What remains vivid in my memory from the pandemic is the experience of forgetting how to speak. Literally, but also figuratively, given that my love language is physical touch. There's an abundance of articles and scientific papers discussing changes in intimacy during the pandemic, which need to be consumed responsibly due to their highly triggering nature. During this challenging time - as well as before and since - art acted as one of my tools for moving forward. Recently, I had the privilege of speaking with Katarzyna Perlak, a London-based artist from Poland, who recognises this as just one of its potentials. In her diverse artistic practice spanning video, performance, textiles, sculpture, and installation, Perlak seamlessly weaves together personal and political. Her works, such as Broken Hearts Hotel (2021), not only address the challenges of intimacy during the pandemic but also extend beyond it, prompting broader reflections on human relationships and resonating with the writer Sophie K Rosa's assertion in Radical Intimacy that “to remake the world, we must pay attention to connection, care, and community as sites of struggle. Doing so could bring us closer — to ourselves and to each other — in ways that fuel our struggles towards revolutionary horizons.” Broken Hearts Hotei (2021) trailer Katarzyna, let's start with your background. How did you find yourself in London? I came to London in 2004, just a month or two after Poland joined the EU and the borders opened. It was exciting but also slightly uncertain because, before that, people from Eastern Europe couldn't enter the UK very easily. At the time, I started studying photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poland. I wanted to go to London to experience something new. When I came here, I decided to stay and continued studying photography at Camberwell College of Arts and then fine art media at Slade School. What made you want to stay? As far as I remember, it happened on the second day [laughs]. I came in the summer, and I loved it right away. The experience of starting here wasn't easy though, as I had very little money and had to work straight away, through which I ended up in a dodgy, underpaid job. But I was still very enthusiastic about the city and all that was happening. It was the exciting energy of London, even though I didn't know anyone to start with. Before studying photography and fine art, you pursued philosophy. Has this academic journey influenced or informed the themes and approaches in your work? I studied philosophy, and at the same time, I also enrolled part-time at the School of Folk Craft. Both of them had a significant impact on my practice. I grew up on a coal mining estate in Poland, where I didn't have a lot of access to arts and culture, so studying philosophy has opened up and inspired many unknown paths and gave me research tools I have been using since. Many of my projects still start at the libraries. The craft school was crucial because I did something with the arts for the first time. We learned so much, from ceramic sculpture to weaving, embroidery and crochet to painting icons. Niolam Ja Se Kochaneczke. Film Still That leads me to my next question. You've coined the term 'tender crafts' to describe your approach to exploring crafts from contemporary feminist, queer and diasporic perspectives. Was your interest in textiles inspired by the school? It was the school and also my grandma who embroidered and sewed a lot. The first time crafts were present in my art practice was when I made Niolam Ja Se Kochaneczke (2016), a film with folk singers where I created a fictional archive of queer love in Eastern European folklore. That was because I was very interested in folk heritage myself. From a crafts perspective, but also the heritage of all the songs. There are so many love songs in the folk archives, but they all were ‘straight’. So I was thinking about those histories represented in them and how we could reclaim them and bring queerness into Eastern European history because often, it's perceived as this Western European deviation that came to Eastern Europe, but not something that belongs to us. I wanted to bring it to where it belongs. And then, I thought about craft and its position in contemporary art; there's still this stigma or less regard for these practices. I wanted to attend to it and reimagine it from a modern-day perspective. A part of it is that you want to preserve the heritage, but of course, we all have different stories to tell as time changes. It's interesting to celebrate what we have learned and, in the meantime, for the crafts to resonate with the current events. What does tender mean for you? Why tender? I resonate with tender as it speaks both to what’s soft, caring, with/in love and also sore, uncomfortable and painful. This also applies to archiving and what’s being stitched to remember. There's tenderness in capturing those moments. There’s also tenderness in the time spent on making. Making space for yourself and others through the needle. At the same time, the labour of crafts can be heavy on the body, and if we look at the production of textiles and crafts, there's a lot of hard labour. I’m very interested in your ongoing Bated Breaths series (2020 - ongoing), a collection of embroidered handkerchiefs, which is a part of the methodology. In the series, you explore the intersections of personal histories, collective memory and cultural etiquette through different proverbs or sayings. Can you discuss the process behind selecting them? Usually, they just come to me in a situation or when I hear something on the news or see something happening. There's a mixture of different sayings. It started with proverbs, both English and Polish. Or there's something that happened that could become a saying. Some archive different political or personal moments, while others are phrases said by people close to me or my friends. I see it as a stitched archive; it's an ongoing project I aim to continue. From left to right: Hands and There is no time like the present from the Bated Breaths series This relationship between personal and political reminds me of Radical Intimacies, where Sophie K Rosa asserts that “the intimate is political.” This statement brings me to your work Broken Hearts Hotel (2021). Does it resonate with what you were aiming to achieve with the project? In this instance, the political element was at the front of it. The Leslie Lohman Museum of Arts (NYC) and The ONE Archive at the University of Southern California (LA) invited a few artists to create work exploring intimacy during the pandemic. I wanted to make a film that focused on the broken heart – and I was going through the breakup myself, so it didn't feel very political as such. I was also trying to expand on it, not only to have it about the broken heart in the context of a relationship but also different situations in which we can experience love. And, aside from making the film in which I was performing, I created these encounters where I was in a space like a hotel room, and people had around 40-minute slots to share a history of broken hearts or experiences during the pandemic with me. Why did you choose a hotel? I was always drawn to hotel rooms and hotels because they are those places that are supposed to be intimate yet open to anyone. They're also non-spaces because they have this transitory nature; they only belong to people as an intimate space for some time. Do you think the transitory nature of hotels reflects the transitory nature of intimacies and relationships? I think so. Because, sometimes, these places open up that opportunity to be the person you might not be in the regular environment. In this case, it was showing this kind of vulnerable space of being heartbroken and speaking about this through other voices because, in the text present in a movie, there are quotes from Bell Hooks, Roland Barthes and a few others. It was very personal, but often, I try to start with personal experiences, which then expand into these inter-subjective forms. A broken heart is a universal experience. So this was interesting for me because when I create work about Eastern European heritage, I feel like the access point is a bit different. Broken Hearts Hotel. Film Still. Credit: Hicham Gardaf On that note, what was the experience of inviting the audiences to participate in this work, from sharing personal broken heart histories to engaging in an intimacy quiz to listening to a bedtime love story? It was moving and quite intense, for sure. I didn't know what to expect. And also because people could ask me questions about my experiences if they wanted to. Some people were more apt for just sharing words. Yes. Some people had some stories they needed to share. It was moving for people to trust me. Sometimes, there were surprising elements. I think that's the nature of, you know, just being online. And I wanted to make sure I was present for everyone. Did interacting with those people help you get over your heartbreak? Definitely. The work was like closure for the heartbreak I experienced at the time. Is that what art can do? Help you process those wounds and heal? I think so. Whatever it is that people are working through – it doesn't have to be a clear-cut line – but I feel like for me and, as far as I know, for many others, it’s a tool to process your feelings and thoughts. Art allows you to move forward. And do you think it's also, in a way, a process of self-affirmation? You mentioned that speaking in an Eastern European accent was also significant to you in the context of this work. I'm interested in the impact of accents on social mobility. I rarely see moving images work with different accents, when it comes to English anyways. Although I modified my voice slightly – I'm speaking through a karaoke microphone with a voice modification – this also creates some distance. And because I also like to use masks, which don't allow you to access someone's identity in a way. Happily Ever After. Film Still You did mention in the film that masks have magical functions, which came up for me in your other performance and film Happily Ever After (2019), with two brides wearing masks as they walk through the streets, creating these juxtaposing images of a lesbian wedding and parades against pride and ‘deviants’. I've been working with masks for a very long time, but I always thought of them as tools that enable us to be who we wouldn't be able to be otherwise. Starting with Niolam Ja Se Kochaneczke, most folk singers I worked with only agreed to be in the film with their identities covered. I made the balaclavas, which also explored the aesthetics of resistance. At the same time, it was necessary because they wouldn't take part in the work otherwise. Then, when it came to the wedding in the Happily Ever After performance, where I created this fictional lesbian wedding, the work had a few parts. In the first part, we walked around the town and did what many couples do when they get married – have their wedding photographs taken. Then, I organised this wedding party in collaboration with other people, which started with a private dinner and then moved into the public part. Many people came as if they were coming to a wedding; they brought flowers for the brides, and there were all these elements of a traditional Polish wedding. I tried to create this temporary utopian space. Because same-sex marriage is still not allowed in Poland? Yes. In the end, I made a video that combined this so-called utopian attempt with the dystopian reality of Polish streets with all these [normality] parades. I wanted to show the challenges and, at the same time, the joy people experience during this moment. This sense of queer pride despite all these challenges is what spoke to me the most. It reminded me of the quote by Maggie Nelson in Argonauts, “The moment of queer pride is a refusal to be shamed by witnessing the other as being ashamed of you.” Does art possess the ability to reimagine what the future can be like? There's potential. But also, art is not outside the world – it’s in the world. There are a lot of obstacles in reimagining and rebuilding, and I think most recently, with certain shows being cancelled and funding being cut. This is a brutal example of that. But art does have the potential of bringing new imaginations and creating the environment we strive for. Nastia Svarevska is a London-based curator, editor and writer from Latvia. She holds an MA in Curating Art and Public Programmes from Whitechapel Gallery and London South Bank University and writes for an artist-run magazine, Doris Press. Her poetry has been featured in Ink Sweat & Tears, the Crank and MONO Fiction. You can find her on Instagram @ana11sva and her website anasva.com.

Other Places by Alexander Massouras features an array of new and recent artworks, each of which explores themes centred around time and narrative. Through his art, Massouras challenges visual realities and draws on contextual references to create compositions that are not just compelling but also poignant. writes Avantika Pathania. Installation shots courtesy of Ben Deakin For Other Places, he derives inspiration from travelling and the concept of postcards, seamlessly combining both to craft stimulating narratives. His practice is usually influenced by found imagery. “I look at postcards a lot and travel brochures, often quite old ones, for these paintings. They capture leisure and the way that we think about work and leisure, along with the going away aspect of holidaying. I tend to encounter those images, and from there I just end up putting them in decontextualized spaces. When you think of travel, there’s a kind of wish-you-were-here sentiment on postcards. These are wish you were here, but without the ‘here.’ Sometimes it’s just about the particular location or setting and the figures are just incidental. Here, the figures become the subject.” From left to right, top to bottom: Alexander Massouras, Four Summers, Castaways Hotel, 2024, Four Summers IX, 2024, Four Summers XVI, 2024, Four Summers XV, 2024 Massouras’ paintings, although different, are united by an “interest in photography.” He is an admirer of 15th-century Italian paintings and the Pop Art movement. His series titled Four Summers, a collection of paintings made between 2019 and 2024, is the most engaging in the space. These paintings employ a colour palette and theme of isolation that echoes Edward Hopper’s realist paintings. On having a resemblance with Hopper’s works, Massouras affirms, “His works look a lot like a stage set, very theatrical.” Alexander Massouras, The Triumph Of Poverty, 2011 Emily Austin, Projects Curator and Gallery Manager at Austin/Desmond explains that the curatorial process aimed to unite “different series that share common themes, such as time, relic, and antiquity, while representing the broad spectrum of Massouras’ work.” Massouras presents travelling and leisure in an ambiguous manner that is both intriguing and captivating. It is difficult to determine where all these people are situated, what they are doing, or even where they are sitting. However, this is where Massouras’ creativity truly shines, capturing an otherworldly essence that is both mesmerizing and profound. Alexander Massouras: Other Places will run from 14 March – 20 April 2024 at Austin/Desmond Fine Art. Avantika Pathania is a London-based writer and arts journalist.

