Helaine Blumenfeld OBE is best known for her large-scale public sculptures whose undulating, ethereal forms evoke a sense of fragility and movement, transforming the environments into which they are placed. In the light of a major exhibition of her works at Canary Wharf, Digital & Art Editor Millie Walton speaks to the artist about working intuitively, the importance of touch and how public art brings people together

LUX: What’s your creative process like? Do you follow a routine, or need a particular atmosphere to create?
Helaine Blumenfeld: I think I have quite an unusual creative process which has changed in a few ways over the years, but essentially, it has always been a process of trying to coordinate what I am feeling and thinking with what I am doing with my hands. That has taken a very long time. Now, when I go into the studio, I am able to disconnect from everything that is going on around me. Francis Bacon used to say that to release that [creative] energy he would either need to be drugged or drunk or both, to allow him to enter into a kind of trance state. I can go into that state, happily, without drugs. For me, it is a state of being. I go into the studio, close the door, and I am there.

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I don’t really look at the work whilst I am making. I take clay and I just keep adding to it or taking away. I have no plan of what I am going to do; I have no drawings. I just communicate with it, and that is how I have worked almost from the very beginning.

I had been working on a doctorate of philosophy, and I could never find the exact words I wanted, but when I made the very first piece in clay, I just thought: ‘This is just incredible! Did I really just do this?’ It was a talent that I had never understood I had, and yet it was so clear. Every piece I made in those early days was a wonder to me and then, we moved back to England from Paris and during the move, some of the pieces got broken. I thought I’ll never be able to do anything like that again.

Now, I do not have that feeling; I see it more as a process. There is a communication between what I am in terms of experience, and the work, and if one piece is interrupted or breaks or collapses, the next piece will follow it.

LUX: You mentioned that you were studying philosophy – when did you start making art?
Helaine Blumenfeld: I always had these amazing dreams that I could never seem to translate. The only way that I knew was words, and yet, to have an incredible dream and then to use words is so bizarre because it is a completely different language. For a while, philosophy seemed like the right method for my expression, but I was never satisfied. When I discovered sculpture and began to understand what very simple forms could communicate, I decided I wanted to be a sculptor.

I think that being an artist is not just about having something to communicate, but also finding the right way to communicate it, and if you don’t, you can be frustrated. Discovering sculpture opened up the whole world to me.

LUX: Was lockdown a creative time for you?
Helaine Blumenfeld: Well my main studio is in Italy, so I have not been able to go back at all. In fact, because I had this very big show [Looking Up] in Canary Wharf, I was meant to go back before we had finished the installation to bring back two pieces that I had not quite finished, but my husband said not to go. It was lucky that he did because otherwise I would have spent the whole lockdown without my family.

In the end, we managed to get the entire show of 40 pieces up at Canary Wharf just two days before lockdown. The opening, which didn’t happen, was intended to be the day of lockdown. When I went back to Cambridge, I was suddenly aware of the virus and what it was doing, which I hadn’t been, and the first two weeks were very anxious. I thought I would have contracted it because I had been working with so many people, including one of my assistants from Italy who had come over, and whose wife had the virus. But after that period, and I think a few artists will tell you the same, it was one of the happiest periods in my whole life. No pressures from the outside world, no commitments, no engagements, no travelling back and forth to Italy, which I normally would do for two weeks here and two weeks there. I was with my husband all the time which I hadn’t been since the beginning of our marriage. And I had clay; I had all the clay I needed. I was working, and I have done more work in the period of lockdown than I have in the last three years I think. So, yes it has been immensely creative.

Read more: Confined Artists Free Spirits – artists photographed in lockdown by Maryam Eisler

LUX: Do you ever start a sculpture and decide to abandon it if it’s not working?
Helaine Blumenfeld: There are different ways of working. Someone like [Constantin] Brâncuși, who I admire enormously as an artist, was held back by his own sense of perfection. Each piece had to reach what he wanted, and it never did, so he would have to abandon and try again. He was tied to certain ideas, whereas I believe that each piece is as good as it can be. I work through the idea rather than trying to get it right in that particular piece. As I said, I never have a clear idea of where I am going or a vision that I need to achieve; the vision comes in the piece.

LUX: That sounds very liberating.
Helaine Blumenfeld: In sculpture, the gesture can be completely yours. When I am working, I don’t look at what I’m doing I feel it intuitively as it happens. Very often when I am in Italy, I finish something in clay and I cover it and wrap it with wet cloth, and then when I go back, I have no idea what I am going to find. I have never seen it objectively or critically, I have just seen it intuitively. When I do unwrap it, then sometimes I will say  ‘Oh, that doesn’t work’, and I won’t go on with it. At that moment, I am really seeing with a critical eye. It’s like seeing your lover in another way from the corner of your eye or a different angle which allows you to seem them objectively for a moment. When I come back to the work, I am able to see it objectively, and at that moment, I know intellectually whether or not it is working.

It is a bit of a different process if I want to do a large piece, however, because when I am working, I have no armature or inner support system. If I had that I would know exactly what I was going to do because the inner structure would dictate what I was going to make. Without that structure, the sculpture is initially incredibly fragile and if it is going to last, I need to have it cast in plaster quickly. Then, when I know the forms, I don’t feel the same resistance to having an armature. At that point, I have an assistant who will mechanically enlarge the piece for me with a proper armature and leave it in a rough state for me to take over. It does happen when I think a piece is very good, but when the scale changes, it doesn’t work. I think that is a mistake that certain sculptors make, thinking that everything can be large when some pieces work better on a small, intimate scale.

LUX: What role do you think public sculpture can play in urban environments such as Canary Wharf?
Helaine Blumenfeld: I think that sculpture, in general, in a public place, creates a private space for people to enjoy. In a way, it creates a space that people can claim ownership of. My idea is to somehow mediate between the personality and the mechanism of a landscape and to create something that is personal and that people can relate to. For example, my first public commission was in centre of a walkway, and I went around and had a look at how people used space. There was a gigantic sculpture there that people would walk around to avoid. Somehow the massiveness of it mirrored and competed with the architecture in a way. So, I decided to do a sculpture in five pieces, that people could walk in between and interact with that would be on a human scale, and it was such a success.

My piece Fortuna, which was put up in 2016, was originally meant to go to the new area of Wood Wharf. When it was finished, it was temporarily put into an area in Jubilee Park, and in a very short space of time, that area in the park was overwhelmed with people coming to interact with the sculpture. When word got around that it was going to be moved, people were horrified. That particular area was meant for changing exhibitions, but the piece remains there and people still go to see it.

