Asiimov Baker

There’s a double bill going on at the Hayward Gallery, and the theme is fabrics: whether it’s what we wear or the fabric of life itself. One ticket gains entry to two companion exhibitions – designed to be experienced one after the other, both shows are riffs on a similar theme.   First up is Chinese sculpture artist Yin Xiuzhen’s Heart to Heart, an ode to used clothes by the Chinese sculpture artist. She describes clothing as a ‘second skin’ which collects the essence of every wearer. A garment, then, becomes a tapestry of all the bodies it’s clothed. Memory is embedded into matter. This effect magnifies with the size of her installations.  Xiuzhen’s ‘Portable Cities’ series is a tribute to how every suitcase is a home, especially since many of us live out of our bags on the move. Unfolding over an airport luggage carousel stitched together using black and white clothes, suitcases contain different cities made out of the garments of its citizens. Hovering above is a gigantic aeroplane, similarly fashioned together. Suitcases, trunks, and other storage receptacles reappear throughout the show; to Xiuzhen ‘home is no longer a fixed address but a collection of belongings packed and ready for transport.’ In the next room is ‘Collective Subconscious (Blue)’: a minibus cut in half and elongated into something resembling a caterpillar. Four-hundred pieces of clothing stitched together and stretched over a metal frame make up the body of this vehicle. As you peer in through the side

There’s an undeniable bliss that comes from being next to a large body of water, and this cold London winter has left me craving a day trip to the seaside. However, my desire for escape was sated by visiting Seurat and the Sea at the Courtauld Gallery, where I wandered through quiet coastal towns and had the shore all to myself.  French painter Georges Seurat was dead by 31, but in fewer than 50 canvases he left an indelible mark on art history. By applying thousands of dots and dashes of pure colour right next to each other, he pioneered the technique of Pointillism, which in turn birthed Neo-Impressionism. The aim of this psychedelic morse-code was that the eye, rather than the brush, would blend colours together to create the image.  Though renowned for his scenes of leisuring Parisians such as Bathers at Asnières and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, more than half of Seurat’s output (and the subject of this show) is stoic visions of the sea from towns along the northern French coast. Seeing as I’ve always found Seurat’s rendering of people somewhat flat and uninspiring, thankfully, these paintings are devoid of people – the only human presence being the boats punctuating the horizon. This heightens the sense of serenity as you trace the geometric silhouettes of ports and harbours mingling with the carefree contours of the surrounding coast. Pointillism really lends itself to seascapes, the unblended paint shimmering under the gallery spotlights like sunlight over the waves. A

London’s art world seems convinced that it’ll implode if there isn’t a major exhibition of Lucian Freud’s works every couple of years. Following his Self Portraits show at the Royal Academy in 2019 and then New Perspectives at the National Gallery in 2022, the most recent fix comes from the National Portrait Gallery. Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting focuses on an often-overlooked aspect of the celebrated painter’s oeuvre; his works on paper. Many artists liken drawing to thinking – you may not like everything you see when you’re allowed into their thoughts. Canvas and paper, because of their varying absorbency and materiality, require wildly different approaches. Compared to the grand monuments of Freud’s paintings, his drawings are delicate and vulnerable, which is why he largely made them as preparatory sketches or to keep a visual diary. Certain marks and motifs would be experimented with on paper before they ended up on canvas. And while he pushed the boundaries of how to represent the human form, not every experiment produced interesting results, so to base an entire exhibition around such drawings is certainly an interesting choice. Where the show really succeeds is in its curation, fostering a dialogue between Freud’s drawings and paintings. When they’re hung side by side – the figures in his drawings isolated from the painting – you really appreciate his keen observation of the body reflected in every determined line. You can see how the density of shading in prepa

Getting on the tube these days means being bombarded with dozens of ugly advertisements, selling you everything from whisky, to electric toothbrushes and LED facemasks. However, things weren’t always this way. Unlike today’s dull Underground adverts, tube stations during the 1920s and 30s were adorned with strikingly vibrant art deco posters that promoted things to do and places to go around London. Over a hundred of these are exhibited at the London Transport Museum’s latest temporary exhibition, Art Deco: the golden age of poster design, alongside objects like a cigarette case, compact mirror, and tea set that express the decadence of that period.  Back then, a post-war economic boom had propelled consumerism, affording people more leisure time than ever.  Speed, freedom, and opportunity became the ethos of an era that could harness industrial technology in recreation rather than warfare. Such carefreeness is reflected in the bold colours, opulent typefaces, sharp geometry, and indulgent scenes of Londoners enjoying a day out. While a younger audience will be drawn to their vintage aesthetic, older visitors might find them charmingly nostalgic. Art deco didn’t get its name until the 1960s when it came under academic scrutiny; during its day it was simply known as Style Moderne. Which is fitting because many of the artists regularly commissioned by London Transport took vivid inspiration from modernist art movements such as cubism, futurism, and vorticism; unknowingly shapin

Hot on the heels of September’s merry-go-round of Fashion Weeks, the National Portrait Gallery’s latest opening is another moment to reflect on what fashion and beauty mean to us today. A second outing in five years for the trailblazing 20th century photographer, Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World unfolds like a billowing ballgown; opulent and eye-catching, but it can’t help tripping over its long hem. The glittering charm, however, forgives its clumsiness.  Beaton’s previous outing at NPG in 2020 was cut short after only five days because of the pandemic. Rather than reviving Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things, this revamped exhibition presents him as more than just a photographer. Younger audiences are likely to find this show more relatable, through its emphasis on his contributions to costume and set design, given their ascendant roles in contemporary fashion. From curious beginnings to his rise through the cultural upper-class, his war photography and costume designs for My Fair Lady, we get a good look at how places and periods influenced Beaton’s style.  If anything, this show is about how big Beaton’s prop and costume chest is. Elaborately grandiose outfits screaming over intricate backgrounds made his early shots look like stills from the kind of plays Aristophanes would’ve put on during his day. Flirting with the avant-garde in Paris, Beaton’s staging and costumes turn weird and uncanny. Even during the war there’s a bold expressionism to his framing that only intensi