Nets 5 – Pumbley Cove (2019), Shezad Dawood, acrylic and wool on linen, 80 x 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Timothy Taylor, London.

British artist Shezad Dawood’s interdisciplinary practice explores themes around climate change, migration, the history of aesthetics and the nature of storytelling. Here, Nick Hackworth speaks to the artist about his new virtual reality environment, collaborating with scientists, and the social impact of art

LUX: Let’s start with your latest VR work, The Terrarium, the trailer of which is shown below. Can you tell us about the work? What would we see in the ‘real’ VR work?
Shezad Dawood: The Terrarium imagines what the Earth might look like in 300 years: with a drastically reduced land mass, and an even greater majority of the Earth underwater. You, the viewer, are one of a number of marine-human hybrid species.

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I worked with evolutionary geneticists and marine biologists to map out the species that might inhabit the Baltic sea at that point (bear in mind that the Baltic Sea is projected to extend into the English coast by then with Sweden and Denmark underwater). So the work is really about taking the audience into this possible future world, and giving them a great 3D experience of it.

A still from The Terrarium, 2020, virtual reality environment, duration variable. Courtesy of UBIK Productions.

In a reference to contemporary overfishing, you get caught by space pirates who transport you off-world where two possible fates await you, and you can activate either, based on your own choices.

The trailer hints at these narrative possibilities and gives you a glimmer of the expansive universe we’ve created in the full VR experience, where you can experience everything from close encounters with genetically-altered species to outer-space banquets!

View the trailer for ‘The Terrarium’ by Shezad Dawood:

LUX: What excites you about VR as a medium and what’s your ‘fantasy’ VR work?
Shezad Dawood: With VR you can do things that you simply can’t do in other media. I’ve always wanted to lead people into parallel universes, and make [those universes] as real and immersive as possible. Simply put, it offers a whole new way of telling stories, with the viewer at the centre, and a totally different level of agency.

From the point of view of a maker, it allows you a level of detail and spatial possibility that I’ve always strived for in my films. VR gives you the ability to go back in and add sound in the corner of a room, and then create an interactive moment at a high point of tension – the complex narrative possibilities are endless! And the ability to play with gravity, with reality itself is fascinating.

Read more: Arts patron Katrina Aleksa Ryemill on empowering women in the arts

My dream VR artwork is to really take the whole concept of an immersive experience further, and have a ‘real-world’ installation that is like a dreamscape, that prepares you like an antechamber to the VR itself, but one that is operatic in scale. And, of course, a VR experience that incorporates world-building and characters with a whole new level of detail, intensity and interaction. The holy grail of everyone working in VR right now is to pull off a truly meaningful way to have multiple players collaborate and work together in a VR experience.

Leviathan Cycle, Episode 6: Ding Ling & Senait (2020) HD video, 18’46”. Courtesy of the artist and UBIK Productions.

LUX: A lot of your recent work is informed by serious concerns about the damage that we humans are inflicting on marine ecologies across the planet. Can you tell us why this means so much to you? And what can art ‘do’ to make difference to these overwhelming problems?
Shezad Dawood: One of the biggest environmental car crashes we’re blindly walking towards is the destruction of marine ecosystems. Perhaps because a large percentage of these interconnected systems remain largely unseen by human eyes, we forget that roughly 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, and that the oceans hold about 96.5% of the Earth’s water. Never mind more critical intersections, such as the function of coral reefs as a semi-permeable membrane against tidal events and shoreline erosion.

Towards The Possible Film (2014) HD and Super 16mm transferred to HD, 20 mins
Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Delfina Foundation.

It is these delicate checks and balances that are both naturally occurring, and that can be aided by considered human research and interaction, that have really motivated me to keep researching in this space. And yes, art can totally play a role, in helping tell stories and give audiences an insight into some of these otherwise invisible narratives. I think the potential for research and collaboration between the arts and sciences is just in its infancy, and there is a way to think about creating new ways of telling that empower and inspire audiences without being patronising.

Read more: How luxury knitwear brand Aessai is supporting South American craftsmanship

I set up my own non-profit project Leviathan in 2017 to further develop a relationship with ideas of oceans and ecology. We stage public events at each physical exhibition venue the project is presented at, bringing scientists to arts audiences and vice versa. There’s a growing repertoire of accessible short texts and video lectures that are available for free streaming and download, that present cutting-edge research in digestible form. It’s been really exciting to have someone who attended a physical event in Seoul then follow up via a virtual talk that took place in Munich!