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Also, in that same area, there is a sculpture called Ascent. After lockdown when you could have groups of six, I went back to see the piece and they had made circles on the ground around it so people could sit in those circles and know that they were social distancing. On that lawn there were six different circles of people sitting. They obviously knew each other and they were celebrating something. I had gone there because wanted to photograph the piece. When I arrived, a man looked at us and said ‘Oh, I see that you want to photograph Ascent‘ which was amazing, that he even knew the name. He said ‘Let me show you the best view!’ He took me round to the side and in fact, it was my favourite view. My friend told him that I was the artist and he knew my name too. He announced to the group of people in their circles: ‘This is the artist’. Every person in that area stood up and clapped. It was like it had been an opening. He told me that he came to the sculpture every day and that it was his point of light in the darkness, it gave him some hope that things could be better. It was an amazing experience for me.

LUX: Speaking of intimacy, you’ve said before that you like people to touch your sculptures. Why is that important for you?
Helaine Blumenfeld: Oh, I think it is vital for people to touch the work. I think we do not touch enough in our society. So much of our feeling and experience comes from touch. As babies, our world  is all about touch, but we are are losing that. Very early on I had a show with people from LightHouse for the Blind, and all they could do was touch. You would be astounded at what people could feel from touching a sculpture, another level of understanding, from just their hands.

You can see that people are entering into the sculptures where the bases have worn away. I often ask the children who are sitting inside, ‘What are you feeling?’ And they say something like, ‘I am in a secret forest and I am protected from all the things around me.’  It is lovely to see how a sculpture encourages imagination.

Often at public exhibitions, whether it is in a cathedral or in Canary Wharf, I see people discussing with each other, and they don’t know each other. ‘What do you see in it? What are you looking at?’ Not only does art introduce a huge audience to beauty, it is also allows people relate to something outside of themselves, it introduces them to another realm. I think that is an incredible way that art brings people together.

LUX: One final question: what’s inspiring or interesting you at the moment?
Helaine Blumenfeld:  It is hard for me to use the word inspiration; I feel incredibly moved. When an artist dreams a dream that is so deep within his own being, it is not just his dream, it is not just his pain, it is universal. That is what I hoped I was doing before, it was coming from within, but much of what I am doing now is coming from without. I am thinking about how people are trying to connect at this time, to reach out and see the perspective of other people. There is a much greater effort because we are all in this together. It has broken down that sense of isolation which I felt was leading to the precipice. So instead of expressing something deeply personal, I am trying to feel something that effects everyone. I think that is where the new work is going.

‘Looking Up’ by Helaine Blumenfeld runs at One Canada Square until 6 November 2020 and throughout Canary Wharf until 31 May 2020.

For more information visit: helaineblumenfeld.com

From his sculpture for Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth to his recent guerrilla monument to replace the toppled bronze of a slave trader in Bristol, British artist Marc Quinn has shown a commitment to giving form to political urgency. Maryam Eisler talks to him about his time during lockdown, his engagement with history in the making, and his renewed excitement at creating art

Maryam Eisler: Marc, tell me about your lockdown experience.
Marc Quinn: It’s totally abstract and totally real at the same time. This moment is one of the most real things we’ve lived through. There are people dying. People’s businesses are closing. Horrific things are happening. And then when you go onto the street, until very recently, there’s no-one around. It’s not like a normal war or natural disaster, where there is visible chaos. This experience is quite abstract. In the end, apart from the people who are near me, the only way I know about what is going on in the world is via my phone and the internet.

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This time has also been about a completely new way of thinking. We have been forced to learn how to navigate the difference between our virtual selves and our real selves.

In terms of making work, it’s been great. It’s me, alone in the studio making things. It’s like going back to square one again and rediscovering my roots. It’s about making art in a way that I used to do 25 years ago. And I really enjoy it.

It’s a great time for transformation. People are actually engaging with the world. There has been a whole resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement after the horrific death of George Floyd. That is amazing, and hopefully something lasting will come from it this time around. We’ve had moments of focus on these types of issues before but never to this extent. I think it’s a time when societal tectonic plates are shifting. Our old life is also shifting.

Maryam Eisler: Tell me about your series History Painting and how it has led to the new series Viral Paintings. How are they made?
Marc Quinn: History Painting is a series of paintings that I have been quietly working on for about ten years. The history of art tells you about how art was classified in the 18th and the 19th centuries, with the lowest genres being portraiture or still-life and the highest being history painting. Works in that genre were commissioned by the state or by the aristocracy. When I saw images taken during riots, such as in London following the death of Mark Duggan in 2011, I thought to myself that this is actually quite interesting because the genre is being flipped on its head. History is now being made from the bottom up, coming from the people instead of the other way around. I thought I could take this idea behind the history painting genre and make new history paintings that are about the day, the moment.

For the first in the series, I found an incredible press photo of a masked man on the streets of Hackney, which was the most iconic one. I contacted the photographer. I bought the rights to make a painting from it. And then I spent three months making a painting of it. At the end, I took all the paint that was left on the palettes and chucked it on top. It’s called History Painting (London, 8 August 2011) ROYBWN. I had this sense that the paint was disrupting it, in a way. But it was also sort of freezing it. And it was also about looking at matter. You can view it as a sculpture; when you squeeze a tube of paint, you always feel that it has so much potential. It’s about that beautiful moment before you actually crystallise it into something that may or may not be good. The paint that’s thrown on top is paint which exists as potential, as matter, as energy, as the unconscious. In a way, this process creates a screen. That screen is between the image’s dematerialised world of the image and the material world, where the paint exists straight from the tube. That was quite unconscious for me, I think. It also felt like it was about change, about movement, about how things are reconvening.

I made those types of paintings for about ten years, including a few about the Black Lives Matter movement. One painting focused on the photograph of Ieshia Evans protesting the death of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, an important, big picture. The large paintings would take six months to paint, so I couldn’t make that many and I had to really focus.

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When the events of 2020 started unfolding, starting with Covid-19, I felt like history was in fast forward at high speed. I don’t have time to spend six months painting each picture. I have to make these in the moment. So, I had to let go of all that craft, but also of my idea of what a painting should be. I have a big printer that takes canvas, so I just thought I’d take a screenshot from my phone of events in the news as they take place, I’ll print them up and paint on top of them. This is how the Viral Paintings were born.

Maryam Eisler: So, you had to revisit your own practice from a whole new perspective?
Marc Quinn: Yes. It just felt so good because I went with the situation, and it took me somewhere completely new, which was really exciting.

Maryam Eisler: It’s an exciting time to be making work.
Marc Quinn: Absolutely. I always want to be excited by the work, otherwise I’d just stop. Great work has historically been produced during moments of crisis, I think. Times like these make you focus quickly on what’s important in life. And what, on the other hand, is a load of bullshit. It gets rid of a lot of fluff and noise. You also realise that your relationships with other people are important. How everyone gets along in the world and how people are treated are important. Love is important. It makes it pretty simple. Times like these bring us back to what being human is all about, and it’s an exciting time to make art because of this potential for change that seems to be all around us.

