Tag: port magazine

At Home with Mark Hix

From his south London home, the celebrated chef, restaurateur and food writer speaks to The Modern House about what modern living means to him

I lived in Shoreditch for 20-odd years, as well as Notting Hill, and I wasn’t considering south London before I bought this place. My friend Richard, who’s a search agent, showed it to me on The Modern House website, and I zipped straight over on my scooter to take a look. I said yes straight away. I didn’t even come for a second viewing because I knew I was going to redo it.

Space was the main consideration, but I’ve found that Bermondsey is a really interesting area. It’s also easy to get to any of my restaurants… I nip over London Bridge to get to the Oyster & Chop House. I’m close to lots of bridges here! I visit at least two of my restaurants every day. I’m not really in the kitchen any more; I’ve got lots of other things to look at, mostly overseeing the creative side.

This place is my home, and I also do some work from here: writing and experimenting. I might start doing some cookery demonstrations, like I do in my Kitchen Library at the Tramshed.

I worked with Tekne on the refurbishment. Originally they’re shop fitters, but they’ve fallen into doing hotels and restaurants. They did my Bankside restaurant, Hixter, and the one in Soho. I recently put them in touch with my friend Robin Hutson, who owns The Pig Hotels, so they’ve done the last two projects for him. When Robin buys old buildings for the hotels he clears them out, and he’s given me a few salvaged things for the flat – a shower and some old Crapper loos.

I designed the space, and then Tekne worked as the contractors and architects. I gave them the ideas, and they put it all on paper. We gutted the whole thing, taking it right back to the bare bricks. We played around with materials: the wine racks are made out of scaffold planks picked up from building sites around here – some we paid for and others we were given for nothing. The same with the bookcase. Because they’re old, they’ve got a bit of character.

The kitchen counter is made from liquid metal. You can pour it over MDF to create curves at the edges, and you don’t get joins. Underneath are pieces of cast concrete from Retrouvius; I think they were originally columns in a mid-century office block. I wanted simple, natural oak units, something that would wear in naturally. Cooker hoods are normally so boring, so we went to a foundry and made a semi-industrial-looking unit that’s wrapped over the top of a normal extractor. We went back to the natural brick on the wall behind, which would have been the end wall of the original factory.

The spoon on the wall is a Michael Craig-Martin – it’s the cover of one of my books, The Collection. The ‘Vacancies’ neon piece is a Peter Saville art piece that he made. The fridge came from an antiques shop in Paris. It was made in the 1800s – originally they would have put a block of ice in the middle compartment to keep the whole thing cold. The refrigeration guy that I use for my restaurants converted it and made the top bit to match the bottom. It’s got different sections: dairy, wine, glasses, negroni cabinet!

I buy a lot of stuff from junk shops and reclamation yards. The kitchen lights are from Trainspotters in Gloucestershire, and I’ve collected midcentury Stilnovo lights over the years.

I bought the cocktail cabinet years ago at the Paul Smith shop. It had a horrible Chinese painting on the front, so I got my artist friend Mat Collishaw to make a replacement. The taxidermy mice in bell jars are by Polly Morgan, and the Bridget Riley is one of the first pieces I ever bought. There’s a shop across the road – a sort of Lithuanian shop – and they were selling what I thought was a mandolin, but I couldn’t work out why it was so big; it turns out it dates from 1903 and was used for slicing white cabbage.

The guitar comes from an event in Lyme Regis called Guitars on the Beach. A friend of mine said: ‘If I get a Fender guitar sponsored, can you ask Tracey Emin to draw on it?’, and she did. I thought it was going to be a silent auction, but it ended up being a raffle at a pound a ticket. So I bought a thousand tickets for £1,000 to narrow the chances down! It’s signed by Paul McCartney as well. I go back to Lyme Regis maybe three weekends a month. I’m part of the local community, I suppose. I get involved in local charity work and I do a food festival, which brings quite a few people to the area.