Installation images courtesy of Benjamin Deakin Upon entering February’s exhibition at APT Gallery, one's attention is immediately drawn to Rebecca Partridge's large Sky Painting, where a deep indigo gradually transitions into a dusty pink ombre. There is a stillness captured in the harmonious change of hues that reminds of the very early morning; a slight light seeping into inky darkness with a hint of an impending dawn. This serves as the initial focal point, captivating viewers from a distance with its imposing scale and subtle blend of pleasing colours. Whereas the small dark canvas positioned adjacent to it prompts a viewer to approach closely to discern its intimate details. In this piece, a scattering of delicate purple wildflowers on slender stems emerge from dark grasses and seem to catch an artificial light. There is a vibrant energy and wild beauty in this scene which contrasts with the serenity of the previous image. Rebecca Partridge, Sky Painting 8, 2020 and Wildflowers, 2023 The work is a fitting introduction to Erotic Ecologies, an exhibition which draws its title from the bio-philosopher Andreas Weber’s 2017 manifesto Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology, urging readers to live with a perspective from ‘the inside of life’ by paying attention to the corporeal experience of being alive rather than as analysing machines standing apart from the world. The drive toward both attachment and autonomy is the fulfilment of what he calls an ‘erotic encounter, an encounter of meaning through contact, an encounter of being oneself through the significance of others’. Across the room, Sarah Kate Wilson’s piece Deep Magic (2024) and Catherine Ferguson’s intricate Schematic Objects II (2023), too share an engagement with nature, but their unconventional compositions deviate from a steady literal interpretation, requiring a viewer, as Weber encouraged, to engage with the natural beyond a purely analytical or representational standpoint. Wilson’s dynamic scribbles emerge through layers of dark black paint, revealing turquoise wax atop the shimmering hues of holographic card. This interplay cultivates a cosmic ambiance that is beautifully dark. In contrast, Ferguson's artwork unfolds against a backdrop dominated by murky brown hues, characterised by dense and interwoven brushstrokes reminiscent of coiled layers of worms or rope. Atop this textured foundation, bold sections featuring a light shade and jug are arranged in a collage-like fashion. The dim colours and odd layered images create a noticeable departure from the pleasant feelings conjured by Partridge’s pieces, leaving the viewer with an indescribable and stirring feeling. Initially seeming out of place, this very characteristic is what seamlessly aligns them with the uneasy darkness emanating from Wilson’s beautiful compilations. Sarah Kate Wilson, Deep Magic, 2024, Catherine Ferguson, Schematic Objects II, 2023 In a conversation with one of Wilson’s colleagues from the Chelsea School of Art, it was revealed that the intensity of feeling in Wilson's Deep Magic canvases was inspired by her experience of childbirth, a personal connection which adds an additional layer of depth, inviting viewers to consider the profound and personal narratives intertwined with the natural elements depicted in the exhibition. The artworks in Erotic Ecologies not only showcase individual expressions but collectively meditate on and manifest Weber’s philosophy. This exhibition, inspired by Weber's advocacy for embracing a perspective from within life itself, boldly asserts that nature is the profound wellspring of both sensual and aesthetic encounters. Inviting viewers to delve into the diverse elements that compose the tapestry of human experience, the exhibition goes beyond portraying the natural world as a subject of analysis. Instead, it positions nature as an inherent source of profound connection and meaning, mirroring Weber’s call for an immersive and engaged relationship with the world. In a narrower space leading to the final room, Eirini Boukla's Untitled artwork, consists of mohair and alpaca yarn nets hung over cardboard boxes, that resonate thematically with Partridge's ombre pieces. Boukla's exploration of depth and dimension in the interaction of colours on painted cardboard boxes highlights their materiality. The juxtaposition of colours creates visually striking depths, prompting a viewer to contemplate the origin and nature of each component within the composition. Notably, Boukla’s use of textiles invites reflection on how materials exhibit altered properties under different weather conditions, a fact observed by Boukla during the exhibition. This exploration of materials and their responsiveness aligns with Weber’s philosophy, as he posits that nature serves as the source of sensual and aesthetic experiences. Boukla’s work reflects an engagement with Weber’s concept of an ‘erotic ecology,’ where the intertwining desires for attachment and autonomy foster a profoundly meaningful connection with the world. Moreover, Boukla’s installation echoes Weber’s call for a departure from traditional paradigms, urging a more immersive and engaged connection with the natural world. The emphasis on embracing the materiality of life, acknowledging tangible aspects, and recognising the dynamic interplay between organisms and their environments aligns seamlessly with both Boukla’s work and the broader themes inspired by Weber’s philosophy within the exhibition. As we progress through the corridor-like space, Boukla's larger cardboard boxes positioned at the back beckon us into the room. The deep red mohair net stretched across a warm yellow box commands attention, while the subtle pink net atop a blue box invites closer examination to discern its nuanced presence. Boukla deliberately manipulates the contrasting and harmonious colours, skilfully playing with the depth created in this carefully arranged composition. In this context, Partridge’s artworks offer a subtle contrast with lighter and gentler transitions between shades of blue and white, reminiscent of a serene sky on a warm day. Yet, the wash of colour atop her non-primed canvases also evokes the dying technique employed by Boukla. In sharp contrast to both Partridge and Boukla, Ferguson's Film Colour painting presents a striking departure. This artwork features collages scenes of an angel flying, a yellow tablecloth adored with a tray of lemons, a possibly Sicilian scene, and a hand-drawn world map, all layered over what appears to be a grey wall. The stark difference challenges a viewer with its unexpected juxtapositions, directing our attention to the materiality of the piece. Agnès Houghton-Boyle is a critic and programmer based in London. Her writing features in Talking Shorts Magazine and Fetch London.

"Biba was the first of its kind and lived a short, spectacularly successful life. With its meteoric rise and quick downfall, the fashion brand perfectly encapsulated the spirit of '60s youth culture." says Martin Pel, curator of The Biba Story, 1964-1975 at the Fashion & Textile Museum. A lifestyle brand synonymous with '60s nostalgia, Biba was honoured on March 22nd with its own exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum curated by Martin Pel. In an exclusive interview with the Biba expert, we delve into the label’s impressive legacy and the resilience of its co-founder and former fashion illustrator Barbara Hulanicki. Image courtesy of Alamy Images For the typical fashion fanatic, the phrase ''’60s fashion" conjures a cavalcade of Mod cuts, optical patterns, André Courrèges futurism and Mary Quant miniskirts. Unlike the aforementioned designers, the 1964 Biba boutique (originally a mail order company) managed to capture the era's zeitgeist while also being inexpensive. "Twiggy used to go to Biba when was a schoolgirl because it was the only place to buy affordable trendy clothes" says Pel, who has authored, co-authored and edited a handful of Biba books including Biba and Beyond: Barbara Hulanicki (2012). Much of its success boils down to its illustrious mail-order catalogues; which were shot by talented photographers like Helmut Newton, James Wedge, Harri Peccinotti and Sarah Moon. Each spread went beyond the textbook layouts of typical catalogues; featuring elegant dioramas and advertorials of models in situ with the furniture and accessories comprising the “Biba lifestyle.” These tomes attracted customers across the United Kingdom (including a young Annie Lennox in Scotland), and brought them in droves to the Big Biba department store, which opened in Kensington in 1973. It was in this Art Deco building that the full Biba experience was enjoyed. There were rails of the latest fashions, a food hall, homeware section, a rose tea garden and an enigmatic restaurant-cum-nightclub on the fifth floor called the Rainbow Rooms. The ultimate place to be, it became a hang-out and concert hall for rock stars such as the New York Dolls and Liberace. A Fashion Empire Fashion-forward visitors to Pel’s exhibition can look forward to an assortment of beautifully crafted designs like a grey, leopard print trouser suit that has been donated by former Biba staff and friends of Hunalnicki. The curator is particularly excited to display a reconstruction of the famed Gingham dress that was commissioned by the Daily Mirror’s fashion editor Felicity Green and shot by the society photographer John French in 1964. At the time, the pink-gingham sleeveless shift frock and matching triangular kerchief made fashion history. Initially expected to haul in a modest sum, its spot illustrating an article on women in business in The Daily Mirror saw Biba receive over 17,000 of orders. Soon afterwards, Hunlanicki expanded her mail order company and opened Biba’s first boutique in London's Abingdon Road with the help of her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon in September 1964. Some would say that this moment marked the beginning of Hulanicki's fashion empire. It evolved into a spectacular paragon of affordable on-trend fashion that only lasted eleven years, but whose impression on the hearts and wardrobes of young Mods must not be underestimated. The One & Only Barbara Hunlanicki Pel first met Hunlanicki in 2009 and has often consulted her expertise when writing Biba related works and curating this year's exhibition. When she was twelve, the Polish born designer moved with her sisters and mother to England from Palestine after her father was assassinated. "Barbara became the emotional head of the family," says Pel. "She used drawing to escape from a new world where she didn’t know much English and had become quite difficult." Having developed a passion for drawing, she won a fashion competition advertised in the Evening Standard In 1955, and saw a swimwear outfit she designed made flesh by the British fashion designer Norman Hartnell. Hulanicki illustrations. Images courtesy of Collingsby Gallery "This was the first moment that she realised she could transfer her drawing skills to fashion illustration," states Pel. Hulanicki then pursued a career in fashion illustration after studying at Brighton Art College in the late 1950s. Her skills were soon recognised by the fashion industry, and she was invited to cover the fashion shows of revered houses like Chanel and Dior. Travelling to catwalks in Paris, London and Milan among others, her success was celebrated by a double page article in British Vogue '64. Seeing that photography was overtaking the need for illustration, "she then naturally progressed into fashion design," says Pel. Keenly aware of the lack of clothes that were accessible to young women, Hunlanicki focused her eye on bold silhouettes and patterns reminiscent of the clothes her mother made throughout her childhood. "Biba was very much Barbara's personal expression and a love note to her family," says Pel. Indeed, family values proved intrinsic to Biba's business model. Hunlanicki christened the brand after her younger sister and crafted clothing lines for children, men and women, as well as patterned wallpapers, and stationery. This range transformed Biba into a living, breathing unit of the family home. "You could literally live, eat, sleep and breathe the Biba lifestyle," says Pel, who has collected a variety of the brand's cosmetics, soups, wines and even baked beans for the exhibition. Inside Big Biba’s Artistic Interiors Crucially, Big Biba amplified its charm by embracing the aesthetics of bygone eras (an uncharacteristic move for '60s brands, who typically conformed to a post-Second World War sentiment of capitalising on the new). "Barbara was the complete opposite and her shops reflected their built-in history," explains Pel. Indeed, when the designer acquired a Victorian building desecrated with modernist interiors, she restored it to its former glory with Art Deco wallpapers, a colour palette inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and objects drawing on Alphonse Mucha and Sarah Bernhardt. But she didn’t stop there! The eclectic interior combined elements of Hollywood's Golden Age with eccentric displays, such as a giant Snoopy and his doghouse in the children's department. Biba interior, 1970s. Images courtesy of Alamy. This formula of old-age sophisticated melodrama traversed throughout Biba’s seasonal lines and brand makeup. It was reflected in the 19th century Art Nouveau Celtic knot that formed its logo, as well as the plum pigments and dramatic makeup looks illustrating its catalogues. "The looks weren't usually pretty in a conventional sense and could be quite extreme," says Pel. "You could have blue eyeshadow, blue lipstick, blue blush, or even a blue wig." Similar to how Paris’ Le Bon Marché transformed shopping into a social event and popularised the Parisian woman archetype in 1852, Biba became a theatre of fashion glamour and poster-child for the stylish youth and household. According to Pel, it was a veritable playground for families, teenagers, models, singers and TV celebrities like Cilla Black and Cathy McGowan. "Buying a Biba garment was an investment and people still wear its clothes. They haven't lost their shape or style,” says Pel. “I would love for the exhibition to remind visitors that if you buy carefully, you can wear inexpensive clothes for a long time." But it wasn't just Biba's sustainable backbone that has made its appeal timeless, as crowds swarmed the shop floor to bag the latest must-wear item, Biba's clothing lines evolved alongside the changing tastes of the modern woman. "As the Biba girl grew into a woman, with a career and a home, the brand supplied her with everything that she would need," says Pel. "The store developed from the point of view of being a woman, rather than simply reflecting what was going on in fashion." From sensual silhouettes in the late '60s to a '50s inspired revival in the '70s, Hunlanicki was careful to adapt her primarily Mod collections to the mood of the moment. Images via Alamy Long Live Biba! Despite its booming popularity, Biba's short life on the high street meant that it closed its doors in 1975. In an attempt to save the label, Dorothy Perkins and Dennis Day made a 75% stake that saw the formation of Biba Ltd. But following disagreements with the board over creative control, Hunlanicki left the company and the store closed again after two years. Further attempts to relaunch the brand in the late 2000s were also unsuccessful. Since then, there's been a musical, documentary and a handful of mentions in films like Made in Dagenham (2010) and Bohemian Rhapsody (2018). As for Hulanicki, the end of Biba "was like losing a child," says Pel. She moved to Brazil soon afterwards and then to Miami in the late '80s, where she made a splash designing interiors for Art Deco hotels and rock stars like Ronnie Wood from The Rolling Stones. "She has been credited as being the spark that reignited Miami," says Pel, who reports that she received the keys to the city from the mayor only two months ago. "She may be 87 but there's no stopping her creative drive! She's incredible, and is always working on something." Not one to revisit the past, Hunlinicki was initially hesitant to reprise her time at Biba when she was first approached by Pel all those years ago. But her enthusiasm for the exhibition has been unfailing. "We talk on the phone regularly and I send her images of the show," says Pel, crediting her involvement in its curation. He’s audibly excited to unveil the displays to Hunlanicki, who has made the journey from Miami to London to see it. And we can’t wait to join her! Raegan Rubin is London-based freelance journalist specialised in art and fashion history, subcultures, social justice, sustainability, LGBTQ+ and Fetish culture. Martin Pel is curator of fashion and textiles at the Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton. He has curated numerous exhibitions including Lee Miller: Dressed (2023), Stephen Jones Hats at the Royal Pavilion (2019), and Biba and Beyond: Barbara Hulanicki (2012). He has authored, co-authored and edited four books including The Biba Years 1963 – 1974 (V&A Publishing, 2014). The Biba Story, 1964-1975 is on at the Fashion & Textile Museum, 83 Bermondsey Street, from 22 March 2024 – 8 September 2024.

