Art Weekly Digest: London 07 - 13 May, 2018

Every week The Art Partners post a carefully curated selection of cultural events to see in London.

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Opening Of The Week

Azzedine Alaïa: The Couturier

Circa 1996 – Azzedine Alaia & Naomi Campbell photographed by Jean Marie Perrier

London is hosting another highly anticipated exhibition praising incredible fashion designer. Conceived and co-curated with Monsieur Alaïa before his death in November 2017, the show charts his incredible journey from sculptor to couturier, his nonconformist nature and his infectious energy for fashion, friendship and the female body. Rather than a retrospective, it interlaces stories of Alaïa’s life and career alongside personally selected garments, ranging from the rare to the iconic and spanning the early 1980s to his most recent collection in 2017.

The exhibition runs until October 7, at the Design Museum, 224 - 238 Kensington High Street, London, W8 6AG

In Focus

WILLIAM LACHANCE: (AFTER) EDGE CITY

William Lachance, Egyptian Robe’ (2018), image courtesy of the artist

(After) Edge City refers to a term which was coined in the '90s by Washington Post reporter Joel Garreau, and culturally it represents an inevitable and displaced sense of international growth in urban centres, pushing residential inhabitants outward. William LaChance - who is a Professor of Studio Art & Art History - is commenting, quite wryly, on this nostalgic look at a utopia, a utopia as imagined by those Modernist forbearers before us. The pictures in this exhibition are associations of displaced forms and colours cribbed from graphic design, fashion, art history and nature itself cobbled together using a variety of methods and materials.

The installation an be seen from May 26th, at the Beers Gallery, 1 Baldwin Street
London, EC1V 9NU

Time to book

Future Series: Food

Have you ever wondered what future will be of the food and how our experience of it will change? In celebration of the landmark exhibition The Future Starts Here, this event will explore a future where food is perceived as a creative tool and your meal 'talks back' to you through wearable tech. Talk will include such speakers as Marije Vogelzang, the ‘Grand Dame’ of Eating Experience and Food Revolutionary; Professor of the Senses, experimental psychologist and neuroscientist Prof.Charles Spence and Sam Bompas of Bompas & Parr - the original enfant terribles of immersive food experiences.

This event takes place on Friday May 18, from 18.30-8:30 p.m, at the V&A Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL

Hymn For The Weekend

RITE: ON THIS PLIANT BODY WE SLIP OUR WOW!

RITE is a summer-long exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion, where through performance, sound, sculpture and painting, Florence Peake re-interprets a moment in modernism’s history: Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, composed in 1913 for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Initially performance at the opening left over six tonnes of clay which stands as a wet landscape in the centre of the gallery, and will be activated by a host of dancers who perform in it during the exhibition. These sculptural works operate as documentation of the performance, but never in a reductive way. Often working performatively to incorporate drawing, painting and sculptural materials, Peake’s work explores the relationship of materials to the moving body.

The festival runs until September 2 at the De La Warr Pavilion, Marina, Bexhill, East Sussex, TN40 1DP

Last Chance To See

Nancy Fouts: Down the Rabbit Hole

Installation View, Image courtesy of the artist and the gallery

American-born artist Nancy Fouts is best known for her distinctive sculptural works, which reconfigure commonplace objects and materials with a characteristically playful and provocative humour. Combining Surrealism, Dada and Pop Art, her work brings together seemingly disconnected objects and ideas to revel in the inherent strangeness of the everyday. Current exhibition addresses the recurring themes throughout Fouts’ work, such as time, nature, and religious iconography, and includes key pieces from the past decade, alongside new works on view for the first time

The exhibition is on view until May 5 at the Brocket Gallery, 16 Windmill Row, London, SE11 5DW