Welcome to the August edition of the Favourbrook Register, our monthly dive into a sinkhole of inspiration, ongoings, and occasionally obscure interests. This month sees almost the entirety of Europe on holiday which means precisely nothing can get done in a reasonable timeframe, so we've decided to down our tools too and ingest some particularly mouth-watering art exhibitions in and around the environs of London town. We're also looking forward to the days becoming that little bit shorter, not because we dislike the summer, but because having a 5 o'clock cocktail seems that much less desperate with the sun one leg into its pyjamas. Enjoy!
Art comes in many different forms, not least clothing. While we're not so egotistical as to suggest that Favourbrook's garments are works of art, we can guarantee that the craftsmanship that goes into each and every piece is artisanal craft of the highest order. We reserve particular love for our velvet jackets. Like every parent will vehemently deny in public but confirm in secret, there do exist favourite offspring, and our velvet jackets are exactly that. In this article, we've highlighted a quartet of velvet jackets that are primed and ready for cocktail hour.
Future Shock, 180 The Strand, Until 28 August 2022
If you haven't yet been to 180 The Strand, then we thoroughly recommend a trip down to this incredible brutalist space in the heart of London. This subterranean epicentre of creativity is one of the capital's most vibrant new spaces, hosting brilliant exhibitions, performances, as well as a Soho House. Right now is a great time to visit because of one such amazing exhibition: Future Shock, an amalgamation of physical and virtual worlds through the works of 14 leading international artists. Expect mind-bending holographic projections and completely immersive experiences of sounds, visuals, and perceptions.
Yayoi Kusama: ‘Infinity Mirror Rooms’, Tate Modern, until 30 September 2022
Art immersion is very much the selling ticket right now, especially after the brilliant sensory ambush of Ryoji Ikeda at 180 The Strand (as well as the new Future Shock exhibition above) and Es Devlin’s Forest For Change at Somerset House. One of the most popular immersive experiences however has been at the Tate Modern with Yayoi Kusama's ‘Infinity Mirror Rooms’, which has now been extended until 30th September (you'll need to be a Tate member to be able to get tickets). The show comprises two of the 92-year-old artist’s mirror room installations which feature a kaleidoscopic array of reflective light and water to creative a seemingly limitless space.
'Surrealism Beyond Borders', at Tate Modern until 29 Aug is a landmark exhibition on the mind-bending, rule-breaking, status quo-challenging school of art known as Surrealism. Surrealism finds the uncanny in the everyday and taps into our unconscious desires to bring the abstract to life. Based on extensive research, this exhibition will reach across the world and over 50 years. It will show how artists around the world have been inspired and united by surrealism – from centres as diverse as Buenos Aires, Cairo, Lisbon, Mexico City, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo.
If you've ever wondered about the eye-watering valuations of art in the modern day and how exactly they are created, then Nick Paumgarten's brilliant 2013 profile of the art dealer and gallerist David Zwirner is an absolute must-read. Zwirner moves in lofty circles, surrounded by equally lofty amounts of money, and Paumgartern brilliantly captures an obscure and abstract world in which people with a great deal of affluence, buy art like most of us buy groceries.
With the British summer moving into the twilight period, we've got our eyes and wardrobes firmly fixed on the delicious prospect of warm summer evening cocktail parties, or weather failing, moving indoors into more comfortable environs for a spirited martini! With that in mind, we've selected a number of cocktail dress options for a sophisticated evening, underlining the inherent glamour of such occasions.
At Tate Britain until 18th September is a fabulous retrospective on the complex British painter Walter Sickert, who is recognised as one of the most important artists of the 20th century, having helped shape modern British art. Sickert was seen as something of a radical in his time, with distinctive approach to setting and subject matter, which Sickert often took from news photography. Sickert was interested in all things theatrical, being a former actor himself. As while his paintings are complex and ever-changing, so to was Sickert's life, being at one stage the prime suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders! In fact, according to the crime novelist Patricia Cornwell in her 2002 book Portrait of a Killer - Jack the Ripper Case Closed, Sickert was in fact the man who carried out the murders, but the evidence is somewhat dubious. What is certain is that Sickert's lifetime's work is more than worthy of closer inspection.
