Amelia’s Magazine | London Fashion Week S/S 2012 Presentation Review: Craig Lawrence

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012 by Meagan Morrison

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012 by Meagan Morrison

I’m quite partial to a knitted design – one of my favourite designers is Mark Fast, order whose spun creations I yearn for, and I loved the A/W 2010 work of graduate student Phoebe Thirlwall. I’m also very fond of Craig Lawrence, whose work I have followed and celebrated, and so I was eagerly anticipating his intimate salon show at The Portico Rooms at Somerset House, the perfect surrounding for the debut of his S/S 2012 collection. An excitement it appeared that was shared by everyone else attending London Fashion Week… The queue for the presentation wound round the marble staircase of Somerset House, and snaked along the grand hall – a bit of a change from what Matt Bramford had seen the previous year.

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012 – All photography courtesy of Ella Dror PR

Craig Lawrence is a London Fashion Week must-see. For six seasons, before he graduated from Central Saint Martins and set up his own label, Craig produced knitwear for the outlandish designer Gareth Pugh. He showed his debut collection for A/W 2009, which won him The British Fashion Council’s NEWGEN sponsorship. The Council’s faith and support continues, as this season sees Craig celebrating his sixth season under the sponsorship. As I was finally ushered into the room and asked to find myself a square inch of space, I spotted blogger Susie Bubble on the front row. I realised what a hot ticket this show was, and thought that maybe next year’s space should be rethought, regardless of the atmospheric surroundings. By the time the doors were closed, every seat in the room had been taken, but in this close setting, I couldn’t have asked for a better view of the clothes.

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012 - All photography courtesy of Ella Dror PR

Craig’s primary inspiration for the collection was the seaside photo sets of British documentary photographer Martin Parr. Parr is known for projects that explore modern life in England, and for his sense of humour that runs through his photos. He claims that the seaside is one of the most fascinating places for people watching, where we lose our inhibitions and where true personalities are unveiled. As the first looks of Craig’s collection were presented, the influence of the British seaside towns was clear, but rather from the depths of the sea, instead of the beach and its holiday makers. The models were enchanting sea creatures. Adorned in the metallic threads of a fisherman’s net or wrapped seaweed, in the colours of the ocean and washed up treasures and sun baked sand, with headpieces like sea coral reefs. Craig presented a rich and textured collection of knitwear in a palette of pastel and muted hues, run with metallic details.

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012

Last season’s moody palette of dark metallic blues, purples and black was replaced with a lighter, gentler combination of creams, pale mint greens and pinks. As the models swayed down the short catwalk they glistened with every step. Craig Lawrence collaborated with Swarovski Elements for this collection which gave a sparkle of luxury to his intricately knitted designs. Swarovski Pale Crystal yarns and fibres had been woven into individual pieces, which caught the bright lights of The Portico Rooms as the models revolved to face each wall of the room. The Swarovski crystals were also sewn in to other designs as pure embellishment.

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012 by Megan Thomas

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012 by Megan Thomas

It was apparently the idea of the Essex phenomenon ‘vajazzling’ that inspired Lawrence’s use of Swarovski crystal fibres for this season, but with this influence aside, it was a sophisticated and refined concept that pushed the collection to another level. Craig’s material of choice, unique Kyototex metallic yarns, keeping to the sea-theme in cream and shell colours, were woven into the designs, adding to the luxuriance and feminine appeal of each look.

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012 - All photography courtesy of Ella Dror PR

Layering was an important detail across the whole collection. The dresses and skirts were flowing, with knitted bralets, metallic leggings and tights worn underneath. There was also a mix of body-con wrap pieces, worn over designs such as a flowing lace-hole knitted maxi skirt, or tank top dress, and super wearable raglan-sleeved tops with elasticated vests which would add a perfect metallic shimmer for day or night. The Swarovski crystal embellishments added texture, and luxuriance. The draped designs left the body effortlessly, as the narrator explained how the pieces were knitted without elastic to create a looser, relaxed fit.

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012 - All photography courtesy of Ella Dror PR

One of the best things about a salon show is the chance to gain a greater understanding of the make up of the collection. For each of the 18 looks, a very well spoken narrator took the audience through the individual components, and explained the techniques undertaken. This replaced the usual upbeat modern song, and was a welcome point of difference. Through this, the salon show to me felt like a proper couture show, harking back to old fashion houses and buying appointments. There was a real sense of charm and nostalgia to this which I know is also an influence that Craig cites from his childhood in the countryside town of Ipswich.

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012

It was great – the audience was able to learn so much from the commentary. The narrator gave away details of craftsmanship that made you study Craig’s work as it came out one by one. We learnt that many of the pieces were created from a single thread to maintain the weightlessness. Indeed some of the designs looked like finely spun gold fisherman’s nets, and the models were beautiful sea creatures that had been caught in the webbing. The narration really helped to emphasise the level of work that had gone into creating this collection.

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012 by Gilly Rochester

Craig Lawrence S/S 2012 by Gilly Rochester

This was not the only aspect of the salon show that ensured it achieved a polished finish – the show was also styled by Dazed and Confused’s fashion editor Kate Shillingford, who has been a strong support of Craig’s career from the start, and oversees the creative direction of the label. Her expertise was really evident – no hanging yarn was out of place, the handmade shoes from Natacha Marro shoes fitted with the otherworldly air, and the delicate woven headpieces made by Steven Doherty were a superior finish acting as sparkling coral reefs, encased around the models heads.

I was mesmerized by Craig Lawrence’s embellished and shimmering sea-bed inspired offering. The pastel tones, metallic yarns and crystal details were subtle, serene and luxuriant. It was a fantastic collection that fully demonstrated his ability for producing knitwear that is challenging yet wearable, and significantly as a young designer, constantly pushing forward.

Categories ,british fashion council, ,Craig Lawrence, ,Crystals, ,Ella Dror PR, ,fashion, ,Gilly Rochester, ,Katie Shillingford, ,knitting, ,knitwear, ,lfw, ,Mark Fast, ,Martin Parr, ,Matt Bramford, ,Meagan Morrison, ,Megan Thomas, ,Metallic, ,Miranda Williams, ,Newgen, ,Phoebe Thirlwall, ,Presentation, ,S/S 2012, ,Salon Show, ,Somerset House, ,Swarovski, ,Womenswear

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Amelia’s Magazine | London Fashion Week S/S 2011 Presentation Review: Craig Lawrence

If you’ve seen Amelia’s post about Charlie le Mindu’s show yesterday, about it you’ll already know what you’re in for. But allow me to indulge myself because we can’t possibly harp on enough about this show…

When I was a lad, salve Sundays were reserved for attending church (occasionally), watching The Waltons and generally relaxing or playing with my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures. My, how things have changed. My most recent Sunday – yesterday – was spent gawking at vaginas. Bit of a difference, eh?

I absolutely love Charlie le Mindu, that’s no secret and I recently had the chance to have a chat with him. He’s a welcome addition to the London Fashion Week line-up in that he has absolutely no shame and heaps of creative and daring talent.

Last season’s show was a spectacle enough, and my imagination had run wild with what he might show this season (little did I know he’d show literally EVERYTHING this bloody season).

As the show started and the first model appeared to excited whoops, I thought – hmmm, I like it, it is fun; love that candy-floss pink porno wig, love the lamp on her head, that human hair mankini she’s just about wearing is daring, could have done with a bit of work around the bikini line though, love. But overall, I was a teeny tiny bit disappointed. Well, I need not have been.

When the first absolutely starkers model appeared, wearing only a huge brimmed hat and carrying a fabulous purse in the crook of her arm, I actually caught myself mouthing OH MY GOD. To myself. Exaggeratedly. I was, yet again, rendered speechless. He’d done it – he’d dared to do what few others would; he’d shocked us in a ‘OMG-she-has-no-hair-down-there’ kind of way. I haven’t seen one of them for years and after yesterdays show, I’d like never to see one again, please. That’s enough for me. You can keep ‘em, ta very much.

What I most adore about Mr le Mindu is that his shows aren’t really about fashion. They’re about style. Style, not in the sense of what’s on trend this season blah blah blah, but about taking an idea and really making it exciting.

After last season’s sexed up religious collection, it seems this season was all about porn stars – an homage, in fact, to the ladies of the adult movie industry of Los Angeles. Hence tacky candy-floss wigs, crude bob cuts, sassy curls that covered bare chests (what is it with me and nudity this fashion week? Totally wasted on me), cartoon-like tailoring (in a good way) and the show piece which was a huge pink perspex Hollywood sign hat. As you do.

Even though I seem to be doing it a lot this season, it’s not fair just to go on about the quantity of arse and tit, because I actually think that Charlie’s more modest creations (modest in the sense that they cover said arse and tit, not modest in a conservative way) are exemplary. The flamingo halter-neck number with a huge bum and the floor-length numbers that cacoon models from head to toe are nothing short of genius. They’re totally unique on an somewhat perpetual catwalk line-up.

Oh, who am I kidding. This is sex, sex, sex at it’s best. Oh, what fun! I bloody loved it and I am counting the days until Charlie’s A/W 2011 show already. Can I suggest, though, that you cover up the see you next Tuesdays next time, purlease? Maybe with the odd human-hair merkin? Oh, the irony…

Illustration by Stéphanie Thieullent

I love the Portico Rooms at Somerset House. Up an elaborate sweeping staircase, website here lies a relatively small room in which I’ve seen some of my favourite presentations: Lou Dalton’s salon show a year ago, more about both this and last season’s Orla Kiely presentations, story and now Craig Lawrence’s presentation this weekend.

Presentations are my preferred preference to catwalk shows. You don’t have to fight for a seat, you can see the clothing and craftsmanship in close-up (particularly applicable with Craig’s astonishing knitwear) and, most importantly, they always have cakes.

This was no exception – just look at this table packed with the stuff. Delicious! Shame I decided on a cream-filled whoopie rather than something edible in front of fashion folk like a delicious slice of tiffin. Cue cream-covered chops, sloppy eating and and a general unfashionable mess. Ah, well.

Craig’s presentation was simple but oh so elegant. Three models perched around sculptural furniture wearing his latest offerings. I wonder how the pay-scale for models differs between catwalks and presentations? Surely sashaying to the end of a runway, striking a pose and then walking back is far easier than having people with zoom lenses oggle your pores and walk in circles around you? It’s a wonder they don’t fall over. They are good at looking into your camera though. Look at this one! She wurrrrks it. Give her a pay rise!

Craig Lawrence has quickly established himself as a man of exquisite craftsmanship, skill and style. I simply adore these floor length knitted numbers. Seeing them up close, you really develop an appreciation for the quality. I imagine that the wool he uses is of a high calibre, but staring closely at his pieces is quite something – hypnotic weaves create beautiful, rich textures.


Illustration by Stéphanie Thieullent

The colours were industrial and pewter was the mainstay, with the occasion flourish of varying greens and white. This all white number rustled as the model moved around the room, and it’s only when you see garments like this move that you realise their full potential. She does look a bit like she’s been through a paper shredder, though. God I hope she hadn’t.

Also on display was a strikingly beautiful and somewhat haunting film, which was actually all I thought I was going to see – the static models were a massive bonus. The black and white film was shot by Ben Toms and styled by Dazed & Confused’s Katie Shillingford. Bloody hard to photograph.

At first glance, it appeared to be a collection of photographs – a model stands stock still in a variety of poses on rocks and in the sea. It’s only when you watch for a little while you realise it is actually a film – you notice the hair flickering slightly from the wind, or the almost still waves of the ocean moving back and forth. It really brought the collection to life. Plus it was edited beautifully – by our own Sally Mumby Croft, no less!

You can see the film (and I suggest you do) here.

All photography by Matt Bramford

Categories ,Ben Toms, ,Craig Lawrence, ,Dazed & Confused, ,Katie Shillingford, ,knitwear, ,London Fashion Week, ,Portico Rooms, ,S/S 2011, ,Sally Mumby-Croft, ,Somerset House, ,Stéphanie Thieullent

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Amelia’s Magazine | London Fashion Week A/W 2011 Presentation Review: Craig Lawrence


Illustration by Jo Cheung

Presentations are funny things; done badly they can leave you feeling a bit underwhelmed, case but done well they can be even more effective than a big catwalk show. Craig Lawrence’s A/W 2011 presentation fell into the latter category for me; a series of presentations meant that there was plenty of room to find a seat, this but still impressive front row faces like Susie Bubble and Fred Butler. A voiceover narrated the details of each outfit which really shed a lot of light on the intricacies of the designs that might have been lost on me otherwise; like garments being turned inside out to expose filigree textures beneath the surface.


Photography by Katie Antoniou

The shoes were also real show-stoppers, medical the result of a collaboration between Craig and Crisian & McCaffrey, featuring killer heels and knitted panels. The colours of the collection were inspired by the night; dark blues, purples and navy blues; a brilliant alternative to the blacks and greys autumn/winter collections often resort to. Craig’s alternative textiles like cellophane and Kyototex give a shimmery finish to evening wear, whilst knitted tights worn underneath sheer knits created striking, layered patterns. Some pieces were made up of large circles and stripes woven into the fabric, subtle details which only really showed up in the texture of the garments.


Illustration by Jo Cheung


In striking contrast to the dark clothes, the models’ eyes were accentuated with a neon orange stripe on each eyelid; in keeping with the ‘brights’ make-up trend. Statement tights were also omnipresent in the LFW crowd and Craig’s offerings imply they’re going nowhere.

When the presentation finished, Craig didn’t seem to be making an appearance, until his mum left her place on the front row to drag him out to much applause. He certainly deserves it for pioneering a totally innovative approach to textiles and knitwear which has made him a firm fixture on the London fashion scene.

You can see more of Jo Cheung’s work in Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration.

Categories ,Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration, ,Craig Lawrence, ,Fred Butler, ,Jo Cheung, ,knitwear, ,LFW A/W 2011, ,Presentation, ,Susie Bubble

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Amelia’s Magazine | London Fashion Week A/W 2011 Presentation Review: Craig Lawrence


Illustration by Jo Cheung

Presentations are funny things; done badly they can leave you feeling a bit underwhelmed, case but done well they can be even more effective than a big catwalk show. Craig Lawrence’s A/W 2011 presentation fell into the latter category for me; a series of presentations meant that there was plenty of room to find a seat, this but still impressive front row faces like Susie Bubble and Fred Butler. A voiceover narrated the details of each outfit which really shed a lot of light on the intricacies of the designs that might have been lost on me otherwise; like garments being turned inside out to expose filigree textures beneath the surface.


Photography by Katie Antoniou

The shoes were also real show-stoppers, medical the result of a collaboration between Craig and Crisian & McCaffrey, featuring killer heels and knitted panels. The colours of the collection were inspired by the night; dark blues, purples and navy blues; a brilliant alternative to the blacks and greys autumn/winter collections often resort to. Craig’s alternative textiles like cellophane and Kyototex give a shimmery finish to evening wear, whilst knitted tights worn underneath sheer knits created striking, layered patterns. Some pieces were made up of large circles and stripes woven into the fabric, subtle details which only really showed up in the texture of the garments.


Illustration by Jo Cheung


In striking contrast to the dark clothes, the models’ eyes were accentuated with a neon orange stripe on each eyelid; in keeping with the ‘brights’ make-up trend. Statement tights were also omnipresent in the LFW crowd and Craig’s offerings imply they’re going nowhere.

When the presentation finished, Craig didn’t seem to be making an appearance, until his mum left her place on the front row to drag him out to much applause. He certainly deserves it for pioneering a totally innovative approach to textiles and knitwear which has made him a firm fixture on the London fashion scene.

You can see more of Jo Cheung’s work in Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration.

Categories ,Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration, ,Craig Lawrence, ,Fred Butler, ,Jo Cheung, ,knitwear, ,LFW A/W 2011, ,Presentation, ,Susie Bubble

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Amelia’s Magazine | London Fashion Week A/W 2011 Womenswear Preview


Illustration by Maria Papadimitriou

I’ll never say a bad word about Mr Paul Costelloe. His was the first on-schedule show I ever saw, drug visit this back in 2008. It was a disaster – you can read my review here (my have we come a long way with our fashion week reviews). Despite that particular experience being pretty traumatic, viagra 40mg I always look forward to what he’ll present us each season, and I genuinely believe he’s the most underrated designer on the schedule – AND he always gets that hideous graveyard 9.30am opening slot. Anyway, enough of the pity, I’m sure he gets along just fine.


Paul Costelloe chatting outside the tent, post-show. All photography by Matt Bramford

Of course, this wouldn’t be fashion week without a cycling trauma, and it was on Friday morning that my back brake completely went so I was left only with the front one, guaranteed to send me flying over the handlebars should I actually need to stop. A quick trip into miserable Evans Cycles soon sorted this but meant I had to dash like a lunatic to Somerset House and just managed to leg it inside before the show started.


Illustration by Lesley Barnes

I was disappointed not to be saddled up against those two lovely old dears I met last time – this time I endured a rather unforgiving fashion blogger. I tend to stand at the top of one of the aisles to secure good pictures, but said fashion blogger deemed it acceptable to stand in front of me. I politely explained that I had chosen that spot on purpose, and I would really appreciate it if she’d take her enormous Mulberry bag and ridiculously large coat somewhere else. She moved an inch to the left. Cheers, then!

God I’m going on a bit, aren’t I? Well, the show itself was brilliant. This season saw Costelloe move in a more sophisticated direction. The catwalk was awash with luxurious tweeds and tartans in vibrant colours. Structured twin-sets with a contemporary edge stood side-by-side a-line dresses in unusual materials; delicious floral prints were teamed with cropped blazers, while hints of military on more a-line dresses were complimented with a roaring forties/fabulous fifties soundtrack of Bobby Darin and The Andrews Sisters (maybe). Poker-straight red wigs added a sexy, playful edge to what is a more mature range of womenswear.

