white room in which Walker has used the artist’s medium as the inspiration for a series titled ‘Pen & Ink’. Partially hidden by it’s conservational covering is an Alexander McQueen dress from the designer’s infamous 2010 collection, ‘The Horn of Plenty’. Its elaborate layers of wrapping inspiring a series celebrating the work done by the museum’s conservators. 

The exhibition itself is a celebration of the role the V&A’s objects have played in Walker’s artistic process. Each series of photographs occupies its own themed room, and gives the show a solid structure. The magical aesthetic of Walker’s images makes them a perfect fit for the latest in a recent slew of large scale fashion retrospectives by the museum, in which a thematic approach to curation has become typical. Wonderful Things follows the dramatic evolution of contemporary fashion exhibitions in recent years. No longer are they simply informative displays of historic artefacts, but experiences. Whole worlds designed as if a walk through the creative’s mind; and this is what makes Wonderful Things so successful where it is once again the creative process that informs the curation. It helps, of course, that the exhibition design is by Shona Heath, Walker’s long term collaborator and set designer. Colour and lighting combine to create immersive, fantastical spaces akin to the complex, dreamlike sets Walker builds for his images. Every photograph and every room is a fantasy. It is an intensely enjoyable show.

Tim Walker: Wonderful Things is on display at The Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, until 8th March 2020. 

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‘James Crew, Vivienne Westwood / Channel, 2017′, Tim Walker: Wonderful Things at the Victoria & Albert Museum, 2019. Photograph © Jasmine Kee.

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Exhibition review: An Enquiring Mind: Manolo Blahník at The Wallace Collection.

Manolo Blahnik is one of, if not the, world’s most beloved footwear designer. An icon in the world of contemporary fashion, his instantly recognisable designs have been synonymous with style and luxury for almost fifty years. 

An Enquiring Mind, currently on display at The Wallace Collection, sees a carefully curated selection of Blahnik’s shoes set amongst eighteenth century masterpieces, from Western painting to performance art and neoclassicism. Each has been selected by Blahnik from his personal archive and hidden amongst the collection’s masterpieces, works which have long since inspired him. His lifelong passion for art underlines the skill and artistry found in his shoes. The exhibition is both an up-close look at these and a tour for visitors around the collection’s great works. The shoes selected pay homage to Blahnik’s career, with designs on display from the 1980s, to early 2000s, and late 2010s.  

The exhibition opens with a series of elegant sketches that highlight the skill and artistry inherent in Blahnik’s work. Each gallery is assigned a theme; the shoes echoing the qualities of craftsmanship and creativity found in the paintings, porcelain, furniture, sculpture and ornate gold ornaments that surround them. Brightly coloured and textured shoes sit alongside two porcelain fete galantes, both speaking to a fascination with theatre and spectacle (qualities synonymous with fashion designers often considered artists in their own right). In the Large Drawing Room, dominated by two enormous gold Boulle wardrobes, the materials, colours and detail of Flemish paintings and bronze sculptures are picked up in Blahnik’s designs. Following this, Jean-Honore Fragonard’s The Swing and Francois Boucher’s Mme de Pompadour, provide the perfect backdrop to a selection of shoes created for Sophia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette. 

Since its conception, collectors at The Wallace Collection have sought to acquire objects and artworks of the highest quality. Beauty and artistic elegance were, and remain, key to their ethos. These same principles Blahnik readily applies to his shoes, and it is evident for all to see. The presence of his shoes is the galleries also emphasise the importance of fashion in the making and understanding of eighteenth century art. His designs inhabit the same sense of excitement and novelty that the above works of art once held for their owners.

I have long been an advocate for the argument that fashion can be art. The placing of Blahnik’s designs within the context of the gallery emphasise their artistry and give credence to the dialogue between fashion and art once more.

An Enquiring Mind: Malone Blahnik at The Wallace Collection is a partnership between Malone Blahnik and The Wallace Collection. It is on display at The Wallace Collection, Manchester Square, London, until 27th October 2019. Entry is free.

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Exhibition Review: Don McCullin, Tate Britain.

If you saw this exhibition you most likely left it feeling emotionally exhausted. I know I did. Documenting sixty years of photography and world conflict, Don McCullin, previously on display at Tate Britain, depicted the devastating impact and suffering caused by some of the twentieth centuries most shameful humanitarian acts. 