I made the garden room because the little terrace is quite small. In the summer you can open the doors up and feel like you’re inside and outside. I put the bi-fold doors in, and then got lots of crazy plants from Covent Garden. It’s a nice place to have tea in the morning. I found the old plantation chair on eBay. The artwork is by my mate Henry Hudson, who works in plasticine. That’s an Australian Moreton Bay Bug [on the ceiling]: it’s a sort of prehistoric crab. Then this is an old python skin I found rolled up in a box in a junk shop. I guess there’s a touch of the macabre, but really I just thought this room was crazy enough that you could put anything in it.

I’ve got a fishing and shooting cupboard here. The wallpaper is by one of the guys who works in the gallery, Tom Maryniak; he’s done a few different types of wallpaper in the loos at my Bankside restaurant. And then the wallpaper in the main bathroom is by Jake and Dinos Chapman.

The photographs above the bed are by Susannah Horowitz – she was one of the winners of the Hix Award. Every time we do the award I end up buying something. And this one isn’t from the Hix Award: it’s just two fucking flamingos with a little bird watching… I forget what its name is! The rooflight was already here; it was quite a weird space before, with a pool table and not much else.”

This feature is an excerpt from The Modern House, read more here

 

 

Food Photography Over the Years

Jo Ann Callis, Black Table Cloth, 1979
Spanning fine art, fashion and advertising, the author of Feast for the Eyes discusses the rich history of food photography through the lens of five influential images 
 
The first-ever photograph of food was taken in 1827 by photography pioneer Nicéphore Niépce, who captured a set table within a ten-hour exposure time using a camera obscura, commonly referred to as a pinhole camera. Over the last two centuries, food photography has continued to evolve. Since the emergence of digital cameras in the 1980s and the internet in the 1990s, it has remained a focus in photography, although rarely has it been recognised as an important subject. Meanwhile, the rise of social media and blogging culture has meant that food is in fact being photographed more than ever. 
 
In response to this, writer and independent curator Susan Bright’s book Feast for the Eyes is the first publication to explore food photography’s significant history. Bright’s book traces the development of the genre and celebrates photographers who have played a critical role in conveying ideas that go far beyond the food they have captured. Irving Penn, Stephen Shore, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Martin Parr are just a few names featured. “We understand what it means to photograph food more than ever before,” she explains. “It’s never just about the food, it’s about everything else. It’s about the person, always. Food is a symbol.”
 
Here, Bright discusses five photographs from Feast for the Eyes taken between 1947 and 2008.
Victor Keppler, (General Mills advertising campaign—Apple Pyequick), 1947
“Keppler was amazing at advertising and colour photography. This image is made up of only four colours but it is instantly recognisable as apple pie. He was so good at paring down colours in advertisements. It is very American and nationalistic; nothing is more American than apple pie. It is about the atomic age of American shortcuts which we can understand immediately. I think it is complete genius, using photography to short circuit the brain.”
Harold Edgerton, Milk Drop Coronet, 1957
“This photograph is just fantastic. Edgerton was a scientist and would claim he was never an artist, but there is a joy to this photograph. There is a mixture of science, art, wonderment and entertainment. I’ve seen this picture a million times and I still go: ‘wow’. We tend to look at the history of art through art photography but it was in science and commercial photography where huge innovations were being made.”
Jo Ann Callis, Black Table Cloth, 1979
“This is a very puzzling image, you’re not sure where you are.  It’s not a diner, it’s not a home; it feels very curious. We question why there is an empty bowl and strawberries in milk. There is something illicit and cinematic about Callis’ work, a tenseness and obsessiveness about it that I really like. Her use of colour is extraordinary.”
Martin Parr, Untitled (Hot Dog Stand), 1983–85
“There is a tenderness to Parr’s images of Britain, but this photograph is quite humorous. The Last Resort was his strongest body of work for me, where he manages to smash through certain British stereotypes as well as rely on them. It was really important to show the idea of the ritual, whether it be a birthday party or going to the cinema and having popcorn, or going to the beach and getting a hotdog.”
Tim Walker, Self-Portrait with Eighty Cakes, 2008
“Tim Walker manages to tap into the childlike quality in us. When you see a Tim Walker photograph you just know its him because he pushes fantasy further than anyone would in a very sweet way. It’s completely fantastical and joyful. He includes food in his photographs because it adds another layer of fantasy and narrative. It reminds me of kids stashing their sweets under the bed but he’s just putting it out there.”
 