Last season I wasn’t that struck on the menswear, but this year I am ALL OVER IT. Again, taking a more sophisticated direction, sharp suits (in similar tartans and tweeds to those seen on the girls) were aplenty. Floor length coats and double-breasted blazers really complimented the womenswear. Contrasting trousers in really bright colours were paired with tame blazers, allowing Costelloe’s men to be quirky but smart at the same time.


Illustration by Maria Papadimitriou

It was a massive collection – the biggest I saw during the day – but each piece had been carefully selected to compliment the next and never was it boring. The only way I could have enjoyed the show more was if Unforgiving Fashion Blogger hadn’t been such a knob. Hilariously she was fighting for my prime photographer’s spot to take pictures with her Blackberry! Well, I ask you.

Another great outing for PC, though. Long may he reign – in a sea of often miserable A/W 2011 dark collections, his whimsical approach and playful colours are a ray of sunshine.

All photography by Matt Bramford

Jena Theo Matilde SazioJena.Theo LFW A/W 2011, viagra 60mg Illustration by Matilde Sazio

I was ushered in through the door by a geezer of a Londoner chap, symptoms straight through to a high heeled officious lady, then again to the very highest heels clinking their way to the front row to show me my seat. There were bags on my seat. Bags filled with goodies. Splendid. The lady next to me was bouncing her baby on her knee, as said baby was knawing on a pain au chocolat. “Nice earmuffs” I said to her, pointing towards her penguin earmuffs on her head. “To protect her from the sound. It can get very loud. But she does love it here. Loves the shows.” How much do I want a chilled out, cute baby like her. Also, cool mother! I know mothers who wouldn’t take their child to Tescos for fear of its screaming the flourescently lit shed down. To the left, was a mad, bright white, highly lit, flashing, mini bulb, sensation. Magic eyes, transfixing, blinding… The lady next to me shields her eyes for a bit, because of the intensity! Then it all went dark and we were treated to intro music as the anticipation built. Dum, dum, dum….dum… dum. EXCITED.

Karina Yarv
Jena.Theo LFW A/W 2011, Illustration by Karina Yarv

The show began. I was pleased to see that what was being presented was completely wearable. Definitely in London. Perhaps less so in Bristol – it was slightly ‘too’ urban for the West Country. However, if I had a choice (and el cash), some of those pieces would be getting worn in Falfael King and that secret bar we’ve been meaning to go to for a while… at least supper club. Or – ah see, I kind of want to move to London- again. Don’t get the wrong impression of Briz, I beg you. Anyway, the show was very charcoal, black and cream orientated. The models all had black stripes across their eyes and otherwise bare faces. This made them look like mysterious, moody superheros. I liked it, as it really set of the simple coloured, pieces; the models all expressionless (course), their masks and the movement of the light or dark pieces worked together perfectly. It felt like we were on the sea, with norwegian heroines. Swishing slowly about, their heels never falter, their gaze exact, the path has been set and the grey skies are dappled with stars, as the storm takes hold. These strong warriors will take us with their capes flowing behind them, their hair dancing in the wind.

Jena.Theo Valkyrie by Matilde SazioJena.Theo LFW A/W 2011, Illustration by Matilde Sazio

My favourite piece was one with an almost bustling at the back, flowing down to the ground, in one swipe. The front was a mini, the back was the drama, the fantasy. I would love to wear this one standing at the front of a ship. Not a ferry, a ship. Jena.Theo designs were indeed simple, but they are deserving of their sparkling lights.

Les Chiffoniers by Abby Wright

Slinky t-shirts, viagra order seriously sprayed on leggings and rocky accessories have defined Les Chiffoniers for the last four years. With a winning formula, sildenafil they like to stick to a very tight remit when it comes to their designs and style. Famed for their perfect fit leather leggings, they exploded into fashion consciousness when icon Kate Moss was snapped stumbling round Glastonbury in a shiny PVC pair. Their SS11 collection features the classic black version with double air zippers in PVC and matte, as well as new stone washed suede versions which had a softer appeal. The label, owned by Leena Similu tend to produce a core collection of beautiful leggings, together with chiffon tops and dresses so expect more variations on this selection this season.

Holly Fulton by Avril Kelly

I have loved Holly Fulton’s designs for years and for me, she seems to get it right every time. This year, once again, she is part of the Newgen showcase for LFW. Her SS11 was an absolute triumph: a collection referencing decadent and luxury cruise lining days, it hinted at a myriad of exotic, far flung locations yet her signature geometric, stylised pattering was still key to the look. Over the last four collections she has produced, Fulton has referenced a vast range of inspirations: from Joan Collins to New York skyscrapers, she cleverly transforms each idea into a consistent, and wearable style. A recent collaboration with online retail giant Asos has cemented her status as one of Britain’s top young designers.

David Koma by Gareth Hopkins

I don’t even need to write that David Koma is one to watch. Since his debut, his status has risen so much so that celebrities including Lady Gaga and Rihanna are clamouring to get into his dresses. At the astonishingly young age of 24, he has already achieved the holy grail of young designer aspirations – a collaboration with Topshop, and was also awarded NEWGEN sponsorship last season. Koma’s style is bold, blocky and futuristic. Using interesting adornments such as bent or tubular pieces of metal and reflective pieces of Perspex, his body conscious designs are edgy and confident.

Last season we enjoyed his refined show of grown up and elegant pieces, but were surprised at the use of python skin in a number of the dresses – Amelia had the chance to ask him about it and you can read the interview here. It will be interesting to see which materials he uses for AW, watch this space (until Monday, that is!)

Eudon Choi by Karolina Burdon

Eudon Choi started his eponymous label 2 years ago after stints at Twenty8Twelve and All Saints. With clothes that reflect these experiences, his pieces are utilitarian in character, featuring masculine detailing and reworked vintage garments. Last year he received both the VFS Merit Award and the BFC/Elle Talent Pad. His collection will show on Friday, the first day of LFW; read our review of his SS11 collection here.

One of our faves, knit fanatic Craig Lawrence will be showing his new collection in the Portico rooms this February, the same as last season – read Matt’s review of his SS11 collection here.

Craig Lawrence by Rukmunal Hakim

Simplistic and assured, Lawrence is a pro when it comes to seeking out and appropriately using the best wool yarns (my sister is a textile designer and I know how hard this actually is). The movement within the pieces sets him apart as having an in-depth knowledge of the materials he’s working with and the ability to use them in an ethically minded way. We Like. A Lot.

MariaFrancescaPepe by Sandra Contreras

‘The underworld, amulets and Salvador Dali’ provide inspiration for MariaFrancescaPepe’s new collection. Pioneering the concept that jewellery should be the focal point of an outfit, Jewellery-Wear is her brainchild and has produced the iconic MFP tubular – a signature necklace which appears in every collection in different variations.

Christopher Raeburn by Gemma Smith

Christopher Raeburn’s designs differed from the majority of SS11’s collections, gone were floaty dresses in florals and pastel, and not a chino in sight. Instead he produced a number of festival-worthy parkers and jackets made from old parachutes and featuring cute dotty patterns. The effect was visually impressive as the lightweight material was slightly transparent so all the seams and joins were exposed. As an exciting and inventive designer, I am looking forward to see how he uses these qualities to create a warmer, AW collection.

Categories ,AW11, ,Christopher Raeburn, ,Craig Lawrence, ,David Koma, ,Eudon Choi, ,Gareth A Hopkins, ,Holly Fulton, ,Les Chiffoniers, ,london, ,London Fashion Week, ,MariaFrancescaPepe

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Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with Marion Foale of Foale and Tuffin, legendary Sixties knitwear label

Matthew Rose is an American artist living in Paris known for his 1, tadalafil 000 piece wall-to-wall collages. On viewing his work, see you can’t help but feel as if you are peering into the wrong end of a telescope; the objects look familiar yet distorted, occasionally sordid yet beautiful.

His abstract, artistic style presents a surreal and parallel world infused with vibrant colours where he often plays with an unusual fusion of subjects (and by this I mean a man with carrots for his head or a woman who is part-human, part-camera – pretty crazy stuff but in the most fantastic sense!).

For almost three decades, Matthew has been producing installations, which reinforce the connection between imagery and literature in art. His works – many of which are a composite of collage and text, presented in a poetic and abstract form – evoke the genres of 20th century surrealist artists, and several critics have cited his work as demonstrating a ‘dadaist exploration of sense and nonsense.’

Matthew’s installations have featured in galleries and museums across Europe, Asia and the United States, and his work has appeared in numerous books and magazines, including MASTERS: COLLAGE (Sterling Publishing/Lark Books, 2010), which was recently published.

His most notable art project to date, A Book About Death, showcased in New York’s Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in September 2009. The show was a logistical feat in that it involved thousands of artists from across the globe mailing 500 artworks in the form of postcards to construct the exhibition. The beauty of the exhibition was that the end result was offered to one lucky visitor in the form of a book… for free. More than 18 exhibitions of A Book About Death have been staged worldwide, including The Queens Museum in New York, MuBE in São Paulo and MoMA Wales.

Matthew’s latest project, Scared But Fresh, a dislocated love story, recently showed at the Orange Dot Gallery, a lovely new exhibition space in the heart of Bloomsbury, which I was lucky enough to catch. By his own admission, Matthew is interested in ‘creating works to see them for himself’ but as a by-product of his imagination, his mesmerising creations elicit in the viewer thoughts and revelations of their own.

After gate-crashing a Brown University reunion held at the gallery, where Matthew studied Semiotics in 1981, I managed to grab a quiet moment with the calm and composed artist before swathes of his fellow country men arrived, to gain a glimpse into the annals of the mind of a truly fascinating individual…

How old were you when you realised you wanted to be an artist?

I couldn’t have been more than six years old when my mother and aunt dragged me to The Brooklyn Museum to see Van Gogh. The lines went around the block and I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about; I was hungry, my feet hurt and being small, I was suffocating in this cloud of wool coats. Once inside the galleries, however, I caught my first glimpse of what has proven to be a very nourishing world… I stayed close to my mother and aunt for about 10 minutes but soon enough got lost (purposely) and quietly pushed my way through the crowds to get up close to Van Gogh’s brilliant colors, these vibrating landscapes – in particular, the painting he produced in the Arlesian sun, Almond Branches in Bloom (1890). It turned out to be one of the pieces he produced the year he died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound. I never forgot the color and intelligence behind this painting, and I slowly began to look for this “art experience” in my own.

What artists did you look up to when you were developing your artistic style?
Most artists I know were influenced by the early 20th century modernists – Picasso, Matisse, Malevich…then Duchamp and the Dadaists, the Surrealists, Pollock, de Kooning and then those who flavored the world we arrived in: Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg. For me, probably folks like Hopper for his era and compositions and silence; and Cornell for his expansive internal universe, and mostly Ray Johnson, because he was a friend and teacher (as he was to thousands) and the way he worked. Since I mostly work in collage, I’m more prone to think in disparate images and texts, an old-fashioned multi-media stream of consciousness. I don’t have problems with dislocated images and lexical puzzles. Of course I don’t pretend that these artists are producing works of philosophy, but rather reflecting the cataclysm that stems from consciousness.

Your work often involves the use of collage – what led to this fascination and why do you like working in this particular abstract context?
Collage is just one of several mediums I work in. Over the years I’ve produced works/object in wax or wood, painting and drawing, and text pieces either as rubber stamp works (printing) or drawing the words. One of my interests is word as image, and collage permits me to combine words and images in a fairly rapid fashion. I tend to work super fast and produce series in a matter of days or weeks. I’m pretty obsessed once I get going and very little interferes with my process. I did a show some years ago called ‘Spelling With Scissors’, and this is my approach – combining literature (texts) with images. I have always discussed my aesthetic view as a form of reading.

What does working in collage allow you to express in ways that other forms of artistic expression cannot?
Speed. Strangeness. The wide array of material allows me to cover many ideas and compositional concepts in a short period of time. Painting plays a part in what I do, as does drawing and often these mediums come into play in a work. But collage is an approach to consciousness, and that, I think is the flux endpoint in my work. Most of the elements I use are found, and that, too, is an important part of my process. Seeing what the world washes up at my feet, the skidmarks of my time and place.

What was the inspiration behind Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh is a love story. The works in the exhibition come together (in my mind, at least) to lay out a dislocated love story, a song about love with its insistent cacophony. I think if you look at the pieces in this exhibition, including the 12-piece collage on paper series, America, you’ll see sex, love and death (the staples of art making), you’ll discover heartache, lust, dread and all those angst-laden things that produce so much of the content of our lives. Or at least that’s the way I see it. Again, I produce these works to see them myself, to see what these odd elements produce in combination, and to perhaps understand what sort of stuff is moving around inside of me; that said, it’s not therapy, but rather an inquiry.

Why is the exhibition called Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh was a phrase sent to me in 2002 by a friend; she signed an e mail that way. I immediately seized upon it, made a tonne of text works with it, cutting stencils and painting them, or adding it to other works, but also meditating upon its possible meanings. The “but” is critical. My thinking in using it for the title of this exhibition at The Orange Dot Gallery in London was that it was so aggressive, sure but still loaded with innocence and dread. Like love.

Critics have previously cited your work as a dadaist exploration of sense and nonsense. What would your response be to this?
I would agree with them. Dada is many things, and has been the point of departure for nearly 100 years of art production. The combination of sense and non-sense, broken grammar, chopped up meaning, and the flux of everyday life is, in my view, what my consciousness is like. What is the sense of finding a dollar bill stuck in a pile of dog shit? Or posters torn and weathered revealing a history of pasting and perhaps, a history of beauty (the models featured in years of posters, bits of their faces and clothing revealed)? I grab onto these things and consider them. Other people think about interest rates and widget production, and so do I, but I do something quite different with the information, the images and the meaning of these things. A large piece I produced, Les Affaires (prints are on Keep Calm Gallery’s site), surveys all sorts of exchanges; it is about commerce in many ways. Another work, Immaculate Perception (also available as a print on Keep Calm Gallery), is a very simple surreal piece showing a girl blossoming from a lemon tree. It’s not very interesting to be logical all day long, plus logic is overrated.

How would you describe your own style of work?
I’m a cut and paste artist. But I try to be clear in my chaos. The style can be dada, neo-pop, surreal, but I think after all these years, it’s simply mine.
When you create art, do you do it in the frame of mind that it will be viewed by others or it is created as a visual form of a personal diary? I create these things to see them for myself, to discover what this 1/2 face would look like with this 1/2 refrigerator. Or what would happen if this nice girl in her party dress would be like if she were wearing a steak for a head, or a pair of mechanical gears for breasts? I produce these works the way I play chess, carefully, but totally willing to take risks, totally willing to exchange queens, sacrifice pawns…not afraid to lose. As for a diary, I’m not sure about that, but I do work in books very often. Some of my series come in the form of 110-page visual novels like A Perfect Friend and Days Like These, People (drawings), Machines (drawings) and a dozen others. I feel not so much as if I’m making things for other people – again – but more for myself, and not to cure myself of anything other than the nightmare that is our world.

You are now based in France. Do you find that where you live has any influence on the themes that run through your work?
Living in France probably hasn’t altered in any significant way the themes that run through my work. Love, sex, death, anxiety, money will find you out no matter where you live. The material though is different. As I’m extremely interested in language, the plethora of printed materials in French, German, Spanish, Italian, English and other languages abounds here. I often find old beat up books tossed out on the street, or objects on the sidewalk. I can also play with a ton of languages and I very much enjoy that. It’s the world. My studio is small and quiet and as I also live in the space I’m always up at 3 am working. Or I sleep then wake and work… something is always going on here, and should I need to go out, a walk proves a real fascination for me after a period of intense activity. “Holy smokes,” I’ll say to myself. “I live in France.” I sometimes forget that I actually live in this country.

What thoughts/feelings would you like viewers to go away with after they have been to your exhibition?
Well they tell me that they enjoy the work, they like that craziness of the work, but that it all makes sense. During the exhibition the head of a large international advertising company spent quite a while looking at my work. His focus is message communication, and in particularly creating iPhone apps, so he’s very attuned to visuals and text, and he said to me: “This is brilliant.” At the moment he was looking at a work from the America series of a girl on a swing with the word “HOME” pasted on top of her. She was pasted, in turn, on top of a photograph of a ship in a raging storm. That to me was very rewarding. Because something that was interesting to me was interesting to someone else, it was strong enough to click somewhere else.

How would you best like to be remembered?
You mean when I die? I launched an enormous project about this (in a way), A Book About Death. So I’ve thought long and hard about what its like to not have consciousness, to be left alone, to struggle with the impermanence of life, and the often sad and painful lives we lead when the folks we love are no longer with us. I’ve tried not to turn away from death and acknowledge it. Maybe as someone who wasn’t afraid to confront his demons, loved his friends and collaborated with the world in a way that made a little bit more sense out of the nonsense.


My situation (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

Matthew Rose is an American artist living in Paris known for his 1, thumb 000 piece wall-to-wall collages. On viewing his work, no rx you can’t help but feel as if you are peering into the wrong end of a telescope; the objects look familiar yet distorted, occasionally sordid yet beautiful.

His abstract, artistic style presents a surreal and parallel world infused with vibrant colours and where he often plays with an unusual fusion of subjects (and by this I mean a man with carrots for his head or a woman who is part-human, part-camera – pretty crazy stuff but in the most fantastic sense!).