Maryam Eisler: Colonial history means that events in the US relate directly to what’s going on in the UK and in Europe.
Marc Quinn: It’s all connected – enslavement is a part of colonial history. The roots of our systematically racist present stems directly from that, a colonial history that we’re all involved in. Britain, Europe and the USA were all involved.

Maryam Eisler: Tell me about the increasing importance of public art at this particular time.
Marc Quinn: It’s quite interesting to see how public art, which normally no one looks at, has suddenly taken on this urgency and this real symbolic value within society, in a way that it has never had in the past. I think that’s really interesting and it started in Bristol when they tore down the statue of Edward Colston. It’s incredible to experience the power of art in catalysing change, even if it’s iconoclasm.

Read more: Looking back on 125 years of Swarovski and into a new era

Maryam Eisler: Yes, you made a replacement sculpture. Tell me why you did that.
Marc Quinn: Jen Reid [one of the protesters] created the sculpture when she stood on the plinth and put her arm in the air. That incarnation of the artwork lasted just three minutes. When I saw the picture of her on Instagram, I immediately got in touch and asked if she’d like to collaborate and crystallise her original action for a bit longer. We then created the resin piece and put it on the plinth to activate the space. It was always conceived to be a temporary installation, to create debate about the idea of representation in the public realm and to continue the momentum of the BLM movement. We both felt it did exactly that. Its 24 hours on the plinth was enough to have the impact.

Maryam Eisler: Do you think art has been too politicised?
Marc Quinn: Most art is purely decorative and that’s not the kind of art I want to make. Art should be political. I make art about the world. I want to reflect and affect the time that we live in and the issues that are most pressing today through art.

Maryam Eisler: What effect is social media having on the art world?
Marc Quinn: Social media and the sharing of online images is great for the art world. It’s a way of making art more accessible and visible to new audiences who may not always go to a traditional gallery or museum. Instagram in particular is a brilliant platform for following emerging and established artists. Of course, as with most public forums, there can be a downside and there can be negativity.

Maryam Eisler: How do you see the art world changing?
Marc Quinn: I think that there will be, and should be, a greater emergence of black artists, curators, writers, architects, and so on. Can you believe that only one per cent of practicing architects today are black? Another interesting angle is that black people and white people are coming together to talk about issues that involve us all. If you don’t do anything about it, you’re complicit in it happening. So, you’ve got to act and speak up. There is no choice. It resonated with me when [US journalist and teacher] Jelani Cobb said, “I’ve probably gotten this question 50 times from white students who ask me if it’s okay for them to write stories about people of colour and racism. And I was like, you absolutely have to write these stories.”

As a privileged successful white artist, I have access to an audience. If I don’t use that influence to talk about what matters, then what’s the point of it all? That’s what I love about the Viral Paintings – they’re tracking what I’m engaging in, now, every day.

Maryam Eisler: How do you think art history will change now, after these events?
Marc Quinn: What’s exciting is that we don’t know what the future holds, but it’s largely in our hands to open a new future and to consolidate some of the gains that have happened during this period and not just go back to the old ‘normal’.

Maryam Eisler: What about the future of museums and art galleries post-lockdown?
Marc Quinn: I think that will be really interesting to observe. No one’s really talked about it, but all the museum schedules have been completely thrown off. Most museums’ programmes work on a two- to five-year lead time, so, they can never really react to the moment. Perhaps this is a time for museums to rethink their planning and do exciting new shows that offer immediate reactions to what is happening around us. It’s an opportunity for these institutions to take an active role in the dialogue. Better representation of black curators and people in art institutions means the work of black artists can be properly contextualised and celebrated. I hope for a more inclusive art world that mirrors the diversity of the world today and celebrates artistic talent from all backgrounds and perspectives.

Find out more: marcquinn.com

This article features in the Autumn 2020 Issue, hitting newsstands in October.

The exclusive Chelsea Barracks residential development in London aims to be the epitome of contemporary luxury living. It also draws on a wealth of traditional artisanal craft heritage, from specially designed and made oak furniture to bespoke light fittings, to forge a new historically significant landmark, as Mark C. O’Flaherty discovers

Some of the heftiest books lining the shelves of the world’s libraries are devoted to the history of London. The tale of Chelsea Barracks warrants a whole chapter of its own. It is an epic story, with handsome accents. Built as a home to Victorian infantry battalions, the original architecture stood for nearly 100 years. Since the 1960s, various plans for the site have been discussed but not materialised, but today Chelsea Barracks is a landmark again – a residential development that combines contemporary British craft with heritage inspiration. From the public artwork in the grounds to the finishings, light fittings and balustrades of the townhouses, Qatari Diar have brought together a nation of artisans.

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The ongoing story of British craft is told from numerous perspectives, and has culminated in more than just a landmark – there is also The Chelsea Barracks Collection. Under the direction of Albion Nord, the studio responsible for the overall look of the townhouse show-home interiors, an 11-piece capsule of designs has been commissioned from many of the artisans involved. Each object is handmade and represents the highest level of British craftsmanship, creating a dialogue with the Georgian squares of Belgravia. Wine glasses and tumblers echo the glassware produced in the 18th century, while the Belgravia Lamp references the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns of local buildings. “It is inspired by the orders of classical architecture,” explains Ottalie Stride, creative director at Albion Nord. “It has strong London connotations.”

You can see the broader strokes of the style in London-based designer Tord Boontje’s floral elements on the townhouse balconies – the wild roses, peonies and apple blossom of the British countryside, so often showcased at the nearby Chelsea Flower Show – all forged in metal by West Country Blacksmiths, based in a 17th-century workshop in Somerset. From the physicality of their creation, to the greenery of Belgravia, they connect numerous threads within the narrative of Chelsea Barracks. These aren’t things you can take home – they are home.

Boontje’s work to date has been almost exclusively for interiors, so to have his petals adorning a façade is significant. They also form a link with the landscaping outside. From one of Boontje’s balconies you have a radiant view over the perfect floral grids planted by award-winning landscape gardener Jo Thompson and landscape architect Neil Porter. This is one of the most arresting and modern green spaces in the city today.

Read more: How Andermatt Swiss Alps is drawing a new generation of visitors

The best kind of design is often site-specific, taking visual cues from and creating a dialogue with its setting. All of the artisans involved in the development studied the site, its environment and and history. Using designs by Albion Nord, the artisans at Marina Mill created for The Chelsea Barracks Collection silkscreened upholstery in a diamond pattern that references tiling inside the restored Garrison Chapel on the grounds. Other designs by Albion Nord took inspiration from the floor plan of the Royal Hospital Chelsea. As much as upholstery, Marina Mill have been weaving history, too.