Nets 2 – Etheridge’s Point Trail (2019), Shezad Dawood, oil acrylic and wool on linen, 100 x 80 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Timothy Taylor, London.

LUX: Can you tell us about the paintings on show in your current, online exhibition, Nets at Timothy Taylor Gallery? And how about how your residency on Fogo Island informed the works?
Shezad Dawood: The Nets works at Timothy Taylor are about boundaries and thresholds — between land and sea, sea and sky, and also between figuration and abstraction. I see the works as invitations to viewers to pause, stop and understand the spiritual epiphany of being and how pattern imposes itself on the world and on us… a complex and complete ecology if you will.

The works were made during an incredible residency on Fogo Island, which is a beautiful rugged island off the coast of Newfoundland, deeply connected to the fortunes of the cod trade. Its home to the famous Fogo Island Inn an amazing, sustainable and community-run luxury hotel on the shore of the Atlantic. Through the residency I was privileged to meet and work with a number of skilled and generous craftspeople on the island including Lillian Dwyer, Sheila Payne and Margaret Freake who brought their local techniques of rug hooking, flocking and crochet to bear on these works. Both conceptually and materially the Nets works embody the spirit and unique geography of the island.

‘Nets’ by Shezad Dawood runs until 12 December 2020 in Timothy Taylor Gallery’s online viewing room: timothytaylor.com/viewing-rooms/shezad-dawood-nets

Nick Hackworth is a writer and curator of Modern Forms, an art collection and curatorial platform founded by Hussam Otaibi, Managing Partner at Floreat Group. 

Untitled drawing by Hugo Wilson made with charcoal, black chalk, sandpaper and a sanding machine, paper mounted on aluminium. Photograph by Maryam Eisler

London-based artist Hugo Wilson works with drawing, painting and sculpture, combining images and techniques from Old Masters with contemporary references to create dynamic, layered artworks. LUX contributing editor Maryam Eisler visits his studio to photograph him and discuss refining his practice, creativity in lockdown and finding artistic freedom

Maryam Eisler

Maryam Eisler: Let’s talk about your surfaces.
Hugo Wilson: I think a lot of my work has been very clean in the sense that the surface is quite finished, and quite considered. Whilst I wasn’t particularly aiming for that, that is just how I work. People have said to me over the last few years, ‘You should be leaving thin bits… you should have thick bits…’ and that is fine, but there needs to be a good reason for it all. Just creating surface texture to please makes no sense to me. I am quite bloody minded. I am certainly not going to do something unless I think it is the right thing to do. But slowly, after five or six years, rubbing away has become a part of my practice. Re-painting has also become a part of it. In the case of these particular drawings, I have also pulled things out of seven or eight dark layers which are muddied or clashed to the point of a problem. Suddenly, a sanding machine seemed like the only option. What I realised is that textures were beginning to appear, but they appeared out of clean, conceptual ideas. That required intuition, that required pulling something out of a chaotic situation.

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Maryam Eisler: There is also great physicality and dynamism involved in your process. Would you agree that the paintings possibly represent a stamping of your own collective energy?
Hugo Wilson: Not consciously, but I think that any great work of art that I love has an honesty of intention, and an honesty of process to reach that intention. In the case of these works, I have, maybe, in a way, understood that my intention is less fixed than I had previously wanted it to be. In the past, I had a plan which I delivered, one way or another, but in this case what I’ve realised is that having a plan is almost pointless. So, creating works that are borne out of an obstacle course make perfect sense. These works also refer to many things, without ever holding a single position. Obviously, collective consciousness then has to come into play.

Hugo Wilson (top), and one of the artist’s works in progress (below). Photographs by Maryam Eisler

Maryam Eisler: To me, it seems like you are referencing freedom?
Hugo Wilson: I feel freer today than I ever have felt. That is for sure. I think moving towards more confidence is what I’m doing do. I also think that a heart punch is far more powerful than a head punch.

Maryam Eisler: Less agonising over process?
Hugo Wilson: I think all artists have this immense problem when they walk into an empty room with an empty canvas or a piece of clay or a block of wood. So, we sort of have to have a strategy in order to start, but also, we need to remember to break the rules that we have imposed on ourselves and to trust in that process. It is hard because it requires dropping things that have worked whether that is making a successful work of art, or selling it, or being liked by curators. Just because you are an artist you are not immune from all that; I wish I was. This last year was really hard because I had success for the first time in my career, and then decided to suddenly throw a hand grenade into my own practice, but it got to the point that I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do it.

