Scrapbook: Pachacuti at Pure

 

 

Kipling and Silver Spoon Attire at Selfridges II

If you haven't had your bag customised yet, you've got one last chance during LFW: 17th September, John Lewis, Stratford, London.

Art-iculate: The Jameel Prize 2011

Last month I was invited down to the V+A to look around the press preview of the ten Jameel Prize 2011 nominees. A competition held bi-annually to identify the best in contemporary Islamic art and crafts, there is an inspiring prize of £25,000 which will be claimed by the winner on 12th September.
The exhibition features over 20 works that draws strongly on the artists’ and designers’ own local and regional traditions, celebrating particular materials and iconography with strong references to traditional Islamic art.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s Birds of Paradise (2008)

The works on display range from felt costumes and sculptures made from hand-made terracotta bricks to mirror mosaics and digital collages inspired by traditional Persian miniature paintings. In many of the works on display there is an underlying reference to the artists’ own ‘hybrid’ cultural identity; the mix of old and new, minimalism versus ornament, tradition and modernity, and home versus exile – topics of self-identity that are becoming increasingly relevant in modern society.

 Aisha Khalid’s Name, Class, Subject (2009)

The V+A announced the shortlist for this year’s Jameel Prize at Art Dubai. Almost 200 nominations were received, from countries as diverse as the United States, Spain, Nigeria, Egypt and Pakistan.

Soody Sharifi’s two prints Frolicking Women in the Pool (2007) and Fashion Week (2010)

The Jameel Prize is sponsored by Abdul Latif Jameel Community Initiatives (ALJCI). The prize was conceived after the renovation of the V+A’s Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, which opened in July 2006. . Launched in 2009, the winner of the first Jameel Prize was Afruz Amighi for her work 1001 Pages (2008), an intricate hand-cut screen made from the woven plastic used to construct refugee tents.

Babak Golkar's Negotiating the Space for Possible Coexistencies No. 2 (2009)

British award-winning architect Zaha Hadid is Patron of the Jameel Prize. She says: "It is a very exciting time for artists working in Islamic art tradition, there is a real spirit of innovation and creativity in the air. Their work now goes beyond established painting, sculpture and calligraphy to explore new media and reflect the diverse cultures and histories of the region. This work has evolved with its own characteristic voice, exploring future possibilities, yet is derived from rich cultural traditions and a timeless history. For millennia, the Islamic arts and sciences have bridged the cultural divide between East and West, teaching us that these worlds are not mutually exclusive, but rather layered upon each other and profoundly interlinked. The Jameel Prize gives us a very promising outlook to the future and I am pleased to see the region's artists pushing new boundaries."

Aisha Khalid

Within the exhibition I discovered the work of several artists whose work was emotive and thought provoking. Expecting to find a labyrinth of rooms, I was pleasantly surprised to see the main exhibition contained within one space, helping to build a relationship and sense of solidarity between the artists.

Hadieh Shafie's 22500 and Two Scroll Books (2011), with detail below

With over 20 to choose from it’s hard to narrow down my favourite work to one. Favourites include: Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s Birds of Paradise (2008) a work that demonstrates her distinctive style of adapting and combining Iranian traditions of mirror mosaic and reverse glass painting techniques with a modern aesthetic. Also, Aisha Khalid’s Name, Class, Subject (2009), an artist book inspired by the exercise or ‘copy books’ used by government schools in Pakistan to teach writing in Urdu and English, is inspired. More traditional works such as Soody Sharifi’s two prints Frolicking Women in the Pool (2007) and Fashion Week (2010) explore the accommodation of modernity within a traditional society, particularly referencing Muslim youth culture in Iran and the United States.

Noor Ali Chagani's Life Line (2010)

The Jameel Prize 2011 is on display until 25th September, free of charge.

Scrapbook: Riots and Looting in Woolwich

The morning after the night before. My street is unrecognisable, starting with the view from my front door.

Zandra Rhodes and Adele Marie at Pure

Today I attended Pure London for the first time and I have to say, it was rather good. Whilst I always try (and ultimately fail) to go each season, today I had an extra special reason to go: to attend a brief Q+A session with designer extraordinaire Zandra Rhodes and jewellery designer Adele Marie on their collaboration; Zandra Rhodes Jewellery.