Chelsea Barracks is a style and brand as well as a prestigious residential address. The Chelsea Barracks Collection incorporates many elements that link the development to history. A metal and leather pendant lantern is inspired by the flashlights used by soldiers in the first world war, while the Barracks Bench has been created in homage to the Egypt-mania that captured London society in the 18th and 19th centuries. A collection of ceramics, titled Radnor, play on the history of porcelain in the area. Silversmith Nicholas Sprimont was the founder of the Chelsea Porcelain Factory, which from the mid 1740s became the tableware maker for the royal family. “They were the first important porcelain pottery manufacturer in England, so it’s great to bring this material to life,” says Stride.

Some of the furniture created with the homes, and The Chelsea Barracks Collection, in mind – including a bench, bedside table, side table and writing desk – come from the Stride & Co workshops in West 38are beautifully crafted objects from carpenters accustomed to making only 15 to 20 pieces in a year. Each desk is made from a single piece of oak for consistency of grain. Detail is everything, and so is the story behind each piece – the side table is inspired by the British fondness for tea-drinking, which took hold in the mid 18th century. Other pieces are battalion inspired. “The Wellington Desk made by Stride & Co is inspired by a traditional campaign desk,” explains Stride. “It would have been used by officers and their staff during a military campaign. Our design here aims to retain the portability and simplicity of the original, whilst including special details such as the lion-claw feet and the Chelsea Barracks rose mark, featured on the key to both the desk and the bedside tables.”

Like Boontje, bespoke light designer Sharon Marston looked to the history of the Chelsea Flower Show before starting work. Marston’s background flags up her instinctive approach to light and materials. Her career began in jewellery and costume design, working with Bella Freud, Paul Smith and the English National Opera. She creates objects that are luminescent, ethereal and elegant. The British flora is a constant inspiration. The two Willow chandeliers she created for Chelsea Barracks evoke the weeping willow tree found in the English countryside as well as landscapes by Turner and Constable. She was also keen to emphasise the inherent Britishness of the formal properties of her pieces. “Craftmanship is at the heart of my approach,” she explains. “The artisans I work with are small cottage industries dotted around the UK, ranging from glassblowers and ceramicists to metalwork engineers. My close relationship with each is what brings the intricate detail of my work to life. There are approximately 2,000 pieces of hand-crafted decorative components made from woven bronze mesh spread across both chandeliers, taking many weeks to create.”

Many of the works carried out for Chelsea Barracks pushed the boundaries for their creators. Reedway is an engineering company involved in the nuclear, space and marine industries. The ornate balustrades they created for the residences were inspired by the work of Arts and Crafts visionary William Morris and made using high-pressure water cutting on metal, usually employed in aviation, so making something very much 21st century. Reedway also worked on artist Conrad Shawcross’s tree-like sculpture at the development, Bicameral, constructed from anodised aluminium and installed permanently in the grounds.

What the designers and artisans behind the new Chelsea Barracks have done is take the romance of a classical Georgian home and refract it through the lens of today’s style but grounded it with Victorian muscle. The method in which that style has been crafted tells a story that has depth and longevity, one that will develop for generations to come.

Restoring the past

The Victorian railings at Chelsea Barracks were given a pass when the government was requisitioning cast iron for the war effort in the 1940s. Grade II listed for more than ten years, the railings have now been restored to their original grandeur as part of the new development. The development team at Qatari Diar worked with the foundry Paterson Engineering in Scotland on what became a complex task. The original railings were moulded 150 years ago, and despite their apparent uniformity, there was no standard fitting. Each component had to be logged before removal for restoration. Back in their original place, they look magnificent. History has been refreshed and a link has been forged between the new architecture and the Victorian era that made these five hectares world famous. “They mark the border of Chelsea Barracks and pay homage to the history of the site,” explains Richard Oakes, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Europe and Americas at Qatari Diar. “Together with the Garrison Chapel, the railings are now all that remain of the original 19th-century barracks, and their preservation and restoration has been a journey all of its own and one that we’re extremely proud of.”

Find out more: chelseabarracks.com

This article features in the Autumn 2020 Issue, hitting newsstands in October.

Chelsea Barracks has already established itself as one of the most desirable places to live in London. Its gardens, with their planting schemes, public artworks and open access, are adding to the city’s continuing and defining history of garden squares, as Anna Tyzack reports

There are many measures by which London could be said to be the greatest city in the world. It is a (possibly the) financial and business hub; a crossroads between the Americas, Europe and Asia; a cultural centre that combines 2,000 years of history with being on the world’s leading edge in creativity in the 21st century.

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It is also the world’s most liveable great city. Yes, there are surveys published in trendy publications each year that tout the virtues of earthy locations in crispy-clean countries. But successful, ambitious humans want to live and work in a place where they can be surrounded by their peers: to be right in the heart of a city teeming with global leaders in finance, the arts, creativity, science, philanthropy and international trade. And yet they also crave a standard of living. Their villa on Cap Ferrat for summer and lodge in Aspen for winter have infinite light, space, nature; and London is the only city of its level in the world that can offer these semblances of space and green alongside its myriad other draws. London is the greenest city in Europe: almost 50 per cent of its surface area is parks, gardens, natural habitats or water.

In the most authoritative measure of its kind, London and New York regularly swap places at number 1 and number 2 slots in the Knight Frank Wealth Report Global Cities Index: but for the ‘lifestyle’ subsection, London is, in 2020, at the top.

One unique aspect of London lifestyle is its garden squares. They developed naturally as spaces for inhabitants to relax and play as the city grew; became protected in law; and now many of them are the most desirable addresses in the city. Garden squares in London can be public (run by the local councils) or private (owned and used by the local landowners); the best are hives of culture, leisure and joy.

And now there is a new crop of squares coming to life. Uniquely, they are in central London, an area not known for its propensity to be developed. They are the creation of Chelsea Barracks, a new super-luxe five-hectare residential area built between super-prime neighbourhoods Chelsea and Belgravia on the site of what was for 150 years an army barracks.

Read more: In conversation with ballet dancer Sergei Polunin 

It is also unique in its concept and ambition. Rather than build yet another cookie-cutter set of branded residences inside an enclosed compound, sell them off and take the money, owner Qatari Diar is in for the long term: the aim is to create a new neighbourhood, not just for those fortunate enough to afford the residences lining the new streets, but to welcome anyone who is drawn in by the beautiful and distinctive urban planning.

And the squares. There are two hectares of garden squares and public spaces, open to all, in the development: in all, seven new squares are being created. The idea is that residents can enjoy them permanently, and through an artfully curated cultural programme, visitors can pass through, linger and enjoy the first, and last, new area on this scale likely to be developed in central London for, well, probably ever.

They are also very much not a recreation or pastiche of existing garden squares. “Our gardens are very different from the traditional idea of railings around a set of trees and a lawn – we didn’t want rules or hostile architecture giving any sense that people were being segregated,” says Richard Oakes, Qatari Diar’s Chief Sales & Marketing Officer Europe & Americas. “Given we were working on what is going to be the most exclusive addresses in London, we had to find a new way of considering what is a garden square.”

This takes a delicate balancing act. The open spaces at Chelsea Barracks (which amount to a lot more than just garden squares) are aimed at attracting visitors and establishing the area as a cultural hub; while residents still feel a sense of exclusivity.

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The landscaping is contemporary in style, while referencing the traditional garden square, with water features to bring a sense of calm and tranquillity and bulbs and flowering trees such as magnolia to add colour and structure throughout the seasons. The red Chelsea Barracks rose, inspired by the intricate petal-shaped window in the restored Garrison Chapel, and cultivated for Chelsea Barracks by grower Philip Harkness, features prominently in the planting. “The gardens provide a spectacular new front door for Chelsea Flower Show, which takes place next door, at the Royal Hospital,” Oakes says.

In Mulberry Square, for example, residents overlook a shallow water rill and a fragrant garden planted with lavender, rosemary and strawberries, a tribute to the patterned canvases of artist Bridget Riley. Here there are benches to sit on with a book or to enjoy a peaceful moment listening to the sound of the water.

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Meanwhile Whistler Square, in the northern part of the Barracks, is named after the artist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who lived in Belgravia and Old Chelsea. It has as its focal point a bronze-edged Cumbrian black-slate scrim, no deeper than a finger nail, decorated with fragile etched lines to represent the lost rivers of London.

But culture, as much as gardens, is at the heart of the development. Garrison Chapel, which forms the centrepiece of the development, is a restored, listed and significant historical structure. It has been painstakingly restored by a host of British artisans including lime plasterers, fresco artists and stained-glass experts and will once again be a place for locals to gather. The new bell, an exact replica of the damaged original, was commissioned from Britain’s last surviving bell maker, John Taylor & Co of Loughborough.

Strikingly positioned, it will be the centre of an art and culture programme, which will spill out into the squares and spaces. It will involve performance art and installation as well as static art, with a focus on giving young and emerging artists a bedrock in the centre of London, an area for so long dominated by art dealers rather than artists. Striking also is the focus away from just retail: life, space and culture, rather than transaction, is what this new area aims to be about.

Public artwork at Chelsea Barracks

A tree-like sculpture by Conrad Shawcross is the first public artwork to be installed at Chelsea Barracks. Casting dappled shade onto Dove Place, the pedestrian entrance to the development, Bicameral comprises 693 components and stands 8m in height. It can be  seen, as Shawcross explains, as an Arcadian symbol for reason, humanity, rationalism, progress and hope, and it was designed to pay homage to the craftsmanship found at the Barracks. The sculpture was created entirely without welding; its interlocking forms are held together by techniques derived from Japanese wood joinery.

Chelsea Barracks in numbers

• Apartments in Chelsea Barracks cost from £5.25 million.
• Townhouses, each with a roof terrace, spa with pool, gym, garden and private garage, cost from £38 million.
• The Garrison Club is for the exclusive use of residents. With all the advantages of a private club, amenities include a 1,800 sq m spa and gym; private cinema, games room, residents’ lounge and business suite with two boardrooms.

Find out more: chelseabarracks.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 2020 Issue.

Italian artist Lorenzo Quinn has been commissioned to create artworks for the likes of the Vatican, the State of Qatar, and the Venice Biennale. Here, the sculptor speaks to Charlie Newman about poetry, the symbolism of hands, and durability.

1. Can you talk us through your creative process from the conception of an idea to the finished piece?

Once I feel the inspiration, I begin by drawing a sketch of the idea. This sketch might change many times until I feel it is right. Then I make a model in my studio, this model could also vary from the sketch as I go. Finally, when I am satisfied with the model, we proceed to cast the piece in metal.

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2. How does your approach differ when you’re working on public art compared to smaller sculptures?

The approach is the same, apart from when we are considering a sculpture with large dimensions, we also have to consider the public safety implications, engineering and durability. We might choose different materials or different ways of constructing and engineering the sculpture.

3. What compels you to sculpt the human body, and specifically, hands?

I choose hands because I want to have a dialogue with the public, to have a conversation, and we have to do [this] through a common language. If I did abstract art, it would be a monologue, not a dialogue. The hands allow me to get closer to the public through a language that everybody understands and relates to.

4. Do you have a preferred medium to work with?

Metals, especially bronze because of its durability.

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5. You often pair poetry with your sculptures. How do you feel this contributes to the work?

I don’t conceive of one without the other. I need poetry to make the artwork or else it would be just a three-dimensional piece. I have always believed, nonetheless, that my sculptures need to go beyond that and into the fourth dimension, which is connecting with people and with the actual artwork. It’s about finding something beyond the physical, and poetry does that very well for me.

6. Which artists have been most influential on your practice?

The classic masters such as Michelangelo, Bernini, Rodin as well as Salvador Dali and my own father…

For more information visit: lorenzoquinn.com

The Watercolour World is an ambitious online project to digitise the world’s watercolours and rescue this all-too-often overlooked but artistically and historically significant medium from being forgotten. It is creating a wealth of riches for all of us, says Michael Brooks

Fred Hohler describes the idea as “blindingly obvious” in hindsight. Having spearheaded the creation of a digital record of the United Kingdom’s oil paintings, the former diplomat soon realised his Public Catalogue Foundation had left an ‘orphan’ collection of watercolours in dark drawers, cabinets and basements across the world.

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Now, though, these paintings are emerging, blinking, into the light. The Watercolour World is a rapidly growing website that hosts digital reproductions of watercolours from around the world. Even in these early days – the site’s official launch was in January 2019 – it has become an engrossing collection. Whether you are captivated by an 1840 view of Kings Cross as a rubbish dump – the ‘Great Dustheap’ – or sailors chasing a slave ship near Zanzibar in 1876, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of riches is coming into view. “I have a new favourite about four times a day,” Hohler admits.

Watercolour is often passed over as an unimportant medium, despite the fact that Ruskin, Gainsborough, Turner and Constable all used it at various times. “The lower status of watercolour was owing to the fact that it had been invented relatively recently, had not been used by the Old Masters, and was widely used by amateurs for documentary purposes,” says Sir Charles Saumarez Smith, senior director of Blain Southern gallery, and former chief executive of the Royal Academy of Arts.