Feast for the Eyes is out now, published by Aperture

Exploring Brutalist Sydney

Discover Australia’s lesser-known Brutalist architecture with a guide to the raw concrete wonders of Sydney and its suburbs
 
“In giving physical form during the last vestiges of architectural modernism, Sydney’s Brutalism, which finished late by international standards, manifested in a variety of building types for a confident Pacific-rim city,” writes Sydney-based architect and urban designer Glenn Harper in his introduction to the Sydney Brutalist Map. Harper has a passion for Australia’s lesser-known Brutalism and since receiving a travelling scholarship for his Sydney Brutalist Project, has recently collaborated with independent map publishers Blue Crow Media to create an architectural map of the city, which also includes his own photographs.
 
“Having a direct and truthful exposure of material in either béton brut finish, precast concrete or textured brickwork, the uniqueness of Sydney’s Brutalism responded to a city of distinct topographic and urban character,” Harper explains. “With the first Brutalist buildings dating to the early 1960s and being houses within steep ‘bushland’ settings or educational buildings within new university campuses, the later projects of the 1980s were monumental and distinctly civic.”
 
Sydney is the latest city spotlighted in a series of Brutalist maps, joining London, Paris and Washington. The map features 50 of the most inspiring examples of Brutalist architecture in Sydney and its suburbs, from Pennant Hills to Sutherland and Curl Curl to Penrith. 
 
The Brutalist Sydney Map is out now
 
Photography by Glenn Harper 
 
 

 

A Brief History of British Subcultures

From Northern Soul to Grime, look back at the defining styles of five youth movements from the last 70 years

Skins & Punks by Gavin Watson
“People said subcultures died with punk, teds, mods, skins and new romantics but that’s ridiculous,” says Jim Stephenson, founder of photography organisation, Miniclick. “You have rave and hip-hop, you have garage and grime, and they are equally as energetic as any of the subcultures that have gone before them,” he continues.
 
“Fashion is arguably the most significant element of all these scenes as that is the outward way of expressing the group these young people are choosing to identify with. When you say ‘punk’ you have an image immediately of what that means. Subcultures encompass a style and a language.”
 
Presented as part of Brighton’s Fringe Festival, Stephenson has curated Behind the Beat, a group photography exhibition exploring British subcultures from 1955 to 2017. Running every weekend throughout May, the show and a programme of talks are investigating the fashion, music, politics and stories that have defined subcultures in the UK. Ten photographers including Elaine Constantine, Derek Ridgers, Ken Russell, Dean Chalkey and Olivia Rose share their work documenting some of these iconic youth movements.
 
Here are five of Port’s favourites.  
 
Teddy Girls
Teddy Girls by Ken Russell

Ken Russell’s 1955 photographs of one of the first female youth cultures to exist are some of the only documents of the teddy girls from the time. Russell photographed them on the streets of Notting Hill, at funfairs, on derelict East End bomb sites and outside the Seven Feathers Club. 

Teddy fashions were inspired by the Edwardian period during the early years of the 20th century, their dress included loose fitting, velvet-collared jackets and narrow trousers. Some teddy girls would put a feminine spin on the typical teddy style with straw boater hats, brooches, espadrilles and elegant clutch bags. They collected rock’n’roll magazines and records, attended dances and went to the cinema with the teddy boys. Most would also carry closed umbrellas but often would not open them, even in the rain. 