Launching their first collaborative collection this month, the duo have breathed a new lease of life into Rhodes most iconic prints and symbols from her illustrious back-catalogue, including faces 'wiggles' and 'seaweed' patterns. A renowned jeweller in her own right Adele is stocked in London's most iconic department store, Harrods. Feeling that she could re-interpret Rhode's work, broadening its appeal to entice a younger demographic, theirs is an ideal marriage.

Aiming to create something 'special for everyone', many items in the collection are statement pieces made from a selection of mixed metals and resin casts. Retailing between £30-120 Rhodes cool design aesthetic has never been so accessible, with each piece created being jewellery that Rhodes herself would wear, ultimately creating 'a piece of her that other people can purchase'.

As the duo is constantly designing, this is only the beginning of what looks set to be a lengthy collaboration. Keep your eyes out for the second collection due in November!

Website plug

Readers, followers and friends, please don't forget to check out my new website. There you can find highlights of my best blog posts on art and fashion, and also find links to all of my published freelance work to date. Additionally you can peruse some of my independent projects and generally find out a bit more about me. What are you waiting for?!

Art-iculate: David Goldblatt, Lifetimes: Under Apartheid

A plot-holder, his wife and their eldest son at lunch. Wheatlands, near Randfontein, Transvaal, September 1962. From the series Some Afrikaners Photographed. © David Goldblatt / V&A Images. Museum no. E.7-1992.
Two weeks ago I went to the V+A for the press preview of the Jameel Prize (which will comprise next week’s Art-iculate entry), and killed two birds with one stone, visiting the photography rooms for the penultimate week of David Goldblatt’s Lifetimes: Under Apartheid.

Lawrence Matjee after release from detention. De Villiers Street, Johannesburg, 25 October 1985. © David Goldblatt / V&A Images. Museum no. E.114-1992.
A photographer I have been a fan of for as long as I can remember (on Sundays my Dad would take me to the Photographer’s Gallery), I often saw Goldblatt’s emotive and unbiased works as part of the annual Deutsche Börse Photography Prize shortlist exhibition.

Dancing-master Ted van Rensburg watches two of his ballroom pupils swinging to a recording of Victor Sylvester and his Orchestra, at the Old Court House. Boksburg, 1980. From the series In Boksburg. © David Goldblatt / V&A Images. Museum no. E.76-1992.
For this V+A display, native South African Goldblatt’s work was split into five chapters, each denoting specific periods of his life and stages of civil unrest; Some Afrikaners Photographed, On The Mines, Particulars, In Boksburg, Johannesburg Encounters, The Structure of Things Then and The Transported of KwaNdebele.

The Apostolic Multiracial Church in Zion of South Africa. Crossroads, Cape Town, Cape, 11 October 1984. From the series South Africa: The Structure of Things Then. © David Goldblatt / V&A Images. Museum no. E.99-1992.
Well known for documenting the social and physical landscape of his nation, Lifetimes: Under Apartheid highlights some of Goldblatt’s most prolific works, shot between 1960 and the mid 1980s, when social segregation was at its most intense. Mainly taken from Goldblatt’s illustrious back-catalogue of photo essays, these images document the individual in a political wilderness. 

A commando escorting the prime minister and leader of the National Party, Hendrik Verwoerd and his wife, Betsy, to the party’s 50th anniversary celebrations. De Wildt, Transvaal, 31 October 1964. From the series Some Afrikaners Photographed. © David Goldblatt / V&A Images. Museum no. E.11-1992.
Some Afrikaners Photographed
Taken from Goldblatt’s first photographic essay, made between 1961 and 1968, Some Afrikaners Photographed depicts Dutch and German settlers who were the main political force in the National Party, which held power in South Africa from 1948 until 1994. The Afrikaners came to be identified with the ruling elite and, together with other ‘white’ communities, they were the beneficiaries of apartheid. Goldblatt says: ‘I was concerned with a few minutiae of Afrikaner life, with a few people’.