For almost three decades, Matthew has been producing installations, which reinforce the connection between imagery and literature in art. His works – many of which are a composite of collage and text, presented in a poetic and abstract form – evoke the genres of 20th century surrealist artists, and several critics have cited his work as demonstrating a ‘dadaist exploration of sense and nonsense.’

Matthew’s installations have featured in galleries and museums across Europe, Asia and the United States, and his work has appeared in numerous books and magazines, including MASTERS: COLLAGE (Sterling Publishing/Lark Books, 2010), which was recently published.

His most notable art project to date, A Book About Death, showcased in New York’s Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in September 2009. The show was a logistical feat in that it involved thousands of artists from across the globe mailing 500 artworks in the form of postcards to construct the exhibition. The beauty of the exhibition was that the end result was offered to one lucky visitor in the form of a book… for free. More than 18 exhibitions of A Book About Death have been staged worldwide, including The Queens Museum in New York, MuBE in São Paulo and MoMA Wales.


Private view invite (image courtesy of Matthew Rose and Orange Dot Gallery)

Matthew’s latest project, Scared But Fresh, a dislocated love story, recently showed at the Orange Dot Gallery, a lovely new exhibition space in the heart of Bloomsbury, which I was lucky enough to catch. By his own admission, Matthew is interested in ‘creating works to see them for himself’ but as a by-product of his imagination, his mesmerising creations elicit in the viewer thoughts and revelations of their own.

After gate-crashing a Brown University reunion held at the gallery, where Matthew studied Semiotics in 1981, I managed to grab a quiet moment with the calm and composed artist before swathes of his fellow country men arrived, to gain a glimpse into the annals of the mind of a truly fascinating individual…

How old were you when you realised you wanted to be an artist?

I couldn’t have been more than six years old when my mother and aunt dragged me to The Brooklyn Museum to see Van Gogh. The lines went around the block and I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about; I was hungry, my feet hurt and being small, I was suffocating in this cloud of wool coats. Once inside the galleries, however, I caught my first glimpse of what has proven to be a very nourishing world… I stayed close to my mother and aunt for about 10 minutes but soon enough got lost (purposely) and quietly pushed my way through the crowds to get up close to Van Gogh’s brilliant colors, these vibrating landscapes – in particular, the painting he produced in the Arlesian sun, Almond Branches in Bloom (1890). It turned out to be one of the pieces he produced the year he died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound. I never forgot the color and intelligence behind this painting, and I slowly began to look for this “art experience” in my own.


Anglais (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

What artists did you look up to when you were developing your artistic style?
Most artists I know were influenced by the early 20th century modernists – Picasso, Matisse, Malevich…then Duchamp and the Dadaists, the Surrealists, Pollock, de Kooning and then those who flavored the world we arrived in: Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg. For me, probably folks like Hopper for his era and compositions and silence; and Cornell for his expansive internal universe, and mostly Ray Johnson, because he was a friend and teacher (as he was to thousands) and the way he worked. Since I mostly work in collage, I’m more prone to think in disparate images and texts, an old-fashioned multi-media stream of consciousness. I don’t have problems with dislocated images and lexical puzzles. Of course I don’t pretend that these artists are producing works of philosophy, but rather reflecting the cataclysm that stems from consciousness.

Your work often involves the use of collage – what led to this fascination and why do you like working in this particular abstract context?
Collage is just one of several mediums I work in. Over the years I’ve produced works/object in wax or wood, painting and drawing, and text pieces either as rubber stamp works (printing) or drawing the words. One of my interests is word as image, and collage permits me to combine words and images in a fairly rapid fashion. I tend to work super fast and produce series in a matter of days or weeks. I’m pretty obsessed once I get going and very little interferes with my process. I did a show some years ago called ‘Spelling With Scissors’, and this is my approach – combining literature (texts) with images. I have always discussed my aesthetic view as a form of reading.

What does working in collage allow you to express in ways that other forms of artistic expression cannot?
Speed. Strangeness. The wide array of material allows me to cover many ideas and compositional concepts in a short period of time. Painting plays a part in what I do, as does drawing and often these mediums come into play in a work. But collage is an approach to consciousness, and that, I think is the flux endpoint in my work. Most of the elements I use are found, and that, too, is an important part of my process. Seeing what the world washes up at my feet, the skidmarks of my time and place.


Scared But Fresh at Orange Dot Gallery (image courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

What was the inspiration behind Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh is a love story. The works in the exhibition come together (in my mind, at least) to lay out a dislocated love story, a song about love with its insistent cacophony. I think if you look at the pieces in this exhibition, including the 12-piece collage on paper series, America, you’ll see sex, love and death (the staples of art making), you’ll discover heartache, lust, dread and all those angst-laden things that produce so much of the content of our lives. Or at least that’s the way I see it. Again, I produce these works to see them myself, to see what these odd elements produce in combination, and to perhaps understand what sort of stuff is moving around inside of me; that said, it’s not therapy, but rather an inquiry.

Why is the exhibition called Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh was a phrase sent to me in 2002 by a friend; she signed an e mail that way. I immediately seized upon it, made a tonne of text works with it, cutting stencils and painting them, or adding it to other works, but also meditating upon its possible meanings. The “but” is critical. My thinking in using it for the title of this exhibition at The Orange Dot Gallery in London was that it was so aggressive, sure but still loaded with innocence and dread. Like love.

Critics have previously cited your work as a dadaist exploration of sense and nonsense. What would your response be to this?
I would agree with them. Dada is many things, and has been the point of departure for nearly 100 years of art production. The combination of sense and non-sense, broken grammar, chopped up meaning, and the flux of everyday life is, in my view, what my consciousness is like. What is the sense of finding a dollar bill stuck in a pile of dog shit? Or posters torn and weathered revealing a history of pasting and perhaps, a history of beauty (the models featured in years of posters, bits of their faces and clothing revealed)? I grab onto these things and consider them. Other people think about interest rates and widget production, and so do I, but I do something quite different with the information, the images and the meaning of these things. A large piece I produced, Les Affaires (prints are on Keep Calm Gallery’s site), surveys all sorts of exchanges; it is about commerce in many ways. Another work, Immaculate Perception (also available as a print on Keep Calm Gallery), is a very simple surreal piece showing a girl blossoming from a lemon tree. It’s not very interesting to be logical all day long, plus logic is overrated.


Cornell Bottle (photography courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

How would you describe your own style of work?
I’m a cut and paste artist. But I try to be clear in my chaos. The style can be dada, neo-pop, surreal, but I think after all these years, it’s simply mine.
When you create art, do you do it in the frame of mind that it will be viewed by others or it is created as a visual form of a personal diary? I create these things to see them for myself, to discover what this 1/2 face would look like with this 1/2 refrigerator. Or what would happen if this nice girl in her party dress would be like if she were wearing a steak for a head, or a pair of mechanical gears for breasts? I produce these works the way I play chess, carefully, but totally willing to take risks, totally willing to exchange queens, sacrifice pawns…not afraid to lose. As for a diary, I’m not sure about that, but I do work in books very often. Some of my series come in the form of 110-page visual novels like A Perfect Friend and Days Like These, People (drawings), Machines (drawings) and a dozen others. I feel not so much as if I’m making things for other people – again – but more for myself, and not to cure myself of anything other than the nightmare that is our world.

You are now based in France. Do you find that where you live has any influence on the themes that run through your work?
Living in France probably hasn’t altered in any significant way the themes that run through my work. Love, sex, death, anxiety, money will find you out no matter where you live. The material though is different. As I’m extremely interested in language, the plethora of printed materials in French, German, Spanish, Italian, English and other languages abounds here. I often find old beat up books tossed out on the street, or objects on the sidewalk. I can also play with a tonne of languages and I very much enjoy that. It’s the world. My studio is small and quiet and as I also live in the space I’m always up at 3 am working. Or I sleep then wake and work… something is always going on here, and should I need to go out, a walk proves a real fascination for me after a period of intense activity. “Holy smokes,” I’ll say to myself. “I live in France.” I sometimes forget that I actually live in this country.

What thoughts/feelings would you like viewers to go away with after they have been to your exhibition?
Well they tell me that they enjoy the work, they like that craziness of the work, but that it all makes sense. During the exhibition the head of a large international advertising company spent quite a while looking at my work. His focus is message communication, and in particularly creating iPhone apps, so he’s very attuned to visuals and text, and he said to me: “This is brilliant.” At the moment he was looking at a work from the America series of a girl on a swing with the word “HOME” pasted on top of her. She was pasted, in turn, on top of a photograph of a ship in a raging storm. That to me was very rewarding. Because something that was interesting to me was interesting to someone else, it was strong enough to click somewhere else.

How would you best like to be remembered?
You mean when I die? I launched an enormous project about this (in a way), A Book About Death. So I’ve thought long and hard about what its like to not have consciousness, to be left alone, to struggle with the impermanence of life, and the often sad and painful lives we lead when the folks we love are no longer with us. I’ve tried not to turn away from death and acknowledge it. Maybe as someone who wasn’t afraid to confront his demons, loved his friends and collaborated with the world in a way that made a little bit more sense out of the nonsense.


My situation (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

Matthew Rose is an American artist living in Paris known for his 1, buy information pills 000 piece wall-to-wall collages. On viewing his work, shop you can’t help but feel as if you are peering into the wrong end of a telescope; the objects look familiar yet distorted, occasionally sordid yet beautiful.

His abstract, artistic style presents a surreal and parallel world infused with vibrant colours and where he often plays with an unusual fusion of subjects (and by this I mean a man with carrots for his head or a woman who is part-human, part-camera – pretty crazy stuff but in the most fantastic sense!).

For almost three decades, Matthew has been producing installations, which reinforce the connection between imagery and literature in art. His works – many of which are a composite of collage and text, presented in a poetic and abstract form – evoke the genres of 20th century surrealist artists, and several critics have cited his work as demonstrating a ‘dadaist exploration of sense and nonsense.’

Matthew’s installations have featured in galleries and museums across Europe, Asia and the United States, and his work has appeared in numerous books and magazines, including MASTERS: COLLAGE (Sterling Publishing/Lark Books, 2010), which was recently published.

His most notable art project to date, A Book About Death, showcased in New York’s Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in September 2009. The show was a logistical feat in that it involved thousands of artists from across the globe mailing 500 artworks in the form of postcards to construct the exhibition. The beauty of the exhibition was that the end result was offered to one lucky visitor in the form of a book… for free. More than 18 exhibitions of A Book About Death have been staged worldwide, including The Queens Museum in New York, MuBE in São Paulo and MoMA Wales.


Private view invite (image courtesy of Matthew Rose and Orange Dot Gallery)

Matthew’s latest project, Scared But Fresh, a dislocated love story, recently showed at the Orange Dot Gallery, a lovely new exhibition space in the heart of Bloomsbury, which I was lucky enough to catch. By his own admission, Matthew is interested in ‘creating works to see them for himself’ but as a by-product of his imagination, his mesmerising creations elicit in the viewer thoughts and revelations of their own.

After gate-crashing a Brown University reunion held at the gallery, where Matthew studied Semiotics in 1981, I managed to grab a quiet moment with the calm and composed artist before swathes of his fellow country men arrived, to gain a glimpse into the annals of the mind of a truly fascinating individual…

How old were you when you realised you wanted to be an artist?

I couldn’t have been more than six years old when my mother and aunt dragged me to The Brooklyn Museum to see Van Gogh. The lines went around the block and I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about; I was hungry, my feet hurt and being small, I was suffocating in this cloud of wool coats. Once inside the galleries, however, I caught my first glimpse of what has proven to be a very nourishing world… I stayed close to my mother and aunt for about 10 minutes but soon enough got lost (purposely) and quietly pushed my way through the crowds to get up close to Van Gogh’s brilliant colors, these vibrating landscapes – in particular, the painting he produced in the Arlesian sun, Almond Branches in Bloom (1890). It turned out to be one of the pieces he produced the year he died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound. I never forgot the color and intelligence behind this painting, and I slowly began to look for this “art experience” in my own.


Anglais (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

What artists did you look up to when you were developing your artistic style?
Most artists I know were influenced by the early 20th century modernists – Picasso, Matisse, Malevich…then Duchamp and the Dadaists, the Surrealists, Pollock, de Kooning and then those who flavored the world we arrived in: Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg. For me, probably folks like Hopper for his era and compositions and silence; and Cornell for his expansive internal universe, and mostly Ray Johnson, because he was a friend and teacher (as he was to thousands) and the way he worked. Since I mostly work in collage, I’m more prone to think in disparate images and texts, an old-fashioned multi-media stream of consciousness. I don’t have problems with dislocated images and lexical puzzles. Of course I don’t pretend that these artists are producing works of philosophy, but rather reflecting the cataclysm that stems from consciousness.

Your work often involves the use of collage – what led to this fascination and why do you like working in this particular abstract context?
Collage is just one of several mediums I work in. Over the years I’ve produced works/object in wax or wood, painting and drawing, and text pieces either as rubber stamp works (printing) or drawing the words. One of my interests is word as image, and collage permits me to combine words and images in a fairly rapid fashion. I tend to work super fast and produce series in a matter of days or weeks. I’m pretty obsessed once I get going and very little interferes with my process. I did a show some years ago called ‘Spelling With Scissors’, and this is my approach – combining literature (texts) with images. I have always discussed my aesthetic view as a form of reading.

What does working in collage allow you to express in ways that other forms of artistic expression cannot?
Speed. Strangeness. The wide array of material allows me to cover many ideas and compositional concepts in a short period of time. Painting plays a part in what I do, as does drawing and often these mediums come into play in a work. But collage is an approach to consciousness, and that, I think is the flux endpoint in my work. Most of the elements I use are found, and that, too, is an important part of my process. Seeing what the world washes up at my feet, the skidmarks of my time and place.


Scared But Fresh at Orange Dot Gallery (image courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

What was the inspiration behind Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh is a love story. The works in the exhibition come together (in my mind, at least) to lay out a dislocated love story, a song about love with its insistent cacophony. I think if you look at the pieces in this exhibition, including the 12-piece collage on paper series, America, you’ll see sex, love and death (the staples of art making), you’ll discover heartache, lust, dread and all those angst-laden things that produce so much of the content of our lives. Or at least that’s the way I see it. Again, I produce these works to see them myself, to see what these odd elements produce in combination, and to perhaps understand what sort of stuff is moving around inside of me; that said, it’s not therapy, but rather an inquiry.

Why is the exhibition called Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh was a phrase sent to me in 2002 by a friend; she signed an e mail that way. I immediately seized upon it, made a tonne of text works with it, cutting stencils and painting them, or adding it to other works, but also meditating upon its possible meanings. The “but” is critical. My thinking in using it for the title of this exhibition at The Orange Dot Gallery in London was that it was so aggressive, sure but still loaded with innocence and dread. Like love.

Critics have previously cited your work as a dadaist exploration of sense and nonsense. What would your response be to this?
I would agree with them. Dada is many things, and has been the point of departure for nearly 100 years of art production. The combination of sense and non-sense, broken grammar, chopped up meaning, and the flux of everyday life is, in my view, what my consciousness is like. What is the sense of finding a dollar bill stuck in a pile of dog shit? Or posters torn and weathered revealing a history of pasting and perhaps, a history of beauty (the models featured in years of posters, bits of their faces and clothing revealed)? I grab onto these things and consider them. Other people think about interest rates and widget production, and so do I, but I do something quite different with the information, the images and the meaning of these things. A large piece I produced, Les Affaires (prints are on Keep Calm Gallery’s site), surveys all sorts of exchanges; it is about commerce in many ways. Another work, Immaculate Perception (also available as a print on Keep Calm Gallery), is a very simple surreal piece showing a girl blossoming from a lemon tree. It’s not very interesting to be logical all day long, plus logic is overrated.


Cornell Bottle (photography courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

How would you describe your own style of work?
I’m a cut and paste artist. But I try to be clear in my chaos. The style can be dada, neo-pop, surreal, but I think after all these years, it’s simply mine.
When you create art, do you do it in the frame of mind that it will be viewed by others or it is created as a visual form of a personal diary? I create these things to see them for myself, to discover what this 1/2 face would look like with this 1/2 refrigerator. Or what would happen if this nice girl in her party dress would be like if she were wearing a steak for a head, or a pair of mechanical gears for breasts? I produce these works the way I play chess, carefully, but totally willing to take risks, totally willing to exchange queens, sacrifice pawns…not afraid to lose. As for a diary, I’m not sure about that, but I do work in books very often. Some of my series come in the form of 110-page visual novels like A Perfect Friend and Days Like These, People (drawings), Machines (drawings) and a dozen others. I feel not so much as if I’m making things for other people – again – but more for myself, and not to cure myself of anything other than the nightmare that is our world.

You are now based in France. Do you find that where you live has any influence on the themes that run through your work?
Living in France probably hasn’t altered in any significant way the themes that run through my work. Love, sex, death, anxiety, money will find you out no matter where you live. The material though is different. As I’m extremely interested in language, the plethora of printed materials in French, German, Spanish, Italian, English and other languages abounds here. I often find old beat up books tossed out on the street, or objects on the sidewalk. I can also play with a tonne of languages and I very much enjoy that. It’s the world. My studio is small and quiet and as I also live in the space I’m always up at 3 am working. Or I sleep then wake and work… something is always going on here, and should I need to go out, a walk proves a real fascination for me after a period of intense activity. “Holy smokes,” I’ll say to myself. “I live in France.” I sometimes forget that I actually live in this country.

