Singing Wall

No its not a new religion the wall does sing, just not on every button. It is addictive.
Next time you are at Kings Cross station give it a whirl.

Cabaret Mechanical Theatre

One of the joys of London is finding the most wonderful and quirky events.
Cabaret Mechanical Theatre is one of my best finds. See a man who eats his own weight in spaghetti in the bath, a monkey rowing a banana, a performing circus and dozens of others.

Fun from another era, beautifully preserved. The best bit is that you can play with them. Push the buttons and watch them perform. I loved the drinking woman above. Sums up just how I felt by the time I finished the accounts yesterday.

Best news is that you can see them and push the buttons yourselves. Showing at Space Station 65 in East Dulwich until 7 September.

Art Telephone Boxes

Scattered around the city are dozens of telephone boxes that have been turned into works of art. This one, and several more, are in Covent Garden.

The BT art telephone boxes is a project to celebrate 25 years of Childline.

My Avatar

Here I am dancing with others in Paris, Brussels, Istanbul and London, some are from the past. Sounds odd I admit and I was confused as I had it described to me.

"Me and my shadow" is a collaborative work happening at the same time in four different cities, a tele-presence connecting performance and place into a virtual world.

When you see it you become part of the installation, your colour depends on which city you are in. You may also be dancing with people who were there before you. Once part of the installation you stay there and continue to perform.

Think of it as your Avatar.

It is unlike any other art installation I have seen before. The artists tell me this is the future of art.

Showing at the National Theatre 10 June to 26 June.

Hymn by Hirst

Damien Hirst's "Hymn" outside the Tate Modern as part of the Hirst retrospective exhibition.

Controversial as always the critics have plenty to say about his wealth, some calling him the biggest conman of our times.
The toy manufacturer Humbrol sued Hirst over this sculpture. They claimed it is a scaled up version of a model they sell to teach anatomy to children.
An out of court settlement was agreed with Hirst paying an undisclosed sum to charity.

The Human Pleasure in Decoration

Illustration: Iranian decorative ceramic, 17th century.

Decoration in its many forms gives instant and gratifying visual pleasure. It is one of our oldest legacies and has been a firm and constant companion throughout our development as a species as well as the more specific creative aspects of our development. However, gratification works very much on a personal level, a pattern that stimulates one individual, leaves another indifferent. Although there are certain forms of decoration that please whole groups of individuals, many of these patterns are culturally linked, and it still does not mean that every individual within that shared culture can appreciate the sentiment of a particular pattern. 

This is perhaps truer today than has ever been the case before. Our contemporary world is going through fundamental changes as far as the development of the individual is concerned. Traditional assumptions and social mores are being tested and questioned as the individual becomes more aware of choices that can be made in their life as independent of the group experience. These choices may well be as fundamental as to that of lifestyle, or as simple as that of choosing an interior environment in which to live. However, what is important is the encouragement of the individual to make choices that are independent of commercial pressure and the tricks of advertisers to coral individuals into specific and limited choices. Ultimately the choice to be an individual is the choice of the individual.

Decoration itself is an art form that seems genetically inherent to all humans. We have always embellished and added to, whether it be the simplest of clay pots and baskets, our interior spaces or indeed that of self-embellishment through elaborate hair styles, makeup and skin art. It seems extraordinary therefore that at least an element of the design world over the last century has consistently tried to disassociate and disentangle the obvious human pleasure in decoration from as many aspects of our lives as humanly possible.

To an extent, at least in the twentieth century Modernist movement, there was an underlying cultural, if not fully racist element in the movement towards the removal of decoration from the design world. Without getting into too many specifics particularly that involving individuals, there was a consistent belief amongst sections of Modernist thought that decoration was linked to what was erroneously termed 'primitive cultures', particularly those of non-European origin. It is perhaps puzzling and certainly hard to justify that a belief in the lack of embellishment and decoration placed a culture on a higher level than one that considered pattern to be an integral part of a finished product.

Most, if not all decoration is a human reflection of the external world. It is a creative interpretation of our relationship with our environment. Whether that is interpreted through realism or abstract geometry, colour or texture, large sweeping compositions or minute detail, it is a long-term personalised relationship between our existence and the experiences that that existence engenders with the world we inhabit. By denying that fundamental, almost visceral connection we rupture the relationship that we have built up over the countless generations with the natural environment. We forget the basic elements and constraints of life and start to create the shiny dissociative structures and cityscapes that have little if any real connection to the world of earth, sea and air, let alone any form of meaningful relationship with the framework of species that make up much of the planet. 

