The many sides of glass: Flavie Audi at Tristan Hoare

If you ask me, there is nothing that rings in the holiday season more than brightly coloured things that shine. From tree ornaments to jewels to candlelight, Christmas is all about the sparkle, so now that it’s almost December I’d suggest running not walking to Tristan Hoare for their latest exhibition Cell-(estial), a collection of enchanting work by French-born Lebanese artist Flavie Audi.

Fluid Rock 19, 2016. Blown glass, gold, silver. Courtesy of the Artist and Tristan Hoare.

Audi is best known for her mouthwateringly beautiful gem-like glass sculptures, but for this exhibition she also includes photography and film as a means to investigate the points at which the natural and artificial worlds meet.

Fluid Rock 16, 2016. Blown glass, gold. Courtesy of the Artist and Tristan Hoare.

 

Glass is a naturally occurring, organic material, yet through its modern usage in mobile and TV screens it has taken on technological significance – as an interface through which real and virtual worlds are mediated – and it is this collision of realities that is at the heart of Audi’s practice. To explore how these realms interact, the show has been divided into two distinct installations, one representing the physical, the other digital, chaotic nature placed alongside the rational and man-made.

We are delighted to have had the opportunity to speak with Audi about this exhibition and her general practise.

Have a read below and then as previously mentioned, get to the gallery immediately!

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Essex Architecture Weekend is Tomorrow!

Tomorrow, Saturday 10 September, marks the start of the 2-day Essex Architecture Weekend presented by Radical Essex.

1 Clockhouse Way Estate, 2016 c. Catherine Hyland. Courtesy Focal Point Gallery

The festival, themed ‘The Modernist County,’ will pivot around three exciting sites: the Bata Estate in East Tilbury, Frinton-on-Sea and Silver End village. The goal is to illustrate how these experimental community models pioneered Modernist architecture.

Le Chateau, Silver End, 2016 c. Catherine Hyland. Courtesy Focal Point Gallery

‘Daydreaming is really underrated’ – ArtAttack interviews the duo behind ‘Flood House’

This Saturday, 30th April, sees the launch of another event in the Radical Essex programme, ‘Flood House,’ an architectural design project conceived by Matthew Butcher with accompanying events/commissions curated by Jes Fernie in collaboration with Focal Point Gallery. 

The structure itself is an investigation into the living conditions of the seasonally flooded landscape it will inhabit, a floating collaboration of art and architecture that is both a projected dwelling for a floating habitat, as well as a labaratory to monitor local environmental conditions.

The exciting commissions to be presented include an artwork by Ruth Ewan entitled ‘All Distinctions Levelled,’ which is a weathervane attached to the ‘Flood House’ itself.

ArtAttack had the chance to speak with both designer, Matthew, and curator, Jes, to get some more insight into this exciting and evocative project.

Photo Brotherton-Lock

Beyond TOWIE: Focal Point Gallery presents Radical Essex & ‘The Peculiar People’

To launch Focal Point Gallery‘s upcoming series of events and exhibitions, Radical Essex, a project that will re-examine the history of Essex in relation to radicalism in thought, lifestyle, politics and architecture, the gallery presents ‘The Peculiar People.’

The show, which traces the history of ideological and social-political communal living experiments throughout the 20th Century to the present day, opens today, 19th April and features an extensive archival display speculating on alternative living experiments from the late 1800s to the 1980s, alongside visual art, architecture, design and literature that relate to these counter-cultural histories.

To get an inside look into the exhibition, as well as the greater Radical Essex project, ArtAttack spoke with Focal Point Gallery director, Joe Hill.

Silver End bus. Courtesy Braintree District Museum

‘A re-negotiation with Modernism’ – David Ben White at l’étrangère

Inside Outside at  l’étrangère presents a new body of work encompassing painting and sculpture by the British artist, David Ben White.

Absorbed within the language and aspirations of modernist architecture, design and art, White’s paintings and sculptures disrupt the self-enclosed logic of this prescriptive legacy through a subversion of its objects and spaces. For his first exhibition at l’étrangère, White will treat the spaces of the gallery as subjects to be reinterpreted; the homogenous model of the white cube is reformed via signifiers of a familiar, domestic interior. Upon entering the gallery, a constructed environment comprising painting, sculpture and vinyl installation draws the viewer into a re-configuration of the relationship between gallery, artwork and spectator, one that gestures towards an interior design logic.

I had the chance to speak with David about his artistic practice and forthcoming exhibition.

David Ben White, Installation view, 2015 | © David Ben White, Photo: Angelo Plantamura. Courtesy the artist and l’étrangère

Weekend Inspiration at Central Saint Martins

This weekend, the sun came back to London, and brought with it my favourite uni exhibition of the year thus far, the Central Saint Martins Foundation and BA shows.

Happily dawning a tee-shirt sans jumper, I walked on to the King’s Cross campus Saturday afternoon expecting exciting new work and that general freshness that comes with most student shows. However, what I got from the exhibition was beyond just that, for I left having seen many pieces I would happily have in my house, and feeling more inspired than ever by the impeccable variety and true uniqueness of the art on view, which spanned across Fine Art, Architecture, Fashion & Textiles, Graphic & Communication Design and more.