behold your heart: Dante Biennale is a picturesque rendezvous of artworks celebrating Dante Alighieri at Rebecca Hossack Gallery bringing together the best of contemporary art's contemplations on the fourteen century writer. writes Avantika Pathania. behold your heart: Dante Biennale is the latest group exhibition at Rebecca Hossack showcasing contemporary artworks that draw inspiration from the life and writings of Dante Alighieri. The show includes previously-existing works like Tobias Till’s silkscreen prints (based on the first and final canticles of the Divine Comedy, Inferno and Paradiso). Others were commissioned by the gallery for the exhibition, such as Alice Macdonald’s watercolour series depicting scenes from Francesco Bertolini's 1911 silent film L’Inferno. Image courtesy of Avantika Pathania. Dante Alighieri, the fourteen-century Italian writer, poet and philosopher, has had a profound influence on Western visual culture best known for his magnum opus, the Divine Comedy (c. 1308 and completed around 1321). The narrative poem presents a vivid portrayal of the afterlife and explores themes of sin, redemption, and divine justice. Dante’s imaginative language and imagery, combined with an impressive array of knowledge and incisive analysis of contemporary issues, make it an awe-inspiring work that continues to captivate, inspire and terrify audiences to this day. Alice Macdonald, watercolours (2024) Courtesy of Rebecca Hossack. Dante’s life was defined by his love for his ideal Beatrice Portinari (the daughter of the banker Folco Portinari and wife of Simone dei Bardi, a woman whom Dante only met twice) as well as the injustices and exile he faced, themes that have proved to be a rich source of inspiration for artists across the ages. Beatrice is a recurring central character in several of the exhibitions artworks. Hepzibah Swinford’s Beatrice Entering the Heavenly Realms (2023) is a cross-cultural coalescence of Dante’s Beatrice and Buddhist spiritual art, which is reminiscent of Thangka paintings. Thangkas are renowned for their ability to provide profound spiritual inspiration, fostering a sense of connection with the divine and inspiring contemplation about divine love. Typically featuring a central Buddhist deity or teacher alongside associated gods and lineage figures, these paintings may depict important religious events or myths, or offer a detailed representation of a particular deity’s realm in the form of a mandala. Meanwhile, Beatrice is a character in Dante’s Inferno, who serves as a symbol of divine love and is believed to have the power to transcend the limitations of time and space. She also plays a critical role as the patroness of Dante’s pilgrimage through the underworld. As his real-life muse, Beatrice’s character represents a significant aspect of the work’s theological and philosophical underpinnings. Tatyana Serraino, Gallery Associate at Rebecca Hossack emphasises Swinford’s inspiration from Buddhist spirituality that forms the visual crux of the painting, with Beatrice entering through the different realms of heaven. The combination of Western and Eastern cultures to create a work of art is transforms the work into a truly universal masterpiece, no longer belonging to just one realm. From left to right: Hepzibah Swinford, Beatrice Entering the Heavenly Realms (2023), John Holcomb, Beatrice & Dante, 2024 (after Henry Holiday's Dante and Beatrice 1884-84 From Serraino further elucidates, “Even if you have not read the Divine Comedy, you will, in some way, be impacted by it. You might be using phrases or concepts that he introduced, from the narrative poem without knowing it. He is a household name, especially in Italy.” John Holcomb’s Pink Dante (2024) re-imagines Botticelli’s Portrait of Dante (c. 1495) infused with a Warholian pop-art crosscurrent. “Though inspired by Fauvism, he is also simultaneously looking back and forth.” On the curatorial process Serraino explains, “We had a lot of fun figuring out how best to place the artworks to create the strongest narrative possible. All works are so unique in the way they interpret the themes and ideas of Dante. They highlight a beautiful interplay of multiple influences.” She talks about the gallery’s first exhibition on Dante that took place two years ago, entitled Inferno, which was to celebrate Dante’s 700th death anniversary. The positive response and impact of this exhibition led to Rebecca Hossack deciding to institute a Dante Biennale in which, every two years, the gallery will present an exhibition inspired by Dante. “Compared to the previous Dante exhibition, this one is more expansive as it not only derives inspiration from Inferno but from all parts of the Divine Comedy: Paradiso, and Purgatorio as well.” Indeed, the essence of Dante’s life and works is intricately captured in every artwork that pays homage to him. The works demonstrate a great deal of thought and devotion, all coming together to celebrate the genius of Dante. Dante Biennale will run from 9 March - 4 April 2024 at Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, 2a Conway Street, Fitzroy Square, London. Avantika Pathania is a London-based writer and arts journalist. Cover image: Phil Shaw, The DIvine Comedy, 2022, (detail) Image courtesy of Rebecca Hossack.

In the realm of contemporary literature, Maria Fusco stands as a luminary, an award-winning Belfast-born working-class writer whose interdisciplinary practice spans critical, fiction, and performance writing. Her unwavering commitment to honesty and inclusivity defines her work, the core focus of which is a profound exploration of intersectionality and class. Maria currently works as Professor of Interdisciplinary Writing at the University of Dundee, and previously held the position of Director of Art Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. In her latest collection of essays, Who does not envy with us is against us (2023), published with Broken Sleep Books and recently launched at Burley Fisher, Maria closely examines her personal history growing up working-class during the Troubles in Belfast. She shares with her readers fragments of memory, of the everyday violence of her neighbourhood, the echoes of war which could be heard through poorly built homes, and her mother’s use of language harshening across many years of conflict. Through her personal anecdotes Fusco paints a clear picture, not only of how working-class experience shapes daily life, but also of how it profoundly influences how we perceive and evaluate those experiences within the context of writing and teaching. For her most recent project, Maria took the bold step of challenging the Royal Opera House to address its historic exclusion of working-class voices. The result is the ground-breaking experimental feminist opera-film titled History of the Present, for which she has been honoured with an Engender Fellowship. Co-created with artist film-maker Margaret Salmon, and filmed on 35mm in unpredictable ways, the piece centres the voices of working-class women. It includes compositions by avant-garde 83 year old composer Annea Lockwood, a compelling libretto by Maria, archival audio featuring Maria and her mother, and improvisational vocal works by soprano Héloïse Werner, that together radically challenge the conventions of opera and carefully articulate the way that trauma is carried in the voice. The piece is currently touring nationally and internationally and is being made available to stream with the Royal Opera House’s on-demand service, making it the only non-stage performance to feature. I had the privilege of attending a screening at the Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, where it was part of the festival’s New Cinema Awards Strand, and of engaging in a conversation with Maria following the screening about this work and her latest projects. Photography by Greag Mac a’ tSaoir In History of the Present, vocalist Héloïse [Werner] improvises the archival sounds of conflict, using her voice in challenging ways to mimic the distinctive sounds of war, of low-flying helicopter whirrs and the rumble of a Saracen armoured personnel carrier. You've discussed the initial conception of the piece as a live performance. Could you share more about what led to your decision to transition it into a cinematic work? Because I work in an interdisciplinary way, the form of my work often does develop and I'm not unused to significant changes mid-process. I had made a number of large-scale voice-based live performance pieces before, so in that way, an opera was a fairly logical way to work. I was drawn to opera’s potential to hold multiple layers of emotional registers. But operas are inherently very expensive to produce, so ultimately I felt it would be more logical to be able to make a work with this sort of subject matter that could travel around and reach different countries, in a way that people could see for free or for not very much money. Throughout the work, violence is expressed through the embodied experience of the voice, and through observing a contemporary Belfast informed by its history. In one of the sections in the opera-film, you speak aloud violent instances of the Troubles. In the most unequivocally clear section, you describe stunning moments: torn flesh lying on the pavement and a severed head, kept on ice with the Christmas turkey in the path because the ambulances couldn’t get through. These images are visceral. Could you tell me about your decision to eschew visual archival footage of the city during the Troubles and, instead, work with artist filmmaker Margaret Salmon to film contemporary Belfast – in a way that is often obscured and unsettled? When dealing with specific historical instances, even those from the recent past, there is a question of audience knowledge and responsibility. How much can you expect the audience to know? How much should they know? Who should tell them, and whose responsibility is that? As the work begins to travel, the embodied work of the camera becomes a manifestation of these questions. In one sense, it involves attempting to acknowledge the inherent challenge of not being able to quite ever definitively get at something, as if the pursuit can only be in an effort to. You can make an effort to try and get at a particular history, or particular historiographic re-telling. Importantly, for me, there is a very strong sense in the work, of testimonial, and of being a contemporary witness. The work is not a documentary, clearly, it's an experimental artist’s film. Its subjectivity is evident therefore, with the use of my voice and family recordings. I think there's an analogous relationship between the attempts that the singer, Héloïse makes, these improvisational attempts to keep up with something which is largely mechanical, and not of the body, but that the body is still trying to process, the inorganic. The experimental methods, that Margaret uses, the double exposure and the chance meetings of image upon image inherent to this technique, and sometimes with the obscuring of lens with Vaseline – there is a kind of pushing back of this notion of existing visual material by its nature being true. As we know, it’s often not true and a documentary is never a straight documentary. Did Margaret's experimental filming approach bring any surprises or unexpected perspectives that made you see the familiar location in a different light? The process of creating images involved a deliberate choice for me not to accompany Margaret during the shoots. I felt that I might reminisce too much about the familiar places, constantly being like, "I used to go here, and then we went there." While we decided on the locations together, I didn’t attend the shoots. I also didn’t accompany Annea during the in-situ field recordings. These recordings were made in Ardoyne, the area I grew up in with the peacelines there. We didn't make an enormous amount of extra material, most of what we see is mainly what we made, there’s very little wastage with it, and that's partially economic. But it's also because we made it in a modular way. We made the first bit and then we worked out what we wanted or needed before doing the next bit. It wasn't storyboarded in a traditional way, and in that way, the process was quite intuitive. On a basic level, exposure is by its nature surprising, because you don't know what you're going to get. There are some things that interested me that I hadn’t really thought about: Margaret noted that when filming folk on the Belfast streets, that they were very easy around the camera, they sort of just glide past the camera observing them and that’s because the people of Belfast are so used to having surveillance on them all the time. It’s not that they’re comfortable but they are accustomed because the level of surveillance is so high. This was something that I think I knew in myself, but hadn’t articulated, and I learnt that through seeing what was happening and the way that Margaret filmed it. History of the Present, 2023 (stills) The vocalisation also draws from archival audio of your infant voice variously crying and learning to speak, echoing your mother's inflections - it powerfully explores the intergenerational impact of violence, and trauma through voice. Can you talk a little bit about your choice to include the audio footage of you and your mother? There are three clips – one when I’m about one year old, learning to speak, and another one when I’m a bit older, present in the room but not speaking. And of course, there’s one where there is the aria towards the end where my Mother, Sally, is relating an anecdote about cleaning in the hospital she worked in. I wanted these to be historical plumb lines – the particular way of women speaking amongst themselves within the house, in a domestic space. There is an element of performance with my mother in the first one, not massively, but there was definitely a bit because she knew she was being recorded. In that recording, my grannie, is also present in the room, and those recordings are of my grandmother, my mother, my two eldest sisters, me and my brother, who is the one recording it. I wanted to include them because I think they're quite special through their ordinariness, and because the sonic spatial quality within them, is really unusual. We don't often get to hear recordings in domestic settings like these. They’re very different to the more standard oral history project, where someone would be being interviewed about what it’s like to be a woman in the Troubles for example. The spatial sense, especially the volume of the voices that people use when they’re in a small room together, it is not easy to listen to comfortably. In the first recording, I’m mimicking the tonal patterns of my mother’s voice, which obviously is one of the ways that people learn to speak, and also importantly, how they learn accent. That's how you're learning because that’s what you're hearing, so being able to, I guess, capture, that moment in time. Then sort of building an analogous relationship with the singer, Hélöise [Werner], attempting to not speak exactly, but to vocalise because there is this central question in the work and, I would say, in most of