By divorcing ourselves emotionally as well as intellectually from the expression of decoration, we condemn ourselves to an existence of denying our basic function as an animal species with the ability to creatively reflect the complexity of our relationship with our planet. The further we withdraw into our artificial construct of urban living the further we move away from our effect on the planet. Our present vacuum of existence often seems incapable of understanding the fundamental concept of cause and effect, with obvious potentially catastrophic results.

This is not to say that if we suddenly embrace decoration in our lives all human problems will be solved. However, by enjoying decoration on an emotional level and understanding what an important part it should play in our everyday lives and that of our home and work environment, we are allowing ourselves to daily reconnect with the unique relationship we have as a species and as an individual with our life and that of the planet. By removing the human wonder and constant delight in decoration we are emotionally shutting ourselves down and anesthetising our life experience.

 Illustration: The ubiquitous plain white mug, 21st century.

Further reading links:

The Designer as a Cross-Discipline Artist

Illustration: Elaine Carstairs: Filigree circle vessel using a mixture of crochet, metal and sculptural perspective.

It is interesting to note the number of consummate multi-disciplinarians that were a common feature of nineteenth and early twentieth century design, whether in the decorative or more formal arts, such as architecture. Individual design careers often spanned architecture, textiles, ceramics, glass, jewellery and many others including book decoration, furniture, fashion and theatre design. Many of these multi-disciplined designers had no formal training outside of their chosen career, but in many respects the lack of formal training had little effect on the results, as intrinsic design skills were what really mattered, and could be used largely irrespective of the discipline.

There is no conceivable reason why a designer should not be able to cross over into a number of areas, depending of course on the innate skill of that designer. A number of designers could equally work well in textiles, jewellery, ceramics or glass and even though they may have some element of formal training in one discipline only, what they bring to another is always intriguing and creatively dynamic, taking the discipline in a direction that may not have been foreseen by those directly trained within that speciality.

Likewise, there is no conceivable reason why a designer should not be able to cross the line between design and fine art, many in fact do. Admittedly, much depends on the aesthetics of the individual designer and their career path. Those who necessarily have a craft or bespoke background may well find the transition between design and fine art an easier one than say that of an industrial designer. However, as with life this cannot be seen as a standard rule for everyone and there are always exceptions to the case.

Today we tend to live in a much more constricted and contained world, where a single-disciplined environment is seen as the norm. Although there is still a certain amount of latitude between disciplines in the design world, single-disciplinary professionalism is still seen by many colleges and schools of art for example, as the norm, although admittedly things are changing. However, as a culture we do seem still insistent on minutely observing the single-purpose individual, that person that can do one task well and only that one task. We seem not to revel in the multi-tasker or multi-disciplined individual even though we purport to. Most artists and designers are still portrayed as single discipline individuals and there is a significant contemporary trend which seems to be following a course in which single disciplines are being broken down into ever more specialised areas so that the mono-focus becomes so acute that there is a danger of creative people being ghettoised within disciplines.

A designer should be classed as that, a designer first, their trained discipline second. Therefore a ceramics designer should conceivably be able to design a rug, and a textile designer to design jewellery, and so on. Admittedly, some design disciplines are technically specific, not many jewellers would perhaps be willing to take on car or aircraft design, but within the disciplines that are usually associated with the decorative arts there really should be little to hold back a good competent and creatively inquisitive designer from expanding on their trained discipline.

The cross-discipline or multi-media artist is an even more interesting concept, as this is an individual that sees no real boundaries to creativity. They are an artist or craftsperson first before any specific discipline. If for example they have been trained within the textile world, bringing elements of ceramics, glass and jewellery into textiles brings a sense of dynamism to the subject. Equally, entering another discipline but taking the textile experience with them, can add immensely to that subject. There is no real barrier to this type of artist bar the one of practical experience which they tend to scale with ease. It is the expansive nature of creative inquisitiveness and willingness to experiment that really drives the cross-disciplined multi-media artist.

The cross-fertilization of disciplines always needs to be encouraged, no matter what the barriers thrown up, whether they be of tradition, peer pressure, or simply fear of the unknown. If an artist or designer wishes to explore another discipline, or perhaps wants to expand therir creativity in another direction, this should not be seen as an intrusion into another world, but as yet another thread of connectivity between disciplines and adding, rather than subtracting from the whole. We live on a multi-dimensional, multi-cultural and multi-creative planet, that the arts, crafts and design should be included within this multi-framework is a necessity rather than an addition to the norm.

The illustration used for this article was kindly supplied by the cross-discipline mixed-media artist Elaine Carstairs. More examples of Elaine's work can be found at - La Belle Helene.

Further reading links: