Interview with Arik Levy and Zoé Ouvrier

13/11/20

Interview: Arik Levy and Zoé Ouvrier 

Arik Levy (b1963, Tel Aviv) and Zoé Ouvrier (b1975, Montpellier, France) create works inspired by nature, but they do not simply attempt to interpret what they see; rather, they go beyond this, exploring, in Levy’s case, psychological and material polarities, and, in Ouvrier’s, feelings, emotions and narratives. Beyond Nature, then, is an appropriate title for this first exhibition bringing together the married couple’s works, and they are as excited as anyone to see what new conversations will arise as a result. 

 

I spoke to Levy and Ouvrier via Zoom from their new home and studio in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. 

Read the full interview here

Interview with Michele Oka Doner

04/04/18

Interview with Michele Oka Doner

Michele Oka Doner: Bringing the FireDavid Gill Gallery, London
21 March – 25 April 2018

Walking into London’s David Gill Gallery, there is a sense of stillness and peace, the gentle scent of burning wax hovers on the air like in a chapel, and visitors are transported a million miles away from the hustle and bustle of Piccadilly’s rush hour. This is the work of Michele Oka Doner (b1945, Miami Beach), who, now in her fifth decade of artistic practice, has a longstanding interest in nature, the elements, ritual and wanting to make people slow down, stop and take a closer look at the world around them. 

Her second solo show at the gallery pivots on a large bronze work, Altar II, a complex cast, jigsawed back together, from an intriguing and manifestly beautiful tree root, which Oka Doner retrieved from the Hudson river, while visiting friends in New York, with the help of a tow truck and a 12-minute gap between trains on the Metro-North line. It is kept company by a number of smaller Burning Bushes and Shaman Sticks, all flickering bright with heavily dripping candles, creating a gentle, almost transcendental, glow. On the walls, there are huge, androgynous, black-and-white figures, printed in relief from ink-infused organic material. Inspired by the myth of Prometheus and the basic attributes that distinguish humanity from any other animal species, Oka Doner believes that all art begins with the sacred, and she relishes the excitement of discovery and transformation, creating something that is ultimately shared.

Oka Doner’s work ranges in scale from jewellery and furniture to set and costume design for the Miami City Ballet, and she has undertaken a number of large-scale public art commissions as well, including Radiant Site at New York’s Herald Square underground station and A Walk on the Beach at Miami international airport. In London for the opening of her exhibition, before heading to Oxford for the launch of a book (she is also a published author), Oka Doner spoke to Studio International about her practice in general and, more specifically, her love of fire and the need to bring it back into her life. 

Watch this interview here

Interview with Mariko Mori

19/07/16
Interview: Mariko Mori

In an interview with Studio International in 2013, Japanese artist Mariko Mori (b1967) said that the main intention of her work was to share the idea that we are all connected and we are one. In 2010, she had co-founded the not-for-profit Faou Foundation, which sets out to gift monumental art installations to promote environmental awareness around the world by installing site-specific works on each of the six habitable continents. She is currently installing the second of these works, Ring: One With Nature, suspended at the top of the 58-metre-high cascading Véu da Noiva waterfall in Muriqui, Mangaratiba, in Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. Although a permanent gift to the nation, the work will be unveiled as part of the cultural programme surrounding the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Signifying oneness, completeness and eternity, Ring certainly embodies Mori’s and the Faou Foundation’s ethos.

In a Skype call from Brazil, Mori spoke to Studio International about the ideas behind Ring: One With Nature and how they have been realised.

Read the interview here

Catalogue Essay on Alexandra Haynes

14/06/16
A Geometry of Freedom
Essay in the publication to accompany 
Alexandra Haynes: The Shapes of Nature
Art First
16 June - 12 August 2016

Alexandra Haynes’ paintings speak of journeys. The organic, spiralling shells; the succulent cacti; the brightly coloured, tropical flowers, seaweed, fish and butterflies are all souvenirs of her travels: sometimes to places as far afield as Barbados or the Kimberley in Western Australia, other times just along the coast to Cornwall. But it is her body of work as a whole that represents the greatest journey – a journey of self-discovery and of finding, developing and learning to enunciate her own pictorial language.

Haynes had a meteoric rise to success when, at the age of twenty-one, she was ‘spotted’ by Brian Sewell during her mid-term exhibition at Cheltenham School of Art in 1987 and selected as one of ten young painters for the summer show of students and graduates promoted annually by You Magazine and The Mail on Sunday. As a direct result of this, she was asked to accompany restaurateur Peter Langan to Los Angeles to produce a series of canvases for his intended – but sadly never to be opened – restaurant there. Cheltenham were reluctant to let her go before having completed her degree, but Haynes, enthusiastic about this first prospect of transatlantic travel, was determined, and her adamancy paid dividends when she was introduced to and befriended by David Hockney.

Read the full essay in the catalogue, available from Art First and online here