my work, about who has the right to speak, and this second bit, in what way? and who may be listened to and that tying in with that testimonial. And yet, working-class voices, particularly those of women perhaps are the ones extended most often, the ones facing strain most daily. In 2015, I made Master Rock, an experimental radio play, which was made in-situ inside of a granite cave in a power station, on the west coast of Scotland. There are three voices in the piece – an English woman’s voice, a Northern Irish man, and the voice of the granite itself. The woman’s voice is depicted by the poet and philosopher Denise Riley, known for her particular, somewhat brittle voice. She’s someone who doesn’t like performing, which she’s told me before, but is used to it as a poet. She’s got this amazing voice, and people like hearing her speak. But by recording the piece in situ, she really had to push her voice outwards. She consistently pushed her voice against the granite to see, rather to hear what came back. It wasn’t literally an echo, this process did have the quite radical effect of rewriting her voice. Working with performance writing and crafting scripts for others to perform, means that your words are no longer your own. You give them to others and all you can remember is how others have spoken them – in a sense you lose your own words. There’s an interesting distinction with that. I often write for specific, individual voices, so, in way that is not repeatable like a traditional play and I think that that testing of voice is very much at stake within a feminist close listening of what a working class women's voice is like. Particularly, what a working-class women’s is voice is like a militarised environment and how they use their voice. An example of that is in the chapter of my new book, Who does not envy with us is against us, when I talk about my mother’s swearing and her having to be hard – having to be aggressive in order not to portray weakness. Interventions, of physical or sexual violence, all the things that might be experienced in a heavily regulated military setting, are held in the voice. I can hear my mother’s voice changing across the two recordings we used in History of the Present – I wouldn’t expect anyone else to hear that change but I do, distinctly, this makes me very upset. And it’s very much linked with this sense of history entering the body, and how we hold that in our body. Obviously, we hold traumatic histories in our body, and various therapies like post-traumatic stress disorder therapy and somatic therapy focus on the voice, and putting back together, the bits that have been torn asunder through various physical, sexual acts of aggression. Somatic therapy is a particularly useful way through post-traumatic stress, to bring the bits back together again. Sometimes that literally means giving a voice, so for me, that's very significant. "One voice. One organ.": Fusco's 2018 play Ezcema explored co-occupation and incessant dialogue with eczema, a skin disease affecting an estimated 15 million people in the UK, celebrating the 70th anniversary of the NHS and commissioned by National Theatre Wales. Could you share more about your role as the founder of the Intertextual writing course at Goldsmiths, especially considering that, at that time, the term wasn't widely recognised or established? Yes, the art writing programme was the first of its type internationally. I approached the programme [in 2007] with more of a notion than a concrete idea. I’d done lot of freelance writing myself and know how difficult even writing traditional reviews are. I’d always been interested in reviewing things that I didn’t have an inherent interest in so that I’d really have to work, squeeze it, and examine it. I think there’s something within that – divergent from literary criticism or normative theoretical endeavours. At that time, there was still a prevalent belief in the possibility of an objective voice, which I found to be specious. The interdisciplinary nature of the art writing programme brought together people with varied interests. Really what it did was kind of ring a bell for people who had a sense of the importance of writing, beyond traditional training and methodologies. Whether it was performance writing, film writing, or literary writing, the focus was on the material qualities of writing within an artistic or literary context. Around the same time, I founded The Happy Hypocrite, a new journal for and about experimental art writing. The ‘for’ and ‘about’ qualification in the title strapline is crucial, it reflects on what it is doing as it is doing it, now we have clearer terms like ‘auto-theory’ or ‘auto-fiction’ or even ‘auto-textual’ to describe this approach… I think there are times when things need to be examined closely by a group of people who are intensively focused on a particular set of issues, this was my intention with the art writing programme. And those times called people towards them, and people oriented towards them and that contributed to a more rigorous and precise level of discussion that will continue to develop. As you’ll know from your own work around experimental writing, it's incredibly precise and there’s nowhere to hide. Not only does it create its own rules, and processes, and sometimes some syntaxes, it also then has to stick to them. It's a whole worlding of affect, words, phrases, space, and time – things that we hold in our bodies. Over time, as the practice evolves, certain aspects become generally accepted, because the discourse has moved on a bit. I think that's what that programme was good at doing, because of its constituent parts, the students, coming together to contribute to a nuanced and evolving discourse. In Who does not envy with us is against us, you talk about not being a reader growing up, and of watching a lot of television instead. Can you tell me about how you became engaged with literature and art? I was going on a bus with my mother, I must have been about nine, and the bus went past the art college in Belfast, which is right in the city centre. This is in the midst of the Troubles, and I saw a man standing outside the art college with a giant papier-mâché lipstick. I mean, I was a child, but I was like wow, it was so surreal, and so joyous. Amidst horror. And I said to my mum, what is that place? and she said that's the art college, and I remember thinking, interesting things go on in there.  I've said this quite a lot before in public contexts because I think it’s important, but I could see the front door of the art college, and I think I may have orientated towards literature, if I had seen a door that was the front door of a literature building, but I didn't. I think that the material properties that interest me in writing, and sometimes in performance reading, but I think just generally in the use of language, and the demands that brings to me is informed by a fine art background, and a practice of materials. Of course, that's not new. Many poets speak about that much more eloquently than I could. But I think that there is something in that, when one works in an interdisciplinary way, there's still always a writer within that. I never shift from being a writer. I’ve co directed this work as you know, and I've directed other works that I've written, but I'm always I'm always a writer, it’s the core activity and the practice. When I came to reading, it was at art college, I read theory, out of interest. I find theory very useful, actually from an emotional point of view in my life, in terms of thinking through emotional things. I find it very helpful and useful and sometimes very enjoyable – it depends on the writer! I think that, for me, it's very important to try and be honest about that, that I wasn't someone who read, and that you don’t have to be someone who is incredibly well read or educated in order to create things which shove and pinch and move and push through traditional forms and move into abstract and experimental forms. Furthermore, with that there is still hope, I believe and push for that within the mainstream that there is space for that. I'm fascinated by the constant adaptability of your text, your economical use of language, and its perpetual flux. Can you tell me about your creative process and collaboration with Olivier Pasquet and Maxine Peake with Mollspeak at Museum of the Home? —an immersive eleven channel sound installation where the voice of an eighteenth-century maid, narrated by Peake, reflects on her duties, desires, and role in the world. The piece is a constantly changing composition of words and sounds that highlights the transposable nature of servants. I've collaborated with Olivier before on the Master Rock piece. Collaboration is always about sensibility; I think it's got to do with certain creative and intellectual sensibilities, like a vibe. In Mollspeak, I was commissioned to make a work for Museum of the Home reopening. I had visited the museum while I’d lived in London and always thought it was great. But, I had always been dissatisfied and wondered who cleaned those rooms, who kept them in good order? I felt like it's really annoying because you never get to see the labour of the maids whose job it was do that. Because I had a good relationship working with Olivier previously, I had a sense that we could work with some objects from the museum and evolve a soundscape from them. We selected objects that the maids would have kept in their personal boxes—simple items like a paper doll, a teaspoon, a tinderbox. Those boxes are the only historical record of the maid servants, so the reason why I could find this information is because the boxes were searched when something went missing in the master’s house, and as a result the only recorded evidence of the maid servants and their belongings comes through court records reporting things being stolen from the main house, which tells a poor and interesting history. So, we made recordings using those objects. I'm drawn professionally to individuals who can handle various aspects of their practice themselves, Olivier is much like Margaret in this respect who manages everything herself as a filmmaker, with intensity and integrity. As a writer, you really don’t require anybody else, and I like that economy. I'm attracted to working with others, that are like that, and exploring how to communicate with people across different fields. For Mollspeak I’d always said that I really wanted Maxine Peake to be the voice for the performance. Fortunately, due to the COVID Lockdown, she had a lighter workload, and could only really do recording work. So we borrowed equipment, sanitised it, and sent it to her for remote recording. She was sitting inside a wardrobe in her house, to create this distinctive sound. I was just terribly nervous to direct her, as you might imagine, but she was very warm and patient. So then the work was installed in the under croft of Museum of the Home. The museum is very traditional in its museological sort of space, and this is a work that is really quite experimental. It's a work which is generative, so an audience member will never hear the same thing twice. It's programmed to be generative, hence speaking towards the disposability of servants. But I think it's interesting to have it in a space which has a sort of directional museological function to have something that really is ambient because of course, when one thinks about it, the servants were ambient, they just sort of like drifted about, sort of like vapours and didn’t speak. Animation courtesy of Maria Fusco How did you go about developing the script for Mollspeak? I did a lot of archival research, delving into the Old Bailey records that I mentioned, and practical aspects like garment cleaning techniques for specific materials. That was the kind of material that we could find, there aren’t memoirs or that sort of thing, which led me to looking through quite diverse sources. I wrote the script in anapestic tetrameter, which was a period meter traditionally used in comic verse of that period, I took advice from a specialist at the University of Glasgow, so that I could authentically replicate the specific historical form of that time, which is quite jovial and is something that the maids would have listened to, when they went to the park on their maybe two hours off on a Sunday, or something. I would say that that script is perhaps one of the more straightforward scripts that I’ve written, it could be delivered as a play, but its experimental nature emerges in the work’s overall form. I’m interested in the label of ‘working class writer’ that you carry – why do you feel this category is important? I think it is important to create space for other people as well as yourself. I have worked as an academic full time for many years now alongside my work as a writer. There’s an ethical responsibility in teaching, as well as in simply being a person in the world, which is to create space for other people. In the UK, the class system is so stratified, melodramatic, and based gaudy stereotype. I think unless you appear and present as being working class with all the features that appear go along with that, people will not necessarily know that you are working class and will assume that you are middle class. By being obvious and labelling that you are working class, it indicates that things aren't necessarily always as they appear, that class is less obvious and more interestingly nuanced. As my work was more widely experienced, sometimes people ask me, whether it is easier to exist in the art world, assuming there are fewer middle-class individuals compared to literature. I'm not sure where that idea comes from! Images courtesy of Maria Fusco I think that by being clear, about where a work has come from, as I try to articulate in my new book, it substantiates into a defined process and a method. The last two works that I’ve made, have been auto theoretical, but I think that my previous work also speaks to the fact that that there is a particular way of sort of being in the world that is often invisible because our class system in the UK is so disagreeable. All our identities are intersectional which is an obvious thing to say, but if I'd grown up in Northern Ireland, and I had been middle class, my personal experience would have not been the same and I would have barely seen that the conflict was happening. So, really, again, as in many other places, it's often the poorer people that experience it and it’s often women and children who experience it most, this is not new news. I think that just being open about that feels like it’s important to do, and I've always spoken about it, I'm not ashamed of it. In the work that I've made recently, the address to that is more direct, but I believe that my methodological approach through many different things that I have made, has an attention to economies of production, to thrift, to paring away, so that you are left with less, sort of like a figure and I think that that’s working classness in action. Cover photography: Greag Mac a’ tSaoir Agnès Houghton-Boyle is a critic and programmer based in London. Her writing features in Talking Shorts Magazine and Fetch London.

