This month’s news features exhibitions on printers and climate as well as a magazine devoted to folding. We’ve even found a project reusing disposable vapes. If you’re looking for more entertainment, don’t forget to register for the Design Council’s Design for Planet festival – it’s free and online.
New life for vapes
Few of us can walk down a street without seeing a discarded vape these days, but one designer has found inspiration in this litter. Ben Watson is designer in residence at Northumbria University, and it was counting vapes on the way into town that made him consider if they could be reused. “On my 10-minute walk, I counted 34 discarded on the road. Not only was this environmentally challenging but also a waste of the planet’s resources. Further research revealed that, with two thrown away every second in the UK, disposable vapes are one of the fastest-growing waste streams.”
Watson discovered that almost all vapes have a core of stainless steel or aluminium. “That captured my imagination – surely these industrial-grade materials have a purpose outside landfill?”
Watson has created an elegant solution, turning vapes cases into lights that can be used as individual torches or bound with a steel strip to form a minimalist lamp. “I sought to breathe new life into this waste using the minimum of new materials to show that, with a small amount of refinement, they can be beautiful.”
His lamp project was shown at the Green Grads event during London Design Festival. This initiative, hosted for 2023 at Heal’s furniture shop, showcases work focused on recycling and sustainable production. “It’s an excellent opportunity to discuss environmentally conscious design with the public,” says Watson.
The public are, of course, the culprits who drop the vapes in the first place, but Watson says manufacturers should take responsibility. “The onus has to be on the manufacturers of these wasteful products to reduce the environmental impact.”
Find out more about Watson’s project on instagram @soiledworks
The art of collecting
As soon as he could walk, illustrator and designer Marin Montagut was taken to the Parisian flea markets. Between these childhood outings and hours spent in his mother’s antique shop in Honfleur, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Montagut has become an avid collector. His passion is “humble tokens of everyday life and folk art” – evidenced in his hoards of reliquaries and religious figurines. These, alongside his collection of artists’ palettes, are lovingly catalogued in his new book, Extraordinary Collections, which celebrates the art of collecting and French style in fantastic photo stories of homes, ateliers and flea markets. Other obsessives featured include Stéphanie Mayeux and the folk art which decorates her Normandy home and the Atelier Lorenzi in Arcueil, which is a workshop that houses the largest private collection of plaster casts in Europe.
There’s also the Gaetan Lanzi’s factory in Faubourg Saint-Antoine. This is now a props rental service, loaning out the furniture once manufactured there. The photos of the chaos of chairs are still quite jaw dropping. You don’t often see that many stacked to the ceiling. This unique and eccentric book is a real page-turner, the scope of these collections is wonderful, and Pierre Musellec’s photography paired with Montagut’s illustrations showcases how much these objects are loved. In the introduction, Montagut describes his interest in wunderkammer – wonder rooms that were found in aristocratic homes in the 16th century. This book deserves to be put in one.
Extraordinary Collections: French Interiors, Flea Markets, Ateliers by Marin Montagut (Flammarion) is out 26 October
Industrial chic
If you think manufacturing isn’t glamorous, you haven’t seen Tools magazine. This beautifully presented annual publication looks at the details of different processes and techniques used in art, design, architecture, craft and everyday life. Tools’ third issue is released this month. After last year’s study of weaving and 2021’s ode to molds, this year’s subject is folding.
The 250-page magazine is created by Paris based creative director Clémentine Berry, founder of the Twice design studio – she’s created beautiful graphic designs for Hermès in her day job. Berry’s aim is to applaud craftspeople whose skills are often overlooked. The new issue features accomplished folders who work in dry cleaning, couture fashion and the military (how else do you think parachutes get folded?).
The art direction and stylish photo shoots elevate the tales of folding so that they look like the stuff of fashion stories and luxury lifestyle – which is exactly Berry’s hope. And, in case you were wondering, next year’s issue will be on cutting. Lots to look forward to.
Tools magazine is out now
Challenging climate apartheid
While the climate crisis is a global problem, it’s one that will hit the global south first and hardest – a condition known as climate apartheid, a phrase coined by Philip Alston, human rights lawyer and former UN rapporteur. A new exhibition at the KARST gallery, Plymouth, will explore the origins of this new crisis, looking particularly at the ecologies of empire – such as slavery, plantations and migration – and how they’ve acted as catalysts and contributed to this problem.
Artists featured include South African artist Sue Williamson, Annalee Davis – a cultural activist and artist from Barbados – and Angela Camacho, who fights for the rights of indigenous and Latinx communities in the global south.
The exhibition is a response to research led by Tim Lenton, professor of climate change and earth system science at Exeter University, which draws connections between forced migration and global warming. The curator of Against Apartheid, Ashish Ghadiali, worked on this study with Lenton. “I hope that visitors coming to the gallery will have the same feeling I’ve experienced while putting the show together: that just and sustainable futures are emerging here.”
Lenton says better international climate policies are needed. “Deaths from extreme heat are escalating in the global south. Climate apartheid needs to be fought with a decisive effort to limit global warming to 1.5C, and to provide meaningful finance from the global north to those suffering loss and damages in the global south.”
Against Apartheid is at KARST gallery, Plymouth, from 28 September-2 December
Forgotten hero of print
This month, the Print Center New York celebrates a forgotten great from mid-century art history. Margaret Lowengrund was the first woman to open her own print workshop in the US and as such was a key figure in the American Print Renaissance of the 1950s. She was also associate editor of Art Digest, and an artist in her own right.
Lowengrund’s work was exhibited at Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1927 and bought by the British Museum, but this show concentrates on the gallery she co-founded and its impact on American art. She opened the Contemporaries Graphic Art Centre because there were few facilities for artists to create prints and lithographs. From the mid-1940s, the function of printmaking in the US radically changed. It was no longer simply commercial but became a way for people to collect affordable art. It changed the process of postwar art production. The Center also acted as a gallery, showing work by printmakers such as Josef Albers, Fayga Ostrower, and June Wayne.
The Print Center show highlights Lowengrund’s achievements as an entrepreneur, a feminist and as an advocate for workers’ rights. A New York Evening Post interview from 1927 includes a quote that sums up her attitude well. “I am not particularly concerned about having a beautiful scene or subject to paint. I want to recreate the commonplace through my own personality and make it interesting.”
A Model Workshop: Margaret Lowengrund and The Contemporaries is at the Print Center New York, until 23 December
