A poignant meditation on family life and the artist’s own childhood during the Cultural Revolution, the installation comprises over 10,000 items collected by Song Dong’s mother, over five decades – ranging from a section of the family home, to metal pots and plastic bowls to blankets, bottle caps, toothpaste tubes and toys. The activity of saving and re-using things is in keeping with the Chinese adage wu jin qi yong – ‘waste not’ – a prerequisite for survival during periods of social and political turmoil. Most of the stuff accumulated by the artist’s mother  seemed useless, even sometimes unlovely but yet strangely affecting.

The biggest surprise is that this trash from another time and place looks so familiar, so un-Chinese (which perhaps says something about the globalisation of the plastics industry).

What is intriguing about this collection of effects that would normally have found their way to landfill is its sheer size. Where did Song Dong’s mother store all those cardboard boxes, those defunct and almost identical television sets, that chipped and shattered kitchen cabinet, the 16 washing-up bowls? A timber-framed hangar, which we’re told was part of the family home, itself mended with scaffolding poles where beams are missing, suggests a spreading rural domain. But more pressingly, why hoard those things? What can you do with a battered and taped cardboard box other than use it to hold more stuff? What use a dozen squeezed-dry toothpaste tubes, each carefully capped? Come to that, why only a dozen of those?

Song Dong, who first suggested displaying this stuff to his recently widowed mum to help her through depression, arranges the objects with a curator’s care, but defiantly not an interior designer’s eye. What I really like is that beauty is not the point. Not one of these things had aesthetic value even when new.

As you wander through The Curve’s banana-shaped space, led along paths marked out with string, the items are grouped on the floor by use, not colour, shape or texture. Each is identically spaced from its neighbour: kitchen stuff here, living-room stuff there. A bed, laden with carefully folded clothing, surmounts a veritable car park of trodden-down shoes, touching in their decrepitude, and in the fact that all are still in married pairs.The more you look, the more you see this as a densely detailed portrait of a family’s life together. The mania for keeping things long past their useful life – the impoverished flipside of the “affluenza” identified by the British psychologist Oliver James – is a bid to fill an emotional void left by children grown and gone, a partner deceased. I definitely related to this habit of collecting / accumulating/ keeping and started to wonder what installation Paloma could put together with all our things and what it would say about us as a family.

The faded and ferociously ironed-flat baby clothes  are freighted with tender longing – perhaps not only for times past, however hard and meagre, but for an imagined future: phantom grandchildren, the cycle beginning again.

The exhibition is at the Barbican Gallery until 12th of June ( Entry is free)

ASSAD MOUNSER

EDDIE BORGO

FENTON

Featuring modern and vintage jewellery, for men and women, the carefully-curated selection will also offer a complete spectrum of accessories – handbags, belts, millinery, sunglasses and scarves.

” The e-shop is something I’ve planned for many years, even before I started my agency ”

There are plenty of e-commerce sites for commercial pieces, I want to bring something new to online accessory retail: a space where discerning, fashion savvy customers can buy special items.Guest designers will feature each season, beginning with the romance of Heaven Tanudiredja; vibrant colour of Ek Thongprasert and Patrick Moulin, who works in porcelain

Prices will begin at less than £200 and continue to £5000 for made-to-order designs. All purchases will be shipped internationally in bespoke packaging.

But as the stock-market crashes, so do their dreams of completing their home. With the recently opened PH Towers Westgate in Las Vegas falling behind on repayments, and bank loans drying up to finance their business, Westgate Resorts is forced to lay off thousands of employees, and close many of its resorts. The recession pushes the company to the brink of bankruptcy, and with all of their money tied up in the business, the Siegel family – all ten of them – suffer firsthand. Having paid cash for the land and construction of Versailles, David then re-mortgaged it, to put funds back into Westgate Resorts. He is then trapped – desperately trying to raise the investment he needs to pay off his debts for PH Towers Westgate, and survive in their current, huge family home – already 23,000 square feet.

