One of the best things about opening a hotel is getting to buy art to deck out the space. It was this task that took us to New York looking at Dutch artist Rik Meijers’s ‘Don’t do that anymore’ exhibition at the Friedman Benda gallery in New York (oh la la, la vie est dure).
Meijers’ paintings depict those for whom things have gone wrong – junkies, drunks, vagrants, drop-outs – the others, the outsiders, the down and outs. At the same time, they also channel a feeling that I think most of us humans feel from time to time – that feeling after a few too many wines, when you’ve had a shit week, when your life is not where you thought it would be (just turned 30, a bit hung-over, without a ‘proper’ job…), and you are on that verge of darkness.
Dominic van den Boogers (author and director of De Ateliers in Amsterdam) describes Meijers’ work in the exhibition publication (if you can get your hands on a copy it’s well worth it)
The exhortation is all the more poignant when you know that Bubba Free John (aka Adi Da Samraj aka Da Free John aka Franklin Jones) was by all accounts himself a lot of an alco/junkie and forced to flee the US after being accused of mentally and sexually abusing many of his female followers.
“The title ‘Don’t do that anymore’ (in Dutch, ‘Doe dat niet meer’) refers to the way that people always lapse back into making the same old mistakes and are prisoners of their own weaknesses and shortcomings. This exhortation is a quote from Bubba Free John, an obscure guru from the 1970s. A self-declared incarnation of God on earth, Bubba Free John was the spiritual leader of the Californian sect The Dawn Horse Communion”.
Meijers paintings have an assemblage quality, combining the tools of the downtrodden (such as beer bottle caps, corks and glass) as well as tar and feathers, reminiscent of the vigilante punishment doled out back in the good old days in Europe and the US. Meijers also kindly gives many of his paintings a layer of gold paint as an offering for a new start.
The overarching theme of the exhibition is a respect for “failure and appreciation of mistakes” (van den Boogers) and a loyalty and strong empathy for the outcast.
Rik Meijers’ ‘Man of Wounds’, is hung in the Mosaic room at the Monster kitchen and bar. Comehavalook.
Ken Neale has an encyclopedic mind on all 20th century classic design matters… And a wonderful but unexplainable understanding of how objects should be assembled. Ken has worked with Nectar Efkarpidis (Hotel Hotel founder and creative director) and Don Cameron in building the precise vision for the Hotel Hotel rooms and spaces.
Ken has a staggering collection of designer pieces, a super small portion of which is crammed into his famous 20th Century Modern store in Kings Cross, Sydney. Many Australian designers feature in his collection and this was a major emphasis in the specifications for Hotel Hotel – refurbishment of old Australian design classics by Kafka, Featherstone and others.
In true Ken form, he has no website, but here are the coordinates for his shop.
Peel and juice beetroot with an electric juicer. Water down the mix with 20% water, fill ice cube mold, place in freezer and wait until it is fully frozen. You can use big cube or sphere molds.
Drink method
Put your beetroot ice rock in a rocks glass. Add the agave, bitters and rum. Stir it with a bar spoon until the glass starts to frost slightly. Finish it all off with a generous sized orange twist – make sure you rub it all along the top edge of the glass so it’s the first thing you smell and taste.
Type ‘Valerie Restarick’ in the google machine and you won’t come up with much. It’s not because she hasn’t been working away making really beautiful ceramics for the last fifteen years from her little studio in North Carlton; it’s because she has a genuine dislike for self-promotion. It took a little bit of arm twisting and a little bit of wooing (by way of lemons, giant zucchinis and garden picked roses) that she agreed to sit down and have a chat about her work for Hotel Hotel.
Dermot AsIs Sha’Non is the horticulturalist and beekeeper tending to the three hives of bees (around 30,000 little individuals) that supply the honey for Hotel Hotel. The hives are located in the wetlands at the back of Kingston, across the lake from Hotel Hotel. The bees foraging for natives, blossoms and blackberry flowers are making a paddock honey that is extracted using the centrifugal approach (without heat) to retain the beautiful wild flavour and health benefits of raw honey. Honey from the three hives is bottled separately to allow the individual personality of the hive to be preserved.