Read more: Diango Hernández’s disruptive Instagram art project

Maryam Eisler: Speaking of bombs, how has this COVID period affected your work?
Hugo Wilson: The last six months have been the best period of work that I have ever had, for two or three reasons. One, the imagined pressure of the art world sort of disappeared for a bit, which I liked. I also realised that I’m terribly untrendy. I think that what is going on in the art world may be a great thing, but the fact that I am not involved in it, is not something that I am bitter about. In a way, I have had to look at that and question ‘well, what does that mean?’ In my case it meant freedom, the freedom to truly know what you care about and want from this. And I think that the answer is to create something, that goes well beyond my own limits, consistently. It can be exhausting though.

A collection of Wilson’s charcoal works and sculptures. Photograph by Maryam Eisler

Maryam Eisler: Would you say it’s also about personal evolution and revolution?
Hugo Wilson: I think last year was particularly difficult because I had given myself a year to change my practice. I thought, okay I shall only do one show, which was the Berlin show I did earlier this year, which actually ended up feeling and going much better than I thought it would. I also had to have my right lung removed. I have been sober for many years since my mid 20s, for a good reason! And suddenly I was on morphine… It was tough, much tougher than I thought it was going to be, because I am one of those lucky people who nearly crashed and burned young, but didn’t. Most of my adult life, however, I have felt pretty happy, no more or less unstable than most other people. And then suddenly, I was right back in the darkness again, mentally. It was very frightening. At the same time, I was sitting in an empty studio. You know, I sound posh. I sound like I have had advantages that actually I didn’t. I was on big scholarships and so on, but actually, I set myself against the world quite early on. I have always been very intolerant of the “hippy artist” and the idea of self-indulgence. As an artist, it’s natural that you experience bleak periods where you don’t like your own work, but you are going to have to keep going into the studio to make it happen. I had one of those periods, quite a long one, and I can tell you, it is hell.

An untitled glazed ceramic sculpture. Photograph by Maryam Eisler.

Maryam Eisler: Now you have come out of that darkness with these wonders, and you’ve almost cut out all the noise …
Hugo Wilson: I am using a 300-gram paper on aluminium. This stuff can take a real beating. I am also using sanding machines and spikes, maybe even fire one day.

Maryam Eisler: And yet, you are classically trained.
Hugo Wilson: I am very classically trained, within an inch of my life!

Read more: Loquet’s Sheherazade Goldsmith on sustainable jewellery design

Maryam Eisler: Can you tell me about your early days in Florence?
Hugo Wilson: I remember going on a school trip to Venice when I was fourteen. I was sitting in front of a Tintoretto and I nearly cried. Now, I understand that I was completely moved by the power of the image, but not one part of me thought I was going to become Catholic. I think, in a way, that the sort of silly, ambitious, quite stupid, young man just thought, ‘I am just going to fucking learn how to do that. He did it, why not me!’ The classical training was, by the way, extraordinary. It was a seventeenth century atelier. There was the master, and everyone who had been there longer than they could teach you, and it was amazing; we drew from plaster casts for a year, before we could draw a naked person, and only two years later, could we actually paint. I do not regret the training at all, but it was a very difficult thing to unpick. It was very addictive. The point is: I was interested in that language, and I learnt it.

Hugo Wilson in his studio with charcoal works in progress (above) and an untitled bronze sculpture. Photographs by Maryam Eisler

Maryam Eisler: So, that old world story is in your DNA?
Hugo Wilson: I am an English man. The works I have seen throughout my life are from this tradition. Slowly, slowly I am getting far more interested in other traditions actually, like Japanese woodblocks for example. I have also always loved those medieval bronzes and the historical anomalies where you look at a bronze from the fourth century and then you look at a Japanese incense holder, and you realise that they are identical, and that idea is at the very core of my practice. That we don’t change. It doesn’t matter what colour you are, or what time in history you are from, we will create idols which speak to us viscerally. I am not really doing anything different. The advantage I have is the internet, two thousand years of art history available at my finger tips and the ability to compare and contrast, and initiate dialogues. Also, 200 years of psychology and human psychoanalysis, and the realisation that actually the human need to create is far more important to understand than what is actually being done.