What thoughts/feelings would you like viewers to go away with after they have been to your exhibition?
Well they tell me that they enjoy the work, they like that craziness of the work, but that it all makes sense. During the exhibition the head of a large international advertising company spent quite a while looking at my work. His focus is message communication, and in particularly creating iPhone apps, so he’s very attuned to visuals and text, and he said to me: “This is brilliant.” At the moment he was looking at a work from the America series of a girl on a swing with the word “HOME” pasted on top of her. She was pasted, in turn, on top of a photograph of a ship in a raging storm. That to me was very rewarding. Because something that was interesting to me was interesting to someone else, it was strong enough to click somewhere else.

How would you best like to be remembered?
You mean when I die? I launched an enormous project about this (in a way), A Book About Death. So I’ve thought long and hard about what its like to not have consciousness, to be left alone, to struggle with the impermanence of life, and the often sad and painful lives we lead when the folks we love are no longer with us. I’ve tried not to turn away from death and acknowledge it. Maybe as someone who wasn’t afraid to confront his demons, loved his friends and collaborated with the world in a way that made a little bit more sense out of the nonsense.


My situation (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

Matthew Rose is an American artist living in Paris known for his 1, dosage 000 piece wall-to-wall collages. On viewing his work, you can’t help but feel as if you are peering into the wrong end of a telescope; the objects look familiar yet distorted, eerie yet beautiful.

His abstract, artistic style presents a surreal and parallel world infused with vibrant colours where he often plays with an unusual fusion of subjects (and by this I mean a man with carrots for his head or a woman who is part-human, part-camera – pretty crazy stuff but in the most fantastic sense!).

For almost three decades, Matthew has been producing installations, which reinforce the connection between imagery and literature in art. His works – many of which are a composite of collage and text, presented in a poetic and abstract form – evoke the genres of 20th century surrealist artists, and several critics have cited his work as demonstrating a ‘dadaist exploration of sense and non-sense’.

Matthew’s installations have featured in galleries and museums across Europe, Asia and the United States, and his work has appeared in numerous books and magazines, including MASTERS: COLLAGE (Sterling Publishing/Lark Books, 2010) published recently.

His most notable art project to date, A Book About Death, showcased in New York’s Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in September 2009. The show was a logistical feat involving thousands of artists from across the globe sending 500 artworks in the form of postcards to construct the exhibition. The beauty of the exhibition was that the end result was offered to one lucky visitor in the form of a book… for free. More than 18 exhibitions of A Book About Death have been staged worldwide, including The Queens Museum in New York, MuBE in São Paulo and MoMA Wales.


Private view invite (image courtesy of Matthew Rose and Orange Dot Gallery)

Matthew’s latest project, Scared But Fresh, a dislocated love story, recently showed at the Orange Dot Gallery, a lovely new exhibition space in the heart of Bloomsbury, which I was lucky enough to catch. By his own admission, Matthew is interested in ‘creating works to see them for himself’ but as a by-product of his imagination, his mesmerising creations prompt the viewer to garner thoughts of their own.

After gate-crashing a Brown University reunion held at the gallery, where Matthew studied Semiotics in 1981, I managed to grab a quiet moment with the calm and composed artist before his alumni chums arrived, to gain a glimpse into the annals of the mind of a truly fascinating individual…

How old were you when you realised you wanted to be an artist? I couldn’t have been more than six years old when my mother and aunt dragged me to The Brooklyn Museum to see Van Gogh. The lines went around the block and I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about; I was hungry, my feet hurt and being small, I was suffocating in this cloud of wool coats. Once inside the galleries, however, I caught my first glimpse of what has proven to be a very nourishing world… I stayed close to my mother and aunt for about 10 minutes but soon enough got lost (purposely) and quietly pushed my way through the crowds to get up close to Van Gogh’s brilliant colors, these vibrating landscapes – in particular, the painting he produced in the Arlesian sun, Almond Branches in Bloom (1890). It turned out to be one of the pieces he produced the year he died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound. I never forgot the color and intelligence behind this painting, and I slowly began to look for this “art experience” in my own.


Anglais (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

What artists did you look up to when you were developing your artistic style?
Most artists I know were influenced by the early 20th century modernists – Picasso, Matisse, Malevich…then Duchamp and the Dadaists, the Surrealists, Pollock, de Kooning and then those who flavored the world we arrived in: Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg. For me, probably folks like Hopper for his era and compositions and silence; and Cornell for his expansive internal universe, and mostly Ray Johnson, because he was a friend and teacher (as he was to thousands) and the way he worked. Since I mostly work in collage, I’m more prone to think in disparate images and texts, an old-fashioned multi-media stream of consciousness. I don’t have problems with dislocated images and lexical puzzles. Of course I don’t pretend that these artists are producing works of philosophy, but rather reflecting the cataclysm that stems from consciousness.

Your work often involves the use of collage – what led to this fascination and why do you like working in this particular abstract context? Collage is just one of several mediums I work in. Over the years I’ve produced works/object in wax or wood, painting and drawing, and text pieces either as rubber stamp works (printing) or drawing the words. One of my interests is word as image, and collage permits me to combine words and images in a fairly rapid fashion. I tend to work super fast and produce series in a matter of days or weeks. I’m pretty obsessed once I get going and very little interferes with my process. I did a show some years ago called ‘Spelling With Scissors’, and this is my approach – combining literature (texts) with images. I have always discussed my aesthetic view as a form of reading.

What does working in collage allow you to express in ways that other forms of artistic expression cannot?
Speed. Strangeness. The wide array of material allows me to cover many ideas and compositional concepts in a short period of time. Painting plays a part in what I do, as does drawing and often these mediums come into play in a work. But collage is an approach to consciousness, and that, I think is the flux endpoint in my work. Most of the elements I use are found, and that, too, is an important part of my process. Seeing what the world washes up at my feet, the skidmarks of my time and place.


Scared But Fresh at Orange Dot Gallery (image courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

What was the inspiration behind Scared But Fresh?Scared But Fresh is a love story. The works in the exhibition come together (in my mind, at least) to lay out a dislocated love story, a song about love with its insistent cacophony. I think if you look at the pieces in this exhibition, including the 12-piece collage on paper series, America, you’ll see sex, love and death (the staples of art making), you’ll discover heartache, lust, dread and all those angst-laden things that produce so much of the content of our lives. Or at least that’s the way I see it. Again, I produce these works to see them myself, to see what these odd elements produce in combination, and to perhaps understand what sort of stuff is moving around inside of me; that said, it’s not therapy, but rather an inquiry.

Why is the exhibition called Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh was a phrase sent to me in 2002 by a friend; she signed an e mail that way. I immediately seized upon it, made a tonne of text works with it, cutting stencils and painting them, or adding it to other works, but also meditating upon its possible meanings. The “but” is critical. My thinking in using it for the title of this exhibition at The Orange Dot Gallery in London was that it was so aggressive, sure but still loaded with innocence and dread. Like love.

Critics have previously cited your work as a dadaist exploration of sense and nonsense. What would your response be to this?
I would agree with them. Dada is many things, and has been the point of departure for nearly 100 years of art production. The combination of sense and non-sense, broken grammar, chopped up meaning, and the flux of everyday life is, in my view, what my consciousness is like. What is the sense of finding a dollar bill stuck in a pile of dog shit? Or posters torn and weathered revealing a history of pasting and perhaps, a history of beauty (the models featured in years of posters, bits of their faces and clothing revealed)? I grab onto these things and consider them. Other people think about interest rates and widget production, and so do I, but I do something quite different with the information, the images and the meaning of these things. A large piece I produced, Les Affaires (prints are on Keep Calm Gallery’s site), surveys all sorts of exchanges; it is about commerce in many ways. Another work, Immaculate Perception (also available as a print on Keep Calm Gallery), is a very simple surreal piece showing a girl blossoming from a lemon tree. It’s not very interesting to be logical all day long, plus logic is overrated.


Cornell Bottle (photography courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

How would you describe your own style of work?
I’m a cut and paste artist. But I try to be clear in my chaos. The style can be dada, neo-pop, surreal, but I think after all these years, it’s simply mine.
When you create art, do you do it in the frame of mind that it will be viewed by others or it is created as a visual form of a personal diary? I create these things to see them for myself, to discover what this 1/2 face would look like with this 1/2 refrigerator. Or what would happen if this nice girl in her party dress would be like if she were wearing a steak for a head, or a pair of mechanical gears for breasts? I produce these works the way I play chess, carefully, but totally willing to take risks, totally willing to exchange queens, sacrifice pawns…not afraid to lose. As for a diary, I’m not sure about that, but I do work in books very often. Some of my series come in the form of 110-page visual novels like A Perfect Friend and Days Like These, People (drawings), Machines (drawings) and a dozen others. I feel not so much as if I’m making things for other people – again – but more for myself, and not to cure myself of anything other than the nightmare that is our world.

You are now based in France. Do you find that where you live has any influence on the themes that run through your work?
Living in France probably hasn’t altered in any significant way the themes that run through my work. Love, sex, death, anxiety, money will find you out no matter where you live. The material though is different. As I’m extremely interested in language, the plethora of printed materials in French, German, Spanish, Italian, English and other languages abounds here. I often find old beat up books tossed out on the street, or objects on the sidewalk. I can also play with a tonne of languages and I very much enjoy that. It’s the world. My studio is small and quiet and as I also live in the space I’m always up at 3 am working. Or I sleep then wake and work… something is always going on here, and should I need to go out, a walk proves a real fascination for me after a period of intense activity. “Holy smokes,” I’ll say to myself. “I live in France.” I sometimes forget that I actually live in this country.

What thoughts/feelings would you like viewers to go away with after they have been to your exhibition?
Well they tell me that they enjoy the work, they like that craziness of the work, but that it all makes sense. During the exhibition the head of a large international advertising company spent quite a while looking at my work. His focus is message communication, and in particularly creating iPhone apps, so he’s very attuned to visuals and text, and he said to me: “This is brilliant.” At the moment he was looking at a work from the America series of a girl on a swing with the word “HOME” pasted on top of her. She was pasted, in turn, on top of a photograph of a ship in a raging storm. That to me was very rewarding. Because something that was interesting to me was interesting to someone else, it was strong enough to click somewhere else.

How would you best like to be remembered?
You mean when I die? I launched an enormous project about this (in a way), A Book About Death. So I’ve thought long and hard about what its like to not have consciousness, to be left alone, to struggle with the impermanence of life, and the often sad and painful lives we lead when the folks we love are no longer with us. I’ve tried not to turn away from death and acknowledge it. Maybe as someone who wasn’t afraid to confront his demons, loved his friends and collaborated with the world in a way that made a little bit more sense out of the nonsense.


My situation (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

Matthew Rose is an American artist living in Paris known for his 1, check 000 piece wall-to-wall collages. On viewing his work, you can’t help but feel as if you are peering into the wrong end of a telescope; the objects look familiar yet distorted, eerie yet beautiful.

His abstract, artistic style presents a surreal and parallel world infused with vibrant colours where he often plays with an unusual fusion of subjects (and by this I mean a man with carrots for his head or a woman who is part-human, part-camera – pretty crazy stuff but in the most fantastic sense!).

For almost three decades, Matthew has been producing installations, which reinforce the connection between imagery and literature in art. His works – many of which are a composite of beautiful colours, visuals and text melting into one another – evoke the genres of 20th century surrealist artists, and several critics have cited his work as demonstrating a ‘dadaist exploration of sense and non-sense’.

Matthew’s installations have featured in galleries and museums across Europe, Asia and the United States, and his work has appeared in numerous books and magazines, including MASTERS: COLLAGE (Sterling Publishing/Lark Books, 2010) published recently.

His most notable art project to date, A Book About Death, showcased in New York’s Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in September 2009. The show was a logistical feat involving thousands of artists from across the globe sending 500 artworks in the form of postcards to construct the exhibition. The beauty of the exhibition was that the end result was offered to one lucky visitor in the form of a book… for free. More than 18 exhibitions of A Book About Death have been staged worldwide, including The Queens Museum in New York, MuBE in São Paulo and MoMA Wales.


Private view invite (image courtesy of Matthew Rose and Orange Dot Gallery)

Matthew’s latest project, Scared But Fresh, a dislocated love story, recently showed at the Orange Dot Gallery, a lovely new exhibition space in the heart of Bloomsbury, which I was lucky enough to catch. By his own admission, Matthew is interested in ‘creating works to see them for himself’ but as a by-product of his imagination, his mesmerising creations prompt the viewer to garner thoughts of their own.

After gate-crashing a Brown University reunion held at the gallery, where Matthew studied Semiotics in 1981, I managed to grab a quiet moment with the calm and composed artist before his alumni chums arrived, to gain a glimpse into the annals of the mind of a truly fascinating individual…

How old were you when you realised you wanted to be an artist? I couldn’t have been more than six years old when my mother and aunt dragged me to The Brooklyn Museum to see Van Gogh.
The lines went around the block and I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about; I was hungry, my feet hurt and being small, I was suffocating in this cloud of wool coats. Once inside the galleries, however, I caught my first glimpse of what has proven to be a very nourishing world… I stayed close to my mother and aunt for about 10 minutes but soon enough got lost (purposely) and quietly pushed my way through the crowds to get up close to Van Gogh’s brilliant colors, these vibrating landscapes – in particular, the painting he produced in the Arlesian sun, Almond Branches in Bloom (1890). It turned out to be one of the pieces he produced the year he died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound. I never forgot the color and intelligence behind this painting, and I slowly began to look for this “art experience” in my own.


Anglais (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

What artists did you look up to when you were developing your artistic style?
Most artists I know were influenced by the early 20th century modernists – Picasso, Matisse, Malevich…then Duchamp and the Dadaists, the Surrealists, Pollock, de Kooning and then those who flavored the world we arrived in: Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg. For me, probably folks like Hopper for his era and compositions and silence; and Cornell for his expansive internal universe, and mostly Ray Johnson, because he was a friend and teacher (as he was to thousands) and the way he worked. Since I mostly work in collage, I’m more prone to think in disparate images and texts, an old-fashioned multi-media stream of consciousness. I don’t have problems with dislocated images and lexical puzzles. Of course I don’t pretend that these artists are producing works of philosophy, but rather reflecting the cataclysm that stems from consciousness.

Your work often involves the use of collage – what led to this fascination and why do you like working in this particular abstract context?
Collage is just one of several mediums I work in. Over the years I’ve produced works/object in wax or wood, painting and drawing, and text pieces either as rubber stamp works (printing) or drawing the words. One of my interests is word as image, and collage permits me to combine words and images in a fairly rapid fashion. I tend to work super fast and produce series in a matter of days or weeks. I’m pretty obsessed once I get going and very little interferes with my process. I did a show some years ago called ‘Spelling With Scissors’, and this is my approach – combining literature (texts) with images. I have always discussed my aesthetic view as a form of reading.

What does working in collage allow you to express in ways that other forms of artistic expression cannot?
Speed. Strangeness. The wide array of material allows me to cover many ideas and compositional concepts in a short period of time. Painting plays a part in what I do, as does drawing and often these mediums come into play in a work. But collage is an approach to consciousness, and that, I think is the flux endpoint in my work. Most of the elements I use are found, and that, too, is an important part of my process. Seeing what the world washes up at my feet, the skidmarks of my time and place.


Scared But Fresh at Orange Dot Gallery (image courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

What was the inspiration behind Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh
is a love story. The works in the exhibition come together (in my mind, at least) to lay out a dislocated love story, a song about love with its insistent cacophony. I think if you look at the pieces in this exhibition, including the 12-piece collage on paper series, America, you’ll see sex, love and death (the staples of art making), you’ll discover heartache, lust, dread and all those angst-laden things that produce so much of the content of our lives. Or at least that’s the way I see it. Again, I produce these works to see them myself, to see what these odd elements produce in combination, and to perhaps understand what sort of stuff is moving around inside of me; that said, it’s not therapy, but rather an inquiry.

Why is the exhibition called Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh was a phrase sent to me in 2002 by a friend; she signed an e mail that way. I immediately seized upon it, made a tonne of text works with it, cutting stencils and painting them, or adding it to other works, but also meditating upon its possible meanings. The “but” is critical. My thinking in using it for the title of this exhibition at The Orange Dot Gallery in London was that it was so aggressive, sure but still loaded with innocence and dread. Like love.

Critics have previously cited your work as a dadaist exploration of sense and non-sense. What would your response be to this?
I would agree with them. Dada is many things, and has been the point of departure for nearly 100 years of art production. The combination of sense and non-sense, broken grammar, chopped up meaning, and the flux of everyday life is, in my view, what my consciousness is like. What is the sense of finding a dollar bill stuck in a pile of dog shit? Or posters torn and weathered revealing a history of pasting and perhaps, a history of beauty (the models featured in years of posters, bits of their faces and clothing revealed)? I grab onto these things and consider them. Other people think about interest rates and widget production, and so do I, but I do something quite different with the information, the images and the meaning of these things. A large piece I produced, Les Affaires (prints are on Keep Calm Gallery’s site), surveys all sorts of exchanges; it is about commerce in many ways. Another work, Immaculate Perception (also available as a print on Keep Calm Gallery), is a very simple surreal piece showing a girl blossoming from a lemon tree. It’s not very interesting to be logical all day long, plus logic is overrated.


