//Annie Frost Nicholson with the Fandangoe Discoteca. Pic courtesy of anniefrostnicholson.com//
Next week sees the opening at London’s Canary Wharf of artist Annie Frost Nicholson’s Fandangoe Discoteca, the mini-disco installation where we can shake out our grief and help maintain daily mental health – the programme covers all intersections of grief from bereavement to climate angst to political rage to break-ups.
The design of the kiosk was inspired by De Stijl and Ettore Sottsass and holds up to eight dancers at a time.
The new interiors magazine TON – the first issue is out now – has two pieces by me on very different but equally extraordinary homes.
TON’s founder and editor-in-chief Jermaine Gallacher – who works with art director Rory Gleeson and editorial director Ted Stansfield – commissioned me to write about Dave Baby’s apartment close to where we both live, in south London’s Stockwell.
As I write, ‘this otherworldly space represents a bewitching realm of desires, sexuality and esoterica with Dave at the maelstrom’s centre, a still figure dispensing wily wit and charm’.
“No fool can be silent at a feast” Solon, Greek lawmaker and philosopher 630-560 BC
West London antiques dealer James Jackson is inaugurating his newly refurbished premises with Fête des Imbéciles, an exhibition of works by the British artist Robert Rubbish.
//PRINT! is staged in Somerset House’s Terrace Rooms; the exhibition’s graphic identity was created by Scott King. His distinctive fluoro pink logo is on the lightbox at the far end of room 1. Photo: Doug Peters////With my wife and PRINT! contributor Caz Facey, rock legend Jimmy Page and poet Scarlett Sabet at the private view this week////Each room has wall grids divided into subjects – this, the main wall in room 1, presents magazines expressing dissent and protest. Photo: Doug Peters////In the courtyard at Somerset House; socks courtesy Pavement Licker////Private view attendees Duggie Fields and Jarvis Cocker. Photo: Martin Green//
PRINT! Tearing It Up – the exhibition at central London’s Somerset House I have organised with the SH Trust’s senior curator Claire Catterall – is now open.
The new issue of international interiors magazine apartamento includes my feature about British artist Duggie Fields and his extraordinary mansion flat in inner west London neighbourhood Earl’s Court.
Graphic artist, musician, fashion and interiors designer and all-round all-rounder Ian Harris has granted me access to more items from his amazing archive; this is in the intriguing category – a flyer for a most unusual art project he visited in the early 1970s.
Warhol Waking was staged over one day in the foyer of Kensington Town Hall in west London in the spring of 1971. This tumultuous period of creative experimentation in public and private spaces was later described as representing either “the immense variety and talent of the London arts scene or its condition of cultural confusion” by artist and art historian John A. Walker.
The installation/intervention proved challenging for visitors: it comprised a typical domestic bed with sheets and blanket drawn back to reveal excrement juxtaposed with a towering orchid which drooped as the day passed and flies gathered.
//Mannequin, New Power Studio, Autumn/Winter 2010 – Spring/Summer 2012. Wall: Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield, 1995-2001, Jason Evans////Set design, Tony Hornecker, 2016. Film: Stylist Simon Foxton discusses growing up in Berwick-upon-Tweed, produced in collaboration with SHOWstudio, 2016//
I am very grateful to curators Adam Murray and Lou Stoppard for these exclusive installation shots from their exciting exhibition North: Identity, Photography, Fashion, which opens in a couple of hours at Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery.
Exploring the influence of England’s northern cities and landscape on fashion and visual culture, the show presents the work of such vital image-makers as Alasdair McLellan – who has created his first film installation for public display at North – as well as Jamie Hawkesworth, Glen Luchford and Nick Knight.
//Interior, 430 King’s Road, west London, designed by Patrick Casey and Malcolm McLaren for the retail outlet Let It Rock and photographed by David Parkinson in January 1972. No reproduction without permission//
I have elected the above image for inclusion in the exhibition 111 Inspirational Interiors, which opens tomorrow in the Windows Gallery 1 at Central Saint Martins in Kings Cross, north London.
The show is curated by designer Ben Kelly in his role as chair of interior and spatial design at University of the Arts London as part of his project Popular Culture And The Interior; the 1972 David Parkinson photograph stems from my participation in Kelly’s ICA symposium last year, Dead Or Alive – Interior Design.
For the exhibition, Kelly invited 111 people to contribute “an image of an interior that has been important and influential in their creative and intellectual development”. The image I chose was taken on the completion of the refurbishment of the ground floor of 430 King’s Road from the premises of boutique Paradise Garage into Teddy Boy culture emporium Let It Rock in late 1971 by the late Malcolm McLaren and his fellow former Harrow Art School student Patrick Casey.