Maryam Eisler: What inspires you today?
Hugo Wilson: I am far more interested in process than I have been for years. I’m also looking at artists like Auerbach and Kossoff. Lovely Bacon… sexy Francis! Physical Freud…I have equally realised that these intuitive works take a really long time to create. I know that sounds odd, but, in my case, it’s been twenty years of me in the making, from being classically trained to using a sanding machine!

Maryam Eisler: Why so long?
Hugo Wilson: The process is the reason why it took so long. I think I rather stupidly assumed and felt that these were big physical gestures done in a week, but no. I suppose growing older makes you relaxed. But did I trust the process even last year? No. And it was my wonderful panel maker, that called me and he said, ‘Hugo you have ordered ten panels last week, and I came into your studio and every single one of them has been painted on and then painted over. Are you okay?’ To which I said ‘I am not, actually!’  All of that feeds into what is happening now and the weird joy that I am experiencing. I am not often this joyful, trust me!

Artworks by Hugo Wilson. Photograph by Maryam Eisler.

Maryam Eisler: You seem able to seamlessly move across mediums. Your sculpture works in particular appear to be an extension of your paint brush, with a few ‘sculptural’ interventions.
Hugo Wilson: Yes, that is what I want. I think that, with these new sculptures particularly, I can be “brave” in a way that I would find trite if they were to be paintings. In a way, given that I have not had a formal training in sculpture, I feel I can be braver with it. I am taking an object and in a way re-contextualising it. Just like a scholar rock, but even a scholar rock is a ready-made. I think it talks about what I am interested in, which is the human need to make systemic ideology. Three thousand years of non-monotheistic history has been placed on these rocks. But, it’s a fucking rock! It is bonkers. These things are going in Christie’s for millions!

Even though I had classical training, I then did a very conceptual master’s degree at City & Guilds [of London Art School] and I had a brilliant tutor called Reece Jones. He was an absolutely wonderful man and a good artist. He was also an angry young man; he would punch me for saying that. Most importantly, he made me ask these questions before starting any artwork: Should this be an artwork? Should it be an artwork made by me? And if it should be an artwork made by me, what is the delivery? And in the case of these bronzes, they are far better than anything I could ever draw. I also like the surface which you really notice. I don’t want to talk about the history of sculpture at all. Hence, my choice of sand casted bronze with its non-finish look, like stone or wood. It is a finish which doesn’t hold any historical position, and that suits me.

Find out more: hugowilson.com
Follow Hugo Wilson on Instagram: @hugowilsonstudio

Gaggenau’s new combi-steam ovens 400 and 200 series

Last week, LUX attended the launch of Gaggenau’s new combi-steam ovens, presented alongside underwater artworks by artist Jason deCaires Taylor and food prepared by executive chef Phil Fanning

Steaming food might be the latest trend in healthy eating, but it’s also a way of enhancing the natural flavours of ingredients. With an increased capacity of 50 litres, Gaggenau’s new combi-steam ovens offer chefs – both budding and professional – the opportunity to get creative with their steaming.

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At the brand’s launch event in Fitzrovia, London, executive chef and owner of restaurant Paris House Phil Fanning showed guests the kind of results that a Gaggenau combi-steam oven can achieve with not just vegetables, but also meats, baked goods or pastry.

Chef Phil Fanning preparing dessert using a Gaggenau combi-steam oven

Gaggenau’s ovens work by combining hot air with varying percentages of humidity (ranging from 100 to 0%), whilst an in-built probe monitors the temperature and continually revises the estimated cooking time to ensure best results and the preservation of nutrients.

Read more: Chef Alain Ducasse on the importance of telling your own story

Gaggenau’s new ovens shown alongside artworks by Jason deCaires Taylor

Strikingly sleek and minimalist in design, the ovens were presented alongside a series of intriguing glass-encased underwater sculptures by British artist Jason deCaires Taylor. Made from pH-neutral cement, deCaires Taylor’s sculptures are ordinarily encountered on the seabeds where they transform into coral reefs as they are consumed and naturally transformed by aquatic microorganisms. Viewed in this new setting, the artworks appeared even more otherworldly, whilst also inviting guests to reflect on the poeticism of the steaming process.

For more information visit: gaggenau.com/gb/

‘Dead End’ (2018), Loie Hollowell

Frank Cohen is one of the UK’s most renowned art collectors. Since selling his DIY business in 1997, he has built up a collection of more than 2,000 artworks by classic and contemporary artists. Here, he tells us how he caught the collecting bug, and which destinations are the most interesting for art right now.