Northern Soul
Northern Soul by Elaine Constantine

Northern soul was a music and dance movement that grew out of the British mod scene in northern England in the late 1960s,  largely inspired by the faster tempo and darker sounds of mid-60s American soul music. Records emerging from the Northern Soul scene became known as ‘stompers’ for their soulful vocals and heavy beats. 

Early northern soul fashion included strong elements of classic Mod style, including button-down Ben Sherman shirts, blazers with centre vents and an unusual numbers of buttons, and brogue shoes. Later northern soul dancers began wearing lighter, loose fitting clothes for easier movement on the dance floor. This included high waisted baggy Oxford trousers and sports vests with leather-soled shoes. 

Skins & Punks

Skins & Punks by Gavin Watson

Gavin Watson grew up in High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire taking photographs of his friends and acquaintances. As a result, Watson captured two of the most iconic subcultures in 1980s Britain, which have become some of the defining documents of this period. Director Shane Meadows cited Watson’s photographs as an inspiration for his film This is England.

Ripped T-shirts and safety pins became a punk staple, as well as zips, studs, badges and armbands that were being used to make political statements. Towards the 1980s, punk fashion became even more politicised with mohawks, tattoos, studded chokers, Dr. Martens boots, and tartan. Women would wear leather skits and ripped fishnets, writing slogans and band logos on their t-shirts. Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood took punk to the mainstream with her fashion designs in the 1970s. 

78/87 London Youth 
78/87 London Youth by Derek Ridgers

Derek Ridgers started photographing London’s youth in the early 1970s with his documentation of the new romantics and the Blitz kids  in London streets and clubs. His series of images 78/87 concentrates on the decade after punk, when youth culture in London was full of diversity. As the punk rock era developed in the late 1970s, Ridgers devoted his time to the photographing London’s decadent club scene in its prime, capturing ravers, goths, punks, skinheads and fetishisits and various fashions that developed from these subcultures. 

Grime 

This is Grime by Olivia Rose

Grime music emerged in the early 2000s and has now become one of the most prominent British music subcultures. Grime evolved from previous electronic music such as UK garage and jungle, and is also influenced by hip-hop and dancehall music. As a new genre, it spread through pirate radio stations and underground scenes until the mid 2000s, when prominent artists brought their music into the limelight. Fashion is often minimal, and tracksuits and trainers are kept sharp and clean. Nike Air Max trainers have been a defining item in grime style and are still worn by many grime MCs. 

Behind the Beat is open every weekend in May, 10am to 6pm at Spectrum Photographic, Brighton

The Unlikely Chef: Harry Gesner

At his Malibu beach house, the influential Californian architect introduces Julia Sherman to a signature dish set to feature in her new cookbook 

Photography by Julia Sherman
Harry Gesner’s architecture heightens your awareness of the sun, the horizon, the water, the overwhelming improbability of being perched on the edge of a cliff. His work is an homage to the earth itself. He sketched his most famous project, the Wave House, directly on his handmade balsa-wood surfboard, bobbing in the ocean and looking back at the land that was his to adorn.
 
I first learned of Harry when I stumbled upon the little-known Scantlin House (referred to now as the Trustee House), which remains hidden behind a grove of trees on the Los Angeles Getty Museum grounds. It was built in 1965 and features a swimming pool that reaches under a rock wall and into the living room, an indoor waterfall and fern garden, two fireplaces, and sweeping views of the city. As soon as I stepped foot in this mysterious building, I accepted my mission to find its creator. 
 
