Article for my column #HelloLondon for Nssmag (also in ITA), 27 April 2016

We're in Vauxhall, a south-London district that's stealing the show to the more famous – and quite overrated – Hackney, thanks to its lively artistic and cultural panorama, that even persuaded Hirst to open here his own gallery and earned it the nickname ‘Voho'.

Beaconsfield Gallery is a typical Victorian brick building, a laboratory located in the former girls' lavatories of Lambeth Ragged School since’95, where the atmosphere is that in-between an underground club and a niche gallery.

Here FOAM Talent 2016, an initiative that every year selects a bunch of newcomers reshaping the future of visual arts, is currently held.

We've attended the opening of the exhibition and, notebook in one hand and beer in the other, we managed between the art pieces and the Dj set in order to bring you the most exciting artists we spotted.

David Favrod – Hiraki, 2012-2015

With Hiraki (“the light”), Favrod starts from the “memories and stories of the Second World War in Japan, as told to me by my Japanese grandparents”, making them pivotal in his own “search for identity”. Here’s what he told us about his project.

On the inspiration behind the series: “This work represents my compulsion to build and shape my own memory. To reconstitute some facts I haven't experienced myself, but have unconsciously influenced me while growing up. My grandparents witnessed the war; survivors who finally passed away and whose memories will soon be a part of history. They told me how illness can take away your sisters, the shame, the relief after the war, and the watermelons… But after that night, we never talked about it again. As if my grandparents gave me their memories as a whisper through the air before allowing it to disappear from their minds. Somehow, I would say that I borrowed their memories. I use their stories as source of inspiration for my own testimony.”

On his creative process: “Before taking any picture I write the general idea and I start to draw the images on my sketchbook. That allows me to construct the series and to see if there are too many landscapes, enough portrait or still life and to have a balance in the series”

Sara Cwynar – Flat Death, 2013-2014

The Canadian artist has an everlasting fascination with the aesthetic from the 60s and 70s that she likes to interpolate within the current context: that of a society dominated by the Internet, in which the concept of the image irretrievably rhymes with those of repetition and sharing. Cwynar is an obsessive collector of images, that she gets from glossy fashion magazines, books, and encyclopedias. She scans them and then she completely twists them, using both analog and digital manipulation. The results are kitsch, surreal images with a retro-modern taste.

Dominic Hawgood – Under the Influence, 2014

English photographer Hawgood describes himself as a versatile artist who likes to experiment with different media: photography, CGI, lighting design and installation. His work is marked by a keen interest in combining “states of mind and technology” and “plays with the impossibility of recreating emotion and feeling.” We asked him a bit more about his work.

On the inspiration behind the series: “Under the Influence casts an eye over the merchandising of modern faith, and looks towards the abundance of African churches in London for inspiration. I was intrigued by the commodification of water and the use of deliverance, and first hand experience of watching exorcisms led me to produce a project around the subject. Such was the theatricality of services, I found myself questioning their authenticity, and so I set about creating a series that communicated a sense of ambiguity at every level. I never released any information about the work, and the project exists cross-platform…as architectural renders, light installation, CGI, moving image, text, photographs.”

On his creative process: “Is changing and evolving continuously. I’m about to release a new series Casting out the self, and that will showcase 3d scanning work that’s pushing further into animation, includes new photographic processes, and a digital and sound collaboration.”

Article for my column #HelloLondon for NssMag (also in ITA), 20th April ‘16

After the fake art exhibition held to present her AW16 collection, 25-year-old British designer Claire Barrow disrupts the lines between art and fashion once again and this time is ready to get steady.

Open to the public until the 24th of April at M. Goldstein Gallery in Hackney, London, The Bed, The Bath and The Beyond is Claire Barrow’s first solo exhibition. With reference to a famous American chain of domestic merchandise, the artist winks at social criticism by pointing at consumerism permeating every inch of today’s society and, at the same time, she brings us her own idea of a twisted return to clarity.

The themes explored throughout the exhibition are in fact those of“cleanliness and godliness”. In what the artist herself has described as an “inner journey discovering her own mortality”, even a common and daily ritual as that of taking a shower comes to assume a mystical significance of baptism and purification.

The aesthetic is the same Claire Barrow's work always stands out for: a surreal juxtaposition of naïve and demonic characters, floating as in a Chagall painting and as archetypal as primitive/prehistoric art.

Her dystopic reality, this time, finds a way through toilet rolls, shower curtains and neon signs. The latter, a material typically associated with mundanity, red light districts and packed metropolis' centres, is freed by any stigma and rises as an emblem of purity and brightness. Barrow finds in neon that vibrant spirit that can bring to life the phantasmagorical presences populating her imagery.