Get in line for your 15 minutes of fame
Fancy getting papped by a top photographer? In a special pop-up studio in Mayfair, the UK artist Miles Aldridge is taking Polaroid pictures of members of the public as part of the Mount Street Neighbourhood Arts Festival. Visitors sit against Miles’s specially designed orange backdrop posing with a series of props—feather boas, teacups, retro telephones—that participants can try on and try out à la Andy Warhol for the aptly named 15 Minutes of Fame series. Aldridge has snapped some very famous people, including the art japester Maurizio Cattelan, who only sat for one take and swiftly exited. The pop superstar Elton John has also been caught by his lens, clasping a skull on his shoulder. Miles is the son of Alan Aldridge, an esteemed art director and illustrator who designed album art for the Rocket Man, including the 1975 Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy cover. The slots are currently all taken in London but Aldridge will also pop up in Paris next week for anyone hopping over the Channel for Art Basel Paris.
Let sleeping boulders lie: Studio Lenca brings a volcanic vibe
Between a rock and an art place
A gravity-defying installation named Ojalá is wowing visitors at the Deutsche Bank lounge at Frieze London. Fairgoers quaffing coffee and cocktails can look up and see handmade Salvadoran hammocks cradling volcanic rocks, courtesy of the artist known as Studio Lenca. The boulders are in fact scanned replicas of volcanic stones from the artist’s home country, El Salvador, which have been re-created in a “lightweight material”, the artist tells us. So, collectors are not at risk of being crushed, thankfully.
Paradise found—in Knightsbridge
Leah Wood is making a splash with a show of colourful works at the Pavilion venue in Knightsbridge, which looks at “the increasingly important role nature plays within an urban environment”. Something to bear in mind as weary fairgoers wander through Regent’s Park. Wood comes from a famous family too—her mother is the model Jo Wood and her father is the Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, who also likes putting paint to canvas. Maybe don’t just Paint It Black though.
Brick by brick: Ekow Nimako and his Lego deity
Lego water deity will have you bricking it
The benign, kiddy-friendly image of Lego gets severely dented on the Elephant Gallery stand at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art fair, where the Ghanaian-Canadian artist Ekow Nimako has created a ferocious female deity entirely from shiny black Lego pieces. Armour plated, topped by a spikey crown and sporting savagely spear-tipped coiling tentacles, Nimako’s Maame Wata, The Wise is inspired by Mami Wata, a powerful water deity revered across Africa and the African diaspora. “I wanted her to be menacing as well as powerful, while also having childlike qualities,” says the artist, who insists that all her components are standard-issue Lego. But maybe don’t try building one with little children…
“My eyes are up here!”: Michael Graham-Stewart’s unusual royal tribute
Queen Victoria lets it all hang out
Also at the 1-54 fair, a whole new aspect to a revered British royal is revealed on Michael Graham-Stuart’s 50:50 Special Projects stand, where a lofty wooden “Queen Victoria” drum, carved by an anonymous Fante artist in Ghana around 1920, is stopping visitors in their tracks. The bejewelled and crowned monarch has rather unexpectedly been bestowed with a colossal pair of conical breasts topped off with specially highlighted pink painted nipples. Indeed, such is the extent of Her Royal Highness’s protrusions that they have to be carefully circumnavigated by visitors to avoid knocking the floorbound monarch over entirely. To any future owner: next time, maybe put Queen Vic high up on a plinth to avoid any mishaps?