One of the most quoted snippets of art criticism of all time is from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing: “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.” It’s a fantastic quote in its own right, but seems particularly relevant when looking at shifts in attitudes towards the sale and collection of female artists at the start of the 2024 spring season. Sotheby’s disappointing Modern and Contemporary Evening Auction, held in London last Wednesday, seems to suggest a market more interested in buying art by women than of them. While this may seem like a good thing on the surface, fears of a market based on overly figurative works hurtling towards a glass cliff may not be unfounded - and it’ll be women paying the price for the Icarian fall. writes Victoria Comstock-Kershaw. Helena Newman auctioneering Klimt's Dame mit Fächer in 2023. Photo by Haydon Perrior, Image courtesy Sotheby's. It’s no secret that when the stock market does well, the upper tier of the art market suffers. Now, with the stock market booming and interest rates likely to stay high for a while, it seems like seriously expensive art might not perform as well in the near future, especially during the spring auctions in London. Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening Auction was off to a rocky start with 10 lots withdrawn by consignors before the sale even started, meaning nearly 15% of the 70 works originally marketed never even saw the light of the auction room—including the event’s second-highest offering, a Blue Period Picasso portrait originally expected to sell for between £5m and £7m and a Josef Albers painting (est £800,000 to £1m) removed about one hour into the proceedings. The rest of the evening, a “staid although not disastrous” affair, ultimately culminated with 60 lots achieving £82.2m (£99.7m with fees)—falling just within the adjusted projection of £74.8m to £106.5m but significantly lower than the earlier £136.9m (£172.6m with fees). Interestingly, however, art by women did generally well: The Now sale (now, refreshingly, no longer a stand-alone event) saw the evening kick off with Takako Yamaguchi’s Catherine and Midnight (1994) selling for £889,000, vastly beating the £400,000 to £500,000 estimate. Additional records in the category were established by Rebecca Warren, whose piece sold for £571,500, and by an abstract painting by the late Etel Adnan, which fetched £444,500, exceeding its low estimate by more than threefold. Emily Kam Kngwarray, Françoise Gilot and Alex Katz were also amongst the roster of female artists beating estimates and pushing the auction into the aggregate low estimate.There were, naturally, a couple of flubs: Nicole Eisenman’s Biergarten (2007) was originally estimated to fetch between £500,000 and £700,000 but failed to raise a single bid – although, in the current political climate, one wonders how much this had to with the fact that it’s owned by Israeli advisors Joshua Gessel and Yoel Kremin. Similarly, Barbara Hepworth’s Horizontal Vertical (1972) failed at presale with an estimate of £900,000 to £1 million ($1.1 million to $1.27 million) but there is always the possibility that the thought of becoming entangled with anything from Ron Perelman’s collection (whose own financial escapades are remarkable in their own right) was enough to scare off potential buyers. From left to right: Alex Katz, Black Hat No. 3, 2010, Françoise Gilot, Portrait de Geneviève avec un collier de colombes, 1944 Female artists doing well at auctions that can otherwise be considered disappointing has been a recurring trend over recent months. Christie's 20th / 21st Century: London Evening Sale and The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale saw The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder (2021) by Jadé Fadojutimi sell for £1.6m against an estimate of £400,000–600,000 and Allison Katz’s Snowglobe (2018) sell for £277,200 against an estimate of £40,000–60,000. Joan Mitchell set a new personal auction record at £29 million for her Untitled (c.1959) at an otherwise uneventful 20th Century Evening Sale at Christie's in New York in November. The entire The Now and Contemporary New York Sale was a bit of a letdown, only tiptoeing within the aggregate low estimate thanks to figurative female painters like Jenny Saville and Marina Perez Simão. Frieze Los Angeles saw first-night sales of works by the likes of Rita Ackermann, Loie Hollowell, Huma Bhabha, Carrie Mae Weems and Lynne Drexler while Louise Bourgeois, Agnes Martin and Barbara Hepworth all set new auction records during a relatively soft and selective autumn season, and Yayoi Kusama climbed to 8th place amongst the world's top-selling artists - behind Magritte and above Klimt. It’s not just the upper tier of the market seeing a resurgence in interest in art by women. As noted by Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics in The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report for 2020, ‘a unique feature of the art trade is that the secondary, or resale, market dominates values, with the highest value of trade taking place between former and future consumers and their intermediaries, rather than between producers and consumers.’ The Other Art Fair, the independent fair currently being held at the stonkingly impressive Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, features an overwhelmingly female-centric roster of galleries and artists, from Willow Stacey’s text-based textiles to programs like the East London Strippers Collective residency, with projects like Nicola Gifford’s The Future is Female at the Chelsea Barracks overtly championing female sculptors. Independent women-focused art advisories like The Nomad Salon, cultural occasions like Zara Muse collaboration with Kanishka Mayfair and, of course, galleries like Gillian Jason are simultaneous causes and consequences of this flourishing intermediary market, with Surrealist, Abstract and Expressionist works in particular demonstrating strength in prices fetched for works by females. Pheobe Boddy, Bad Bitch, 2024, Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, All My Emos, 2022 Art of women by women in particular has also been selling remarkably well and the reason is twofold. Of course, the female-as-subject is a timeless tradition in the Western artistic canon and, in an age where women are increasingly viewing their own and others bodies as objects to be consumed, it is a natural reflection of society that artworks by the likes of Joan Semmel or Tali Lennox do well (that, and those ghastly vases of headless female torsos). Of the most researched female artists on Artsy, figurative and (often naked) portrait artists like Cinthia Sifa Mulanga and Zandile Tshabalala have been rising the ranks. More importantly, however, is the cultural clout that comes with being able to claim support for and of minority artists and their works. Playing to feminist sensibilities might not mean much to the upper tiers (just 9.3% of the overall total market share went to female artists in 2023 and of the top 50 most expensive works sold at auction last year zero were by women) but it carries plenty of weight to newer and younger collectors. Up-and-comers like Jason Foster and Amar Singh have been building collections based on works by female, LGBTQ+, and minority artists (and, naturally, won’t shut up about it). Artsy’s irritably obtuse Women in Art report demonstrates the rising popularity of artworks “female-identifying artists”, especially African and Gen-Zers (indeed, the current record holder for most expensive African work sold at auction is held by US-based Ethiopian Julie Mehretu, whose 2008 work Walkers With the Dawn and Morning fetched £8.6m at Sotheby’s New York in November). You can generously attribute all of this to broader cultural shifts and, of course, the fact that it’s International Women’s Month, but it is significant that art by women is doing so well in a time when auction houses are clearly a bit nervous. According to ArtMarket’s 2023 report, the number of transactions concerning female artists doubled over the past five years and tripled over the past ten, a trend attributed to ‘deliberate policy among key market players to revalue their works both historically and monetarily.’ On the surface this is a good thing, but other factors might cause the more cautious of us to raise eyebrows. The S&P500 and the NASDAQ have risen to new all-time highs as the art market has pulled back from its 2022 benchmarks and any art institution worth their salt will be watching the inverse correlation between equities and art with at least a little bit of apprehension. Indeed, Sotheby’s slashed their buyer’s premium for the first time since 1979 only last month. The auction house decreased the fee to 20% on the hammer price up to $6m/£5m, and 10% of the hammer price above $6m/£5m—a price not only significantly lower than the previous 26% up to $1m/£800,000, 20% up to $4.5m/£3.8m, and then 13.9% on the portion of the hammer price beyond that, but very much below the fees charged by its principal market rivals. It’s difficult to say who exactly this move was made for; but the adoption of a new ‘success fee’ incurring an additional 2% commission should a lot’s hammer price exceed the top estimate (a structure already implemented by Christie’s a decade ago) suggests that it’s primarily in the interest of buyers - presumably in an attempt to signal confidence in the art market as the positive post-Covid economy continues to encourage investors from looking elsewhere than the safety of fine art as outlays. This has been the first time since 1982 (when Christie’s briefly dropped its premium from 10% to 8%, likely as a response to the worst economic downturn in the United States since the Great Depression) that one of the world’s leading auction houses has reduced its buyer’s premium. This is not to suggest that Sotheby’s restructured their finances solely to spite women. It is, however, of great interest that these phenomena are occurring in tandem: typically, buyer's premiums increase as vendor fees decrease and sellers of valuable items seldom pay the full commission. One motivation behind these shifts is to transition away from private and intricate negotiations in obtaining works for sale, but a side effect is that artists and their estates make less money. Clearly women aren’t making as much as they could be in the first place, but one would be forgiven to worry that the coincidental rise in interest in female artworks is a result of a desire to capitalise on a trend rather than as a barometer of financial success. Identity-based trends aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but the ramifications of women doing well in overall economic contraction will be more cultural than financial. Michelle K. Ryan and Alex Haslam coined the term “glass cliff” in 2005 as a way of referring to the hypothesised phenomenon in which women are more likely to break the glass ceiling during periods of crisis or downturn when the risk of failure is highest. It’s generally a term used to refer to leadership positions awarded to women in companies and governments just before things go tits up, but, I believe, can also be applied to the general cultural gravitas of women in Western society. This month an Ipsos survey revealed that almost half of Britons believe that “women’s equality has gone too far” in the UK (a fact that, as astutely pointed out in the comment section London-based feminist art collective Hysterical founder Eliza Hatch’s commentary on the subject, surely has nothing to do with the fact that half of the British population is male). The market’s ardent penchant for female-produced artworks, therefore, is one that potentially implies a conciliatory economy in which women artists and their collectors are left to pick up the slack as the cultural pendulum swings south. It may sound unfair to imply that the reason female artists are thriving in the middle market is because collectors who acquire them simply aren’t reliable as barometers of success, but it is clear from setbacks like Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Sale