Frank Cohen. Image by Jonathan Straight

1. How did you first get into collecting?

As young as 7 years old I started to collect cigarette packets. In those days there were not so many brands and the cigarette packets had wonderful graphic designs on them. I asked all my aunts and uncles and my mothers friends to save the packets when they had smoked the cigarettes as everyone smoked in those days. 68 years ago it was fashionable and I kept them in mint condition always.

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When I was about 14 years of age I started collecting coins. One day when I went to a cinema in Manchester the cashier gave me a Victorian penny in my change. I had never seen one before so I took it to a numismatist, which was next to the cinema and he gave me half a crown for it! I collected coins for nearly 20 years and had one of the biggest collections of pattern coins in England.

Pattern coins are coins that were presented to the Royal Mint to be picked to go into circulation. I collected the ones that were never put into circulation, making them very rare. There were only about 10 minted of each, one always went to the Victoria & Albert Museum for their collection and the Queen gets one.

‘Glasgow Docks’ (1947), L.S. Lowry

2. Do you have an all time favourite artist?

I have all time favourite artists during different times in my collection. When I started collecting there was no contemporary art scene, so I collected Modern British art but if I could have afforded to buy anything I would have bought Picasso or Monet.

When I first started buying I bought Edward Burra, a fantastic English painter who only painted in water colours that looked like oils. I also bought L.S.Lowry, one of the greatest British painters of the last 100 years. In the late ‘70’s I bought Dubuffet and Miró from Leslie Waddington who let me pay for them over 2 or 3 years, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to collect them. Afterwards he offered me Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and Mark Rothko, that were actually very cheap but I still couldn’t afford them. Today they are worth millions! You win some and lose some and I don’t regret anything or anything I bought.

3. If your collection could speak, what would it say about you?

My collections speak to me and my wife Cherryl, who has always been very important and supportive in my career. We’ve really collected together. I don’t care what anybody else thinks. It would say to me ‘I love you because you have made the right choice’.

‘La Vie en Rose’ (1980), Jean Dubuffet

4. What’s the most interesting destination for art right now and why?

I suppose the Far East is an interesting destination right now for buyers but because the world is global there are some really good artists coming through from Brazil, Africa, Thailand and Romania. America, Germany and London, France and Italy were always at the forefront.

Read more: Contemporary ceramicist Edmund de Waal at The Frick Collection, NYC

5. Have you ever doubted your artistic judgment?

I have never doubted my artistic judgment because it’s me buying the artist. To put it another way I have bought some terrible things over the years and some great things – how do you judge it, how much money is it worth? I have done very well but I haven’t bought for that reason. I have artists that will never ever increase in value but I love them still.

‘Anonymous Now’ (2019), Chloe Wise

6. What’s your exhibition recommendation for this year?

My recommendations for this year mean nothing except to me, as no doubt people that read this article will naturally have a different view. Besides all the classic artists I have collected over the years, I have also bought young artists as well right now like Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Alex de Corte, Chloe Wise, William Monk and Loie Hollowell.

Read more of our 6 Questions interviews here. 

One of Rachel Whiteread’s so-called shy sculptures, ‘Cabin’ (2016), on Governors Island in New York, her first major permanent public commission in the United States

Rachel Whiteread, winner of the 2019 Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon award, has illuminated the world’s art scene with her blazing originality, her wit and her unique perspectives, for more than 30 years. She speaks to Darius Sanai about creating something out of nothing, the joys of London, and the importance of being bored

Rachel Whiteread in her studio, 2011

LUX: Your works create something from nothing. Is it a kind of anti-matter that you are creating?
Rachel Whiteread: That’s exactly right. I’ve always tried to make something out of nothing.
Something I used to do at college a lot was just stare at a white wall or a floor and visualise what I’d want to make from that space. I’d see what it was, so it was still something but it was out of nothing. It’s still a practice that I do, I suppose like a meditation, but I didn’t ever call it that. It was just, you know, staring at the wall.

There’s probably not enough staring into space done now. Everything’s always about looking at images, like on Instagram. Everything is just so full up that what I try and do is empty out. You wouldn’t think it from the chaos of my studio, though.

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LUX: Is there just too much social media around now?
Rachel Whiteread: Yes, I think so. People don’t know how to be bored anymore – I must have been saying this for years. Being bored is one of the most essential things of life, because what you do is you then work out how to not be bored, and by doing that, you open up a creativity in your mind. Even if it’s just deciding that you’re going to cook something or you’re going to read –whatever your creative outlet is – people just don’t do this anymore. They’ll scroll through Instagram instead and look at thousands of everyone else’s borrowed images. I think there’s something to be said about really slowing down the brain; it can be a very useful thing to do.