Harry stopped surfing a couple of years ago (in his eighties), but he swims in the Pacific Ocean every morning. He has adventured around the world, befriended the most eccentric of characters, and loves to tell a good story. When I finally finagled my way into Harry’s Malibu beach house, a cylindrical building anchored by a cavernous central fireplace, he put on his chef’s hat (literally) and got to work. 
Harry Gesner’s Red Fresh Dates, Marcona Almonds, and Upland Cress Salad
Serves: 4 to 6
  
For the dressing
 
1 teaspoon flavourful honey such as buckwheat
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1 teaspoon minced shallot
3/4 teaspoon grated tangerine zest 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons olive oil
 
For the salad
 
2 cups (360 g) fresh whole dates
1/2 cup (55 g) chopped salted Marcona almonds
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 head Red Ruffles or Red Oak leaf lettuce
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
 
1. Make the dressing: Dissolve the honey in the vinegar in a large salad bowl. Add the shallot, zest, and mustard and stir to combine. Add the oil to the dressing in a slow stream, whisking to emulsify. 
 
2. Make the salad: Remove the base of the dates’ stems. Smash the dates with the broad side of a chef’s knife to crack them. Remove and discard the pits and toss the fruit in the bowl with the dressing.
 
3. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Toss the almonds with the oil and spread them on a baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, until golden brown. 
 
4. Wash and spin the lettuce and tear it into bite-size pieces. Toss it in the salad bowl, season with salt and pepper, and toss to coat with dressing. 
 
5. Sprinkle the almonds on top of the salad and serve immediately.
 
This is an excerpt from Julia Sherman’s forthcoming book, Salad for President: A Cookbook Inspired by Artists, available May 16. For more information, click here. 

A Moveable Feast: Noma Mexico

Whole grilled pumpkin with a kelp and avocado fudge

Inspired by Mexico’s rich food history, Copenhagen’s most famous restaurant has opened a temporary outpost in Tulum 

Noma in Copenhagen has been voted the world’s best restaurant three times. Since 2003, head chef and co-owner René Redzepi has taken an innovative approach to Nordic cuisine, with items like deep fried moss, edible flowers and ants all making appearances on the menu. While the original restaurant is relocating to Copenhagen’s Christiania neighbourhood, Redzepi has transported Noma to Tulum in Mexico for a seven week residency.
 
Staging successful pop-ups in Tokyo and Sydney, Redzepi and the team at Noma have been on the road for the last two years, but Noma Mexico is the third and most ambitious venture yet. Conceived as an open-air restaurant nestled between the jungle and the beach, it offers a meticulously researched tasting menu based on Mexican ingredients and traditions. For Redzepi, this was an opportunity to pay tribute to a country that has excited him for over a decade.
Noma Mexico
When the concept for Noma Mexico presented itself, Noma’s former sous chef, Rosio Sanchez, was the first person Redzepi asked to join the endeavour. She was brought up in Chicago by Mexican parents, from whom she learned a great deal about Mexican cuisine, ingredients and flavours. 
 
“For the last 6 months, Rosio, a small team and I have been traveling all throughout the country from Merida to Ensenada, from Oaxaca to Guadalajara, and everywhere in between,” says Redzepi. “We searched to find that special chile, to understand the seafood, to taste just a few of the infinite variations of mole, and to find inspiration in the vast and wonderful culture.”
 
To create new and compelling dishes, Redzepi and Sanchez also teamed up with Traspatio Maya – a nonprofit group of 15 Mayan communities situated across the Yucatan Peninsula – who provided them with hyper-local ingredients. Indigenous delicacies such as rare wild bee larva, pure sweet and sour melipona honey from the Calaukmul reserve, white naal teel corn and pumpkin seeds have been used to create an incredibly diverse 15-course menu. Other items include pinuela, tamarind, crickets, grasshoppers roasted in garlic, chile peppers, jackfruit, mangoes and Yucatan limes. Spice also appears throughout, with dishes ranging from cool masa broth with droplets of habanero oil to pasilla peppers with chocolate sorbet boiled in melipona honey. 
 
