Street Photography

Tuesday 27 December 2016

The Art Gorgeous

December 27, 2016

Original "The Art Gorgeous" article by Pandemonia

assemblage...

Around The Globe With – Pandemonia



✦ I step out of a taxi in Convent Gardens, a private member-looking club with no name on the front. The staff usher me into the main dining room. I’m a bit disoriented and the room goes silent as everyone is looking at me and I can’t see my host.
Diana Chire rescues me and sits me down at a large table with at least 30 women, and I find myself the guest of She Zine, a feminist arts magazine. I’m next to Jessica Patterson, founder and CEO of JP Media Group. The conversation turns to #WCW Women’s Crush Wednesday and she explains, “I put these events on for women to reclaim the #WCW tag. We want to take ownership of our image and change its meaning.”


But she is interrupted by a muscular man in tight pants who leaps on to the table. He starts performing for us, and then I remember that we at Circus, a cabaret restaurant and cocktail bar.”



Through the cabaret haze, I recognize a cartoon lobster. Philip Colbert of the Rodnik Band has just arrived, and I am so excited to hear about his recent collaboration with Chupa Chups.

“I have always thought Chupa Chups is the perfect pop icon: it’s pop meets Surrealism,” Philip explains. “Did you know Salvador Dali created the original logo in 1969? For me, the lollipop is like the molecule of Pop.”

I run into Brix Start Smith waiting for me. Brix worked with post punk fixtures The Fall and the Adult Net before moving into fashion with Philip Start. I loved her in the “I am Kurious Orange” ballet produced at the Michael Clark Ballet Company.

As we talked at her table, a troupe of dancers march aboard and the fire breather treated us to a flaming nipple tassel dance.



Turning back to Diana at the end of the evening, I give her my best wishes for the magazine. We discuss the night’s entertainment, Pandemonia, and how it all relates to Third Wave Feminism.

Before the next act started I took the opportunity to disappear. POP!

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Maryam Eisler’s Searching for Eve in the American West
Tristan Hoare Gallery


Photo: Daniel Lismore, Philip Colbert, Maryam Eisler, Natan CG, Pandemonia and Nimrod Kamer.

✦ I love Americana, and love the biblical Eve, so this was an irresistible night out for me. In the company of my doggie, Snowbell, I set out to investigate.

Pushing our way through her adoring fans I managed to get a few words with the artist, who fell in love with the American Southwest while on the trail of Georgia O’Keeffe.

Who is your Eve”, I asked her.

“She is Woman with a capital W, and the sensuality behind woman and nature as one.” Maryam was struck by the contrast between the soft, smooth curves of the female body and the jagged forms of the desert.

I told her is seemed like the landscape was largely internal, like de Chirico’s?

She agrees and adds that while in America she did a lot of research on American modern poetry. Influenced by Ezra Pound and E.E. Cummings, she actually married the poetry and images in the catalogue of the exhibition.



At that moment, in walked designer Edeline Lee wearing another Tromp L’oeil coat. How embarrassing! After documenting the faux pas, I decided it was time to high-tail it out of there. Snowbelle needed chocolate to recover, so we headed over to Belgravia to R Chocolate’s opening launch. Squeezing into the shop, Snowbelle couldn’t believe her luck as we were offered a dizzying array of the finest couture chocolates decked out in thyme and honey, strawberry and basil, lemon caramel, raspberry and tarragon, fresh mint and apple.



R Chocolate 198 Ebury Street London SW1W 8UN



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John Philips: Vanitas at the London Print Studio
(Till Wednesday 21st December)




✦ At first glance, these sumptuous pictures look like 17th century paintings. On further investigation however, it becomes clear that they are a combination of digital manipulation and photography, some works being the combination of up to 14000 images.



Philips tells me, “Everybody has a camera on their phone and everyone is photographing trivia. So I decided I would also photograph things that were discarded and unwanted but try to make images that had a real sense of presence and that really enchanted and grabbed people.”

Despite running the highly collaborative London Print Studio, John was able to carve-out a private space where he created these images. He adds, “Weirdly, although I did these in isolation they seem to have generated more of a social response than my other work. I suspect way back in our ancestry, we all buried flowers with our dead so our relationship to death and flowers is very deep and ancient. It resonates across all cultures.”

Well, I knew it was time to get to the next show if I didn’t want to wilt myself.

Cabbing it to Mayfair I caught up with Francesco for a tour of his latest exhibition.

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Francesco Jodice Cabaret Voltaire Gazelli Art House




✦ Francesco exhibition is a project 20 years in the making. Archiving 150 places around the world, it documents the social transformations facing our times – specifically what he sees as a growing phenomenon of cities defined more by psychological imperatives rather than physical realities.