that the hard-hitters are likely to be sitting this season out. As investors abandon the ethos of the 2020-21 ‘flight to quality’ and start moving their money away from more stable asset types like artworks into riskier ones like equities, wiser investors will simply not be looking to park their money in art. The fear, therefore, is that when we look back at this relatively stale but female-centric market that we blame the women: it’s no secret that the art world is already prone to blaming “wokeness” for the perceived decline in the overall quality not only of work being made, but being sold. Collectors and curators very rarely catch the same flack as artists and as long auctions continue to only just scrape by, the scrutiny on female artists and their contributions to the art market may intensify due to the perception that female-produced artworks are being disproportionately relied upon to buoy a struggling post-Covid market or the skepticism surrounding identity-based trends in art collecting. In the case of portrait and figurative female artists (whose already over-saturated lower market is bound to see a bubble-burst soon), extra caution should be taken as they continue to inadvertently - but often literally - attach the female figure to stale markets in the art world's collective financial subconscious. Shadi Al-Atallah: Kris croker stole my tears, 2018, Elsa Rouy, Exposed Like This, 2021 There’s no real solution to be provided, or at least none until I am proved correct (or, hopefully, not). One might cautiously suggest that newer female artists move away from figurative art, especially those overly focused on female nudes. It may seem a bit unkind to tell women to stop painting themselves during International Women’s Month, but I think we can all agree that less Oh de Laval or Maya Fuji and more Paula Siebra or Liz Wilson can only be a good thing. The boorish, fleshy deconstructions of female and non-binary artists like Elsa Rouy or Shadi Al-Atalla aren’t doing much for the whole ‘women are not objects’ argument and anyway, abstract and expressionist (and to a certain extent installation) works make more money in both the long and short term markets. A strategic pivot away from figures not only augments artists' brand recognition (because seriously, how many To Feel Alive (2020) knock-offs can we be expected to keep stomaching?) and market penetration but also strategically positions them for sustained growth and prominence within the industry - something that may come in handy once the market picks up again and analysts start looking back up the glass cliff-face and start to identify women as potential harbingers of weakness. This is, of course, a remarkably pessimistic view of what might genuinely be a new and exciting trend in purchasing powers across the art market, but when looking at the auction history of works like O'Keeffe's 1932 Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 the trend towards treating works by female artists during times of economic upturn as pump-and-dumps becomes more apparent, and the added 21st century tendency of female artists uncritically portraying their genders bodies with the same, perfunctory artistic methods as their sexist counterparts just adds an extra layer on unpleasantness to the entire affair. We've come a long way, baby - but it's also up to us try and make sure we can keep the momentum going into better markets. Georgia O'Keeffe, Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, 1932, Oh de Laval, To Feel Alive, 2020 Victoria Comstock-Kershaw is a London-based critic and contemporary arts writer.

"Danielle Fretwell’s exhibition is a fascinating exploration of unconventional still-life compositions and abstract canvases that focus on the theme of withholding information and creating visual hindrances." writes Avantika Pathania. Installation view of Danielle Fretwell: Shallow Invitations, at Alice Amati, London, 2024. Courtesy of Alice Amati. Photography Tom Carter While her work may remind viewers of Surrealist compositions, Danielle Fretwell does not take direct inspiration from the art movement. Instead, she is interested in exploring the impact of withholding information on her practice, and the viewer’s experience of the artwork. The works are thought-provoking and mysterious, with the viewer drawn into a world of hidden meanings and subtle hints. She adds a layer, like a straight curtain or veil on the still life which feels like a Rothko colour-field painting on top of her work. She paints the entire still-life first and then decides what is going to be hidden, and is still exploring what this does to the practice. The works are rich in detail and symbolism, offering a striking perspective on the theme of truth in painting. Fretwell’s realist still-life compositions are notable for their attention to detail and texture, making the visual elements tactile. In one of her paintings, the idea is that she is thinking about all the different ways she can withhold information. Lack of light causes the viewer to figure out what they are looking at. But, why does she want to withhold? The sense of withholding is based on her personal experience with truth and truth in painting. Fretwell comments, “…historically the purpose of oil painting- you are mixing these colours, depicting something onto a canvas. So, it is not true. My idea is, how can I get to the truest form in paint?” The exchange of what the viewer gets from the painting versus Fretwell’s actual intention results in an interplay of guesses, with the viewer engaging in a guessing game with the artist. It is not exhausting because ultimately, the viewer takes what they want to take in and leaves the rest. Before Bloom # 2, c. 2023. Oil on canvas. Unravelling, c. 2023. Oil on canvas. The texture-inspired works, which Fretwell calls abstract, might appear as folded and unfolded paper at first glance. Heavily influenced by textiles, these works represent fabric in a way- not necessarily in the form of a curtain or veil, but simply a fabric. For this, Fretwell’s process involves pressing a bedsheet to create the texture, which results in multiple layers, to ultimately make them into descriptive hyperrealistic paintings. The point is to force the viewer to engage with the artwork “physically” by drawing the viewer to look closely at what is happening. The result is a world of hidden meanings and subtle hints, offering a striking perspective on the theme of truth in painting. In her realist still-life compositions, one can feel the velvety texture of the fabric, and the smooth surface of the glass, making the visual elements tactile, and very sensorial. Fretwell’s genius not only lies in her way of portraying elements and subjects in a way that the viewer would instantly know what they are ‘feeling’ (more than seeing) when they look at these works, even from a distance but also her subtle hints that make the viewer wonder: what is going on? The theme is exploring truth in painting. The idea of time and mortality is what Fretwell is interested in. She chooses to focus on perishable foods, and floral bouquets- “things that at some point will no longer look like that.” The idea is that these paintings exist “in the before,” anticipating that people might enter these spaces and maybe pick up and “crack the egg” (about Unravelling)- something that is yet to happen. Meanwhile, with abstract works, the idea of revealing the truth is more in the process rather than the result. Before Bloom # 1-3, 2023. Photography by Tom Carter. The star of the exhibition is the Bloom series- a set of three paintings by Fretwell. Placed in the basement section of the gallery, the series showcases flowers, some bloomed, some yet to bloom, in a vase with a silky light-ferned green curtain as the backdrop. The key point of the series lies in the last painting (Before Bloom 3) which was initially created with the same consideration and detail as the first painting (Before Bloom 1). What resembles an etched artwork was initially the glossy replica of the first painting. It would be nearly impossible to guess it in one go that Bloom 3 also underwent the same arduous process. Alice Amati’s familiarity with Fretwell’s work resulted in an intuitive curatorila process, as they have been working together for a long time. They already knew which works were supposed to be placed with each other and they also kept in consideration the balance to be kept in the two spaces. A lot of it was a conceptual framework that links these works together. Amati says “Something is striking in each of the artworks.”  All artworks were made for the show, Fretwell began creating these works 7 months prior. On her first solo show, Fretwell says that she feels grateful, overwhelmed, and excited. “Is this all really happening?” What differentiates abstract paintings from the still-life ones is the intention and the thought- is there anything underneath it? Well, is there anything? The viewer can only guess, as Fretwell answers, “Only I know that.” Shallow Invitations will run from 01 March to 13 April 2024, at Alice Amati, 27 Warren Street, Wednesday to Friday, 11 am - 6 pm, and Saturday 12-5 pm.

"Simultaneously urgent and beautiful, Trevor Nunn’s Uncle Vanya promises a lot – and delivers." writes Fetch theatre critic Paige Bruton. Andrew Richardson (Astrov) and James Lance (Vanya) in Uncle Vanya. photography by Manuel Harlan. Deep in the provincial countryside, Professor Serebryakov (William Chubb) has returned to the dilapidated estate of his now-dead first wife. Since his retirement, he’s been living on the restless and yet stagnant grounds, a place he refers to as “a different planet” compared to his life as a garlanded academic in the city. For Elena (Lily Sacofsky), his beautiful second wife who is also thirty years his junior, both the estate is “alien,” as well as her own role in her marriage and within Serebryakov’s family, and she spends her days endlessly idle and lonely. Yet – despite their desire for escape – both characters are reliant on the land for their income: Vanya (James Lance), once Serebryakov’s brother-in-law, and Sonya (Madeleine Gray), Serebryakov’s daughter to his previous marriage, along with a host of misfits, have been toiling the land for Serebryakov’s benefit. In a clash of families and competing feelings of misery, missed opportunity and desire, a storm cloud gathers in the country household. The events that unfold through the rest of the play speak to the embodied condition of humanity and its relationship with time and space. Trevor Nunn’s production at the Orange Tree Theatre perfectly demonstrates what makes Chekhov’s classic a masterpiece: feelings of desperation and hopelessness permeate the set, seeming to waft straight from the disheveled – and staple – dressing gown of Vanya, like a stale yawn. In contrast to the oppressive ennui experienced by the characters, the performances were anything but. James Lance’s Vanya was uniquely hilarious, finely balancing a misery that we pity, and a bitching jealousy that endears us. He manages to create an Uncle Vanya that is everyone’s “that uncle” – beloved, despite never managing to hold his tongue. Madeline Gray’s Sonya was by-far the stand-out performance of the night, producing an earnestness and hopefulness that cut through the apathy of rest of the aging and ailing characters in the play. Gray’s Sonya morphs into a younger sister, delivering lines with such sweetness (“I know I am not beautiful”) that they will break anyone’s heart, and few eyes were dry in the audience by the end of the play. Chekhov’s brilliance also proved itself more pertinent with time: Dr. Astrov (Andrew Richardson) and Sonya’s monologues about the preservation of forests are truly a remarkable dedication to the importance of nature. Using what seem to be feminist criticisms of Christian ideas of dominion over both land and women, Chekov encapsulates in Uncle Vanya why environmentalism must be intersectional, almost a hundred years before the term was coined. A production that will both amuse and enthrall, Nunn’s Uncle Vanya spectacularly demonstrates what Chekhov has to offer to a 21st century audience.