Cornell Bottle (photography courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

How would you describe your own style of work?
I’m a cut and paste artist. But I try to be clear in my chaos. The style can be dada, neo-pop, surreal, but I think after all these years, it’s simply mine.
When you create art, do you do it in the frame of mind that it will be viewed by others or it is created as a visual form of a personal diary? I create these things to see them for myself, to discover what this 1/2 face would look like with this 1/2 refrigerator. Or what would happen if this nice girl in her party dress would be like if she were wearing a steak for a head, or a pair of mechanical gears for breasts? I produce these works the way I play chess, carefully, but totally willing to take risks, totally willing to exchange queens, sacrifice pawns…not afraid to lose. As for a diary, I’m not sure about that, but I do work in books very often. Some of my series come in the form of 110-page visual novels like A Perfect Friend and Days Like These, People (drawings), Machines (drawings) and a dozen others. I feel not so much as if I’m making things for other people – again – but more for myself, and not to cure myself of anything other than the nightmare that is our world.

You are now based in France. Do you find that where you live has any influence on the themes that run through your work?
Living in France probably hasn’t altered in any significant way the themes that run through my work. Love, sex, death, anxiety, money will find you out no matter where you live. The material though is different. As I’m extremely interested in language, the plethora of printed materials in French, German, Spanish, Italian, English and other languages abounds here. I often find old beat up books tossed out on the street, or objects on the sidewalk. I can also play with a tonne of languages and I very much enjoy that. It’s the world. My studio is small and quiet and as I also live in the space I’m always up at 3 am working. Or I sleep then wake and work… something is always going on here, and should I need to go out, a walk proves a real fascination for me after a period of intense activity. “Holy smokes,” I’ll say to myself. “I live in France.” I sometimes forget that I actually live in this country.

What thoughts/feelings would you like viewers to go away with after they have been to your exhibition?
Well they tell me that they enjoy the work, they like that craziness of the work, but that it all makes sense. During the exhibition the head of a large international advertising company spent quite a while looking at my work. His focus is message communication, and in particularly creating iPhone apps, so he’s very attuned to visuals and text, and he said to me: “This is brilliant.” At the moment he was looking at a work from the America series of a girl on a swing with the word “HOME” pasted on top of her. She was pasted, in turn, on top of a photograph of a ship in a raging storm. That to me was very rewarding. Because something that was interesting to me was interesting to someone else, it was strong enough to click somewhere else.

How would you best like to be remembered?
You mean when I die? I launched an enormous project about this (in a way), A Book About Death. So I’ve thought long and hard about what its like to not have consciousness, to be left alone, to struggle with the impermanence of life, and the often sad and painful lives we lead when the folks we love are no longer with us. I’ve tried not to turn away from death and acknowledge it. Maybe as someone who wasn’t afraid to confront his demons, loved his friends and collaborated with the world in a way that made a little bit more sense out of the nonsense.


My situation (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

Matthew Rose is an American artist living in Paris known for his 1, medicine 000 piece wall-to-wall collages. On viewing his work, illness you can’t help but feel as if you are peering into the wrong end of a telescope; the objects look familiar yet distorted, here eerie yet beautiful.

His abstract, artistic style presents a surreal and parallel world infused with vibrant colours where he often plays with an unusual fusion of subjects (and by this I mean a man with carrots for his head or a woman who is part-human, part-camera – pretty crazy stuff but in the most fantastic sense!).

For almost three decades, Matthew has been producing installations, which reinforce the connection between imagery and literature in art. His works – many of which are a composite of beautiful colours, visuals and text melting into one another – evoke the genres of 20th century surrealist artists, and several critics have cited his work as demonstrating a ‘dadaist exploration of sense and non-sense’.

Matthew’s installations have featured in galleries and museums across Europe, Asia and the United States, and his work has appeared in numerous books and magazines, including MASTERS: COLLAGE (Sterling Publishing/Lark Books, 2010) published recently.

His most notable art project to date, A Book About Death, showcased in New York’s Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in September 2009. The show was a logistical feat involving thousands of artists from across the globe sending 500 artworks in the form of postcards to construct the exhibition. The beauty of the exhibition was that the end result was offered to one lucky visitor in the form of a book… for free. More than 18 exhibitions of A Book About Death have been staged worldwide, including The Queens Museum in New York, MuBE in São Paulo and MoMA Wales.


Private view invite (image courtesy of Matthew Rose and Orange Dot Gallery)

Matthew’s most recent project, Scared But Fresh, is a dislocated love story exploring the sense and non-sense, which I was lucky enough to catch at Orange Dot Gallery, a lovely new exhibition space in the heart of Bloomsbury. By his own admission, Matthew is interested in ‘creating works to see them for himself’ but as a by-product of his imagination, his mesmerising creations prompt the viewer to garner thoughts of their own.

After gate-crashing a Brown University reunion held at the gallery, where Matthew studied Semiotics in 1981, I managed to grab a quiet moment with the calm and composed artist before his alumni chums arrived, gaining a glimpse into the annals of the mind of a truly fascinating individual…

How old were you when you realised you wanted to be an artist? I couldn’t have been more than six years old when my mother and aunt dragged me to The Brooklyn Museum to see Van Gogh.
The lines went around the block and I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about; I was hungry, my feet hurt and being small, I was suffocating in this cloud of wool coats. Once inside the galleries, however, I caught my first glimpse of what has proven to be a very nourishing world… I stayed close to my mother and aunt for about 10 minutes but soon enough got lost (purposely) and quietly pushed my way through the crowds to get up close to Van Gogh’s brilliant colors, these vibrating landscapes – in particular, the painting he produced in the Arlesian sun, Almond Branches in Bloom (1890). It turned out to be one of the pieces he produced the year he died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound. I never forgot the color and intelligence behind this painting, and I slowly began to look for this “art experience” in my own.


Anglais (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

What artists did you look up to when you were developing your artistic style?
Most artists I know were influenced by the early 20th century modernists – Picasso, Matisse, Malevich…then Duchamp and the Dadaists, the Surrealists, Pollock, de Kooning and then those who flavored the world we arrived in: Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg. For me, probably folks like Hopper for his era and compositions and silence; and Cornell for his expansive internal universe, and mostly Ray Johnson, because he was a friend and teacher (as he was to thousands) and the way he worked. Since I mostly work in collage, I’m more prone to think in disparate images and texts, an old-fashioned multi-media stream of consciousness. I don’t have problems with dislocated images and lexical puzzles. Of course I don’t pretend that these artists are producing works of philosophy, but rather reflecting the cataclysm that stems from consciousness.

Your work often involves the use of collage – what led to this fascination and why do you like working in this particular abstract context?
Collage is just one of several mediums I work in. Over the years I’ve produced works/object in wax or wood, painting and drawing, and text pieces either as rubber stamp works (printing) or drawing the words. One of my interests is word as image, and collage permits me to combine words and images in a fairly rapid fashion. I tend to work super fast and produce series in a matter of days or weeks. I’m pretty obsessed once I get going and very little interferes with my process. I did a show some years ago called ‘Spelling With Scissors’, and this is my approach – combining literature (texts) with images. I have always discussed my aesthetic view as a form of reading.

What does working in collage allow you to express in ways that other forms of artistic expression cannot?
Speed. Strangeness. The wide array of material allows me to cover many ideas and compositional concepts in a short period of time. Painting plays a part in what I do, as does drawing and often these mediums come into play in a work. But collage is an approach to consciousness, and that, I think is the flux endpoint in my work. Most of the elements I use are found, and that, too, is an important part of my process. Seeing what the world washes up at my feet, the skidmarks of my time and place.


Scared But Fresh at Orange Dot Gallery (image courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

What was the inspiration behind Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh
is a love story. The works in the exhibition come together (in my mind, at least) to lay out a dislocated love story, a song about love with its insistent cacophony. I think if you look at the pieces in this exhibition, including the 12-piece collage on paper series, America, you’ll see sex, love and death (the staples of art making), you’ll discover heartache, lust, dread and all those angst-laden things that produce so much of the content of our lives. Or at least that’s the way I see it. Again, I produce these works to see them myself, to see what these odd elements produce in combination, and to perhaps understand what sort of stuff is moving around inside of me; that said, it’s not therapy, but rather an inquiry.

Why is the exhibition called Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh was a phrase sent to me in 2002 by a friend; she signed an e mail that way. I immediately seized upon it, made a tonne of text works with it, cutting stencils and painting them, or adding it to other works, but also meditating upon its possible meanings. The “but” is critical. My thinking in using it for the title of this exhibition at The Orange Dot Gallery in London was that it was so aggressive, sure but still loaded with innocence and dread. Like love.

Critics have previously cited your work as a dadaist exploration of sense and non-sense. What would your response be to this?
I would agree with them. Dada is many things, and has been the point of departure for nearly 100 years of art production. The combination of sense and non-sense, broken grammar, chopped up meaning, and the flux of everyday life is, in my view, what my consciousness is like. What is the sense of finding a dollar bill stuck in a pile of dog shit? Or posters torn and weathered revealing a history of pasting and perhaps, a history of beauty (the models featured in years of posters, bits of their faces and clothing revealed)? I grab onto these things and consider them. Other people think about interest rates and widget production, and so do I, but I do something quite different with the information, the images and the meaning of these things. A large piece I produced, Les Affaires (prints are on Keep Calm Gallery’s site), surveys all sorts of exchanges; it is about commerce in many ways. Another work, Immaculate Perception (also available as a print on Keep Calm Gallery), is a very simple surreal piece showing a girl blossoming from a lemon tree. It’s not very interesting to be logical all day long, plus logic is overrated.


Cornell Bottle (photography courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

How would you describe your own style of work?
I’m a cut and paste artist. But I try to be clear in my chaos. The style can be dada, neo-pop, surreal, but I think after all these years, it’s simply mine.
When you create art, do you do it in the frame of mind that it will be viewed by others or it is created as a visual form of a personal diary? I create these things to see them for myself, to discover what this 1/2 face would look like with this 1/2 refrigerator. Or what would happen if this nice girl in her party dress would be like if she were wearing a steak for a head, or a pair of mechanical gears for breasts? I produce these works the way I play chess, carefully, but totally willing to take risks, totally willing to exchange queens, sacrifice pawns…not afraid to lose. As for a diary, I’m not sure about that, but I do work in books very often. Some of my series come in the form of 110-page visual novels like A Perfect Friend and Days Like These, People (drawings), Machines (drawings) and a dozen others. I feel not so much as if I’m making things for other people – again – but more for myself, and not to cure myself of anything other than the nightmare that is our world.

You are now based in France. Do you find that where you live has any influence on the themes that run through your work?
Living in France probably hasn’t altered in any significant way the themes that run through my work. Love, sex, death, anxiety, money will find you out no matter where you live. The material though is different. As I’m extremely interested in language, the plethora of printed materials in French, German, Spanish, Italian, English and other languages abounds here. I often find old beat up books tossed out on the street, or objects on the sidewalk. I can also play with a tonne of languages and I very much enjoy that. It’s the world. My studio is small and quiet and as I also live in the space I’m always up at 3 am working. Or I sleep then wake and work… something is always going on here, and should I need to go out, a walk proves a real fascination for me after a period of intense activity. “Holy smokes,” I’ll say to myself. “I live in France.” I sometimes forget that I actually live in this country.

What thoughts/feelings would you like viewers to go away with after they have been to your exhibition?
Well they tell me that they enjoy the work, they like that craziness of the work, but that it all makes sense. During the exhibition the head of a large international advertising company spent quite a while looking at my work. His focus is message communication, and in particularly creating iPhone apps, so he’s very attuned to visuals and text, and he said to me: “This is brilliant.” At the moment he was looking at a work from the America series of a girl on a swing with the word “HOME” pasted on top of her. She was pasted, in turn, on top of a photograph of a ship in a raging storm. That to me was very rewarding. Because something that was interesting to me was interesting to someone else, it was strong enough to click somewhere else.

How would you best like to be remembered?
You mean when I die? I launched an enormous project about this (in a way), A Book About Death. So I’ve thought long and hard about what its like to not have consciousness, to be left alone, to struggle with the impermanence of life, and the often sad and painful lives we lead when the folks we love are no longer with us. I’ve tried not to turn away from death and acknowledge it. Maybe as someone who wasn’t afraid to confront his demons, loved his friends and collaborated with the world in a way that made a little bit more sense out of the nonsense.


My situation (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

Matthew Rose is an American artist living in Paris known for his 1, remedy 000 piece wall-to-wall collages. On viewing his work, medical you can’t help but feel as if you are peering into the wrong end of a telescope; the objects look familiar yet distorted, eerie yet beautiful.

His abstract, artistic style presents a surreal and parallel world infused with vibrant colours where he often plays with an unusual fusion of subjects (and by this I mean a man with carrots for his head or a woman who is part-human, part-camera – pretty crazy stuff but in the most fantastic sense!).

For almost three decades, Matthew has been producing installations, which reinforce the connection between imagery and literature in art. His works – many of which are a composite of beautiful colours, visuals and text melting into one another – evoke the genres of 20th century surrealist artists, and several critics have cited his work as demonstrating a ‘dadaist exploration of sense and non-sense’.

Matthew’s installations have featured in galleries and museums across Europe, Asia and the United States, and his work has appeared in numerous books and magazines, including MASTERS: COLLAGE (Sterling Publishing/Lark Books, 2010) published recently.

His most notable art project to date, A Book About Death, showcased in New York’s Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in September 2009. The show was a logistical feat involving thousands of artists from across the globe sending 500 artworks in the form of postcards to construct the exhibition. The beauty of the exhibition was that the end result was offered to one lucky visitor in the form of a book… for free. More than 18 exhibitions of A Book About Death have been staged worldwide, including The Queens Museum in New York, MuBE in São Paulo and MoMA Wales.


Private view invite (image courtesy of Matthew Rose and Orange Dot Gallery)

Matthew’s most recent project, Scared But Fresh, is a dislocated love story exploring the sense and non-sense, which I was lucky enough to catch at Orange Dot Gallery, a lovely new exhibition space in the heart of Bloomsbury. By his own admission, Matthew is interested in ‘creating works to see them for himself’ but as a by-product of his imagination, his mesmerising creations prompt the viewer to garner thoughts of their own.

After gate-crashing a Brown University reunion held at the gallery, where Matthew studied Semiotics in 1981, I managed to grab a quiet moment with the calm and composed artist before his alumni chums arrived, gaining a glimpse into the annals of the mind of a truly fascinating individual…

How old were you when you realised you wanted to be an artist? I couldn’t have been more than six years old when my mother and aunt dragged me to The Brooklyn Museum to see Van Gogh. The lines went around the block and I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about; I was hungry, my feet hurt and being small, I was suffocating in this cloud of wool coats. Once inside the galleries, however, I caught my first glimpse of what has proven to be a very nourishing world… I stayed close to my mother and aunt for about 10 minutes but soon enough got lost (purposely) and quietly pushed my way through the crowds to get up close to Van Gogh’s brilliant colors, these vibrating landscapes – in particular, the painting he produced in the Arlesian sun, Almond Branches in Bloom (1890). It turned out to be one of the pieces he produced the year he died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound. I never forgot the color and intelligence behind this painting, and I slowly began to look for this “art experience” in my own.


Anglais (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

What artists did you look up to when you were developing your artistic style?
Most artists I know were influenced by the early 20th century modernists – Picasso, Matisse, Malevich…then Duchamp and the Dadaists, the Surrealists, Pollock, de Kooning and then those who flavored the world we arrived in: Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg. For me, probably folks like Hopper for his era and compositions and silence; and Cornell for his expansive internal universe, and mostly Ray Johnson, because he was a friend and teacher (as he was to thousands) and the way he worked. Since I mostly work in collage, I’m more prone to think in disparate images and texts, an old-fashioned multi-media stream of consciousness. I don’t have problems with dislocated images and lexical puzzles. Of course I don’t pretend that these artists are producing works of philosophy, but rather reflecting the cataclysm that stems from consciousness.

Your work often involves the use of collage – what led to this fascination and why do you like working in this particular abstract context?
Collage is just one of several mediums I work in. Over the years I’ve produced works/object in wax or wood, painting and drawing, and text pieces either as rubber stamp works (printing) or drawing the words. One of my interests is word as image, and collage permits me to combine words and images in a fairly rapid fashion. I tend to work super fast and produce series in a matter of days or weeks. I’m pretty obsessed once I get going and very little interferes with my process. I did a show some years ago called ‘Spelling With Scissors’, and this is my approach – combining literature (texts) with images. I have always discussed my aesthetic view as a form of reading.

What does working in collage allow you to express in ways that other forms of artistic expression cannot?
Speed. Strangeness. The wide array of material allows me to cover many ideas and compositional concepts in a short period of time. Painting plays a part in what I do, as does drawing and often these mediums come into play in a work. But collage is an approach to consciousness, and that, I think is the flux endpoint in my work. Most of the elements I use are found, and that, too, is an important part of my process. Seeing what the world washes up at my feet, the skidmarks of my time and place.


Scared But Fresh at Orange Dot Gallery (image courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

What was the inspiration behind Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh
is a love story. The works in the exhibition come together (in my mind, at least) to lay out a dislocated love story, a song about love with its insistent cacophony. I think if you look at the pieces in this exhibition, including the 12-piece collage on paper series, America, you’ll see sex, love and death (the staples of art making), you’ll discover heartache, lust, dread and all those angst-laden things that produce so much of the content of our lives. Or at least that’s the way I see it. Again, I produce these works to see them myself, to see what these odd elements produce in combination, and to perhaps understand what sort of stuff is moving around inside of me; that said, it’s not therapy, but rather an inquiry.

Why is the exhibition called Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh was a phrase sent to me in 2002 by a friend; she signed an e mail that way. I immediately seized upon it, made a tonne of text works with it, cutting stencils and painting them, or adding it to other works, but also meditating upon its possible meanings. The “but” is critical. My thinking in using it for the title of this exhibition at Orange Dot Gallery in London was that it was so aggressive, sure but still loaded with innocence and dread. Like love.

