PB

 Mona Lisa (Peanut Butter and Jelly), Vik Muniz, 1999

Peanut Butter Platform, Wim T. Schippers, 2011

Portia Munson

Pink Projects

The “Pink Projects” are an exploration of the color pink, a culturally loaded color that has been projected onto girls and women. The “Pink Projects” are made up of thousands of inexpensive products that are either produced or packaged in the color pink. These pink plastic objects --Fake nails, tampon applicators, hair clips, makeup, cleaning products, mirrors, baby pacifiers -- seem to be trying to imitate and perfect the body, perfect nature. 

In these installations, the discarded items assume new value and meaning, showing the marketing of femininity and how our culture infantalizes women.

Tim Walker at Somerset House

Joana Vasconcelos - Versailles

“Joana  does not seek to fit into Versailles, but to confront it. Her work made up of redirections, metamorphoses and displacements of objects, cuts across time and shifts the symbols. Inspired by the mythological and aesthetic force of the palace of Versailles, Joana Vasconcelos questions notions of luxury and beauty by proposing new works especially designed for the palace.”

Amy Stevens

Confections

"Cakes are the centerpieces of celebrations and symbolic trophies evoking nostalgia and awe. Historically, cake has played a significant role in women's lives. Women have used cake as both an outlet of creativity and a symbol of female power politics. In my constructions of these photographs, I am commentating on not only cake itself as a rich cultural symbol, but of the domestic fantasy world of contemporary home decorating and cooking magazines and television shows. It's a fantasy world where entertaining, cooking and decorating unite. It's a place where one needs to have a beautiful home, decorated seasonally, in order to entertain friends with gourmet meals and elaborately concocted desserts."

Annet Couwenberg

Jennifer Angus

“We don’t have very many ‘Wow!’ moments anymore in this age of Internet. We’ve become a bit jaded,” says Angus, “I am trying to capture in my work the magic we experience as children. I would like people to discover it once again and for a moment just stand there and say ‘Wow!’” Inspired by the tribal dress of the Karen tribe in Thailand’s Golden Triangle—a region bordered by China, Laos and Myanmar—Angus combined her passion for pattern and textiles with a newfound fascination for the often overlooked (even maligned) insect. Using no endangered species, Angus creates her distinctive patterns without utilizing dyes or destroying natural resources.

Naturally electric blue, emerald green, pink, purple and red insects coalesce on the walls to create an immersive Victorian-era room that recalls an age of excitement, exploration and scientific discovery. Complementary small-scale dollhouses covered in beeswax are home to anthropomorphized insects that provoke viewers to revisit their own relationship with the eco-system.

For Angus, pattern is associated more with meaning than decoration. Her works call to mind themes of death, cultural association and ideas about collection. “ Although insects are common all over the world, insect collectors share the same passion, rigor and attention to display as many art collectors,” says director Suzanne Isken, “You will find that Angus’ work reflects the world’s infinite cache of unexpected beauty and diversity, a view that we at the Craft and Folk Art Museum hope to share with Los Angeles.”

Alastair Mackie

Alistair Mackie, Untitled (sphere) (2000-9) mouse skulls, glass, wood 26cm x 26cm x 26cm, image courtesy All Visual Arts, photography Tessa Angus

Ghada Amer

Le Salon Courbé, 2007, wallpaper, embroidered furniture, silk and wool carpet

Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec

As part of the London Design Festival, French designers Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec filled the Raphael Court of the V&A museum with fabric covered foam– 240 square meters of the gallery floor are covered with the Textile Field, to encourage visitors to lie down and look up at the Renaissance art.

An invitation to lascivious reverie. Our intention is to propose a different, casual approach to freely experience what can be a quite intimidating environment, such as a museum.

We conceived an expansive, coloured foam and textile piece with gentle inclinations to produce a sensual field on which to comfortably lounge while meditating on the surrounding Raphael Cartoons. Everyone can immerse into this temporary installation, for a minute, an hour or more, that is the idea. No efforts, no apprehension just contemplation.