The house becomes covered in dog muck, pets die due to neglect, and while her minimised home staff and stressed husband seem to work tirelessly to keep the household ticking over, Jackie is lost in her role in the situation. Upon renting a car she hilariously asks the bemused assistant the name of her driver, refusing to accept her new self-sufficiency. In addition, at Christmas, when buying abundant and unnecessary gifts for her children, her voiceover details her husband’s threats to cut off her credit cards, accentuating the precarious threat of complete bankruptcy the Siegels face under Jackie’s uncaring hands (one shot of the bikes in the garage is as succinct an image of their unthinking consumerist lifestyle as any). Jackie doesn’t understand the gravity of her family’s situation, because while David is moody, he never tells her the extent of the problems. Suddenly the kids may have to go to college but David states they may just have to work – the legacy of the Siegels is all but lost during the two years of the film.

There are many exceptional traits in The Queen of Versailles, from the honesty with which the Siegel’s face the interviews, to the composition of each shot; the film is balanced and brimming with irony and metaphor for the ultimate, but failed, American Dream. The insertion of the Siegels’ many portrait photographs and paintings sets the tone for the tale of this small-town-couple-come-good, underlining their trashy approach to egoism, and indicating the ironic lack of humility these billionaires show – even during their downfall (some of the film’s woefully funny shots include an oil painting depicting David as a King, surrounded by his eight children, and another with the family as Roman gods). The tragic irony of the King and Queen of capitalistic, self-made wealth’s vanity and their tumbling fall from grace is a healthy reminder that anything can change in an instant, and nothing should be taken for granted – even though, as The Queen of Versailles clearly portrays, it is very easy to do just that.

The Queen of Versailles is an aesthetically beautiful film, rich with inherent ironies and contradictions which portray the delusions of its stars, and suggests the recession is the responsibility of everybody – regardless of their wealth and status. The bold and large scale ambitions of the Siegels deserve to be witnessed on the big screen, and it is unlikely a small screen would do justice to their epic tale of crashed fortunes and fate. The Queen of Versailles is an accomplishment, and a critical testament to the valorisation of material goods and wealth in a new society, where few can afford the luxuries they seek.

This exhibition does not just re-present the body. It presents the body in all of its often half-conscious operations. A large, interactive ensemble of works from visual artists, choreographers and (fashion-) designers makes us see and feel the body as the source of our thoughts and emotions. Upcoming and internationally established artists and designers operate on the boundaries between disciplines to unravel the mysteries of the body. The whole of the city of Hasselt qualifies as a stage, but the main focus is on larger venues such as the Cultural Center, the house for contemporary art Z33, the Fashion Museum, CIAP and the city Museum Het Stadsmus.

When it comes to Naomi Filmer’s work, glass bubbles are blown upon isolated body parts that remain anonymous and abstract. Fleshy hues in glass comment on skin tones, and a skin of leather is occasionally formed over areas of the bubbles that mimic anatomy.

Dates: 04.02.2012 ¬ 27.05.2012  Not to be missed!

In his pictures and deportment Cunningham is like a Weegee of fashion, catching our ever-changing world or you could compare him to Scott Schuman of the Sartorialist…except Schuman went on the Conde Nast payroll and has been developing/monetizing his brand. Deals were done! Bill Cunningham, by contrast, makes a point of saying that he often avoids taking payment for his work because he loses control. He doesn’t just talk the talk either…he’s 83 and he sleeps on a cot in studio filled with filing cabinets on top of Carnegie Hall.

Bill’s legacy does not merely stand due to the longevity of his career or the varied public figures whom he chooses to shoot but his absolute dedication to the merit of style – focusing solely upon the clothes he has failed to adopt a celebrity snapping attitude.

He has also remained on the periphery of the parties, gatherings and events that are seen to be an integral part of such a sociable industry. By choosing to remain on the outside, he has negotiated a powerful position from which he has an unrivalled trust, respect and appreciation from the top players in the business.

Anna Wintour even went so far as to say ‘we dress for Bill’.

It is just so refreshing and heartwarming to come across such a lovely, humble and witty man, a figure of probity in a corrupt, ruthless world of poseurs.

Genuinely in love with clothes, Cunningham makes you think of fashion in a more positive and enlightened way.

Wonderful viewing!