Critics have previously cited your work as a dadaist exploration of sense and non-sense. What would your response be to this?
I would agree with them. Dada is many things, and has been the point of departure for nearly 100 years of art production. The combination of sense and non-sense, broken grammar, chopped up meaning, and the flux of everyday life is, in my view, what my consciousness is like. What is the sense of finding a dollar bill stuck in a pile of dog shit? Or posters torn and weathered revealing a history of pasting and perhaps, a history of beauty (the models featured in years of posters, bits of their faces and clothing revealed)? I grab onto these things and consider them. Other people think about interest rates and widget production, and so do I, but I do something quite different with the information, the images and the meaning of these things. A large piece I produced, Les Affaires (prints are on Keep Calm Gallery’s site), surveys all sorts of exchanges; it is about commerce in many ways. Another work, Immaculate Perception (also available as a print on Keep Calm Gallery), is a very simple surreal piece showing a girl blossoming from a lemon tree. It’s not very interesting to be logical all day long, plus logic is overrated.


Cornell Bottle (photography courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

How would you describe your own style of work?
I’m a cut and paste artist. But I try to be clear in my chaos. The style can be dada, neo-pop, surreal, but I think after all these years, it’s simply mine.

When you create art, do you do it in the frame of mind that it will be viewed by others or it is created as a visual form of a personal diary?
I create these things to see them for myself, to discover what this 1/2 face would look like with this 1/2 refrigerator. Or what would happen if this nice girl in her party dress would be like if she were wearing a steak for a head, or a pair of mechanical gears for breasts? I produce these works the way I play chess, carefully, but totally willing to take risks, totally willing to exchange queens, sacrifice pawns…not afraid to lose. As for a diary, I’m not sure about that, but I do work in books very often. Some of my series come in the form of 110-page visual novels like A Perfect Friend and Days Like These, People (drawings), Machines (drawings) and a dozen others. I feel not so much as if I’m making things for other people – again – but more for myself, and not to cure myself of anything other than the nightmare that is our world.

You are now based in France. Do you find that where you live has any influence on the themes that run through your work?
Living in France probably hasn’t altered in any significant way the themes that run through my work. Love, sex, death, anxiety, money will find you out no matter where you live. The material though is different. As I’m extremely interested in language, the plethora of printed materials in French, German, Spanish, Italian, English and other languages abounds here. I often find old beat up books tossed out on the street, or objects on the sidewalk. I can also play with a tonne of languages and I very much enjoy that. It’s the world. My studio is small and quiet and as I also live in the space I’m always up at 3 am working. Or I sleep then wake and work… something is always going on here, and should I need to go out, a walk proves a real fascination for me after a period of intense activity. “Holy smokes,” I’ll say to myself. “I live in France.” I sometimes forget that I actually live in this country.

What thoughts/feelings would you like viewers to go away with after they have been to your exhibition?
Well they tell me that they enjoy the work, they like that craziness of the work, but that it all makes sense. During the exhibition the head of a large international advertising company spent quite a while looking at my work. His focus is message communication, and in particularly creating iPhone apps, so he’s very attuned to visuals and text, and he said to me: “This is brilliant.” At the moment he was looking at a work from the America series of a girl on a swing with the word “HOME” pasted on top of her. She was pasted, in turn, on top of a photograph of a ship in a raging storm. That to me was very rewarding. Because something that was interesting to me was interesting to someone else, it was strong enough to click somewhere else.

How would you best like to be remembered?
You mean when I die? I launched an enormous project about this (in a way), A Book About Death. So I’ve thought long and hard about what its like to not have consciousness, to be left alone, to struggle with the impermanence of life, and the often sad and painful lives we lead when the folks we love are no longer with us. I’ve tried not to turn away from death and acknowledge it. Maybe as someone who wasn’t afraid to confront his demons, loved his friends and collaborated with the world in a way that made a little bit more sense out of the nonsense.


My situation (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

Matthew Rose is an American artist living in Paris known for his 1, clinic 000 piece wall-to-wall collages. On viewing his work, see you can’t help but feel as if you are peering into the wrong end of a telescope; the objects look familiar yet distorted, eerie yet beautiful.

His abstract, artistic style presents a surreal and parallel world infused with vibrant colours where he often plays with an unusual fusion of subjects (and by this I mean a man with carrots for his head or a woman who is part-human, part-camera – pretty crazy stuff but in the most fantastic sense!).

For almost three decades, Matthew has been producing installations, which reinforce the connection between imagery and literature in art. His works – many of which are a composite of beautiful colours, visuals and text melting into one another – evoke the genres of 20th century surrealist artists, and several critics have cited his work as demonstrating a ‘dadaist exploration of sense and non-sense’.

Matthew’s installations have featured in galleries and museums across Europe, Asia and the United States, and his work has appeared in numerous books and magazines, including MASTERS: COLLAGE (Sterling Publishing/Lark Books, 2010) published recently.

His most notable art project to date, A Book About Death, showcased in New York’s Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in September 2009. The show was a logistical feat involving thousands of artists from across the globe sending 500 artworks in the form of postcards to construct the exhibition. The beauty of the exhibition was that the end result was offered to one lucky visitor in the form of a book… for free. More than 18 exhibitions of A Book About Death have been staged worldwide, including The Queens Museum in New York, MuBE in São Paulo and MoMA Wales.


Private view invite (image courtesy of Matthew Rose and Orange Dot Gallery)

Matthew’s most recent project, Scared But Fresh, is a dislocated love story exploring the sense and non-sense, which I was lucky enough to catch at Orange Dot Gallery, a lovely new exhibition space in the heart of Bloomsbury. By his own admission, Matthew is interested in ‘creating works to see them for himself’ but as a by-product of his imagination, his mesmerising creations prompt the viewer to garner thoughts of their own.

After gate-crashing a Brown University reunion held at the gallery, where Matthew studied Semiotics in 1981, I managed to grab a quiet moment with the calm and composed artist before his alumni chums arrived, gaining a glimpse into the annals of the mind of a truly fascinating individual…

How old were you when you realised you wanted to be an artist?
I couldn’t have been more than six years old when my mother and aunt dragged me to The Brooklyn Museum to see Van Gogh. The lines went around the block and I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about; I was hungry, my feet hurt and being small, I was suffocating in this cloud of wool coats. Once inside the galleries, however, I caught my first glimpse of what has proven to be a very nourishing world… I stayed close to my mother and aunt for about 10 minutes but soon enough got lost (purposely) and quietly pushed my way through the crowds to get up close to Van Gogh’s brilliant colors, these vibrating landscapes – in particular, the painting he produced in the Arlesian sun, Almond Branches in Bloom (1890). It turned out to be one of the pieces he produced the year he died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound. I never forgot the color and intelligence behind this painting, and I slowly began to look for this “art experience” in my own.


Anglais (image courtesy of Matthew Rose)

What artists did you look up to when you were developing your artistic style?
Most artists I know were influenced by the early 20th century modernists – Picasso, Matisse, Malevich…then Duchamp and the Dadaists, the Surrealists, Pollock, de Kooning and then those who flavored the world we arrived in: Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg. For me, probably folks like Hopper for his era and compositions and silence; and Cornell for his expansive internal universe, and mostly Ray Johnson, because he was a friend and teacher (as he was to thousands) and the way he worked. Since I mostly work in collage, I’m more prone to think in disparate images and texts, an old-fashioned multi-media stream of consciousness. I don’t have problems with dislocated images and lexical puzzles. Of course I don’t pretend that these artists are producing works of philosophy, but rather reflecting the cataclysm that stems from consciousness.

Your work often involves the use of collage – what led to this fascination and why do you like working in this particular abstract context?
Collage is just one of several mediums I work in. Over the years I’ve produced works/object in wax or wood, painting and drawing, and text pieces either as rubber stamp works (printing) or drawing the words. One of my interests is word as image, and collage permits me to combine words and images in a fairly rapid fashion. I tend to work super fast and produce series in a matter of days or weeks. I’m pretty obsessed once I get going and very little interferes with my process. I did a show some years ago called ‘Spelling With Scissors’, and this is my approach – combining literature (texts) with images. I have always discussed my aesthetic view as a form of reading.

What does working in collage allow you to express in ways that other forms of artistic expression cannot?
Speed. Strangeness. The wide array of material allows me to cover many ideas and compositional concepts in a short period of time. Painting plays a part in what I do, as does drawing and often these mediums come into play in a work. But collage is an approach to consciousness, and that, I think is the flux endpoint in my work. Most of the elements I use are found, and that, too, is an important part of my process. Seeing what the world washes up at my feet, the skidmarks of my time and place.


Scared But Fresh at Orange Dot Gallery (photography courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

What was the inspiration behind Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh
is a love story. The works in the exhibition come together (in my mind, at least) to lay out a dislocated love story, a song about love with its insistent cacophony. I think if you look at the pieces in this exhibition, including the 12-piece collage on paper series, America, you’ll see sex, love and death (the staples of art making), you’ll discover heartache, lust, dread and all those angst-laden things that produce so much of the content of our lives. Or at least that’s the way I see it. Again, I produce these works to see them myself, to see what these odd elements produce in combination, and to perhaps understand what sort of stuff is moving around inside of me; that said, it’s not therapy, but rather an inquiry.

Why is the exhibition called Scared But Fresh?
Scared But Fresh was a phrase sent to me in 2002 by a friend; she signed an e mail that way. I immediately seized upon it, made a tonne of text works with it, cutting stencils and painting them, or adding it to other works, but also meditating upon its possible meanings. The “but” is critical. My thinking in using it for the title of this exhibition at Orange Dot Gallery in London was that it was so aggressive, sure but still loaded with innocence and dread. Like love.

Critics have previously cited your work as a dadaist exploration of sense and non-sense. What would your response be to this?
I would agree with them. Dada is many things, and has been the point of departure for nearly 100 years of art production. The combination of sense and non-sense, broken grammar, chopped up meaning, and the flux of everyday life is, in my view, what my consciousness is like. What is the sense of finding a dollar bill stuck in a pile of dog shit? Or posters torn and weathered revealing a history of pasting and perhaps, a history of beauty (the models featured in years of posters, bits of their faces and clothing revealed)? I grab onto these things and consider them. Other people think about interest rates and widget production, and so do I, but I do something quite different with the information, the images and the meaning of these things. A large piece I produced, Les Affaires (prints are on Keep Calm Gallery’s site), surveys all sorts of exchanges; it is about commerce in many ways. Another work, Immaculate Perception (also available as a print on Keep Calm Gallery), is a very simple surreal piece showing a girl blossoming from a lemon tree. It’s not very interesting to be logical all day long, plus logic is overrated.


Cornell Bottle (photography courtesy of Orange Dot Gallery)

How would you describe your own style of work?
I’m a cut and paste artist. But I try to be clear in my chaos. The style can be dada, neo-pop, surreal, but I think after all these years, it’s simply mine.

When you create art, do you do it in the frame of mind that it will be viewed by others or it is created as a visual form of a personal diary?
I create these things to see them for myself, to discover what this 1/2 face would look like with this 1/2 refrigerator. Or what would happen if this nice girl in her party dress would be like if she were wearing a steak for a head, or a pair of mechanical gears for breasts? I produce these works the way I play chess, carefully, but totally willing to take risks, totally willing to exchange queens, sacrifice pawns…not afraid to lose. As for a diary, I’m not sure about that, but I do work in books very often. Some of my series come in the form of 110-page visual novels like A Perfect Friend and Days Like These, People (drawings), Machines (drawings) and a dozen others. I feel not so much as if I’m making things for other people – again – but more for myself, and not to cure myself of anything other than the nightmare that is our world.

You are now based in France. Do you find that where you live has any influence on the themes that run through your work?
Living in France probably hasn’t altered in any significant way the themes that run through my work. Love, sex, death, anxiety, money will find you out no matter where you live. The material though is different. As I’m extremely interested in language, the plethora of printed materials in French, German, Spanish, Italian, English and other languages abounds here. I often find old beat up books tossed out on the street, or objects on the sidewalk. I can also play with a tonne of languages and I very much enjoy that. It’s the world. My studio is small and quiet and as I also live in the space I’m always up at 3 am working. Or I sleep then wake and work… something is always going on here, and should I need to go out, a walk proves a real fascination for me after a period of intense activity. “Holy smokes,” I’ll say to myself. “I live in France.” I sometimes forget that I actually live in this country.

What thoughts/feelings would you like viewers to go away with after they have been to your exhibition?
Well they tell me that they enjoy the work, they like that craziness of the work, but that it all makes sense. During the exhibition the head of a large international advertising company spent quite a while looking at my work. His focus is message communication, and in particularly creating iPhone apps, so he’s very attuned to visuals and text, and he said to me: “This is brilliant.” At the moment he was looking at a work from the America series of a girl on a swing with the word “HOME” pasted on top of her. She was pasted, in turn, on top of a photograph of a ship in a raging storm. That to me was very rewarding. Because something that was interesting to me was interesting to someone else, it was strong enough to click somewhere else.

How would you best like to be remembered?
You mean when I die? I launched an enormous project about this (in a way), A Book About Death. So I’ve thought long and hard about what its like to not have consciousness, to be left alone, to struggle with the impermanence of life, and the often sad and painful lives we lead when the folks we love are no longer with us. I’ve tried not to turn away from death and acknowledge it. Maybe as someone who wasn’t afraid to confront his demons, loved his friends and collaborated with the world in a way that made a little bit more sense out of the nonsense.


Illustration by Abigail Wright

You may have noticed that Britain’s fashion scene has been ‘yarnbombed’ of late. Knitwear is everywhere. The term itself refers to covering street furniture, prostate including stop signs and phone boxes with knitted garments, such as long scarves and soft tea cosies. People generally festoon the knitwear to make a point and highlight an issue, such as a charity’s appeal.

The wool adorning act follows from the last two years of the enormous and triumphant return of knitwear to fashion. Its rise coincides with the soaring popularity of vintage and collectable clothing.

That’s why style pioneer of the sixties and knitwear legend Marion Foale’s informal talk at Image Boutique in Bath’s Milsom Place on Monday was quite the fashion event. For over thirty years Marion Foale has hand-knitted the finest wool and cotton jackets available in the world. Her designs are inspired by the glamour of the forties. They are exquisite in their fit and form, always with emphasis on femininity. Each jacket takes over 300 hours to make using only the finest cotton and wool yarns.

Min Stevenson, owner of Image, said: “We sell Marion Foale jackets every season, people love them. We were very excited to give our Foale fans a chance to meet the maker of such a superb collection.”

Wearing one of her own red, swing cardigans, Foale chatted in a relaxed manner to her avid fans. She spoke of her background in the fashion business during the swinging sixties, and her successful knitwear collection from the seventies onwards.

I felt a little out of place, standing there with the PR lady and photographer, discussing the miniature quiches on offer. Most of the women there could afford the £400 prices of a Foale piece, and looking at their fabrics and immaculate complexions, most were certainly members of Bath’s elite.

However, when I fought through the ladies, and eventually cornered Marion for an interview, I found she was incredibly friendly and talked of her sixties past with delight and relish. She was equally lighthearted when discussing starting a business in knitwear with no idea how to actually knit. Gutsy.


Illustration by Cat Palairet

Of course Foale started her fashion career with a fabulous collection of tailored fabric designs in the sixties. She did this with her business partner, Sally Tuffin, who herself favoured the floatier designs.  After studying together at the Royal College of Art and attaining their degrees in 1961, they formed Foale and Tuffin. Situated in London, on the cusp of the sixties style revolution, their designs pushed boundaries and gave young women an avenue of self expression they had never previously experienced.

They began by working from their South Kensington flat, spending their days working at their sewing machines on their dining room table. Patterns would have to be cut on the floor. Foale said, “I started by making bridesmaid dresses and things like that for cash. We worked in our flat using domestic machines, sewing them up ourselves and taking them on the bus.” Their talent was soon realised and by the mid sixties they had moved onto the famous King’s Road.

“Fortunately Woodlands 21 opened, and they were desperate for a new, young look. There was only Mary Quant back then and so of course they snatched at it and put them in the window.”

“Then Vogue comes along and photographs it, then David Bailey photographs it. Then you have got to make 36 more by hand and cut them out. You get somebody to help you machining, then a factory. Then of course the American market started opening up. They wanted a bit of the Swinging Sixties and that’s how it all happened.”

From 1965 to 1970, Foale and Tuffin signed for Youthquake with Mary Quant and Betsey Johnson doing whistle stop tours around the USA with Go Go girls to model and the Skunks boy band creating the accompanying musical sounds. Foale and her business partner Sally Tuffin found themselves in a world of stylish rebellion. The 1960s were the first time that young people embraced their own style. Previously girls were always dressed to look like their mothers.  Foale said:  “We’d had it rammed down our throats – I had to go to Sunday School with white gloves, a hat and a handbag, just like a miniature mum in a dress made by her, exactly the same as hers! I mean who wanted to do that? We just wanted to kick against it all.”


Illustration by Faye West

Their trouser suits, mixed tartans, kaftans and shockingly thick woolly tights, to be worn with mini skirts, broke boundaries. However, although she saw the departure from the strict formal wear of the 1950s as indeed risque, she also saw it as an inevitable move for fashion in the1960s. “We thought it was very daring but it was just so comfortable wearing trousers. There weren’t many trousers for women that you could buy at the time.

“And there was this whole problem with mini skirts and what you put on your legs. Stockings in those days were flesh coloured, fine denier and worn with suspender belts. Well, we wanted fun colours, and thicker as well. We found these wonderful Swedish stockings, which we sold in our shop. And I think the trouser suit revolution was just a feeling in the air, that had to happen.”