Noma Mexico is open until 28 May 
 
Photography by Jason Loucas 

Radical Fragrance

For Geza Schoen, founder of the cult fragrance label Escentric Molecules, blurring the boundaries between art and chemistry is key to innovation

Geza Schoen, the 48-year-old German founder of the cult fragrance label Escentric Molecules, does not talk much like a traditional perfumer. He dispenses with the airy, time-worn Proustian associations when describing scents, preferring to talk about the molecular components instead, and sounding more like a chemist in the process. One in particular, an aroma chemical called Iso E Super – which was developed in a laboratory in 1973 and appears in the background of many great perfumes – would become the genesis of the minimalist Escentric 01 and Molecule 01: fragrances launched by Schoen in 2006. “When I smelled Iso E Super for the first time I noticed why I had preferences for certain fragrances: they all contained a big chunk of it,” exclaims Schoen, who recalls giving the scent to a friend to wear in the 1990s that resulted in women chasing him down the street. “That’s when I realised it had a super power.”

Schoen’s idea was to propose two fragrances in homage: one with an unprecedented 65 per cent of the molecule blended with a handful of other notes, and the second even more radical interpretation to contain only the molecule in its purest form. Though his unique proposition was initially met with resistance, it soon became a word-of-mouth phenomenon on account of its animalic, woody, velvety and sensual qualities. “Molecule 01 is to perfume what Bauhaus is to Baroque,” says Schoen of his decision to challenge the traditional scent paradigm of combining synthetics with natural products, by simplifying the process to just one ingredient. “I wanted something cleaner.” 

Schoen has made a habit of always thinking outside the box, saying, “For me it’s natural to do things differently.” Born and raised in Kassel to parents who were both teachers, Schoen’s fascination with smell began when he was a teenager; he would get samples of perfume in the post, writing to fragrance companies asking them to send him their wares. By the age of 16, he could identify hundreds of different perfumes. “The sense of smell is still the most important sense we have, and the most fascinating.” Starting out training and working at the international fragrance manufacturers Haarmann & Reimer (now Symrise) for 12 years, he left after becoming disillusioned with how corporate the industry had become. He moved to London in 2001 to create a scent, Wode, for the London design duo, Boudicca.

The fragrance came in two versions: Scent and Paint, with the latter packaged in a silver spray-paint can that doused the wearer in a deep blue pigment similar to that which the ancient British queen, Boudicca, wore into battle. This was the start of a number of esoteric projects Schoen has worked on that push the boundaries of what can be achieved with fragrance, like Paper Passion – a scent that smells like a Steidl book and comes packaged in one. He has also conceived a series of fragrances made in tribute to smart women called ‘The Beautiful Mind’, and worked with artists such as Wolfgang Georgsdorf, for whom he made 64 odours for Smeller – an ‘olfactory organ’ that spectators can play like a piano to make aromascapes. 

But it’s with Escentric Molecules that the fullest expression of his scent philosophy remains, that of stripping things back “so that it’s very plain and very linear but it still smells great”. With its minimal packaging and unisex fragrances, Escentric Molecules is a modern concept that resonates with the times. “I think gendered fragrances are outdated,” he declares. “These days, people are changing their fragrances as often as they would change their jeans or their sneakers.” While scent 02 starred ambroxan (a key ingredient of ambergris), and for 03 the centrepiece was vetiver, Schoen recently launched series 04 with the sheer sandalwood molecule Javanol at its heart. He speaks of its “psychedelic freshness, as if liquid metal grapefruit peel was poured over a bed of velvety cream-coloured roses.” He amplified the fizzy grapefruit top notes in Escentric 04 with pink pepper and juniper, for an extra shot of freshness with a rose core, and base notes of balsamic ingredients. According to Schoen, using Javanol was challenging because “more than any other chemical I’ve used before, it gave direction to where the fragrance had to develop into.”

More than 10 years since launching his brand, Schoen is still enjoying playing at the boundaries between art and chemistry. “It wasn’t really my goal to change the perfume world,” he says. “I just wanted to make a fragrance for myself and my friends to wear.”

The Escentric Molecules 04 collection launches 25 April 2017

This article is taken from Port issue 20. To subscribe, click here.