Fanny Latour-Lambert's photography exists on a plane of cinematic obscurity. From figures that contort across the lens to romanesque semi-nudity, each still unifies the photographer's conceptual eye with her model's natural essence. Since the age of fourteen, she's honed the enviable skill of making seemingly mundane beauty exceptionally stunning. Most notably, the photographer intrigues her audience by capturing numerous contradictions in each frame. In one photograph, nubile rouge lips are compromised by a sombre expression. In others, exposed skin is accentuated by thick fur coats and severe corsets. There are also, of course, the exquisite fashion editorials she shot for W, Vogue, i-D, GQ, Louis Vuitton, Chloé, Moncler and many more. While these editorials are a reverie of pastel handbags, aquiline features and Art Deco pigments, Latour-Lambert's use of experimental makeup, overcast silhouettes and generous proxemics insinuate that all is not as it seems. Playful and considered, her reportage style is catnip to both dark romanticists and artistic old souls. 'La Période Bleue' in Vogue Poland November 2022 Born in Montpellier, France and residing in Paris, Latour-Lambert is drawn to the provincial countryside, as well as the capital's busy metropolis. "I've always found myself touched by a landscape, person or an outfit. I never understood the power of this sensitivity until I discovered that photography could help others to understand what I saw." For Latour-Lambert, the concept of beauty is subjective, malleable even. "Everybody is expected to like a lovely sunset on the beach, right? But, to me, a gloomy rainy day in Normandy can also be beautiful." Revering documentative photographers such as Paul Strand, August Sander, Sally Mann, Diane Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark and Cristina Garcia Rodero, her images are similarly infused with a candid flair. Latour-Lambert first came across Rodero’s work in her childhood; a time happily punctuated by annual visits to Spain's Basque Country during the Semanta Santa festival. When her father bought Rodero's photography book España Oculta (1989), she immediately recognised scenes from the celebration on its pages. "There's a dark and intriguing poetry in her pictures," she says. "They showed me how different perspectives can alter the stories behind what we see everyday." Crucially, Rodero inspired the young photographers to distort reality and engage with the environment around her. Initially expressing her creativity through painting, it wasn't until Latour-Lambert was fourteen that her penchant for photography emerged. "I was always imaginative," she says. "I would draw with paint and make up all these stories in my head. But I didn't find a medium to adequately convey my ideas until I found photography. And then I obsessed over it." Using a reflex camera, she was obliged to take a portrait of the popular girl in class for her Facebook profile. "I'd never used a camera that was of such quality before," she recalls. "And as soon as she put it in my hands, I was like, Wait a minute, why do I love this so much?" It was on her following birthday that Latour-Lambert received a high quality camera of her own and never looked back. Over time, her love for photography motivated her to experiment and eventually master the techniques required to produce industry standard photographs. From the beginning, Latour-Lambert found photography to be a solitary endeavour that was often misunderstood as uncool and nerdy. But she persevered, first by taking photographs of her family and friends, and then of classmates whose features captivated her instinctive curiosity. Since she was still in high school at the time, the demand for her talent reverted largely to social media pictures and profiles. But as her popularity grew, Latour-Lambert became more selective with her subjects, nurturing her tastes and gravitating towards people who captivated her interest. Her fashion career took root when she was seventeen and scouted by a modelling agency to shoot their new faces. Latour-Lambert's devotion to her craft saw her skip class in high school, and then leave art college altogether to make her passion a full-time career. All her hard work paid off! At only eighteen, her first editorial (initially a test shoot) was published in L'Officiel Homme. Nowadays, her lens seeks narratives that go beyond fashion iconography, and she often collaborates with talented stylists like Gaelle Bon and Gabriella Norberg. Latour-Lambert is drawn most emphatically to her model's facial expressions and Calvin Van der Ghinst is one face she continuously uses due to his androgynous looks. "We did a shoot where he was a painter, not too much into the Egon Schiele era, but more like something around Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec." In another still, he appears like a young David Bowie in high school and in another, as Buster Keaton. Her works are as pictorial as the paintings often displayed in their backgrounds; seemingly hewn from fragrant pastels and rich pigments. The Greatest Magazine FW19/20 La Métamorphose series In one photograph, a gamine model and old French renaissance sitting room is accentuated by a peach and lime green palette. Others depict artists in situ, chinoiserie backdrops, Baroque profiles, tableaus of women half-dressed and draped across a bathroom floor, and angular women with Louise Brooks bobs from 1920s Weimar Berlin. With her camera in tow, Latour-lambert is straddling the margins between modernity and a bygone era with masterful ease. "I'm always after a timeless feeling in my pictures," she says. "And am constantly mixing eras or blurring the line between now and then." Latour-Lambert’s carousel of portraits tend to converge loving intimacy with cold solitude. Their emotive fluidity derives from the intuitive "human contact" between the photographer and her subject. "It's the natural expressions and interactions that the models have with the camera which conveys feeling," she says. In an upcoming shoot in Normandy, Latour-Lambert and her creative team will explore a complex of deserted bungalows built in the '70s and '80s next to the beach. Barren and desolate, the mood of the idyllic environment shifts into something distressed and harrowing. Latour-Lambert plans to use this dichotomy to shroud her models with a sense of foreboding. The shoot will be made all the more disconcerting by the influences she’s pulled from 1997's Gummo by Harmony Korine; the American experimental drama film about a rag-tag gang of boys navigating the ruins of a tiny, tornado-ravaged town in Ohio. Surrounded by the deformed and perverted, the film's tone is suitably disturbing. Latour-Lambert also cites Michel Haneke's The White Ribbon (2009) as everything she loves "in a nutshell." From its dark aesthetic to subtle symbolism, the German mystery drama exudes the same sombre sensibility recognisable in the photographer's own work. Sisterhood series for Vogue Ukraine, January 2024 Throughout her practice, Latour-Lambert has remained rigidly authentic. Refusing to compromise on personality, identity or creativity, she's conjured photographs that visually arrest her viewers. From a model's impenetrable gaze to their costume’s flamboyant theatricality, her work reverberates with a genuine excitement and playfulness. It's gratifying to be both challenged and delighted at once- particularly when it comes to fashion editorials and campaigns. As usual, the photographer is currently engrossed in planning her next shoot, which will see her in Togo, West Africa, with stylist Laure Dansou and creative director Kaduri Elyashar. Considering her penchant for fanciful beauty, it promises to be yet another series of enigmatic portraits. Raegan Rubin is London-based freelance journalist specialised in art and fashion history, subcultures, social justice, sustainability, LGBTQ+ and Fetish culture.

Image courtesy of Louis Bekk & Friends The inception of Louis Bekk & Friends's shows stemmed from a collective vision to break free from the confines of conventional London traditional nightlife. "Everything in Central London is centered around the weight of people's wallet, bottle and table service culture and it is not very democratic." explains co-founder Jan De Corte. "We wanted to create a sort of anti-member club, where people felt part of an exclusive event while being able to include everyone." Reflecting on the success of the first installment at 299 London, De Corte remarks, "It's incredibly motivating to organise something yourself and to get feedback from the community. We are constantly learning and working towards offering a better experience for our community." The event saw rising star Johnnie Hartmann and DJ duo Flag Twins opening as well as Bekk's viral remix of Flume's hit Never Be Like You played live for the first time. "The Flag Twins did an incredible job warming up, and the moment where Louis played [Never Be Like You] was very unique as the whole crowd was singing along." Considering the support for the sold-out show and the associated Marylebone Boys social media (a visual diary documenting and parodying life in the neighborhood - think a 21st-century Sloane Ranger set a little further East), it's clear that the London community is at the heart of the collective: "Marylebone has such great potential and is full of creative entrepreneurs. We felt like a big community event would really add something special." The collective is fueled with enthusiasm to elevate their upcoming event at Maroto Mayfair on Friday 8th March, which will not only see the return of Hartmann but the support of house & techno producer and DJ Berghmann. "The first ticketed event we did has really set the bar." admits De Corte ahead of the impromptu show. "Our effort is all about bringing people together, good people, and have fun." As the collective look towards future performances at concert venues - and in the celebration of their final London club venue - a guestlist is available to sign up to here. Cover image courtesy of Borja Marting Emma Lee is a London-based arts news journalist. Her work has been featured in Vogue, The Art Newspaper and the Financial Times specialising in art market analysis.

Cahyati Press operates as an experimental publishing and printing venture, co-founded by long-time friends Syarafina Vidyadhana and Katyusha Methanisa. They manage the small press from Meanjin, Brisbane, and a compact 14-square-meter kiosk in Katu, Bali. The Cahyati kiosk features a diverse collection of contemporary works by dynamic female and queer writers. Using funds generated from the sale of their collaborative zine Some Type of Love, created in partnership with friends Christabelle Adeline, Rara Rizal, and Farhanah, and as recent recipients of the Extra Nice Fund, the duo plans to introduce Bali's inaugural Riso printer to their studio. Their primary focus revolves around left-leaning publications, showcasing the voices of queer and female writers, particularly those overlooked by mainstream publishers. Following a zine launch recommended by London-based programmer Callista Saputra, I had the opportunity to engage in a detailed conversation with Kat and Avi about their project. Image courtesy of Cayhati Press Why don't you start off by telling me how Cahyati Press came about? - and how you met? Ka: Well, we met about ten years ago when I illustrated one of the pieces in a publication that Avi had at the time called The Murmur House, and then we started working together at Vice when they first opened in Indonesia. Av: It's been a long friendship. I think in 2014 I was in my second year of college and Kat was still in high school, we were babies. So you were very young when you started working with Vice? Av: Yes we were, I think we started in 2016 or 17. Kat was a host to a couple of videos and wrote about music and other cultural phenomenons. I mostly did translation, wrote as well and hosted a couple of videos. Now I run a language service agency, where I work as a translator and interpreter, mostly for development clients, so it's quite far from the creative industry. Kat is an architectural graduate. Ka: Yes, so I'm called an architectural graduate in Australia because I don't have my licence yet. I mostly work under my boss who's a senior architect. When I worked at Vice, it was as a contributor and for maybe six months to a year I was in the office, when I had a semester break. So your background is in architecture Kat, and yours is in literature, Avi? Av: I studied English for my undergraduate degree yes, there wasn't a particular focus so it was a real mix of cultural studies and literature and linguistics. Images courtesy of Agnes Houghton-Boyle And so when did you decide to collaborate on Cahyati Press? Av: I had the idea in early 2021, it was still in the middle of a pandemic, I had just moved to Bali and I think at the time, we shared the same anxiety about our day jobs, we wished to be doing something more and to have a way to channel our creativity and all of the anxious energy. We'd been friends for quite some time by then and I think that meant that we were able to experiment with this idea together, and to really figure out what it was we wanted to do, whether that be selling books or publishing them. We really took our time to figure out what was possible with Kat being based in Meanjin and me in Bali, having had no retail experience whatsoever! So we talked about what we'd like to do, and the division of labour between us became obvious. Kat, being very skilful at design, creates our books and content for our social media. It would take me forever to design anything, and I much prefer to edit my friends work, so we work well together. Then in December 2022 we opened the store. I had very almost been about to move to Jakarta, because the covid-19 restrictions had a softened and people started to travel again, and I thought, maybe I should go back, I missed my nerdy friends, I missed talking about books. I'm sure there are people who love to read books in Bali, but I just couldn't seem to find them. Then a friend of ours, his name is Boe, made a zine titled Homegrown, full of brilliant party flyer archives. He told us that there was a kiosk up for rent, which was quite affordable and said why don't you try and do something here, instead of going back - see if you can find your community. At first, I felt really overwhelmed by the purchase commitment, Kat and I had been taking our time, thinking about our ideas, but we decided to finally pull the trigger. Ka: We started to work with our friend Gek Sri who does interiors. She has an interior studio with a friend of hers, Cempaka, called Working Title Studio, and together they helped us design the store. We knew that the books on display would be vibrant and colourful. Our space is quite small, too, so we intended to direct full attention to the books by choosing a muted and monochromatic palette for our walls and ceiling. We also wanted to use different materials, like