LUX: Will distraction of this kind affect future artists?
Rachel Whiteread: I suspect it will, but I also think that there’s going to be a backlash to all this and that people will just start to shut down a bit and try to be quieter about what they do, because you can’t just scream and shout about it. It’s hard for young artists. I’ve got two sons, they’re 13 and 17, and it’s difficult for them to be young anymore, to be able to play and enjoy life in a certain way, because you can just turn on the computer and you’re immediately entertained and distracted.

‘Shack I’ (2014), one of two concrete casts of cabins in the Joshua Tree National Park in California.

LUX: How do you decide what to create next?
Rachel Whiteread: Normally one thing leads to another, to be honest. I have had an exceptionally busy year de-installing and installing at the Tate, in Vienna and Washington. I have just come back from Washington where the exhibition has just opened, and also cast a very large piece, another one of my ‘shy’ sculptures, that’s in the Dalby Forest in Yorkshire – it’s a cast of a Nissen hut that’s been made as part of the First World War centenary. I have had a busy time doing all of that, and I am now having a breather before I get going again. I am at the pre-production phase of a new body of work.

LUX: Do you ever consider the reaction to your work while you are planning it?
Rachel Whiteread: I am very fortunate to be in a position to be able to do what I like. There has been a lot of controversy over various works I have made, but this is not something I court, it is simply in the nature of the objects.

‘Cushion’ (2006)

LUX: What gives you the most satisfaction?
Rachel Whiteread: Luckily for me, the show at the Tate gave me an enormous amount of satisfaction. It was five years in the planning and has travelled very successfully to Europe and America including the National Gallery of Art in Washington. I have very much enjoyed doing the retrospective, looking back at thirty years of work – it has been really helpful.

Read more: PalaisPopulaire & Berlin’s Cultural Revolution

LUX: What are your frustrations in making your art?
Rachel Whiteread: It is becoming harder and harder to find large studio spaces. Gone are the days when artists could colonise derelict areas in London. Consequently there is a lack of places for young artists to work. Luckily for me I am able to stay in London and carry out some of the more ambitious things, but it is very expensive. But what are the annoyances? That the day isn’t long enough, that I’m getting older and don’t have quite as much energy – I’ve got a bad back [laughs].

LUX: You’re carting heavy materials around…
Rachel Whiteread: That’s down to years of not looking after my back properly; it catches up with you. You think you’re forever young, especially when people were constantly calling you the YBAs [Young British Artists].

LUX: London – is it an integral part of who you are?
Rachel Whiteread: It’s totally integral to who I am. At one point we looked into moving out to Norfolk or Essex. To get a place with land where I could build a big studio, but I thought, actually I can’t. I need the frisson and busyness of London.

‘Nissen Hut’ (2018)

LUX: What do you love about London?
Rachel Whiteread: I love the multicultural world, the soupiness of London. It’s the one of the best cities of the world. I love the way the people are mostly extremely tolerant of each other. I love the way it’s an enthusiastic city and it has so much to offer culturally – even if you don’t go to that much you still feel it around you – it’s a bit like osmosis, it touches you somehow. I love the green spaces, I love the built-up spaces, I love the Thames, I love the canals, I love the way in which London can have these complex urban spaces and then these very beautiful but still very urban spaces. And so much has been done with trying to get wildlife going. It’s just a great community – a load of really good, interesting villages all stuck together – that’s sort of what London is, isn’t it?

LUX: After so much progress in tolerance over the past few years, are things now going the other way?
Rachel Whiteread: Completely, yes. Terrifying. I hate to think what we’re going to be leaving our children and grandchildren. There’s a sour feeling in the world at the moment and it’s not pretty.

LUX: It’s inexplicable, isn’t it? There are a people with a lot of money feeling angry.
Rachel Whiteread: A lot of it has got to do with Brexit. There are so many people who were sold a line that they just didn’t know what they were voting for. And the reality of that is sinking
in. It’s an appalling waste of money, time and energy – and for what, in the end? In the UK in particular there are a lot of people who are angry in London, and outside London, too, and quite rightly so for being neglected and ignored. Money is not coming in to pay for things that are needed, resources are at an all-time low, and there’s not enough housing. So for all of those things it’s a really complex city to live in, but when things work, they work brilliantly and people cross-culturally can really rub shoulders together and get a lot out of each other and that’s a great thing.