Sandwiched between photographs of the English neighbourhoods in which McCullin lived, landscapes and still-life compositions, were some of the best known and most heartbreaking images of conflict abroad ever to be taken. Despite being interspersed with sections covering the artists’ life back home, the same sense of hardship and deprivation that appeared in his war images haunted even these. Traveling around Bradford, McCullin recalled how everything he saw ‘seemed to echo…the scenes of deprivation, dereliction, death, and disaster (he) had witnessed in other countries’. His eyes having ‘grown accustomed to (the) dark’.

McCullin’s images first functioned in the context of photojournalism, and therefore complexities came with displaying his work in the context of the gallery. No longer viewed with the immediacy of ‘news’, having been read at the breakfast table, McCullin’s photos functioned as historic records of the past. Yet that is not to say their impact doesn’t remain decades later. Whilst looking at a photo of a child lying abandoned on a road (A Child Abandoned, Bangladesh, 1971), a woman behind me abruptly left, telling her partner, ‘I can’t look at anymore pictures of suffering’. At the time his photos were commissioned, McCullin proved successful in making it impossible for audiences to ignore the horrors taking place in the world. The exhibition, then, proved important in showing new audiences evidence of some of the worst historical conflicts, and displaying the work gave them a life beyond the artist’s archive. It afforded McCullin’s photographs a new lease of life, where he has been dissatisfied with the insufficient role he feels his work has had in ending suffering. An exhibition forced audiences to revisit the tragedies of people and places that should never be forgotten.  

While the subject matter proved the primary focus of the show, it was in McCullin’s presentation in his photographs that the work was most impactful, helping them stick in audiences’ minds. Visitors to the exhibition viewed carefully composed, harrowing images of the devastation caused by conflicts in The Congo, Cambodia, Cyprus, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Beirut, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. Photographs at once both uncomfortable and beautiful in their framing and use of light. McCullin has explained that his images are an attempt to ‘seduce people into actually hanging on a bit longer.’ Asking audiences to truly look at his photographs, rather than turn away because what they depict is too difficult to see. ‘So (that) they go away not with an intimidating memory but with a conscious obligation’.

If you made it to the end of the exhibition, you were rewarded, in the final room, with truly breathtaking images of landscapes and still-life compositions. Composed in his darkroom at home in England, still-life photography offered McCullin escapism from the tragedies he had experienced at war. In the context of the exhibition, they too supplied much needed relief for visitors. For McCullin photography is about feeling; this exhibition having had that in abundance. It was long and broke my heart, but it was undoubtedly worth seeing. It will stick with me, just like McCullin wanted. 

Don McCullin was on display at Tate Britain, Millbank, from 5th February - 6th May 2019.

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Exhibition Review: Jesse Darling: The Ballad of Saint Jerome, Tate Britain.

In the latest instalment of Tate’s ‘Art Now’ series, Berlin and London-based artist Jesse Darling revisits the legend of Saint Jerome and the lion. Through sculptures and site-specific installations, the exhibition explores ideas of identity centred on themes of vulnerability, including gender, sexuality, disability, companionship and love. Though Darling initially viewed the fable as a kind of love story, here she begins to question Jerome as symbolic of the patriarchal control exercised by institutions; be that the Church, the State, or in this case, the Museum. 

And so, the story goes that when Jerome was met by an unruly lion, rather than reach for his crossbow, he tended to the animal’s injury. Removing a thorn from its paw, the lion became his faithful companion. The legend was a popular subject in art during the Renaissance period, with the lion representing the taming of the wild and Jerome, understanding and restraint. Acknowledging the lion’s pain is romantic in the sense that Jerome sees past its aggression; but the story also raises questions concerning power, control and the suppression of otherness. Darling’s work attempts to resist social and political constraints with an exhibition that is a culmination of playful pieces addressing complex themes. Toilet brushes, polyester packaging, medical equipment, and plastic water bottles give everyday materials a new and playful life. Like much of Darling’s previous work, personal themes are visible - disability being the most obviously recognisable in the presence of twisted mobility canes (a neurological disease paralysed most of the artist’s right arm). Parallels are drawn between the medical industrial complex and the church in a series of works titled No more St. Jerome, which question the imperial understanding of bodies. 