Lead photography by Giles Revell

Questions of Taste: Douglas McMaster

Meet the pioneering chef and restaurateur behind the UK’s first zero-waste restaurant 
 
Douglas McMaster has to think more creatively than many chefs today. With his Brighton restaurant Silo, the 27-year-old is leading the country’s zero-waste movement. From sourcing to serving, his mantra is: ‘Waste is a failure of the imagination.’ Everything arrives to the restaurant directly from the farmers, cutting out processing, packaging and food miles. Compost machines are used to turn scraps and trimmings into compost that is then used to support the growth of even more produce. Given his uncompromising approach, the finesse of his dishes is even more impressive.
 
McMaster dropped out of school and, for him, the kitchen was the only place to go. He found it an environment he could be himself. ‘It was liberating as I hated that school made me feel like I was just another brick in the wall,’ he says. Since then he has gone on to win BBC Young Chef of the year and has worked at a handful of high profile restaurants such as St. John Bread & Wine in Spitalfields, London. He also ran a pop-up restaurant called Wasted in Sydney and Melbourne where he trialled his zero-waste techniques before opening Silo in 2014. ‘I worked under the grandmaster of zero waste – Joost Bakker. It was his idea, I just made it happen from day one,’ he explains. ‘I believe it is my mission to continue carrying the flag and I love to see other innovators in the industry doing the same.’

McMaster’s menus are driven by season and the environment. ‘If there is a large crop of cucumbers, we put cucumbers on the menu. If the forager finds mushrooms, then mushrooms it is. We don’t dictate nature, nature dictates us.’ Recently, he collaborated with Patron Tequila for a Secret Dining Society event, and alongside Mr Lyan founder Iain Griffiths, presented a zero-waste cocktail pairing menu. ‘We even printed the menus on 100% recycled agave to save the agave fibres from tequila production going to waste,’ he says. 

The Nottinghamshire native is intent on spreading the zero-waste message and believes that even small actions can be effective in making a difference. ‘Start by looking at every purchase as a vote. If you buy fast food you are voting for fast food to exist, if you buy organic food you are voting for an organic future, if you buy something with no packaging you are voting for zero-waste.’ 
 
Silo is located in Brighton’s North Laines
 
Photography by Xavier Buendia 

Stories of Success: Oliver Jeffers

In the new issue of Printed Pages, It’s Nice That speaks to the illustrator and artist about his projects, paintings and picture books

Photography by Matthew Tammaro

“I grew up in Belfast, everyone is a storyteller there,” says Oliver Jeffers sat in the offices of Harper Collins, a corporate lump of a building sat next to the Shard in London. He’s visiting the UK from his home in Brooklyn to promote his storybook called Imaginary Fred, written in collaboration with author Eoin Colfer. There’s a common misconception that Jeffers is just a storybook maker. It’s easy to see why, when his books, that include Lost and Found, How To Catch A Star, The Moose Belongs to Me and The Day the Crayons Quit, have been translated into over 30 languages worldwide and have won countless awards. He is, first and foremost an artist. An artist with an acute sense of what makes a story, and an insatiable curiosity about the world.

 As he describes his career to date, Oliver explains how he began to understand his own art, and began to use painting and drawing as a way of exploring the world around him. “When I was looking back at early paintings of mine, they were suggesting a story. Maybe they were a beginning, middle or end,” he says. “You might be looking at something that is full of energy and about to happen, or the aftermath of an event. You are connecting the dots in your head. You can paint kinetic energy on a 2D surface that has momentum or movement. I thought that was really interesting because the viewer can decide where it goes in their head.”

It’s these fragments of stories that have helped Oliver develop his career along two parallel paths. He firmly believes that a successful story lies in its structure – there must be a beginning, a middle and an end, but the extent to which you supply all the ingredients depends on what you are trying to achieve. “It started when I was making these individual images of a physical impossibility. Which was trying to capture something as intangible as a star. I thought these are series of really interesting images that hint at bits of a story. At one point it occurred to me the images sit better together than alone, and that I was making a book,” he explains.