‘Untitled’ (100 Spaces) (1995), installed at Tate Britain in 2017

LUX: Your art has a blend of seriousness and wit – would you agree that this also describes yourself as a person?
Rachel Whiteread: My work is me, I couldn’t make anything else. It is totally me, it’s how I think, how I exist in the world.

Read more: Gender stereotypes and the male nude in art

LUX: Is there a responsibility with your influence? Are you tempted to use it?
Rachel Whiteread: I’ve got two children and a job, and I don’t have the energy for it. Maybe later on. My parents were both very political and it’s certainly in my DNA. The ways I can influence people are by giving lectures, by sharing my work.

LUX: How does it feel to be the Whitechapel Gallery’s Art Icon for 2019?
Rachel Whiteread: It’s nice to be recognised for the many decades of hard work, and everyone likes to be recognised. It is a great honour. The Whitechapel is a fantastic institution doing fantastic things and has such a great and rich history.

‘Holocaust Memorial’ (1995-2000) in the Judenplatz, Vienna

LUX: Do you believe that gallery funding should come from the state?
Rachel Whiteread: When they’re very much community-led galleries, which places like the Whitechapel are, then I would say yes. They’re for a community as they’ve always been. It’s just extremely hard raising money for galleries, and now there are a lot more than there used to be, they all need funding and they all have to find ways of making money. It’s complicated. But they are therefor the public and therefore the government should fund them.

LUX: Does the amount of money being spent in the art market seem strange?
Rachel Whiteread: The whole economics of the art market doesn’t sit comfortably with me. A lot of artists are generally left-ish, and a lot of them find that dichotomy difficult, because it’s a tough thing to think about.

LUX: Is it true that the punk movement influenced your generation in the art world?
Rachel Whiteread: Absolutely. I grew up in the seventies in London, I went to a few punk gigs. They were a bit rough for me to be honest [laughs]. But I was quite young at the time, so I’d go to the Marquee in Wardour Street [in Soho]. The gigs were pretty scary but they had an enormous influence upon me.

‘Monument’ (2001), installed in Trafalgar Square, London as part of the Fourth Plinth Project

LUX: Did you have any idea at art school what kind of art you would go on to produce?
Rachel Whiteread: No, the whole development of making my art was a gradual process, but certainly the seeds were sown at Brighton [Polytechnic] and the Slade [UCL London].

LUX: Did you always plan to be an artist?
Rachel Whiteread: Not initially, though my mother was an artist and there was always a strong familial influence. However, I always imagined that I would have to teach in order to sustain my practice as an artist. I have been very fortunate though, and my art has supported me.

LUX: Was it serendipity that you and the other Young British Artists, such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, were contemporaries?
Rachel Whiteread: It was total serendipity. People say it was a movement, but it just happened to be a certain moment in time where this political and creative energy came out. One of the artists I relate to most is Sarah Lucas. She grew up just down the road from me and I didn’t know her when we were children – we came from very different backgrounds. I was from a middle-class home and she was from a working-class family, but there was definitely the London energy in the work we both made. The YBAs were simply how the stars were aligned and we were fortunate to be doing our work together at the same time.

Rachel Whiteread is the Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon 2019 with Swarovski. Visit whitechapelgallery.org/support/art-icon-swarovski

This article was first published in the Winter 19 Issue.

Installation view of 21st Century Women curated by Fru Tholstrup and Jane Neal at Unit London, Mayfair

Marking the centenary since some women won the right to vote in Britain, London’s newest Mayfair gallery Unit celebrates the work of female artists with a major group exhibition

21st Century Women at Unit’s new space on Hanover Square opened in the wake of new research from the Freelands Foundation which showed that although 66% of postgraduate arts students in 2017 were female, just under a third of artists represented by London’s major galleries were women.

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“Though significantly more women than men enter art school in Britain, only a fraction of these women continue to actively practice as artists beyond the age of 30,” commented the exhibition’s co-curator Jane Neal. “Nonetheless, a growing number of this minority of female artists are responsible for breaking new ground and contributing to the pioneering movements of today. It is high time that women artists attained greater visibility in the art world – and there is no excuse for discrepancy in price points between men and women in the primary or in the secondary markets.”

