Arts & Culture
Warm Britannia
Published 19 April 1999
Design byHugh Aldersey-Williams
If you plan carefully, you can recapitulate the century in a London day. Begin at the Design Museum, which is currently commemorating Britain's lukewarm embrace of European modernism during the 1930s. Notice how so much of what was achieved was achieved mainly by refugees and emigres: Lubetkin, Goldfinger, Mendelsohn, Chermayeff, Moholy-Nagy, McKnight Kauffer. Britain was not made modern by Britons, who, then as now, were wary of big ideas looming through the famous fog from the Continent.
Stop for lunch from 1939 to 1945, then continue at the Imperial War Museum's "From the Bomb to the Beatles", which covers the period to 1965, and shows that we were, however, not without imagination of our own as we progressed from austerity to affluence.
Finally, proceed to the ICA to bring the chronology sharply up to date. "Stealing Beauty" is a synopsis of British design now, but one with a hidden agenda of showcasing, if that's not too vulgar a term for them, designers "seeking alternatives to the consumerist package". From affluence back to austerity. The exhibition is curated by Claire Catterall, who was responsible for the contents of the "Powerhouse" exhibition - that late flowering of Cool Britannia - as well as an excellent show at the Royal Institute of British Architects on inflatable structures.
"Stealing Beauty" itself is a stolen title, of course. But why don't these designers create beauty? Why must they nick it? The answer comes in the kind of words used to describe their work: ephemeral, banal, familiar, urban, edgy. Some of the designs are "one-liners", other pieces are "not often easy to get" (that's in the conceptual sense, not the shopping sense, you understand). It's "context-defying", it's "unadulterated luxury and glamour", it's "as much modern-design chic as you could ask for" but "there is a place for ugliness". Confused? In other words, it's a hodge-podge of rising talent culled from recent issues of Blueprint, Wallpaper and the Guardian's paradoxically miniature Space supplement. Catterall still has the nerve to claim her troupe represents "a rejection of the way design is going now".
Some of the rejection is petulant. A duo of graphic designers going under the name of Bump produce crockery with abusive slogans printed on it. "They are looking at the choreography of domestic rows," Catterall explains deadpan. Bump miss the social point, but in a strictly consumerist context, they do provide a sophomoric antidote to the cutely lettered plates of Emma Bridgewater.
Elsewhere there is evidence of presence and purpose. The husband-and-wife team of Tomoko and Shin Azumi achieve elegance in their anti-consumer statement, making domestic furniture out of the metal mesh used for shopping trolleys. Tord Boontje's much illustrated Transglass objects are made from used bottles, cut, fused and sandblasted into new shapes. "If you design and manufacture products now in this world, they should either be really minimal or very durable. Anything in between is unethical," Boontje says. There is astonishing freshness from such simple transmutations. Stolen beauty indeed.
At the ICA, you'll be able to steal your own, too. Boontje's "rough and ready" chair is shown along with instructions and a template so you can make one at home. "Good design should be a democratic thing," Boontje says. "In principle, design is nothing more than planning. We could completely replan the way we live in this world."
El Ultimo Grito (Spanish for "the last word") are a trio of Spanish design graduates of London area colleges. Bare-bones rationalism is their thing. A coffee table-cum-magazine rack has a simple frame with a single-plane tabletop curved to form a deep crevasse down its centre for the magazines. It's called "Mind the gap".
There is the now familiar mix of craft and conceptual art influences that characterise "avant-garde" design. There is more than a nod to the make-do-and-mend world of Richard Wentworth, whose own show has just come to London. There is a more specific sense of familiarity about some of the work, too, echoing the rebellious ideas of just a decade ago generated in reaction to the high style of the 1980s in Berlin, in New York, in Paris. Britain is late again.
And again, others are showing the way. Many of the designers in "Stealing Beauty" have chosen to work in Britain. The titles they give their work show their relish for the everyday slogans of British life. For Boontje, "London is a place where you can be idealistic because of the lack of industry." For the fashion designer Ann-Sofie Back, her own country was a non-starter: "You had to be neat and commercial and wearable in Sweden." She couldn't speak French, so she came here. "Here, I can do fashion exactly the way that I want it to be. I like the look of old fabrics more than new fabrics. When I buy old garments there's a more random feel to it, and a car boot sale is more attractive to me than Portobello market."
"Stealing Beauty" is at the ICA until 23 May. "Modern Britain 1929-1939: design and craft" is at the Design Museum until 6 June. "From the Bomb to the Beatles" is at the Imperial War Museum for the rest of the year. Richard Wentworth's "Thinking Aloud" is at the Camden Arts Centre until 30 May
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