It’s that charitable time of year kids! So get our your Stella McCartney Green Carpet Challenge dresses and head out to the various galas and fundraisers out there. Somehow my invitation to the Independent Curators International Gala last week got misplaced so I totally missed Greek collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos receiving a Leo Award, the award for performing the best cover version of a song by 1970s crooner Leo Sayer (or something like that). I’ll just have to make do with the first item on my wishlist – a limited edition car tax disc entitled American Shogun by Matthew Barney, who features significantly in Dimi’s collection. It’s still available for just £40 from Pretty Taxing artist’s editions.
Over this side of the pond, the London artworld’s version of Band Aid has set up shop again with art world celebrities pretending to be actual shopkeepers with real grungy shop-assistants aprons on! Yes, House of Voltaire have set up in Mayfair, and the South London kids are keeping it real by partnering up with Chloé. They’re offering knowingly ironic Jordan Wolfson bumper stickers for £8, Peter Saville tea towels for £25 and Jeremy Deller’s iPhone covers for £10 a pop. Everything is on my wishlist because the Voltaire-babes are just so zany! Let’s hope those ‘shop assistants’ are on zero-hours contracts a la Sports Direct.
Talking of fantastic fashion-art crossover ideas, I’m particularly taken with the striking public sculpture by white South African artist Michael Elion titled Perceiving Freedom sited on Cape Town’s Sea Point Promenade. Looking out towards Robben Island, the sculpture is a giant pair of Ray-Bans (who have co-sponsored the project), a kooky yet thoughtful art-fashion comment on apartheid, incarceration and how designer sunglasses fit into the mix! Oddly enough the sculpture seems to be upsetting naughty activists out there. Out of respect to this important project, I’m adding a pair of Safilo Peggy Guggenheim-inspired sunglasses to this wishlist.
And finally with all the fund-raising mayhem, it’s easy to miss that the book that all of us at ArtReview have been waiting for has quietly slipped onto the market. Yes, Robin Mackay, Luke Pendrell and James Trafford’s Speculative Aesthetics is finally out with writers exploring the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists! This is bang up there on my wishlist and I’ll be reading it straight after I get through Russell Brand’s Revolution and the new Nick Hornby novel. Happy shopping my friends!
Online exclusive published on 24 November 2014.