At the Soccer Cup Final. Orlando Stadium, Soweto, November 1972. © David Goldblatt / V&A Images. Museum no. E.42-1992.
On the Mines

The first book Goldblatt published was On the Mines (1973), with an essay by Nadine Gordimer who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Goldblatt took most of the photographs on the Witwatersrand, the area that had been the backbone of South African industry since gold was discovered there in the 19th century. Mining was not only the motor of economic growth – born from the migrant labour of black men - but formed part of the country’s identity. In Gordimer’s words: ‘The mining industry was the basis of South Africa’s industrial wealth and long ago set the pattern for the exploitation of blacks by whites. ... Weighed against gold, the white man’s sweat is still considered of greater worth than the black man’s’.

Saturday morning at the Pick ‘n Pay Hypermarket: Miss Lovely Legs Competition. Boksburg, 1980. From the series In Boksburg. © David Goldblatt / V&A Images. Museum no. E.81-1992.
Particulars

David Goldblatt’s father owned a men’s clothing store in the small mining town of Randfontein. He later described the impact of this period: ‘Of my life experiences one that was crucial was that of working in my father’s shop … where I acquired a consciousness of bodily particulars that was technical rather than subjective’. Mostly made in 1975, Particulars is an assemblage of body fragments. Goldblatt describes how he attempted to ‘explore ... the particulars of their bodies, as affirmations or embodiments of their selves’. Details of clothing, gesture, setting and pose reveal social and sexual identities, locating the figures in time and place.

The leader of the Vikings gang with his wife, child and sister, at home. Orlando East, Soweto, October 1972. © David Goldblatt / V&A Images. Museum no. E.37-1992.
In Boksburg
Boksburg is a town in the eastern sprawl of the greater Johannesburg area. The photographs Goldblatt took there in 1979/1980 examine life in what he describes as a typical ‘small-town, middle-class, white community’ of the period. As he noted: ‘Boksburg is shaped by white dreams and white proprieties. Most of its townspeople pursue the family, social and civic concerns of respectable burghers anywhere, while locked into a deep and portentous fixity of self-elected legislated whiteness’. The photographs capture everyday scenes and social rituals in a segregated society. On its margins but vital to its existence appear the disenfranchised black onlookers, servants and labourers, who are tolerated in ‘whites-only’ suburbia. ‘Blacks are not of this town’, Goldblatt put it. ‘They serve it, trade with it, receive charity from it and are ruled, rewarded and punished by its precepts. Some, on occasion, are its privileged guests. But all who go there do so by permit or invitation, never by right’.

A young boy swimming. Aberdeen, Cape Province, 1966. From the series Some Afrikaners Photographed. © David Goldblatt / V&A Images. Museum no. E.115-1992.
Johannesburg Encounters
This group of portraits was made during the 1970s and 1980s in and around Johannesburg. Most were taken in Soweto, the collective name for the black townships to the south-west of the city in which most of Johannesburg’s black populace were compelled to live. Many of the watershed events in the struggle to end apartheid took place in Soweto.

The salute of the banned African National Congress at the graves of four assassinated black community leaders. Cradock, Eastern Cape, 20 July 1985. © David Goldblatt / V&A Images. Museum no. E.112-1992.
The Structure of Things Then
Goldblatt has always been interested in the ways ideology and politics are embodied not only in the actions and appearances of people, but also in the structures that surround them. The photographs he compiled for his 1998 book South Africa: The Structure of Things Then depict built and social structures such as churches, monuments, squatter camps, private homes and servants’ quarters. Each is a manifest symbol of the conditions that created them. The pictures explore how people’s values, their ethos, aspirations, fears and needs have taken shape in the built environment of South Africa.



Woman collecting shellfish. Port St Johns, Transkei, 1975. From the series Particulars. © David Goldblatt / V&A Images.

Museum no. E.61-1992

The Transported of KwaNdebele
The implementation of apartheid social engineering forced many black South Africans to travel enormous distances between their homes and workplaces. They had been forcibly relocated to semi-independent ‘homelands’, but were now very far from the white urban centres where they could find employment. Goldblatt's photographs document the exhausting bus ride between the Wolwekraal bus depot in KwaNdebele homeland and the Marabastad terminal outside Pretoria. A one-way journey could take over three hours, impelling people to leave home in the middle of the night to be at their jobs on time. The necessity to take onward transport in Pretoria could prolong the journey yet further.