Maggi Hambling, Edge I, oil on canvas, 2014

We speak to two of the artists taking part in the exhibition; painter Anna Freeman Bentley, and sculptor and painter Maggi Hambling whose work was recently selected by Tracey Emin to feature in a exhibition by female artists from Deutsche Bank’s collection at Frieze London and Frieze Masters

Read more: 5 exhibitions to see in London this month + 1 to miss

Maggi Hambling, Trump, oil on canvas, 2018

Maggi Hambling

1. Do you feel that your work is interpreted in a particular way because you’re a female artist?
Certainly not!

2. Tell us about how the Trump oil on canvas piece came about?
I scraped all the oil paint off my palate, onto the canvas… this revolting coalescence embodies everything I feel about Trump.

Anna Freeman Bentley, Gathering II, oil on canvas, 2018

Anna Freeman Bentley

1. You’re a relatively recent masters graduate of art school, why do you think so many women train but less than a third of artists represented by major galleries in London are female?

I could answer this question with examples from my experience and my own reflections, but they can’t necessarily be applied more generally. In some ways I don’t know. I wish that the galleries just represented the best art that is being made today, and if that were the case then the gender split would be about 50/50. But in all honesty, I think we all know that the structure, like most other things, is built in favour of men.  There’s no one person or one thing responsible for it, it’s just the way it has been for centuries. But I do think that change is happening, it just takes a long time.

Read more: Whitechapel Gallery’s Iwona Blazwick on the power of education

2. Do you feel obliged to create art that promotes female empowerment?

No. I don’t think men feel obliged to promote a male agenda much when making their work. For me, to feel empowered as a women artist is not to push a female agenda but to just make my work with confidence and ambition.

Anna Freeman Bentley, Foyer, oil on panel, 2017

3. Your work explores the design, function and use of architecture and how this changes through time and the resulting state of mind that places engender. In light of the gender imbalance in architecture and construction, does your work explore inequality?

The primary interest of my practice is exploring psychologies of space and a sense of emotive potential evoked by certain interior settings. Therefore, for me, my work isn’t about gender and inequality. Having said that, I recognise that some of my subject matter touches on gender issues. But I don’t see my work as being politicised in that way. Ideas of tension can be read into the work but these are not limited only to inequality about gender, there is tension in economic inequality, historical and current use, as well as other dichotomies relating to the objects that fill the space.

’21st Century Women’ curated by Fru Tholstrup and Jane Neal runs until 31st October 2018 at Unit London, Hanover Square, London. For more information visit: theunitldn.com

John Virtue Landscape No.174 (1990 – 1992) acrylic emulsion charcoal gouache pencil black ink shellac on board. 181 x 298cm Courtesy of Albion Barn

This September, Fortnum & Mason in collaboration with art collector Frank Cohen will present an in-store exhibition of British landscape artist John Virtue. LUX Digital Editor Millie Walton explains why she’s already looking forward to it

John Virtue is no ordinary landscape painter. And I say that for all of those who are reading this and thinking landscape painter means traditional means boring. I am normally one of those people.

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John Virtue Untitled No.1 (2012-17) acrylic on canvas 183 x 183cm Courtesy of Albion Barn

For starters, Virtue’s paintings are monochromatic (i.e. no sunshine, flowers, cows, quaint farm buildings or windmills). They’re moody, turbulent, textured. His depictions of London are heavy, drizzling scenes of a kind of shadow city, bereft of all the usual iconic shapes. I’d go as far to say, it’s more of a mood than a landscape, and it’s one that any viewer – with or without knowledge of art history, or in fact, of London – can feel. A visual poetry.

Read more: India’s most significant modernist painter S.H.Raza at Piramal Museum of Art, Mumbai

Trained at Slade School of Fine Art, Virtue now resides in North Norfolk where he gleans inspiration from the harsh, flat, stretching expanses, whipped by wind and rain. Mixing swathes of white acrylic paint with black ink and shellac, his paintings are charged with the energy of the weather, dripping with the un-predictability and almost frightening power.

John Virtue Landscape No.43 (1986-87) black ink shellac gouache on paper laid on board 147 x 220 cm Courtesy of Albion Barn

The juxtaposition of these huge, dark canvases set amongst Fortnum & Mason’s gleaming colours and grandeur will be an intriguing one.

Fortnum’s X Frank 2018 is curated by Robert Upstone and runs from 10th September to 20th October at Fortnum & Mason, Piccadilly. For more information on the exhibition visit: fortnumandmason.com/events/fortnums-x-frank-2018