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​Private View: Francis Alÿs

The Belgian artist brings his Children’s Games to London’s Barbican for an immersive celebration of the universal ingenuity of play

Since 1999, Belgian artist Francis Alÿs has engaged with the universality of play while travelling the world, documenting the ingenuity of children’s games across different global contexts. Illuminating the limitlessness of children’s imaginations – transcending war and challenging circumstances – the games become intimate portraits of childhood against varied socio-political landscapes, with play as an invisible thread.

From ‘musical chairs’ in Mexico, to ‘leapfrog’ in Iraq, ‘jump rope’ in Hong Kong, and ‘wolf and lamb’ in Afghanistan, Alÿs’ decades spanning Children’s Games project becomes the center of Francis Alÿs: Ricochets – an immersive exhibition that turns London’s Barbican into a cinematic playground. In the first presentation of the video works in the UK, multi-screen installations construct a dialogue between distinct and distant regions, alongside a new body of animated films, depicting the simple gestures of hand games.

For a film by Catherine Hyland, created with the Barbican, Alÿs explores how games and creativity enable children to interact with their environments – while creating distance from nuances beyond their understanding. By triggering memories and establishing a commonality among viewers, Alÿs expands on the power of play as an invitation to enter a new dimension, and a means of escape from the conflicts that permeate the adult world. 

Francis Alÿs: Ricochets is on display at the Barbican Art Gallery until 1 September 2024.

Private View: Anna Dickinson

Profiling the British artist and the materiality of her sculptures for her first solo exhibition in Denmark at von Bartha, Copenhagen

British artist Anna Dickinson has been creating vessel-like objects for more than 45 years, expanding upon the distinct language between light and glass by enabling an unpredictable dialogue to occur through the materiality of her sculptures. As the foundations of Sentient / Forms, her first solo exhibition in Denmark at Copenhagen’s von Bartha gallery, 13 new pieces are dispersed as if alien, conscious beings on a foreign planet, developing sentience and inviting close examination of the interactions between them.

In a short film directed by Catherine Hyland – showing at von Bartha alongside the exhibited works – Dickinson engages with her artistic process and the motivations that power her work. Connected to her dyslexia and medical interventions, fragments from her daily life become quiet inspirations for her creative interventions and the way she views the world, playing with opacity, transparency and distortion to build forms intended to interact with their environment.

“The more I ride, the more I work with glass, I see these similarities. The hours and hours of grinding the glass to make it look perfect.”

Likening the hours spent perfecting her sculptures to the repetitive training she undergoes through her tenacity for riding dressage, from her London studio, Dickinson pours years of expertise and dedicated technical skills into her creations. As the forms evolve from hollow vessels to incorporate complex structures of small tubes, she reflects a fascination with engineering and combining different materials, developing resonant juxtapositions, rooted within her own experience through materiality over sentimentality.

'Moon Rock imagines a not-too-distant future when lunar mining could take the strain off material resources on earth'

Talking to Paul Holdengräber, design, architecture and literature lead a discussion of taste with Aesop’s creative minds

Paradoxically, taste is a matter of taste. Yet, the arts and our environment dissolve into creativity and the human psyche through osmosis, becoming reflections of the world we build around us. Quiet interventions within design and literature, art and architecture, are capable of constructing an aesthetic identity where none is intended, and for Aesop, its referential nature is borne entirely from the minds that conceived it – simply as the product of a philosophy, shared.

In the second of two films, created in partnership with Aesop, director Catherine Hyland captures the human approach to art and culture that feeds its philosophy. Opening up the conversation once more, American interviewer, curator and writer Paul Holdengräber engages with Aesop Creative Director Aï Kato and Head of Retail Design, Europe and Global Innovation, Jean-Philippe Bonnefoi, following the influence of art, architecture and great thinkers on the brand’s DNA. Comprehending Aesop’s principles through the simplicity it rests upon, Kato applies a critical eye to making the mundane exceptional; respecting the perfection of natural materials out of respect for the body, through meticulous care in their preparation.

From Aesop’s flagship store on London’s Regent Street, the film considers how deliberate actions and the illumination of thought translate into its understanding of the world – and its locations. For Bonnefoi, it’s about finding order in life so as to disrupt it creatively; following the rhythms of nature and embedding themselves within the natural order of their environment. Through his reflections, we explore the parameters of the brand and the harmonious expansion of these boundaries in the spaces Aesop inhabits; the art of disappearing, to be smelt before seen, yet maintaining an elegance that transcends its perception. 

Paul Holdengräber talks to Aesop's first employee about human interaction, sensory experiences and building the brand by communicating sensitivity 

In order to fully succumb to sensory experiences, the position that enables our comfortable passage into worlds unknown is entirely tied to our state of mind at that present time. It’s a state that can be eased through human interaction, allowing a sense of contentedness that invites new explorations.

Finding difference by disregarding the movements of others, and authenticity by resisting the hype they receive, Aesop Founding Associate and Chief Customer Officer Suzanne Santos founded the brand on an exchange of words and ideas. In a short film, directed by Catherine Hyland for Aesop, Santos and American interviewer, curator and writer Paul Holdengräber explore the importance of conversation in parallel to the brand’s ethos.

In its sensitivity to the world, and desire to communicate it, Aesop has developed through its storytelling – like its namesake, allowing sensory discovery to give way to clarity of thought. From its beginnings in Melbourne in 1987, Aesop has been driven by synergies: between bodies and the botanical preparations we expose them to, the ambience and aromas that dictate our environment, and the spaces that house their stores – each architecturally considered, intended to become woven into the fabric of the street on which they stand.

For Santos, every element of Aesop, from the vials and jars, to the architecture of each store location, is designed to underscore the formulas they contain. Shot within Aesop’s London Regent Street store, the conversation considers the importance of everyday philosophy and deep thinking to Aesop’s infallible sense of identity: solidified by silencing outside influences for the sake of authenticity. Centering the brand’s capability for “attending to people’s pleasure”, Holdengräber leads a journey into a space in which every minute detail is considered – mirroring the minutiae around us, and the shared systems of thinking that become the axis of human connection.