Gallery Libby Sellers, the new design gallery from curator Libby Sellers, brings together some of Europe’s most progressive designers in its latest exhibition – Grandmateria II.

GRANDMATERIA II, 14th October-7th December 2011

GALLERY LIBBY SELLERS

41-42 Berners Street, London W1T 3NB (020 3384 8785)

The exhibition title alludes to the mythologies of the Philosopher’s stone: a stone said to have alchemist powers to transmute lead into gold. By working with modest materials, using materials out of context, or by layering the materials with rich narrative each of the represented designers elevate the ordinary to extraordinary effect.

Grandmateria II highlights design’s ongoing ability to transform preconceptions of the everyday. The choice of materials – pallet wood, local brick, found pine, tail lights from industrial vehicles, boiled leather, fibre cement, ceramic or woven wool – combine with intelligent narrative to question both traditional cultures (local and global) and the materialism of consumer economics.

Designers included in the exhibition are Fabien Cappello, Formafantasma, Simon Hasan, Stuart Haygarth, Nicolas Le Moigne and Nina Tolstrup.

Images – from top: BrickGlass by Fabien Cappello (2010) Photography by Fabien Cappello; Paletable by Nina Tolstrup (2010) Photography by Studiomama; Slip Lamp by Nicolas le Moigne (2011) Photography by Nicolas le Moigne; Tail Light by Stuart Haygarth (2011) Photography by Stuart Haygarth.

The London Design Festival, the capital’s leading annual design extravaganza, returns to the city this September. Designers, studios, shops, galleries, and museums stage exhibitions and events in over 240 locations, reaffirming London’s place on the global design scene.

The London Design Festival operates as an umbrella organisation for the citywide events, full listings of which can be found on their website and in their printed guide (available in venues across the city).

Each year, the LDF organisers also create their own events and installations. This year’s Trafalgar Square installation, titled ‘Outrace’, is being created by designers Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram, supported and enabled by Audi AG.

From 16th-23rd September, the project allows the general public to take control of eight industrial robots on loan from Audi’s production line. Visitors to the square, alongside the entire web audience, are able to book a slot to interact with the installation via the specially built website.

By attaching light heads onto synchronized mechanical tentacles that are equipped with LED technology from the Audi R15 race car (winner of this year’s LeMans 24h), the installation allows users to trace light messages into the air in real time. As users write their messages, each unique light trace is recorded and uploaded to the web via HD cameras. Clever.

Over at Southbank Centre, Paul Cocksedge Studio has designed ‘Drop’ – a series of 3-metre high, polished, stainless steel discs. The giant coins, which appear to have fallen from the sky, are magnetised to encourage human interaction enabling passers-by to place spare pennies on the reflective surface. For each penny given, a pound will be donated to charity.

Furthermore, the Victoria and Albert Museum is the festival’s hub this year, with plenty of events and installations taking place throughout the week. Lookout for the staircase installation by artist and designer Stuart Haygarth. Working with leading framing company John Jones, he has created a striking installation on the grand marble staircase leading to the V&A’s Architecture galleries. Haygarth creates a cascade made with over 30 traditional and contemporary bespoke frame mouldings, spanning in lengths of almost 20 metres each, bringing this significant piece of the museum’s architecture to life.

If the London Design Festival’s event listings are too much for you to digest, keep an eye on our website throughout September for our pick of the best.

Mayfair gallery, Haunch of Venison, is staging its first exhibition of British artist and designer Stuart Haygarth with an exhibition called ‘Found.’ The show examines his ongoing relationship with abandoned objects and his fascination with taxonomy through a series of new furniture works, lamps and chandeliers.

FOUND, open 1st December 2009-30th January 2010

HAUNCH OF VENISON

6 Burlington Gardens, London W1S 3ET (020 7495 5050)

Haygarth has spent many years gathering seemingly insignificant, discarded items such as ceramic figurines, spectacles, glassware, and plastic objects whilst beachcombing, cycling and on excursions to markets and car boot sales. These are then sorted and graded, methodically stored by  colour, material and subject.

The found materials often inspire the final work through their form, previous use, tactile qualities and their relationship to light. They are then painstakingly compiled to create lamps and furniture, giving otherwise banal and overlooked objects a new significance.

For his new work at the show, Haygarth has been gathering smashed car wing mirrors from narrow roads and ‘hot spots’ in London, such as Rotherhithe Tunnel, using them to create several new objects including a revolving mirror-ball with 350 smashed wing mirrors attached to a mirrored sphere, and a series of wing-mirror shaped tables complete with smashed glass surfaces.

Haygarth has also continued to explore his fascination with spectacles, creating a series of urchin lights for the exhibition – shaggy cascades of frame parts lit from within, and an optical chandelier made from tinted lenses (top image).

Haygarth sees his years of collecting and studying our unwanted items as an opportunity to investigate our social behaviour and habits. He finds beauty in the everyday discarded items, and through his work he challenges perceived notions of precious and beautiful.

Images courtesy of Haunch of Venison: from top – OPTICAL (2007); TIDE (2004); RAFT (2009); DISPOSABLE (date unknown)

EDITOR’S COMMENTS:

Haygarth’s first major show in the UK is housed within truly spectacular space at the Haunch of Venison gallery in Mayfair. One can’t help but be mesmerised by the painstaking care and attention that goes into each piece of work here. Many pieces in the show are new (the images we have here are mainly older pieces) and have taken several years to complete, based on the fact that the found objects from which they are assembled must be collected over time.

And it is the patience of such an undertaking that adds to the awe of his work. TIDE (shown above) is made up of the plastic objects that washed up on the Dungeness coastline in Kent over several years. The obsessive nature of such an undertaking instills as much fascination in the viewer as the beauty of the object itself.

However, at the opening party, I heard several attendees say that Haygarth’s working practice is changing. The giant Mirror Ball made from smashed car wing mirrors has apparently been falsified. These aren’t real smashed wing mirrors but, in fact, new ones that have been smashed in the studio. Er, what? Several pieces are also said to be made by an external fabricator.

I know Haygarth has always flirted between being an artist and designer (handmade vs fabricated) but the charm of his work is led by the idea that he himself collected and assembled each piece. The thought that some of his designs are essentially ‘get the look’ items totally strips him of integrity. I very much hope these were rumours and that I can be proved wrong.