Art & design in the sunshine
As we welcome spring, sunshine and the cautious optimism that we may be moving through, and beyond, difficult times we're looking ahead and looking forward to celebrating art and design in 2021.
We've brought together our pick of some of the best art and design exhibitions happening across the UK this summer...
Fred Baier: form swallows function
Until 03 May
Roche Court, East Winterslow, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP5 1BG
Image: sculpture.uk.com
The New Art Centre hosts an exhibition of work by the British furniture designer Fred Baier, showcasing pieces made by the artist throughout the course of his long career.
A self-described ‘furniture artist', Baier creates visually challenging and complex furniture that sits somewhere between art and contemporary furniture design.
The exhibition articulates Baier's lifelong approach to furniture-making, exploring the relationships between geometry and function, making and concept, and marrying technical innovation with a conceptual approach to production.
Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life
Opens 19 June
The Design Museum, 224 - 238 Kensington High Street, London, W8 6AG
Image: designmuseum.org
Discover one of the great furniture designers and architects of the twentieth century whose work was often overshadowed by her male peers, such as Le Corbusier and Jean Prouvé.
Enter the world of Charlotte Perriand, whose pioneering designs shaped the 20th century. Her modern ideas can be found in the way we live today, from the use of materials to her belief that good design is for everyone.
Step inside recreations of some of her most famous interiors, including the apartment designed for the Salon d’Automne in 1929, and and enjoy some of her furniture up close, such as the iconic Chaise Longue Basculante and the Fauteuil Pivotant.
London Design Biennale
01 - 27 June
Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 1LA
Image: londondesignbiennale.com
London Design Biennale invites countries, territories and cities together for a global gathering of design.
Watch the world’s most ambitious and imaginative designers and curators respond to Artistic Director Es Devlin’s theme of Resonance, which considers the ripple effect of ground-breaking design concepts on the way we live, and the choices we make, with pavilions set across the historic location of Somerset House.
Highlights will include a forest being planted in the heart of central London. The Forest for Change will fill the entire courtyard of Somerset House, countering the attitude of human dominance over nature, which forbade the introduction of trees into the courtyard when the building was conceived.
Visitors will be able to make their way through the labyrinth of trees to find a clearing at its centre, housing a pavilion created in partnership with non-profit communications agency Project Everyone and dedicated to the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals.
Transference
08 May – 03 July 2021
Make Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Stockwell House, 13 High Street, Bruton, Somerset, BA10 0AB
Image: hauserwirth.com
Alexander deVol presents sculptures and wall works inspired by the fluency of fractal patterns in nature, informed by the tacit motions of his everyday studio practice.
Alexander deVol is a designer, artist and maker who's work investigates the material properties of wood and their transferal into other materials.
For his first solo exhibition with Make, he has created new paper sculptures and painted canvases, using earth pigments, clays, stone, gypsum, metals, resin, and waste product from his daily practice. Playful and experimental, his studio practice has evolved into new territories during long months of lockdown, finding alternative directions and material interpretations.
Breaking the Mould: Sculpture by Women since 1945
29 May – 05 September
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, Wakefield, WF4 4LG
Image: artscouncilcollection.org.uk
This major Arts Council Collection survey exhibition seeks to redefine post-war British sculpture by presenting a diverse range of work by women.
Breaking the Mould is the first survey of post-war British sculpture by women. This exhibition provides a radical recalibration, addressing the many accounts of British sculpture that have marginalised women or airbrushed their work from art history altogether.
The exhibition surveys seventy-five years and explores the work of over forty sculptors. All of the works have been selected from the Arts Council Collection, which holds more than 250 sculptures by over 150 women. The exhibition features a number of sculptures on public display for the first time since they were purchased for the nation.
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