The figure of Jerome functions in the context of Darling’s work as a stand-in for the museum and church, institutions which uphold the status-quo that sees art embedded in a system of capital and patriarchy. He is Tate Britain: a problematic figure where his decisions in translating the Bible for mainstream audiences set certain principals in place. In supplementary correspondence that accompanies the exhibition, between the artist and Anglican priest Reverend Dr ‘Tina’ Beardsley, Darling cites the gendering of words, such as ‘woman’ and ‘shame’, as becoming synonymous after Jerome. In many ways, this arguably put society on a path to where we are today. The parallels between the twin institutions of museum and church are clear. In the layout of the exhibition, the hole in the central white wall functions almost as an altarpiece. As spaces, both the church and the museum offer visitors a similar feeling that they are in the presence of true beauty. Something thus worthy of care; and art is historically referred to in relation to that which is deemed of value. 

The idea that things are better cared for in a glass box or vitrine, is a belief inherent in the concept of the museum, where it is thought objects will be better looked after in this way than they could possible ever be in the environment they originated from. To fix the lion’s wound, Jerome tames it, thus instituting a hierarchical relationship that exercises and maintains control, in much the same way art institutions have historically functioned. Darling’s works appear as relics. They are artefacts that, placed under the guise of the exhibition space, have obtained worth in the same way Church culture afforded meaning to the trophies that came (allegedly) from saints, making them visual reminders of what one should believe. In her conversations with Beardsley, Darling comments that to her it seems as if ‘all of Western secular culture has been imagined in the model of the Christian church. It is a shame’, she writes, ‘that art has become such a “high-church” in whose great houses many feel unwelcome’. One should acknowledge, of course, that Darling is a European artist with her own institutional exhibition. There is something to be said then for getting into bed with the institution, where it is her first at the age of thirty-two.

It is significant that the wall text acknowledges the way Darling’s work challenges the conventions of the museum display. A quick nod to self-critique by Tate, I suppose - where sculptures created from cabinets typically used to exhibit art expose the patriarchal logic and structure of art institutions. Recognising that the exhibition questions how audiences perceive objects, and the ways in which meaning and value are ascribed through modes of display - the vitrine, the frame - arguably neutralises Darling’s point. When institutions acknowledge institutional critique, do the practices associated with this not become institutionalised in themselves? 

Darling intends for the work to be subjective. Take from it what you will. ‘A picture is said to be a thousand words’, she tells Beardsley, ‘I sometimes think the only way to redeem objects, is to think about them in this way’. Yet while it may not be an attempt at activism, works crafted from everyday materials are an attempt to occupy and resist the space of the museum: a rejection of the institution and its outdated structures of viewing and collecting knowledge. Held up on buckled, bent legs, museum vitrines containing archival binders filled with cast concrete provide the most obvious subversion of the gallery-as-institution in Epistemologies (shamed cabinet). 

Darling proves complexity in art is still possible - despite the fact that class and capital make many feel unwelcome. Successfully using humour to address the serious topics she is exploring, her work is a break from the slick, manufactured work that characterises the capitalist art world. 

Jesse Darling: The Ballad of Saint Jerome is on display at Tate Britain, Milbank, until 24th February. Entry is free. 

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Clothing built like buildings: Azzedine Alaïa: The Couturier, at the Design Museum.

As much about structure and architecture as it is clothing, Azzedine Alaïa: The Couturier, is the first exhibition of the Tunisian-born couturier to be shown in the UK. Yet, it proves to be one of many to situate his work within the context of art and design. In 1996, the first retrospective of Alaïa’s work was displayed at the Palazzo Corsini in Florence, curated by Carla Sozzani. A further six followed, during the course of which the designer opened his own gallery, showcasing a cultural programme in art, design, literature, fashion and photography. Alaïa and seasoned curator Mark Wilson were ninety percent of the way through this retrospective when the designer passed away last year.

Upon entry to the gallery, visitors are met with a line-up of Alaïa’s most recent work. The garments are organised thematically on statuesque mannequins. At 850-square meters, the space isn’t split by walls; rather Alaia’s creations are presented against a backdrop of five ten-meter-high screens, commissioned from five leading contemporary figures in design and art personally known to the designer. Criss-crossing between the garments, screens by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Konstantin Gricic, Kris Ruhs, Marc Newson and Christoph von Weyhe, situate fashion alongside fellow artists which result in new and thought-provoking connections. 

