i heart scandinavia

i love scandinavia.

i wish i was danish.

i wish where i lived looked as good as copenhagen.

i wish everyone had as amazing a style-sense as the stockholm-ians.

i try to visit once a year just to top up my inspirations and aspirations... and of course i take a lot of photos.

the architecture:

(aarhus)

(copenhagen)

(copenhagen)

(aarhus)

(copenhagen's black diamond)

(aarhus' museum of modern art, ARos)

the graffiti (how danish can you get - a bike and sausages!):

(aarhus)

the art:

('boy' by ron muecks...at ARos, aarhus)

the clothing, the best interiors and design shops, the most awesome pastries and the prettiest people. i could go on and on...

rca m.a. fashion exhibition at the v&a

a second stop after the design museum on my london trip was the v&a (another massive favourite of mine). telling tales was the main attraction for me, but more on that later.

i managed to catch the rca's fashion m.a. and boy, am i glad i did. of course, my eyes naturally searched for shoes and was pleased to find helen wilde's work and these boots in particular (the image is rubbish i'm sorry, damn reflective glass). amazing detailed folds of leather, together with the overhanging at the front and back add just enough to these beautiful and minimal boots.

another eye catcher was this knitted dress by abbie shaw. the huge zip-pull is just calling out to be played with, but the winner for me is the structure of the dress = totally contemporary but at the same time you could imaging jackie-o in it. a good look indeed.

a quick mention of one other student - jarah stoop who makes the most outstanding luggage and bags = masculine, tough and industrial. highlight for me was this holdall on a trolley.

all in all, impressed and excited to see the great quality of work coming out of the rca. onwards and upwards.

bubble, burst

it is wedding season at the minute and my third was this week. i felt adventurous and decided to make a statement head-piece = an origami cube, made out of beautiful paper (in a colour, complementing my homemade dress) and placed, nestling in my hair.

stood outside the church waiting to go in, a tramp inquired as to why i had a cardboard box on my head. yep. i know what you're thinking, he probably fancied it for himself but that just totally killed it for me. hilarious. i guess the origami swan medallion i made will have to wait...

so today, catching up on some of my favourite blogs, i saw these images from LAMagazine of a shoot by Billy Kidd (full spread here - http://www.lagmagazine.com/beauty/editorial.php?uid=nWqKCt7i58nq7X1pr4G0) on susie bubble's http://www.stylebubble.co.uk/style_bubble/. beautiful, and totally the look i was going for, although perhaps not so full-on.

also, interestingly, spotted these paper shoes on another favourite, http://www.highsnobette.com/ of work by ndeur, (http://ndeur.wordpress.com/), a leg of the le creativ sweatshop, as part of 'ndeur + make a paper world'. good good stuff.

the use of a material out of it's usual and in an unexpected form is always fascinating. and of course, shoes just make my day. more on this juxtaposition, i promise.

design museum exhibitions

few weeks back i made my way to the design museum in london (a favourite place of mine) to see the super contemporary exhibition and the mariscal installations.

mariscal was a real good fun exhibition, a feast of colour for the eyes with lots of texture and experiences - absolutely perfect for children (and not too self conscious adults) to play with and get involved. highlights were the dark room plastered with graffiti, the hoards of hanging cartoon characters and cute little videos shown on screens embedded in theatre-like sets. there was so much to see and my eyes could not stay still - not a bad thing considering the type of exhibition it was, a proper celebration of the vividness and energy of mariscal's work.

super contemporary was pretty hard core and hard work - so much info and so much to take in. on the one hand i hate this - you lose concentration quick; but on the other it allows you to dip in and out of the content, taking in what you want, what interests you, what you fancy.
the fact that it was all london based really interested me (boy, they're pushing to further cement london's reputation as design capital), although i could spot missing people / publications / designs. they should have had an audience participation bit where you could contribute your own opinions - very interesting from london's point of view to know what other nations think / associate / know of the london design scene.
as icon magazine's justin mcguirk commented in the editor's bit in july's issue, someone should do an alternative show - how interesting would that be?

the timeline design of the exhibition was spot on, the layering by practice all headed by the history of the time worked fantastically (although i would've painted the wood a nice white just to let it disappear into the wall a bit). it was strange working around the room and shifting from 'history' to recognising your own memories of things happening - particularly for me the channel four re-branding for some reason...

here's are a few snaps of the exhibition's design - again, i have to say that i loved the look and the slotting in and layering of images and texts, worked beautifully. and everyone appreciates colour coding, right?


so, i loved the timeline but was not that impressed with the commissioned stuff in the middle of the room. although, saying that, i loved the idea of the maps of london with designers' favourite places... picked up some handy info.
one installation which stood out for me was neville brody's freedom space. walking into that cubicle was a strange experience.
i like how abstract an image the repetition of the cameras make.

a good friend of mine commented that they should just have published a book of the info and commissioned work...and i totally see that.

let's start at the top...

so blogging has really taken off in the past couple of years, with everybody interested in telling everybody about themselves / their opinions / their loves and hates etc.. presidents and prime ministers and cultural institutions have embraced it, and young writers / photographers / artists / designers / makers / curators / critics use blogging as a medium for spreading their work, concepts and ideas.

my reasons for starting this is as practical as it is self-indulgent.

i am one of those aforementioned curator using this medium as a platform to share, muse and present people / places / things that interest and influence me. i work in the the art and design world and constantly see and hear things worth sharing and discussing - sometimes good and intelligent, other times bad and stupid. expect totally multi-discipline posts - all aspects of design and visual art all the way through to geek talk about museums, curating and exhibitions in the form of reviews, photos, excited babbling and the odd academically-slanted article.

i guess you'll learn a lot about me...

would i class myself as a digital curator? not sure about that.

a relatively new term to the language of curation, it's still a bit vague as to its definition. some would argue that grouping together images with a connecting thread is by no means a curated 'exhibition', but that would just lead us down the old road of the changing role of the curator... interesting though, and i believe that it certainly is something worth proper discussion, as the internet and all it can offer is certainly here to stay. already it's changing peoples' experience of museums and collections, it's a self-built foundation for artists and designers and a harvesting ground for the development of new movements.

so, here's my own space.

there's already some discussion on blogging curators - here's a couple links.

curtsey of the wonderful michelle kasprzak of http://www.curating.info/:

http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/content_display/features/featured-in-print/e3idcc910dc3148408d3fd35c04e4c44b86

check out also an interview with michelle on labforculture.org:

http://www.labforculture.org/en/resources-for-research/contents/research-in-focus/cultural-blogging-in-europe/interview-with-michelle-kasprzak-curating.info