wood, glass, metal, plastic, concrete, and plants for balance. Av: We thought we'd take it year by year. We didn't know how to do this at all when we started. We hoped it would be fun and that we'd meet new people, and luckily that's what happened. The framework is that this is an experiment. That works for the both of us to take off the pressure. Otherwise, Kat and I are both very ambitious, it's hard for us not to turn our hobbies into something more demanding! It sounds like it's been a really collaborative process, you've drawn on the expertise of all the talented people you know, when locating and designing the space and with the works that you publish. When you are selecting the projects you take on, is there a particular quality or theme that you look for? Av: The general theme is, works that wouldn't find a home otherwise. There are a lot of small independent publishing houses in Indonesia, and each of them, of course, has their own curation. But, we would like to believe that what we publish is something that other people wouldn't be interested in, not solely because nobody else wants it, but there are quiet qualities in these works, that have a perceived lack of commercial value, or that are considered to be controversial. A lot of people are afraid of controversy, especially regarding of queer topics. That's what we’re attracted to. Tell me about the texts you've published so far? Ka: So far, we've published three quite different works. The thing that they have in common is that other people wouldn't necessarily publish them for the reasons Avi mentioned. For example, Rizky Rahad’s book of essays about the radical potential of queer cinema, Queer’s Shoot Back! was developed from his dissertation and is experimental in its topic and format. It’s not something that I’ve seen in print or be highlighted, in Indonesia. Aca & Ica, is a comic series from the artist Ula Zuhra that follows two girls in Jakarta just doing stuff, it’s about nothing in particular. It’s a slice of life, where sometimes the girls are not perfect. Again, I don’t think I’ve seen characters like that in print – or at least not highlighted. Av: The other zine, Some Type of Love, is also written by our friends Christabelle Adeline, Rara Rizal, and Farhanah, and contains photographs of another one of our friends Meisya. So yes, the common theme is that we work with our friends and that presents the obvious advantages. The fact that we know each other, it's easier to communicate and not beat around the bush; it's easier to provide clear and constructive feedback and to collaborate. I personally find it more difficult to collaborate when I don't know the person that well, it's easier to emphatize when I know the person and how they would feel. It's easier to help, also shape their voice. The reason we liked that zine so much is because it’s a zine about love, where romantic love is the only type of love that we don’t discuss. There’s an interview about group sex and how to conduct that safely, what happens, do people share towels?  Haha. There’s also an essay about having a crush and what that means. To go back to Ula’s zine-comic book, there’s a phrase, cegil ('cewek gila', or crazy girl), in Indonesia, that means unhinged girls. The zine is like a mix of Broad City-type of vibes mixed with culture. Aca and Ica are two best friends, they’re snobs, who talk about film and music. It took us back to our early twenties, when we had a lot of time on our hands and we consumed art and culture and would get stoned and party. They’re not perfect, it’s like Kat said. We like that particularly because there’s not a lot of space for women to be imperfect and to be gross! One of the best things I read last year was Izumi Suzuki’s enduringly cool Hit Parade of Tears, which I think you’d love. A darkly toned short story collection from the Japanese underground writer about a series of spiky tongued, bad girl narrators whose lives are hilariously altered by supernatural occurrences. My Guy, the first story of the collection opens with a stilettoed ‘blondster’ running down the street away from a total ‘creep’ and accidentally into the arms of a mysterious alien guy, who she mysteriously and strangely falls in love with only to find out that his mission was to spread his seed far and wide and she left to raise their extra-terrestrial child alone. In The Covenant a fectless teenage girls begin to believe they are alien rather than human due to their lack of emotion and plot to kill an older man trying to hit on them. In Trial Witch a fed-up housewife is granted temporary powers which she uses to turn her violent husband into a series of animals, inanimate objects and eventually a shrivelled-up piece of beef jerky. Ka: Izumi Suzuki has been in my to-read for a while! I think we have stocked Terminal Boredom, her other short story collection, at the store along with other Verso releases at one point. Thanks for mentioning–it might be what it takes to push it up my to-read list this year. Av: I’m so glad that we published, Rizky’s collection of essays too. Because it was a Master’s thesis, it gives a different dimension, because we’re not just talking about queer cinema, we’re talking about radical queer cinema. We discuss what it takes for a queer cinema to be radical because of course there are films out there that are produced and published by Netflix or other streaming platforms, that portray queer culture or queer people, that don’t necessarily represent accurately. Images courtesy of Agnes Houghton-Boyle / Cahyati Press Outside of Netflix and streaming services, are there film festivals dedicated to or programming radical queer cinema in Indonesia and Bali? Av: There were, but I’m not sure if they are active anymore… Regulation wise, there’s not yet a way to criminalise queer people. But it’s obviously not a popular topic. For safety reasons I don’t think people screen that work at festivals here. We do home screenings however, with friends, people that we trust. Rizky also just came up with this collective for radical queer cinema collective, Kamerad, about camaraderie. Ka: There used to be one called Q! Film Festival, but I don’t think they’re active anymore, the last one was in 2017. It’s not a film festival, but I would like to shout out Queer Indonesia Archive (QIA) for doing the important work of preserving pieces of queer history. Gita, who works with us at Cahyati, is an active volunteer there too. We did a collaboration with them last year, where Avi hosted a zine workshop using their archive materials–photos and clippings from old magazines. We loved seeing the results. Author of 'Queers Shoot Back' Rizky Rahadianto at Cayhati in December 2023. Images courtesy of Cayhati Press. It’s amazing that you’re publishing work that might not otherwise have had a chance to start, and that you’re helping to form the voices of these writers. I noticed that one of the books you had on your display table in the store is A Girl is a Half Form Thing, the radically experimental, daring and dark debut novel by Eimear Mc Bride. A stream of consciousness, void of commas or speech marks, from the perspective of a young Irish woman with a troubled sexuality, which took Mc Bridge over nine years of continuous rejection to find a publisher. Of course, finally, in 2013 it was picked up by what was then a very small print, run out of a bookshop in Norwich, Galley Beggar Press. They took a chance on the book and had to borrow money to give it the 1000 print run which catapulted the novel to instant success, winning the Goldsmiths Prize for fiction. There are so many fantastic titles in your shop, Melcher and Ferrante and Heti to name a few. Are you focusing specifically on female and queer publishing? Ka: We are currently collaborating with one of our friend Ndari and half of the books that you saw at the store are from her curation, including A Girl is a Half Formed Thing. She runs an online store called There But For the Books, which I think she started during the pandemic too, but is currently taking a break. We asked Ndari to be the guest curator for this month, it’s really exciting to be focusing on women’s writing. Cahyati’s own curation is similarly women and queer-focused, in both the pieces we are publishing and the books we are sourcing. Also; Good spot! I love Fernanda Melchor, and Sheila Heti is one of Avi’s favourite writers. Tell me about your recent collaboration with the South East London based studio and press, Em-Dash, who also make their own zines as well as take on and assemble publications and facilitate collective making. How did your collaboration come about? Av: When we first opened, Saundra, who has run Em-Dash along with Ru, for the past three years in London, came to visit us at the store. She’s Indonesian and was visiting Jakarta and Bali to see family, but also in a mission to be less scared about where she came from after spending so many years abroad. So we talked about potentially collaborating next time she visited, we agreed it would be perfect and so Em-Dash helped us get exposed to different zines and art books in the UK. It really opened up our horizons as to how other people do zines and to know that there is a risograph machine that is used in the UK – whereas in Indonesia even a second hand one is still quite expensive. So in September she came to Bali with a suitcase full of zines which we sold across the course of a three day exhibition. On the first few days of the exhibition we made it so that people could buy their zines but were not allowed to bring them home yet, to ensure that more and more people could have access to the work – to touch it and read it. On the last day people could bring home the zines they had bought and a lot of people from the UK donated theirs to our library. We would hate for these zines to be hoarded, we wanted to make sure the work is available at the store so when people visit they can browse and read and it is accessible to anyone. That was the goal. It was really fun doing something like that. Ka: It’s really inspiring, just how much they put out. Also, they were the ones who suggested that we have a kind of library at the store. I think we learnt a lot from each other. Av: We also did a screening of Shy Radicals, a really cool film by Tom Dream, based on the Hamja Ahsan book, and featuring Arlo Parks singing. We screened it at the front yard, literally where we were having breakfast yesterday, on a makeshift screen. It was heartwarming. What are the benefits of working at Cahyati for you? Ka: It’s really rewarding to be able to publish our friends' work, and friends of friends work. I really enjoy the brainstorming process with the writers and the artists, seeing their vision and bringing it to life. I think because it’s such a small team, it’s really intimate and it’s very productive when we get together and collaborate. Also, when we’re at the store it’s really nice to meet people and hear about how they know about us and what they like. We take recommendations from people, it’s not just a one way street. It’s also a great way to have gotten to know artists on the island, and people who are visiting. It’s just really fun to talk to people and hear what they like. Av: I enjoy the editing process the most. It’s quite different to the process with others I think. Like with Rahad’s essays, I was tasked with repackaging in a way that would be accessible language wise to the general public, because otherwise academics can often only be understood amongst themselves. The Some Type of Love Zine was really cool, because it was based entirely on speculation and Christabelle stayed in Bali at my house for a month to finish all the writing. So the brainstorming part, as Kat said, has been really fun, to bring our friends' visions to life and to meet new people. Of course, there are other book stores on the island as well as Indonesia generally, where have Periplus the chain book store who also have great books - but for me personally, what’s really missing as a customer maybe, not even as a book shop owner, is the lack of interaction, or the lack of genuine connection – like if you like this book you should check out this book, knowing that this is the last book that someone else has read perhaps makes you appreciate or enjoy it differently. Everything is so automated with computers and algorithms and the environment is not very supportive of us reading hard copy on the spot, whereas I grew up with bigger chain stores like Gramedia, where I could sit for hours reading. My parents would only allow me to buy one book at a time, one book a month, so I would sit on the floor and read as many things as possible while I was there. That’s the kind of environment we’re trying to create at Cahyati. There are new operational hours now too, we open Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday – outside of those hours people can make an appointment. Over the last year we were only open by appointment because we wanted to make sure visitors had uninterrupted time in such a small space that gets easily crowded. We do want to make sure that people also get the space to themselves and can browse and read on the front porch or inside and talk to us about where they’re from and what they’re doing – a lot of the time we find out that they’re artists or creatives too. Moving forward we are in the process of securing our first risograph printer, we received a grant from It’s Nice That, a London based organisation, for £2,500 to help us pay 50% of the rent and securing our first risograph printer. There isn’t one on the island so people typically go through digital printing or offset to print their work, therefore, they have to make sure that it’s perfect because the cost is quite high or they have to print in large amounts. We thought that if we have a risograph printer people can just show up and experiment with the medium and it’s a lot of fun for everyone. Illustration by Diane Roussille for It's Nice That On the flip side, what are some of the challenges of running an independent press? [They laugh] Ka: Maybe actually making a profit. Av: I wish this could be my full time job, and because I have that dream that challenge is making that come true, whereas at the moment we both also have full time jobs in order to support this, so I feel like with more capital, we can hire more people to be in our team and we can grow. We don’t want to be the biggest, we like to stay small, but this way we could have more clear divisions of labour and maybe we could be more effective and productive given the time and resource allocation. Ka: For me, when we’re working with our artists and writers, we want to make sure their work can be printed in high quality and then sometimes there’s challenges to that and we have to compromise because of lack of resources. What we want, sometimes doesn’t make sense, in terms of cost and we have to do a bit of compromise. Agnès Houghton-Boyle is a critic and programmer based in London. Her writing features in Talking Shorts Magazine and Fetch London.