In many ways, this negative view of the medium is what makes the new collection so compelling. In the 17th century, for instance, watercolour was the military medium of choice. Before photography, painting was considered the best way to keep tabs on where the military had been, and how easy its terrain and infrastructures would be to defend. “From the time of George III, the way of making a record for the military, then the civil service overseas, and the navy, was watercolour,” Hohler says.

At Woolwich Military Academy and elsewhere, officers studied drawing and were taught how to survey a landscape and draw coasts and harbours so that the knowledge of newly gained territories could be spread amongst the military. The watercolourist Paul Sandby was among those who did the training, and the courses were clearly popular, with many accomplished amateur painters emerging from the military academies. As a result, military, government and private collections are awash with watercolour landscapes from across the world, all painted with an attention to detail.

Many of them, however, have not seen the light of day for decades, if not centuries. “Watercolour as a medium is naturally more susceptible to the effects of heat and light,” says the charity’s chief executive Andra Fitzherbert. “As a result, they tend to be hidden away in dark places or kept in albums where they’re rarely pulled out and enjoyed.”

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And that’s where The Watercolour World project comes in. Launched with the patronage of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, and realised through support from the Marandi Foundation, The Watercolour World aims to collate hundreds of thousands of watercolour paintings, many of which have never been available to the public until now.

It’s a labour of love, but it will also be very useful, Hohler says. For a start, the watercolours facilitate the re-creation of lost historical artefacts. Paintings in the collection show the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, which has been extensively destroyed by ISIS. Hohler and Fitzherbert hope that The Watercolour World will one day be useful to its regeneration. Then there are the watercolours depicting the tombs of Pharaoh Sety I. The wall paintings of these tombs were damaged by those keen to profit from exhibiting the contents and recreating the spaces for a London audience in the 19th century. Thanks to watercolours, there is a record of how they once looked, and The Watercolour World will be an invaluable resource for future archaeological research.

Just as exciting is the scientific potential of the project. Many watercolours offer a view of a world that no longer exists and are a means by which conservationists, ocean scientists, coastal engineers and geologists can reach back into the past, make sense of the present, and perhaps safeguard the future.

There is strong precedent for this. In the 1860s, the government moved the Gunditjmara, the Aboriginal people of the area, off Tower Hill, an extinct volcano in Victoria, Australia. They proceeded to clear the land’s thick vegetation for grazing. Only in the 1960s was there a move to restore the area. Fortunately, the watercolourist Eugene von Guérard had made a painting of the virgin land in 1855, a painting so detailed that the authorities could identify more than 20 species of plant to use in the restoration project.

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The vast and growing catalogue of paintings in The Watercolour World means that similar restorations might be possible in other areas. Some of the paintings are already in use in a project to catalogue changes in the British coastline over the past 250 years. Geologist and coastal engineer Robin McInnes is in the closing stages of The State of the British Coast Study, which was commissioned by The Crown Estate, the European Commission and Historic England. Using a range of sources, including paintings in The Watercolour World, McInnes has been able to discern where and when beaches have eroded, cliff lines have changed and engineering projects have made an impact on the shoreline. The results of the study will be used to aid conservation and ecological efforts. “They’ve been feeding me coastal images, many from private collections that have never been seen before. I’ve been able to use some in my study,” McInnes says. Some are from less highbrow sources, too. “Postcard companies employed some prolific watercolour artists to paint the coast.”

Another environmental application will be in surveys of glaciers. Watercolours have a strong history here. The first known depiction of a glacier, made in 1601, was Abraham Jäger’s painting of the Rofener Glacier in Austria. By the middle of the 19th century, artists were painting faithful renditions of scenes at the heads of glaciers. John Brett’s Glacier of Rosenlaui, for instance, shows the position of the glacier in 1856, as well as a detailed portrait of the erratics, the boulders at its head that had been carried by the ice. The Watercolour World’s collection includes renditions of glaciers by Horace Bénédict de Saussure, the precision of which give a marker for recent glacier retreat. “Climate change is on almost everybody’s mind right now, but in the 19th century artists and scientists were working together documenting glaciers,” says Barbara Matilsky, who curated last year’s ‘Vanishing Ice’ exhibition at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis. Many of the show’s 47 artworks, dating from 1860 to 2017, showed evidence of climate change.

Using The Watercolour World as a scientific resource is a “fabulous idea”, Matilsky says. She points out that artists and scientists have long worked together to document the natural environment. In the 19th century, for instance, geologists at the Museum of Natural History in Paris commissioned artists to paint glaciers. “They wanted to show students what they look like so they could intuit from these works the processes that formed the glaciers,” Matilsky says. “Scientists were very much aware that artists were important in communicating scientific concepts.”

At the other end of Earth’s temperature scale, The Watercolour World includes dozens of paintings of volcanoes. The 1776 eruption of Vesuvius is particularly well represented, because the British diplomat Sir William Hamilton commissioned the artist Pietro Fabris to paint 54 illustrations of the volcano for his scientific studies of its geology.

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Fitzherbert is keen to point out that The Watercolour World will be of relevance to everyone, not just to scientists and culture professionals. All of the images have searchable location and keyword information, allowing people to explore their family history and their local area’s past. “We want to make it personal so that people can navigate through a map and find local places of interest and find family homes or where they were brought up,” she says. “People can use these paintings to reflect on their own lives.”

The Watercolour World operates a small team, equipped with a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner, to perform the digitisation. In addition, a group of volunteers tag and categorise the images, adding their locations and all relevant data about the artist’s intentions. Only then are they uploaded onto the site.

The project has yielded unexpected gains. One is that, in some ways, the website offers something even better than a gallery viewing. The scanners provide a depth of colour and an ability to zoom in that just aren’t available in a static display. What’s more, observing the paintings on screens means they are, effectively, backlit. “You see it in an entirely different way,” Hohler says. “It’s given a brilliance to these images that you don’t otherwise get.”

Though the collection is already clocking in at 83,000 images, a queue is forming. “The wonderful thing is, as soon as you launch a project like this, it belongs to everybody,” Hohler says. Many institutions and organisations have offered their digitised collections. The Watercolour World is even receiving offers to scan private collections that have never been made public, let alone digitised. “We’ve been overwhelmed by people’s positivity and encouragement,” Fitzherbert says.