The sixties were undeniably an electrifying decade for fashion and liberation, but Foale believes they were merely designing what they, as young women, wanted to be wearing. She said: “It was just good fun. Nothing was serious. We just did what we wanted to do, we didn’t want to go and work for anybody and we just did it because we wanted to do it.
“We were breaking boundaries without realising, we just did what we wanted to wear and what we liked and we wouldn’t go and work for people in factories.”

Ms Stevenson, who has enjoyed a business relationship with Foale for decades, remembers Foale and Tuffin with fondness. She said: “It was different to what other people were doing and that was the exciting thing.”


Illustration by Nina Hunter

After their children were born, Foale and Tuffin ceased in 1972. Sally Tuffin started a ceramic business and Marion Foale started her own knitwear collection in 1981. Ms Stevenson said: “It was an awful thing when they stopped because they’d been doing such a wonderful business. It was a great shame, it had such a terrific following. There were some Japanese inspired pieces, oh fabulous. I cut mine up for my daughter. I regret it, regret it, regret it!”

However Foale had moved to a 16th century thatched farmhouse on the Warwickshire borders and wanted to explore new avenues of knitwear design, steering away from what she already knew. Ms Stevenson believes that this was hand knitting’s time. She said: “There was a big thing for knitwear, there was Patricia Roberts and Edina Ronay. It had a special place.”

However, initially Foale could not knit. “I couldn’t knit and I couldn’t write a pattern, so I taught myself. When the babies were little I started knitting because that was the only thing to do.

“I started with children’s and put a little book together, because I wanted to do a knitting pattern book. I was told to do wholesale, so I rang up Paul Smith, an old friend of mine – his wife used to work for us –  and I went to see Paul and said what do you think? He said: “No, no good. Far too understated, far too simple, no I wouldn’t bother.” I went away and I thought, I’ll bother. We all laugh about it now.”

Foale has since enjoyed fantastic success with Foale Ltd. Her hand knitted garments are sold around the world. Still based in the Midlands, she and has a team of knitters within a 25 mile radius of her offices. Many of the knitters are retired and find that it is an outlet for their knitting skills. The selection process is tough and only one in five will make it onto the team. Foale, a lover of maths, draws the patterns on graph paper and uses her tailoring skills to create the fitted, feminine style of her garments. The knitters never sew their pieces together themselves however, they will only knit the separate pieces, as Foale believes that knitters do not necessarily make sewers.

She had some words of advice for young, budding designers and acknowledged the different obstacles in their way. “Oh, it’s much harder now, I feel so sorry for young designers. But if you want to do something, do it. Whatever you want to do, do it. Go for it. “


Illustration by Holly Giblin

Since Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin’s designs hit London’s Kings Road, female fashion designers have of course flourished. Stylish knitwear has prospered since Foale started her knitwear business in 1981. Fashion Editor of The Daily Telegraph Hilary Alexander calls it, “London’s heritage of knit wizardry”. And looking at the last three seasons, catwalks have been thoroughly wrapped up in scarves and cardigans, as well as Mad Men-styled chic 1950s separates. A new wave of knitwear designers such as Louise Goldin and Craig Lawrence have thrived.

This has transcended to the high street, giving rise to the knitting club, and of course, the art of ‘yarnbombing’.  The huge revival love of knitwear could be partly attributed to nostalgia – the metaphorical knitted hug, together with the recession’s ‘make do and mend’ principles. It certainly seems that everyone is in the midst of knitting a scarf these days.

To own one of Marion Foale’s sweaters, though, is to own a collectable. Many women dearly cherish her pieces.  Her designs are beautiful, distinctive, imaginative and utterly English. Marion Foale was the arguably one of the original ‘yarnbombers’ –  terribly dignified but with a glint in the eye…

Foale and Tuffin: The Sixties. A Decade in Fashion by Iain R. Webb is out now, published by Antique Collectors Club Publishing Group

Marion Foale’s Classic Knitwear: A Beautiful Collection of 30 Original Patterns, first released in 1985, is out now, published by Rodale Press

Categories ,1960s, ,Abigail Wright, ,Bath, ,Betsy Johnson, ,Cat Palairet, ,Craig Lawrence, ,Edna Ronay, ,Faye West, ,Foale and Tuffin, ,Hilary Alexander, ,Holly Giblin, ,Image Boutique, ,Kings Road, ,knitwear, ,london, ,Louise Goldin, ,Marion Foale, ,Mary Quant, ,Min Stevenson, ,Nina Hunter, ,Patricia Roberts, ,Paul Smith, ,rca, ,Sally Tuffin, ,South Kensington, ,Swinging Sixties, ,Woodlands 21, ,Yarnbombing, ,Youth Quake

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Amelia’s Magazine | Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration Launch Party: The Movie

Cooperative Designs 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Natsuki Otani
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Natsuki Otani.

Last season I was incredibly gutted to miss the Cooperative Designs presentation – such were the glowing reports on our website. But in my enthusiasm I actually turned up too early this time, viagra buy got turned away, buy ate a Pret sandwich… and then missed most of what turned out to actually be a catwalk show on repeat.


Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Tim Adey.

Descending some stairs we were asked to sit in a darkened vault but my photographer’s sixth sense directed me instead to stand in a separate photographers box, where the models paused for a few seconds in somewhat brighter conditions.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Jane Young
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Jane Young.

This was a collection inspired by 90s rave culture, Drum n Bass and the contemplative industrial photography of Thomas Struth, which meant that the oversized silhouette of Cooperative Designs came in industrial tones of grey and beige stripes combined with fluoro highlights in tie detailing, visors and threaded hair accessories.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Tim Adey.
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Tim Adey.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia GregoryCooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory.

There was lots of asymmetrical patterning, floppy hooded jumpers, boxy baggy tops and knit dresses tiered with baggy pouches. Lacy see through knitwear recalled the combat trouser shapes so beloved of 90s dancers. Hats by Noel Stewart were tall and floppy like a gnome’s or featured ear flaps and visors – questionable styles that were somehow rendered infinitely desirable. A wide knitted skirt was particularly cute, and were the little boots by Flip Flop, customised by Cooperative Designs with extravagant orange soles.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia GregoryCooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia GregoryCooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory.

Of any designers that I love I can actually imagine myself wearing Cooperative Designs. Their clever knitwear by it’s very nature being supremely flattering to the shape of a real women. Thankfully, they make a point of picking their models to reflect their customer.

On my way out I was given a brilliant press release: informative, well written and protected in a cardboard envelope that even I would struggle to lose. Best of all, it came with my very own piece of painted plywood jewellery by Corrie Williamson, as featured in the collection. More designers could learn from such professionalism on the press release frontier.

You can read Naomi Law’s excellent review here.

I totally missed out the East 17 reference…
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Natsuki Otani
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Natsuki Otani.

Last season I was incredibly gutted to miss the Cooperative Designs presentation – such were the glowing reports on our website. But in my enthusiasm I actually turned up too early this time, mind got turned away, ate a Pret sandwich… and then missed most of what turned out to actually be a catwalk show on repeat.


Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Tim Adey.

Descending some stairs we were asked to sit in a darkened vault but my photographer’s sixth sense directed me instead to stand in a separate photographers box, where the models paused for a few seconds in somewhat brighter conditions.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Jane Young
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Jane Young.

This was a collection inspired by 90s rave culture, Drum n Bass and the contemplative industrial photography of Thomas Struth, which meant that the oversized silhouette of Cooperative Designs came in industrial tones of grey and beige stripes combined with fluoro highlights in tie detailing, visors and threaded hair accessories.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Tim Adey.
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Tim Adey.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia GregoryCooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory.

There was lots of asymmetrical patterning, floppy hooded jumpers, boxy baggy tops and knit dresses tiered with baggy pouches. Lacy see through knitwear recalled the combat trouser shapes so beloved of 90s dancers. Hats by Noel Stewart were tall and floppy like a gnome’s or featured ear flaps and visors – questionable styles that were somehow rendered infinitely desirable. A wide knitted skirt was particularly cute, and were the little boots by Flip Flop, customised by Cooperative Designs with extravagant orange soles.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia GregoryCooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia GregoryCooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory.

Of any designers that I love I can actually imagine myself wearing Cooperative Designs. Their clever knitwear by it’s very nature being supremely flattering to the shape of a real women. Thankfully, they make a point of picking their models to reflect their customer.

Cooperative Designs 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory
Plywood jewellery by Corrie Williamson for Cooperative Designs 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory.

On my way out I was given a brilliant press release: informative, well written and protected in a cardboard envelope that even I would struggle to lose. Best of all, it came with my very own piece of painted plywood jewellery by Corrie Williamson, as featured in the collection. More designers could learn from such professionalism on the press release frontier.

You can read Naomi Law’s excellent review here. You can see more of Natsuki Otani’s work in Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration.
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Natsuki Otani
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Natsuki Otani.

Last season I was incredibly gutted to miss the Cooperative Designs presentation – such were the glowing reports on our website. But in my enthusiasm I actually turned up too early this time, drug got turned away, order ate a Pret sandwich… and then missed most of what turned out to actually be a catwalk show on repeat.


Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Tim Adey.

Descending some stairs we were asked to sit in a darkened vault but my photographer’s sixth sense directed me instead to stand in a separate photographers box, where the models paused for a few seconds in somewhat brighter conditions.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Jane Young
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Jane Young.

This was a collection inspired by 90s rave culture, Drum n Bass and the contemplative industrial photography of Thomas Struth, which meant that the oversized silhouette of Cooperative Designs came in industrial tones of grey and beige stripes combined with fluoro highlights in tie detailing, visors and threaded hair accessories.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Tim Adey.
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Tim Adey.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia GregoryCooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory.

There was lots of asymmetrical patterning, floppy hooded jumpers, boxy baggy tops and knit dresses tiered with baggy pouches. Lacy see through knitwear recalled the combat trouser shapes so beloved of 90s dancers. Hats by Noel Stewart were tall and floppy like a gnome’s or featured ear flaps and visors – questionable styles that were somehow rendered infinitely desirable. A wide knitted skirt was particularly cute, and were the little boots by Flip Flop, customised by Cooperative Designs with extravagant orange soles.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia GregoryCooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia GregoryCooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory.

Of any designers that I love I can actually imagine myself wearing Cooperative Designs. Their clever knitwear by it’s very nature being supremely flattering to the shape of a real women. Thankfully, they make a point of picking their models to reflect their customer.

Cooperative Designs 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory
Plywood jewellery by Corrie Williamson for Cooperative Designs 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory.

On my way out I was given a brilliant press release: informative, well written and protected in a cardboard envelope that even I would struggle to lose. Best of all, it came with my very own piece of painted plywood jewellery by Corrie Williamson, as featured in the collection. More designers could learn from such professionalism on the press release frontier.

You can read Naomi Law’s excellent review here. You can see more of Natsuki Otani’s work in Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration.
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Natsuki Otani
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Natsuki Otani.

Last season I was incredibly gutted to miss the Cooperative Designs presentation – such were the glowing reports on our website. But in my enthusiasm I actually turned up too early this time, ailment got turned away, ate a Pret sandwich… and then missed most of what turned out to actually be a catwalk show on repeat.


Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Tim Adey.

Descending some stairs we were asked to sit in a darkened vault but my photographer’s sixth sense directed me instead to stand in a separate photographers box, where the models paused for a few seconds in somewhat brighter conditions.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Jane Young
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011 by Jane Young.

This was a collection inspired by 90s rave culture, Drum n Bass and the contemplative industrial photography of Thomas Struth, which meant that the oversized silhouette of Cooperative Designs came in industrial tones of grey and beige stripes combined with fluoro highlights in tie detailing, visors and threaded hair accessories.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Tim Adey.
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Tim Adey.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia GregoryCooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory.

There was lots of asymmetrical patterning, floppy hooded jumpers, boxy baggy tops and knit dresses tiered with baggy pouches. Lacy see through knitwear recalled the combat trouser shapes so beloved of 90s dancers. Hats by Noel Stewart were tall and floppy like a gnome’s or featured ear flaps and visors – questionable styles that were somehow rendered infinitely desirable. A wide knitted skirt was particularly cute, as were the little boots by Flip Flop, customised by Cooperative Designs with extravagant orange soles.

Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia GregoryCooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia GregoryCooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory
Cooperative Designs A/W 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory.

Of any designers that I love I can actually imagine myself wearing Cooperative Designs. Their clever knitwear is by it’s very nature supremely flattering to the shape of a real women. Thankfully, they make a point of picking their models to reflect their customer.

Cooperative Designs 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory
Plywood jewellery by Corrie Williamson for Cooperative Designs 2011. Photography by Amelia Gregory.

On my way out I was given a brilliant press release: informative, well written and protected in a cardboard envelope that even I would struggle to lose. Best of all, it came with my very own piece of painted plywood jewellery by Corrie Williamson, as featured in the collection. More designers could learn from such professionalism on the press release frontier.

You can read Naomi Law’s excellent review here and you can see more of Natsuki Otani’s work in Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration.
Sally Mumby-Croft at the ACOFI launch with Jonno and Matt. Illustration by Naomi Law
Sally Mumby-Croft at the ACOFI launch with Jonno and Matt. Illustration by Naomi Law.

Former Amelia’s Magazine art editor Sally Mumby-Croft put together this stunning movie reminder of the launch party for ACOFI with a little help from 6 Day Riot. I hope you enjoy a tour of Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration, rx as seen at the Bunker Cafe and Scout Hut at 123 Bethnal Green Road on Friday 28th January 2011. It features Susie Bubble, troche cakes by Lily Vanilli, sneak peaks inside the book and lots of sketching by the illustrators who helped out on the day.

YouTube Preview Image

I asked Sally a few questions about how she put the movie together:

What where you looking for when you filmed this?
When filming I’m often looking for the quiet moments in between moments of action, whether this be an illustrator lost in concentration, the movement of a pen, the simple action of making tea or a DJ pressing play. I wanted to capture the moments which were unique to an Amelia’s Magazine book launch.

What was your favourite moment of the party?
Apart from assisting Amelia and Matt Bramford with the set up in the morning and watching 123 heave under the number of guests who turned up for the book launch, my favourite moment of the party was when Amelia and Harriet (of Tatty Devine) cut the fantastic cake made by Lily Vanilli and we had a chance to taste the prettiest cake I’ve ever seen!

Sally Mumby-Croft. Photography by Liz Johnson-Artur.
Sally Mumby-Croft. Photography by Liz Johnson-Artur.

Who else have you made short videos for?
Recently I’ve been really lucky to work with the photographer and filmmaker Ben Toms, over the past three months I’ve worked on videos for JW Anderson, Edun and Craig Lawrence.



Outside of fashion film, I’ve worked with the fantastic team behind the upcoming documentary Just Do It: get off your arse and change the world and assisted on the editing of their Grow Heathrow short:

YouTube Preview Image

What else are you working on at the moment?
I’m thinking about the possibility of expanding upon Edgeland, a short documentary I made with Xavier Zapata in 2009. Edgeland consists of a series of interviews with Hackney residents who have been displaced by the Olympic development site in Stratford. Apart from that I have an idea for a new short film…

There’s a reason why I heart Sally big time. She’s incredibly talented, knowledgeable and she cares about the world around us. You can follow Sally on twitter here, and keep up with her on her Vimeo channel here.

Categories ,123 Bethnal Green Road, ,6 Day Riot, ,ACOFI, ,Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration, ,Ben Toms, ,Bunker Cafe, ,Craig Lawrence, ,Direct Action, ,Edgelands, ,Edun, ,goldsmiths, ,Grow Heathrow, ,hackney, ,Harriet Vine, ,Just Do It, ,JW Anderson, ,launch party, ,Lily Vanilli, ,Liz Johnson-Artur, ,Matt Bramford, ,Naomi Law, ,Olympics, ,Sally Mumby-Croft, ,Scout Hut, ,Stratford, ,Susie Bubble, ,Tatty Devine, ,Xavier Zapata

Similar Posts:






Amelia’s Magazine | Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration Launch Party: The Movie

Sally Mumby-Croft at the ACOFI launch with Jonno and Matt. Illustration by Naomi Law
Sally Mumby-Croft at the ACOFI launch with Jonno and Matt. Illustration by Naomi Law.

Former Amelia’s Magazine art editor Sally Mumby-Croft put together this stunning movie reminder of the launch party for ACOFI with a little help from 6 Day Riot. I hope you enjoy a tour of Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration, as seen at the Bunker Cafe and Scout Hut at 123 Bethnal Green Road on Friday 28th January 2011. It features Susie Bubble, cakes by Lily Vanilli, sneak peaks inside the book and lots of sketching by the illustrators who helped out on the day.

YouTube Preview Image

I asked Sally a few questions about how she put the movie together:

What where you looking for when you filmed this?
When filming I’m often looking for the quiet moments in between moments of action, whether this be an illustrator lost in concentration, the movement of a pen, the simple action of making tea or a DJ pressing play. I wanted to capture the moments which were unique to an Amelia’s Magazine book launch.

What was your favourite moment of the party?
Apart from assisting Amelia and Matt Bramford with the set up in the morning and watching 123 heave under the number of guests who turned up for the book launch, my favourite moment of the party was when Amelia and Harriet (of Tatty Devine) cut the fantastic cake made by Lily Vanilli and we had a chance to taste the prettiest cake I’ve ever seen!

Sally Mumby-Croft. Photography by Liz Johnson-Artur.
Sally Mumby-Croft. Photography by Liz Johnson-Artur.

