Clerkenwell Design Week rolls around so fast! This year we found ourselves shuttling between Clerkenwell and Kensington, launching urinals and marshalling bloodthirsty teenagers and drink fuelled designers.
Tuesday saw the London launch of 'Fountain '17', an exhibition of artworks based on Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain', which has its centenary this year. As probably the most influential artwork of the 20th Century, this is a very difficult subject to tackle. It has been discussed and dissected ad nauseam by critics, and is still capable of stoking the question '...but is it Art?'
One way around the problem is to make a joke of it - but to do so the joke has to be a damn good one. We particularly liked the monument to the detritus often found blocking urinal outlets: a gigantic piece of chewing gum by Desmond Brett. Also worthy of note was Assemble's experiment with slip-marbling a WC pan.
For our part, we un-asked the question by looking at the object in an abstracted, geometric way. Read and see more here:
Fountain '17 launch event at Ideal Standard showroom, Clerkenwell.
Wednesday saw us back in Clerkenwell, where we joined forces with the exuberant Trevor Flynn of Drawing at Work and brilliant designer Anahi Copponex. Anahi runs fascinating courses on 'Pattern Cutting for Architects', and during the evening she ran a session on body adornment using long loops of synthetic whalebone - the stuff used to make modern corsets and hoop skirts. Whilst life drawing continued upstairs, we tutored a group in experimental folding techniques. As always when designers cut loose, things got wild, culminating in a fashion parade.
Work in Progress
Drawing at Work at Desso for Clerkenwell Design Week
We rounded off the week with a return visit to the Design Museum, where we'd been invited to work with an extremely sparky bunch of young people at the Museum's monthly Sunday Workshop. After a quick collaborative warm up exercise, we guided attendees (ages 12-16) through our approach to drawing systems, stories, and processes. They responded with an array of insightful, well considered, beautiful - and in one case, surprisingly gory - pictures.
See more on our work with the Design Museum here.