Find out more: watercolourworld.org

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue

It’s not just the consumption of art that is being revolutionised by technology; it’s all about the democratisation of who can become a creative, and the effect this can have on society, says Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst

A LUX x ROSEWOOD COLLABORATION

A few years ago, I became aware of teamLab, an extraordinary group of  artists based in Tokyo. They have over  500 members in their organisation, and they  come from all walks of life. When you meet  them and exchange business cards, you will find one might be an architect, one might be a programmer. It’s quite an astonishing  group, all working together to create these amazing visual experiences. At the time, they had had numerous exhibitions in Japan; their immersive interactive digital works result in hugely colourful exhibitions.

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Most of their subject matter is based on the natural environment: they create flowers, birds, trees, fish, butterflies and waterfalls, and the viewer becomes part of the experience of the exhibition. Through the way in which their algorithms work, the artworks respond to and interact with visitors. Some of the pieces are very large, such as one in Tokyo where you roll up your trousers, take your shoes off and walk across the floor, and (digital) fish touch you, swim around you and swim away. In these exhibitions, the work is programmed at the start of the exhibition, but is influenced by the visitors. The artist stops having control from the moment the first visitor appears, which moves things on from the repetitive visual loop you would see in earlier video art displays.

It was when we [Pace Gallery] were hosting a show in Palo Alto, California, by teamLab, in the old Tesla factory, that it became evident that the old ‘white cube art gallery’ model was not the way to support artists such as these. The exhibition was ticketed, the space was huge, and it travelled to London and Beijing; its size and reach were beyond anything a traditional private gallery could host, as it had large-scale public appeal.

Tech engineers and programmers creating art is a major change for the future of creativity in general, and the art world in particular. Five or 10 years ago, I felt the art world to be slow on the uptake of technology. These artists are now creating a new world of art through technology, understanding the tools you need to bring the disciplines together. You have teams of people with science and technology backgrounds and others who have studied art together in a studio – people with sharply different backgrounds and skill sets. It’s unlikely you would have had engineers in an art studio just a decade ago.

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This means that participation is no longer just about the art world; we are reaching a much broader audience. Previously, the art world was confined to a very small percentage of people. Now the reach of these new types of art is much broader; through social media, millions are seeing it, and millions are visiting exhibitions by artists such as teamLab, JR or Random International. Studio Drift, a team we work with in the Netherlands, has just had an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which was one of the most-visited shows the museum has ever done.

They have a much wider reach than a typical contemporary art show. This in turn means there is a whole new category of people experiencing this kind of creativity, who wouldn’t go to see a show of works on canvas. It opens doors to new audiences, and it also by extension gives the opportunity for people to start to see themselves as artists who may not have otherwise considered doing so.

We are in a moment in time when much is changing. Groups of artists have a much bigger reach, they are involved in conversations around nature and sustainability and technology, and all these artists care very much about how art can be part of people’s lives, moving nature into the built environment, and seeing how nature can be incorporated into modern life.

With FuturePace (through which we represent artist groups like these) and our partner Futurecity, we are involved in conversations with airports, cities and placemakers. There is a public realm element to it, lifting people’s lives with art experiences. JR, for example, is not just a street artist. He has a message he wants to convey, he is understood by a very broad swathe of people (he has 1.2 million Instagram followers) and his work has the power to transform societies. He has worked in favelas in Brazil, set up schools, started projects to feed homeless people, and worked against gun crime. He has seen that art has the power to speak to people and transform. He is very passionate and energetic in what he does, and he deals with art that is aimed to be visible to the many, not the few. And his art is not just for the wealthy. The democratisation of art is the next frontier, outside of the world of the galleries. It is an inclusive movement, inclusive of people who can make it and also of those who can consume it.

Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst is a former president of Pace London, the international gallery group, and co-founder of FuturePace, a collaboration between Pace and the placemaking city developer Futurecity. Find out more: future-pace.com

This article was originally published in the Winter 2019 issue. 

As the world’s leading contemporary art galleries come together for this year’s Frieze London in Regent’s Park, Iwona Blazwick, director of Whitechapel Gallery, discusses the challenges and successes of working to enrich communities through outreach programmes

What is the ultimate objective of a public learning programme? For anybody who’s struggled to find recognition, has a difficult home life or doesn’t see what prospects there are for them, art holds the key. Perhaps this kind of experience might help somebody realise they’re an artist, but I don’t think it has to limit itself to that. We’ve had programme alumni go on to do everything from forensics to fashion design, psychology to filmmaking.

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I think the real asset of a good youth programme is that it can teach transferrable skills that take you in different directions. By encouraging participation and decision-making, we hope to bridge social, cultural and religious differences and instil some sort of epiphany in people that will help them for the rest of their lives, whether in a professional capacity, or as members of different communities. However, I don’t want to instrumentalise art. I also believe that it should be free to not do any of the above! But that very freedom too, I hope, can be found in our programmes.

In recent years there has been a shift from traditional media such as painting and sculpture towards moving-image work, performance and of course social media and digital. And yet, at the same time, artists working in the digital realms are also being drawn to ceramics and other tactile ways of making art. As a medium-sized institution, we can be quite nimble and offer a wide portfolio of activities to reflect this interdisciplinary time. For example, when we hosted Thick Time, our exhibition of work by the great South African artist William Kentridge, members of our youth forum, Duchamp & Sons, collaborated with the English National Opera, and our youth participants very unselfconsciously made extraordinary costumes, animations and even worked on a libretto.

However, perhaps the bigger philosophical issue is: are we teaching people, or do we have something to learn from them? I believe our strength lies in reciprocity. Situated in East London as we are, we are uniquely placed to access rich and culturally diverse communities, and have one of the youngest populations of any borough of London. So many artists and creatives live in the area, and it is incredibly cosmopolitan, which gives everything a tremendous energy.

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One challenge (and success) has been the fact that some communities here are fairly inward-looking, and are not engaging with the gallery. Perhaps this is because they are first-generation immigrants, or because they haven’t felt confident speaking English, or because of different religious backgrounds. To create a dialogue, it was important to recognise that each party had something to bring to the table. For example, in 2015, we launched a project in Stepney Green called Art Already Made: Skills Exchange and worked with a group of Bengali and Somalian women. For various cultural reasons, they had been a little bit isolated, and this project sought to recognise the tremendous skill sets they had and create an exchange of skills between the women and artist Rebecca Davies, ranging from engraving and bookbinding to embroidery and illustration. Having worked with them in a community centre, the next step was: how do we persuade them to come here, to the Whitechapel Gallery? That was the ultimate goal. And they did come, and they brought their families, and that was a great victory in that sense, to have convinced them to cross the threshold, to build up their confidence and work to keep them coming back and maintain that relationship.