Who else have you made short videos for?
Recently I’ve been really lucky to work with the photographer and filmmaker Ben Toms, over the past three months I’ve worked on videos for JW Anderson, Edun and Craig Lawrence.

http://www.vimeo.com/20191792
http://www.vimeo.com/20191533
http://www.vimeo.com/18878998

Outside of fashion film, I’ve worked with the fantastic team behind the upcoming documentary Just Do It: get off your arse and change the world and assisted on the editing of their Grow Heathrow short:

YouTube Preview Image

What else are you working on at the moment?
I’m thinking about the possibility of expanding upon Edgeland, a short documentary I made with Xavier Zapata in 2009. Edgeland consists of a series of interviews with Hackney residents who have been displaced by the Olympic development site in Stratford. Apart from that I have an idea for a new short film…

http://www.vimeo.com/5191789

There’s a reason why I heart Sally big time. She’s incredibly talented, knowledgeable and she cares about the world around us. You can follow Sally on twitter here, and keep up with her on her Vimeo channel here.

Categories ,123 Bethnal Green Road, ,6 Day Riot, ,ACOFI, ,Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration, ,Ben Toms, ,Bunker Cafe, ,Craig Lawrence, ,Direct Action, ,Edgelands, ,Edun, ,goldsmiths, ,Grow Heathrow, ,hackney, ,Harriet Vine, ,Just Do It, ,JW Anderson, ,launch party, ,Lily Vanilli, ,Liz Johnson-Artur, ,Matt Bramford, ,Naomi Law, ,Olympics, ,Sally Mumby-Croft, ,Scout Hut, ,Stratford, ,Susie Bubble, ,Tatty Devine, ,Xavier Zapata

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Amelia’s Magazine | Gig Review: Sia at the Roundhouse


Illustration by Eugenia Tsimiklis

In my honest opinion, buy the V&A is the single most wonderful museum in the world. Where else can you pass by Medieval sculpture, breeze by centuries-old Japanese textiles and pass under Renaissance frescos to marvel at Dame Edna’s full-english-breakfast frock? At the V&A, I tell ya!

I was here today for the latest Fashion in Motion catwalk show – events that bring the runway to the public and make watching fashion, in this sense, accessible.

This time it was the turn of Osman Yousefzada, Afghan-born and British-based fashion designer.


Illustration by Leah Wilson

Taking my seat on the front row, it’s always incredible to look around and see what type of people attend these events. Today’s crowd was made up mostly of the usual breed of fashionista-slash-scenester, but it’s always great to see how diverse this crowd is – particularly the two little old dears who were sitting by my side. They were in the mid-to-late seventies I’d say, but they looked absolutely gorgeous and told me ‘they love a catwalk show!’

The show began with a burst of loud music and a very muscular man appeared wearing one of Osman’s body-concious floor-length creations (womenswear, I hasten to add). As he moved down the catwalk robotically, whoops and cheers were heard, and his lean frame began to dance in that fascinating interpretative style that I defy anybody to fully explain or understand. He was joined by a girl who came hurtling and spinning down the catwalk, her aesthetic a-line pleated Osman creation getting maximum exposure from her delicate moves.

When the ‘fashion’ part of the show kicked in, it was easy to see why Osman is celebrated internationally for his forward-thinking fashion. In this semi-retrospective of his work, the key themes were glamour, sophistication and body-concious ensembles. These four strutted their stuff first.

Quickly the show gathered pace and we were treated to a whistle-stop tour of Osman’s previous and present collections. Body-con was again high on the list of things to see, along with a range of delicate and very, very feminine short dresses.


Illustration by Eugenia Tsimiklis

Osman’s style is hard to pin down. It’s glamorous, at times futuristic but never, ever boring. At first glance many of the pieces are wonderfully simple, but always with a twist: like an oversized tafetta corsage in post-box red, or metallic gold bodice.

Osman relies on a natural colour palette; futuristic grays are a strong theme along with fashionable nudes, and it is the craftsmanship and engineering of these Japanese-inspired pieces that work the hardest.

Hot pink blouses and gold lamé macs brought a welcomed splash of colour, however.


Illustration by Leah Wilson

Illustration by Eugenia Tsimiklis

In my honest opinion, prostate the V&A is the single most wonderful museum in the world. Where else can you pass by Medieval sculpture, ampoule breeze by centuries-old Japanese textiles and pass under Renaissance frescos to marvel at Dame Edna’s full-english-breakfast frock? At the V&A, order I tell ya!

I was here today for the latest Fashion in Motion catwalk show – events that bring the runway to the public and make watching fashion, in this sense, accessible.

This time it was the turn of Osman Yousefzada, Afghan-born and British-based fashion designer.


Illustration by Leah Wilson

Taking my seat on the front row, it’s always incredible to look around and see what type of people attend these events. Today’s crowd was made up mostly of the usual breed of fashionista-slash-scenester, but it’s always great to see how diverse this crowd is – particularly the two little old dears who were sitting by my side. They were in the mid-to-late seventies I’d say, but they looked absolutely gorgeous and told me ‘they love a catwalk show!’

The show began with a burst of loud music and a very muscular man appeared wearing one of Osman’s body-concious floor-length creations (womenswear, I hasten to add). As he moved down the catwalk robotically, whoops and cheers were heard, and his lean frame began to dance in that fascinating interpretative style that I defy anybody to fully explain or understand. He was joined by a girl who came hurtling and spinning down the catwalk, her aesthetic a-line pleated Osman creation getting maximum exposure from her delicate moves.

When the ‘fashion’ part of the show kicked in, it was easy to see why Osman is celebrated internationally for his forward-thinking fashion. In this semi-retrospective of his work, the key themes were glamour, sophistication and body-concious ensembles. These four strutted their stuff first.

Quickly the show gathered pace and we were treated to a whistle-stop tour of Osman’s previous and present collections. Body-con was again high on the list of things to see, along with a range of delicate and very, very feminine short dresses.


Illustration by Eugenia Tsimiklis

Osman’s style is hard to pin down. It’s glamorous, at times futuristic but never, ever boring. At first glance many of the pieces are wonderfully simple, but always with a twist: like an oversized tafetta corsage in post-box red, or metallic gold bodice.

Osman relies on a natural colour palette; futuristic grays are a strong theme along with fashionable nudes, and it is the craftsmanship and engineering of these Japanese-inspired pieces that work the hardest.

…Whilst some pieces, like this beautiful bell-like creation, seemed to float over the model as she effortlessly walked the catwalk.

Hot pink blouses and gold lamé macs brought a welcomed splash of colour, however.


Illustration by Leah Wilson


Illustration by Eugenia Tsimiklis

In my honest opinion, shop the V&A is the single most wonderful museum in the world. Where else can you pass by Medieval sculpture, breeze by centuries-old Japanese textiles and pass under Renaissance frescos to marvel at Dame Edna’s full-english-breakfast frock? At the V&A, I tell ya!

I was here today for the latest Fashion in Motion catwalk show – events that bring the runway to the public and make watching fashion, in this sense, accessible.

This time it was the turn of Osman Yousefzada, Afghan-born and British-based fashion designer.


Illustration by Leah Wilson

Taking my seat on the front row, it’s always incredible to look around and see what type of people attend these events. Today’s crowd was made up mostly of the usual breed of fashionista-slash-scenester, but it’s always great to see how diverse this crowd is – particularly the two little old dears who were sitting by my side. They were in the mid-to-late seventies I’d say, but they looked absolutely gorgeous and told me ‘they love a catwalk show!’

The show began with a burst of loud music and a very muscular man appeared wearing one of Osman’s body-concious floor-length creations (womenswear, I hasten to add). As he moved down the catwalk robotically, whoops and cheers were heard, and his lean frame began to dance in that fascinating interpretative style that I defy anybody to fully explain or understand. He was joined by a girl who came hurtling and spinning down the catwalk, her aesthetic a-line pleated Osman creation getting maximum exposure from her delicate moves.

When the ‘fashion’ part of the show kicked in, it was easy to see why Osman is celebrated internationally for his forward-thinking fashion. In this semi-retrospective of his work, the key themes were glamour, sophistication and body-concious ensembles. These four strutted their stuff first.

Quickly the show gathered pace and we were treated to a whistle-stop tour of Osman’s previous and present collections. Body-con was again high on the list of things to see, along with a range of delicate and very, very feminine short dresses.


Illustration by Eugenia Tsimiklis

Osman’s style is hard to pin down. It’s glamorous, at times futuristic but never, ever boring. At first glance many of the pieces are wonderfully simple, but always with a twist: like an oversized tafetta corsage in post-box red, or a metallic gold bodice.

Osman relies on a natural colour palette; futuristic grays are a strong theme along with fashionable nudes, and it is the craftsmanship and engineering of these Japanese-inspired pieces that work the hardest.

…Whilst some pieces, like this beautiful bell-like creation, seemed to float over the model as she effortlessly walked the catwalk.

Hot pink blouses and gold lamé macs brought a welcomed splash of colour, however.


Illustration by Leah Wilson


Illustration by Eugenia Tsimiklis

In my honest opinion, online the V&A is the single most wonderful museum in the world. Where else can you pass by Medieval sculpture, pilule breeze by centuries-old Japanese textiles and pass under Renaissance frescos to marvel at Dame Edna’s full-english-breakfast frock? At the V&A, remedy I tell ya!

I was here today for the latest Fashion in Motion catwalk show – events that bring the runway to the public and make watching fashion, in this sense, accessible.

This time it was the turn of Osman Yousefzada, Afghan-born and British-based fashion designer.


Illustration by Leah Wilson

Taking my seat on the front row, it’s always incredible to look around and see what type of people attend these events. Today’s crowd was made up mostly of the usual breed of fashionista-slash-scenester, but it’s always great to see how diverse this crowd is – particularly the two little old dears who were sitting by my side. They were in the mid-to-late seventies I’d say, but they looked absolutely gorgeous and told me ‘they love a catwalk show!’

The show began with a burst of loud music and a very muscular man appeared wearing one of Osman’s body-concious floor-length creations (womenswear, I hasten to add). As he moved down the catwalk robotically, whoops and cheers were heard, and his lean frame began to dance in that fascinating interpretative style that I defy anybody to fully explain or understand. He was joined by a girl who came hurtling and spinning down the catwalk, her aesthetic a-line pleated Osman creation getting maximum exposure from her delicate moves.

When the ‘fashion’ part of the show kicked in, it was easy to see why Osman is celebrated internationally for his forward-thinking fashion. In this semi-retrospective of his work, the key themes were glamour, sophistication and body-concious ensembles. These four strutted their stuff first.

Quickly the show gathered pace and we were treated to a whistle-stop tour of Osman’s previous and present collections. Body-con was again high on the list of things to see, along with a range of delicate and very, very feminine short dresses.


Illustration by Eugenia Tsimiklis

Osman’s style is hard to pin down. It’s glamorous, at times futuristic but never, ever boring. At first glance many of the pieces are wonderfully simple, but always with a twist: like an oversized tafetta corsage in post-box red, or a metallic gold bodice.

Osman relies on a natural colour palette; futuristic grays are a strong theme along with fashionable nudes, and it is the craftsmanship and engineering of these Japanese-inspired pieces that work the hardest.

…Whilst some pieces, like this beautiful bell-like creation, seemed to float over the model as she effortlessly walked the catwalk.

Hot pink blouses and gold lamé macs brought a welcomed splash of colour, however.


Illustration by Leah Wilson


Illustration by Eugenia Tsimiklis

In my honest opinion, viagra buy the V&A is the single most wonderful museum in the world. Where else can you pass by Medieval sculpture, pills breeze by centuries-old Japanese textiles and pass under Renaissance frescos to marvel at Dame Edna’s full-english-breakfast frock? At the V&A, I tell ya!

I was here today for the latest Fashion in Motion catwalk show – events that bring the runway to the public and make watching fashion, in this sense, accessible.

This time it was the turn of Osman Yousefzada, Afghan-born and British-based fashion designer.


Illustration by Leah Wilson

Taking my seat on the front row, it’s always incredible to look around and see what type of people attend these events. Today’s crowd was made up mostly of the usual breed of fashionista-slash-scenester, but it’s always great to see how diverse this crowd is – particularly the two little old dears who were sitting by my side. They were in the mid-to-late seventies I’d say, but they looked absolutely gorgeous and told me ‘they love a catwalk show!’

The show began with a burst of loud music and a very muscular man appeared wearing one of Osman’s body-concious floor-length creations (womenswear, I hasten to add). As he moved down the catwalk robotically, whoops and cheers were heard, and his lean frame began to dance in that fascinating interpretative style that I defy anybody to fully explain or understand. He was joined by a girl who came hurtling and spinning down the catwalk, her aesthetic a-line pleated Osman creation getting maximum exposure from her delicate moves.

When the ‘fashion’ part of the show kicked in, it was easy to see why Osman is celebrated internationally for his forward-thinking fashion. In this semi-retrospective of his work, the key themes were glamour, sophistication and body-concious ensembles. These four strutted their stuff first.

Quickly the show gathered pace and we were treated to a whistle-stop tour of Osman’s previous and present collections. Body-con was again high on the list of things to see, along with a range of delicate and very, very feminine short dresses.


Illustration by Eugenia Tsimiklis

Osman’s style is hard to pin down. It’s glamorous, at times futuristic but never, ever boring. At first glance many of the pieces are wonderfully simple, but always with a twist: like an oversized tafetta corsage in post-box red, or a metallic gold bodice.

Osman relies on a natural colour palette; futuristic grays are a strong theme along with fashionable nudes, and it is the craftsmanship and engineering of these Japanese-inspired pieces that work the hardest.

…Whilst some pieces, like this beautiful bell-like creation, seemed to float over the model as she effortlessly walked the catwalk.

Hot pink blouses and gold lamé macs brought a welcomed splash of colour, however.


Illustration by Leah Wilson

Oh, and the shoes were pretty amazing, too – and looked surprisingly comfortable (although I’m not sure I’ll be wearing any anytime soon)

We’ll look forward, then, to Osman’s future collections now we’ve revelled into this little delve into his past. If you want to find out more about Fashion in Motion and future events, check out the listings section or the V&A website.

You can also see the previous Fashion in Motion event, Erdem, here.

Would it be wrong of me to say that London has become oversaturated with sombre bands that focus on their image rather than entertain their audience? It would be a lie for me to deny that many of the gigs I’ve attended recently have done little to evoke much excitement. Perhaps this is something I’ve come to recognise because Sia’s gig at Camden’s Roundhouse last Thursday was far from the stale acts I’ve been subjecting myself to lately. I’ve come to the conclusion that this is because the performance was constructed with one very significant word in mind – fun!

Fun began the moment I stepped into the venue and was confronted with a stage design that had made extensive effort to use every possible colour the eye can conceive – a far cry from the dark mellow colour tones I’ve come to encounter in other performances.

Sia took to the stage in a kooky Craig Lawrence outfit fashioned with what I’d assumed was red and white construction tape giving her the appearance of a Christmas candy cane. Whilst this may have constituted a fashion atrocity to some, tadalafil the outfit couldn’t have been more suited to the foolery played out that evening.

Sia was eager to bring out the silliness in everyone with moments between songs reserved to the audience – moments in which we were invited to heckle our performer. Random items were thrown towards the stage in these instances not out of spite but because this musician has a reputation of wearing whatever is hailed her way; like a mouse shower cap for example! (Which she put on with good grace and an infectious laugh). A brief exit from stage later on in the show had her re-emerge with some sort of bubble contraption strapped to her back that flooded the Roundhouse with literally hundreds of bubbles.

Gig goers were treated to a few new tracks from the upcoming album ‘We Are Born’ which has a presence of more upbeat pop melodies as compared to previous albums which contrasted such tunes with slower tracks. I can’t decide if I find this a bit upsetting because it’s these somewhat softer tunes that seem to bring out that commanding voice Sia possesses that I’m so fond of. That’s not to say that these new tracks are in any way bad; ‘Never Gonna Leave me’ was definitely a crowd pleaser. Then there was the poignant ‘Breathe Me’ that the band only had to play the first couple of cords to before the crowd howled back their appreciation. Whilst we weren’t given a taste of any of the tracks Sia had collaborated on with Zero 7 she did put on an impressive performance of ‘Soon We’ll Be Found’ where she simultaneously translated her lyrics into the language of sign. In fact the whole show was played out with a sign language interpreter just to the right of the stage.

What struck me overall about the evening was the prominence Sia placed on audience involvement and how such an energetic mass was shaped by simply acknowledging the crowd. It got to the point where it seemed everyone was craving the musicians attention with some folks clambering on top of a mates shoulders hoping to be called upon to ask a question whilst others decided a deafening shout was all that was needed to be noticed. Sia misunderstood most of these cries and would try to echo what she thought she’d heard which more times than not seemed to be a swear word of some kind.

These moments of miscommunication were hilarious and were a unique feature of the evening. I would have loved to have voiced something of my own however I was forced to make protecting my ear drums a priority as a result of the squeals emerging from the eager gentleman beside me. This musician definitely has an effective formula for igniting excitement; Transforming a room of rather rigid bodies into a space where those very bodies are bouncing off each other as they fight for a space to dance.

Charisma and vocal talent is something Sia undoubtedly possesses and uses to make sure she isn’t performing to a crowd of zombies. This energy remained even after the show had finished with gig goers more than happy to chat with absolute strangers as they exited the venue. I saw that we were all showing off our smiles; in fact I’m still trying to wipe that smile from my face.

Categories ,Craig Lawrence, ,Live Review, ,Roundhouse, ,Sia, ,Zero 7

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