Despite what you might think, Steven Siegel (renowned land artist, you may have heard of him) does not think of himself as an eco artist.
Steven explains “I don’t make art because I’m political I make art because I’m interested in aesthetics.
However, if one is an observer of the world the content of your work naturally reflects what’s going on in the world”. So he is an artist that is political and thinks about the state of the world, and how can you not, the environment.
“If you took away the politics and social meaning I would still get up and make art. The primary motivator is to feast my eyes on something. If you took away the visual part, and all that was left was the politics, I’d say forget it.”
Books with photos of contemporary landscapes and the mundane and remarkable ways that people make use of them, build them up, and destroy them.
Displacement Island
Marco Poloni’s Displacement Island is a series of photographs of the Italian island Lampedusa, the largest of the three Pelagian islands. Lampedusa is both a place of retreat and refuge; during the summer the island is a popular holiday destination while other times refugees from North Africa arrive in small fishing boats or coastguard vessels. In this book, Poloni documents all facets of the island’s identity. Displacement Island was exhibited at the Centre de la photographie, Genève in 2006. Thanks to Kodoji Press (Switzerland).
This stunning publication presents a photographic fable rooted firmly in the realities of Madrid’s largest public park, Casa de Campo, which sprawls five times the size of Central Park. Antonio M. Xoubanova wandered the paths of this urban woodland observing people, animals and objects as he ventured into unfamiliar territory. With accompanying text by Luis Lopez, this book posits that for any researcher, archeologist or photographer, their findings will always be the same: someone was here, somebody did this, stuff happens here. Thanks to the brilliant Mack (London).
Published in conjunction with Perimeter Editions, Composite Journal delves into the work and life of a single creative practitioner per issue, teasing out the artist’s practice and its underpinnings from a diverse series of vantages, positions and perspectives. The inaugural issue traces the oeuvre of Kempenaers, famed for his Spomenik series capturing former Yugoslavian war monuments, his various books through Amsterdam’s Roma Publications and his longstanding negotiation of the contemporary picturesque
This stunning tome of monochrome images fromGerry Johansson functions as a photographic encyclopaedia of his travels through Germany, cataloguing urban and rural architectures and landscapes in alphabetical order. Johansson’s practice operates within an astutely socio-historical framework, sensitively teasing out and expounding local and national histories and undertones via seemingly simply, economical imagery. Deutschlandarrives courtesy of the good people at Mack Books(London).
The Picturesque is Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers’ incredible follow-up publication to Perimeter favourite Spomenik, his much-celebrated rendering of modernist war monuments of the former Yugoslavia. While this book continues the picturesque tradition via arresting, highly-formalised images of the natural world, it also disrupts it by applying similar formalistic sensibilities to decaying manmade structures. Thanks as ever to Roma Publications (Amsterdam) and Idea Books (Amsterdam).
Don Cameron (along with Ken Neale) helped Nectar Efkarpidis (Hotel Hotel founder and creative director) curate many of the spaces at Hotel Hotel.
Don started out as a music video and advertising director. His method is one of staging for meaningful experience.
The revivalist approach to the Hotel Hotel room interiors coupled with the conviction not to compromise on detail has meant that where objects weren’t available or were nonexistent they were then purpose designed for Hotel Hotel and fabricated as editions by craftsmen and artisan companies.
Nectar and Don worked together on a fundamental re-appraisal of what a hotel room could be. The basis of the approach was not to focus on luxury or precedents created by other successful boutique hotels; but instead to focus on how best to convey authenticity, narrative relevance and a curated experience that is personal rather than distancing and intellectual.
The carefully chosen 20th century furniture (many collected by Ken) combined with primitive art, found objects, antiques and vintage design, and the material and aesthetic polarities of these elements have generated compelling narratives in each space.