As evidence, Francesco cites “Baikonur”, the famous Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. When the Soviet system collapsed, Putin rented the city from Nazarbayev. This is the first rented city in the world.”

I point out it’s a bit like America renting Guantánamo Bay from Cuba, and ask if his work relates in any way to Trump or Brexit.



“That was a coincidence,” he says, but then takes me to see his video installation called Atalante. “The movie is based on a line from the video game called Deus Ex, ‘It is not the end of the world but you can see it from here’. I love this sentence, and I am inviting you on a terrace where you can see it. I have no judgement about Brexit of Trump. As an artist I am very curious to observe these things as a new chapter…it is the new flow of the tide, and I have no idea where it is going to bring us.”



I add that the internet and social media have changed the game. All this information and misinformation is challenging power and authority. Without facts we are only left with emotion and it is unsettling the current order.

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Maria Nepomuceno, Victoria Miro Gallery



✦ It was a hectic day. First, was ladies at tea with Hello! Magazine at the CafĂ© Royal, for a fashion interview. It was an interesting interview, supposing what Pandemonia’s perfect fantasy day would be, but with an invite in hand to Maria’s show, I was very aware of the time. I realized I had never been to the Victoria Miro Gallery, as prominent as it is, and as it turned out, it was a wonderful first visit. Meeting Maria, I find out that she lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She tells me that her work is heavily influenced by nature.



M: “My work as a whole there is always this idea of a flux of energy. All the parts of beads and ropes they are hand-made so there is this idea of creating an organism that makes me think about creating life as a whole, nature, plants, animals,landscape, and universe.”

P: They do look a bit like internal organs, the subconscious. Processes moving behind the scenes.

M: “Yes, there is a viscerality. Each material has a symbolism. For example, the beads are for me like cells, microcosms. At the same time, they are reproduced at a large scale and they become like planets. They give an idea of cosmos.”



Another fantastic month from London…from molecules of Pop lollies, to the psychic plumbing of Maria Nepomuceno, it is enough to make your head go *POP*.

by Pandemonia
October & November, 2016

Wednesday 19 October 2016

The Art Gorgeous

Around The Globe With – Pandemonia. Pandemonia’s Social Diary October 19th 2016

The Art Gorgeous article by Pandemonia



assemblage...


Around The Globe With – Pandemonia

October 19, 2016


Pandemonia’s Social Diary ☀


✦ Walking for Manish Arora – Paris Fashion week I step off the Euro Star, Gare de Nord and hop in the first cab I find. Arriving at Comptoir General, I am immediately made to feel at home by Manish and his team. They are very friendly and show me the outfit they wanted me to wear. Finding myself fourth in line, I am bit a nervous, but Mei the model in front of me puts me at ease.

Several stylists buzz around, dressing me. It’s a strange experience wearing someone else’s fashion. It was fun to watch Pandemonia stripped of her tropes, slowly becoming an element of Manish’s vision.



The preparation is intense as we all get ready. I see some familiar faces from London modelling, singer Bishi and Artist/ Model Tessa Kuragi. I keep a look out for Mei, so long as I’m behind her I’ll be in the right place. There is a lot of shouting, it is a bit chaotic even. A blue dog called @Fluffy_the_Dog appears from somewhere and then… we are on!







After the walk, ever so quickly, all the girls change back to their street clothes and disappear into Paris. Afterwards in a bar around the corner I get Manish to tell me about his collection:

“The idea of the collection was: life is beautiful.
That’s how I began.I always believed that,
while it’s not always easy,if you start thinking like that,
it just happens. I wanted to bring that feeling into the show.”

“I like your pop aesthetic.
I have a Western aesthetic too,
but yours comes from somewhere else.”


“I think it was Suzy Menkes who told me
that my work is definitely not ethnic
but that only an Indian designer
could design something like that.”

“Your toaster handbag was great!
Especially the toast bit being the purse.
Money, the bread of life.”
(Why didn’t I think of that one!)


“It’s quite from your world.”

“How did you feel about the show?”

“You know, I haven’t seen it yet, I was back stage.
But the way it went off, the energy and reactions,
seem it was really nice… After I go home I will crash out
for a couple of hours, wake up, check everything and see how it went.”




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✦ Frieze Art 2016 Private View



Walking into Frieze, I bumped into was none other than the glamorous Nancy Dell’Olio. My doggie, Snowbell, instantly noticed her Louboutin Cataclou wedges sparkling on her feet, so we cozied up for some photos.



Following signs for my friend, Julie Verhoeven, I was surprised to find myself in the bathroom where she was manning her Toilet Attendant installation.