The exhibition is a celebration: a temple of timeless design. Visitors witness craftsmanship up close in a sixty-piece display that spans multiple collections across Alaïa’s career. There are the famous bandage dresses, the flamenco inspired dresses, the Grace Jones dress, the Tina Turner dress… pieces which are now iconic. However, the elongated silhouettes, specifically recut by Alaïa to fit the perspex mannequins, appear far more active and glamorous than they often do in traditional exhibitions of dress. Alaïa’s renowned ‘second-skin’ clothing is articulated in way that makes the work come to life. It proves to be in more than just the catwalk footage and film interviews with celebrity friends, models and fellow designers, that they do this. Set above eye level, to the viewer these elongated figures exhibit a quality that makes them more than simply objects. The exhibition themes are structured around technique, and highlight what makes Alaïa’s work so enduring. What allows his clothing to remain unique is the cut - innovative and refreshing, yet classic and timeless. They could have been made today or thirty years ago.

Alaïa defined a new aesthetic. He created a way of dressing for women where every piece was a new classic, simple and beautifully made with everything modelled to the body. Unlike most fashion designers, Alaïa refused to conform to the consumer timeline of his industry. He did not pick a theme to inspire his collection. Instead, he championed eternal beauty, forever dependant on the shape of the body. ‘If anything, my work comes close to architecture’, he once stated. This exhibition proves that to be true - Alaïa’s painstaking shaping of the female form makes his clothes sculptural objects in their own right.

Azzedine Alaïa: The Couturier was on display at the Design Museum, London, from 10thMay – 7thOctober 2018. The exhibition was organised by the Design Museum in collaboration with Maison Alaïa and the Azzedine Alaïa Association.

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Exhibition Review: Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive

I often find myself in London’s Photographers’ Gallery hoping to kill some time, only to be faced with the discovery of an interesting artist and Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive is no exception. Curated by Nathalie Herschdorfer - produced in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts Le Locle - it situates itself alongside those exhibitions that have stayed with me most. Specifically, I recall Wim Wenders: Instant Stories (2017-18) - an exhibition that also explored the relationship between photography and film. Yet it is in the large-scale, meticulously staged nature of Prager’s elegant images that I find the work most recalls that of Gregory Crewdson’s Cathedral of the Pines (2017) in its cinematic quality.

Referencing the mid-twentieth century aesthetic of Hollywood cinema, Prager (b.1979) carefully constructs staged images which draw out individual characters and narratives. With a rich colour pallet, the works have a dramatic intensity. Over forty photographs sit alongside ten years of Prager’s work in film, drawing parallels between the filmic attributes of the artist’s self-termed ‘moving photographs’. Their sleek and vivid compositions typically centre on female protagonists in public settings. From beaches, to airports, theatres and Prager’s hometown of Los Angeles, the audience are drawn into individual stories. It is evident in the way the exhibition is structured that Prager’s films function as extensions of her still images. Depicting the before, now and after, in her own hyper-real worlds, Prager traverses between the private and the public. Remenisant of Edward Hopper, the works exposes the extraordinary within the everyday.

Sustained across the gallery’s top two floors is the signature visual style of an artist whose influences appear visible. Prager’s use of luminous colour is reminiscent of works by American artist William Eggleston (so taken was Prager with a photograph by Eggleston that she taught herself photography). Prager’s films blur the line between reality and fiction. They parallel the Surrealists’ use of cinema to manipulate time and space in order to further distort the real and the unreal. References to Alfred Hitchcock appear frequently; Bryce Dallas Howard’s protagonist in Despair (2010) reminds me of the character of ‘Miss Lonely Hearts’ in Rear Window (1954). Prager’s voyeuristic style mirrors Hitchcock’s and his influence looms large too in the series The Big Valley (2008). Further on, in the 2013 series Faces in the Crowd, highly orchestrated and costumed scenes emphasise the photograph’s filmic qualities. Large scale images, the majority taken from above, draw the audience into the private moments of individuals, often caught in motion.

The majority of photographs are taken from above. In instances where an individual looks directly into the camera, the theatre of Prager’s work is revealed. Her use of costume to single out characters within crowds extends her narratives. Emphasising personality, each suggests a individual backstory, with images appearing more theatrical than a real crowd. Crossing the worlds of photography, fashion and film, it is this mix between the real and the staged, the grit and glamour, that makes Prager’s work so successful. She depicts a world that, in all its dressed-up splendour, is both akin to daily life yet strangely unfamiliar.

Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive remains on display at The Photographers Gallery, Soho, London until 14thOctober 2018.

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