That book was How to Catch A Star and the pursuit of the impossible, the drive to try and make sense of this sometimes nonsensical world, is apparent in his artwork. “There was a paradigm shift for me. My wife went to university to study engineering. When we first met and were discussing our university experiences she was just really bemused by the fact there is no right or wrong answer at art school. ‘Who says your work is right?’ she asked. ‘It’s all subjective, it’s all about the bullshit you come up with to back it up. There is no right or wrong answer.’ It just didn’t make sense to her,” he says, chuckling. “I realised there are two equally valid, but entirely opposing ways of viewing the world. Logic or emotion. Science or art. I started going off on a tangent to see if you could look at one aspect of life using both filters at the same time.”
Inspired by the perceived tension between unbridled creativity and art, Oliver started to place mathematical equations into his paintings, effectively telling a story or conveying an idea using emotion and logic on the same canvas. “I decided to make a still life painting of something that is very typical of Renaissance-style figurative painting. A picture that people would say effectively communicates emotion. Then, for logic, I thought let’s use a mathematical equation – because gestural brush strokes on a painting mixed with cold, clinical, precise numbers and mathematical symbols are the absolute opposite of each other,” he explains. “Rather than choosing something random, I decided to use an equation that would fit somewhat. Except, I don’t know anything about maths, I failed maths at school, I was an illogical thinker. So I went through an old set of encyclopedias that I had. I looked under light, and found an equation that represents light then chose an equation about the refraction of light going through glass.”
 
The painting was subsequently bought by a quantum physicist who assumed the painting was about Bell’s string theory. Oliver met with the buyer and his foray into philosophy and mathematics stepped up a notch. “The process of creating is helping me to understand. Otherwise the artworks wouldn’t be about questions, they would be about answers. I enjoy making objects that aesthetically pleasing – it’s not exactly the most efficient way of finding out things, but it’s enjoyable.” Ultimately, this understanding led to Oliver’s most ambitious and intriguing works to date: his dipped paintings.
 
Read the full article in Printed Pages SS17, out now.
 

Port Issue 20: Out Now

The New York issue is now on sale, featuring artist Julian Schnabel, the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik, Olympic fencer Peter Westbrook and more

Issue 20 of Port is our tribute to New York – a city that looms large in politics and popular opinion and larger still throughout style, culture and design. In it, we have gathered people and portrayals as big as the Big Apple itself.

Mounting a successful return to New York, our cover star for issue 20 is Brooklyn-born artist Julian Schnabel, who speaks to Kyle Chayka about his reputation as “the carnival man of contemporary art”, his recent exhibition at Pace Gallery and a film in the works. 

In the style section, we include our favourite looks from the Spring Summer 2017 Collections, and an editorial styled by Alex Petsetakis captures the colourful spirit of David Hockney’s poolside paintings with stripes and soft focus. Elsewhere, a design still-life shoot sees New York-native birds from the Wild Bird Fund photographed with organic designs including an Eames mobile for Vitra and a silver branch broach from Louis Vuitton.   

In the feature well, our design editor Will Wiles and photographer Robin Broadbent explore New York’s architectural motifs – from water towers to fire escapes – in a sprawling 38-page photo essay. Next, Adam Gopnik, a staff writer for the New Yorker for over 30 years, invites us into his home and shares an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, At the Stranger’s Gate. We also meet Peter Westbrook, the first black fencer to win an Olympic medal and founder of the Peter Westbrook Foundation.

Highlights from the Porter include a intimate guide to New York, with recommendations and anecdotes from Port readers and contributors including designer Philippe Starck, writer Will Self and restaurateur Alessandro Borgognone. Also in this section, Studio 54 legend Giorgio Moroder shares his experience producing Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’, Matthew Combs considers the city’s relationship with rats, and architect Daniel Libeskind muses on the drama and energy of the subway. 

Port Issue 20 is available from 12 April. To subscribe, click here