“Last time I met you was at the Melissa Pop shop Covent Garden…
So this is your toilet?”


“Well… I’m in charge.
Five day shifts, 11 to 7 the majority of the days.”

“How are you finding your new career?”

“So far everyone’s being very well behaved.
I’m waiting for some shagging though
I suppose that will happen after hours…”

“Wait until Friday night!”

“I’m policing.
People need to put the seats down.
Keeping an eye on that.
I’m selling a few wares.”

“What do you have to sell?”

“Velvet poos.”

“Oh!… Are they going like hot cakes?”

Moving back to the hall, I was drawn to the Silberkuppe Gallery’s, Anonymous Was a Woman by Margaret Harrison. Like a feminist Mount Rushmore, it features women prominent in politics and culture whose work brought them to nasty ends.



Later on, I met with Clelia Colantonio of the Frutta Gallery whose exhibit, she told me, was inspired by an Italian trattoria. It featured Lauren Keeley, a British Artist and her sight-specific pieces. Built up on plywood, the pieces are somewhere between sculpture and painting. They convey an interesting Trompe-l’oeil feel, but are actually built in three dimensions.



Around the corner, I was impressed by Jesse Darling’s “March of the Valedictorians”. The chairs, with extended legs bent into anthropomorphized shapes, were clearly inspired by Modernist tastes. Zhoe Granger of Arcadia Missa explained that Jesse often uses steal or other industrial materials, subverting the elements by coaxing them into more fragile organic forms.





Turning to another wall I spot some paintings with the Evisu logo. The works are by a musician and artist named Dean Blunt, who chose Evisu because it was very prominent brand within the Hip Hop scene, commenting on the commercialization of hip hop culture. Zhoe stressed the representation of the rampant flattening what was once organic black street culture.

Afterwards, I disappeared into the art fair bumping into fashion designers Pam Hog, Victoria Grant, photographer Diana Gomez and Bip Ling amongst many others.

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✦ Vin & Omi, 6th Oct



Photo credits to Saul Zanolari!

Dressed in black, hoping I’m not overdressed, it’s off to cocktails at the Sanderson Hotel where fashion designers Vin & Omi are launching MERGE, an exhibition of their favourite artists.
James Unsworth’s graphic cigarette prints took my notice before I was spirited away by the glamorous Earl of Earl’s music. Earl told me she originally came from Alaska singing gospel in the local church choir. Moving to London, she decided to produce her own music. Discussing our looks, she let slip she wasn’t always blond. I reassured her that my hair wasn’t always blue. All the while, Saul Zanolari’s “BB the Green Boy” was smiling down at us.



Snowbell’s tummy rumbled as he had sniffed out the Alison Jacques Gallery across the street, where Takuro Kuwata confectionary-like work is on exhibition. Alison explained that Takuro’s work is rooted in traditional Japanese ceramics, but with “so many references in the work, even geographical ones with Japan being on a fault line. And there is a historical angst there”. On contemplation, I felt his work expressed a sort of elemental energy.



Me with Alison Jacques and sculpture! Photo credits to James Unsworth!

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Colnaghi, 7th Oct Night



With an invitation to one of the oldest galleries in London, I set out to Colnaghi’s unveiling of their new 4,000 sq ft gallery & Vanitas exhibition opening. A subject close to my heart!



Vanitas is a selection of 30 Spanish paintings and sculptures from the 16th to 20th century on the theme of Memento Mori. It is dedicated to the genre of symbolic works that remind the viewer of their mortality, and the transient nature of our existence. Arriving at the gallery, I was struck by the live-action Mary Magdalene “painting” in the front window. For authenticity, the stylist brought all the cloths and props, even the slate floor, from Spain.

The gallery was replete with stunning old masters, while creative director Diego Fortunato designed all the sumptuous interiors. The crowd was impressed with both. Snowbell meanwhile had her eye on the canopies, as did David Pun who I noticed was in attendance. I had a moment with DJ Blonde Ambition, a girl of like-mind who transmogrified the gallery space into a party with some fresh beats. By the end of the evening all dour warnings all cast aside, we guests all enjoyed ourselves in our own happy bubble. *POP*



(Left) Me with DJ Blonde Ambition! Photo credits to her!

by Pandemonia
19th October 2016

Tuesday 15 March 2016

Camper SS16: Pandemonia

Pandemonia appearing in the latest Camper advertising campaign.

Prints, Posters and Video.

The campaign is global reaching both North and Southern hemispheres.
Pandemonia represents Kobarah shoe.


Mallorca By Camper

Art Direction: Romain Kremer
Photography and Video: Daniel Sannwald
Styling: Anna Trevelyan
Set Design: Gary Card
Music: James Kelly