Another example would be our efforts to counteract the gang culture that is sadly on the rise in East London. For a lot of youth, the issue is that there is nowhere to go that you don’t have to spend money. In our latest programme, we worked with artist Seth Pimlott, who ran yoga sessions and performance workshops, ultimately culminating in the performance piece Alone Together, all about physical release. To provide somewhere to go and something to do, hopefully it can help children who would otherwise end up in a spiral of violence. Working across so many communities, of course, one has to bear in mind various cultural sensitivities, but having said that, we would never tolerate someone being intolerant. If somebody was critical because of somebody else’s sexuality or whatever, that’s something that I think one would confront. What we hope is that through their networks the kids who are exposed to our programmes will reach out to those kids who aren’t – those kids who do feel much more alienated or hermetic.

Ultimately, in any programme, what’s most important is to share. All of our initiatives serve as case studies. The reasons why entities such as the Swarovski Foundation, and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation before them, support our programmes is they want to learn from them. We’re moving into a post-industrial economy and have a generation facing changes and job shortages because of automation. Industry is changing, which is good, but it’s also a scary prospect and if you haven’t got the education and the confidence to deal with that, you are going to be lost.

Learn more about the Whitechapel Gallery and the gallery’s upcoming exhibitions: whitechapelgallery.org

Born in Senegal, and raised in Lebanon, Nadim Karam is an architect, painter, sculptor, writer and designer. With his Beirut-based multidisciplinary design studio, Atelier Hapsitus, Karam has created large-scale urban art projects in Paris, Prague, Dubai, London, Melbourne, Tokyo and Chicago. His work has been exhibited at several Venice Architecture Biennales, and his first major exhibition in the UK is currently on display at The Fine Art Society. Millie Walton speaks to the creative polymath about urban toys, artistic challenges and the importance of fun.

LUX: Your sculptures and paintings are often quite fantastical. Where does your inspiration come from?
Nadim Karam: Life! I believe, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, that an element of fantasy in a serious context or with a serious message can transport an idea or story, and help it catch alight. A judicious dose of fantasy is one of our antidotes to apathy, ugliness, and pessimism.

Inspiration, I suppose, comes from our experience of life and the way we look at the world… I am lucky to come from Lebanon, with its wonderful, chaotic energy and endless contradictions, and I spent ten years absorbing Japanese cultural philosophy, which is now very much a part of me. I have so many ideas; I just need to find the quiet in-between-work moments to put them down in my sketchbook.

LUX: At Atelier Hapsitus, you combine several different creative disciplines – art, architecture and design – is there an over-arching theme or vision that ties these altogether?
NK: Probably that would be absurdity, memories and stories, which constantly feed into each other. Their meeting point is the public art projects that I create for cities or public contexts.

LUX: You often describe your sculptures as ‘Urban Toys’ – what do you mean by that?
NK: My work is whimsical; I make toys to the scale of the city to create question marks, open a dialogue and introduce moments of delight, or fantasy to urban contexts.

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LUX: How do you persuade clients that spending money to make their urban environments ‘playful’ is important?
NK: I believe in it. I believe in it so much that I invest years and years working with communities, municipalities and bureaucrats to persuade them to introduce playfulness to their cities. Urban environments can be lonely places, dominated by real estate, communication and transportation systems and the business of making money. Adults need dreams, fantasy and moments of wonder just as much as they did when they were children, but at a certain point they were required to put their toys away and get on with the serious business of living. If we can introduce organic flexibility within rigid systems through interactive works, we can help reinforce a sense of belonging to a community, and celebrate enjoyment for its own sake.

This will never work if you just cut and paste an artwork into a context – that is not the kind of public art I am talking about. Before proposing a project to a city, I study, with my office, the history and culture, the geography and built context, because I want to create works that feel like they have grown out of the place or in contrast with it, and are adopted by the people who live there.

LUX: What’s been your most challenging project to date?
NK: In different ways, many have been challenging; Prague because I had to negotiate through a tense post-communist social climate, Nara (Japan) because it took twenty years to get the Buddhist monks’ acceptance and Melbourne because I had to create ten kinetic three-story high sculptures on the other side of the world in just 9 months.

The scale of my work is getting bigger, though, and this is providing fresh challenges. For Dubai I want to create “The Cloud”, a public garden 300m above ground, and for Lagos I am working on an Elephant City, a dynamic urban system within a giant sculpture. Currently, I am working on projects for Shenzhen, Dilijan and Singapore. They might be far from realisation, but I never stop to think about whether I can do these projects or not. If I don’t stop working, at some point opportunity and encounters will create a window in time to make a project work.

LUX: Do you believe urban environments should be inclusive for everyone and, if so, how do you ensure this is possible in your art/architecture?
Nadim Karam: When you create an artwork, like a painting or a sculpture, and you hang it in a gallery or institution, the context is purposefully neutral and the focus is on the dialogue between the work and the viewer. In the urban environment, the placement of an artwork becomes politicised because the context has its history, memories, sights, sounds and moods. Public spaces are necessarily democratic arenas where opinions are challenged and it is not easy to reach consensus. So a public art project will not happen if people don’t believe in it. But if we can enrich our public spaces with stories, beauty, absurdity, fantasy or questions, we are enriching the community as a whole and enhancing the quality of their shared experiences.

LUX: What’s your creative process like?
NK: All my projects grow from my sketchbooks, where I record my raw ideas. A series of these sketches will form a significant part of my new exhibition at The Fine Art Society. I use lapses of time while travelling from one place to another to generate ideas, and when I get back to my office, I work with ten to fifteen people to transform these ideas into workable projects or sculptures. Otherwise, they might become paintings when I reach my studio.

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LUX: What’s it like to be an artist in Lebanon?
NK: It is challenging, because there is no support from cultural institutions. At the same time, we live with uncertainty; at any time, bombs can explode and we have to close the office. You have to be sufficiently independent to be an artist in Lebanon, because you cannot live from it otherwise. My projects are all over the world, so I spend a lot of time travelling, but I generate all my work from Lebanon – it is a place of continuous energy and inspiration.

LUX: Where are your favourite urban environments in the world and why?
NK: I love the richness of all urban environments and their different cultures. They are a collision of so many factors; each city has a completely different aura and way of being despite all our globalisation efforts. The projects I have created all came from the serendipity of encountering a city and being inspired to interact with it. I celebrate the identity of each place by first trying to understand it, then offering it a bouquet of stories.

LUX: What’s next?
NK: Currently, I have an exhibition entitled ‘Urban Stories’ at The Fine Art Society in London, which showcases over twenty years of my practice. The exhibition came about through the shared motivation of The Fine Art Society and myself to draw a connecting line from my early sketches to my latest works. Meanwhile, I am designing and building my own art studio, “The Muse” in the Lebanese mountains, and the Pavilion of the Whole World.

‘Urban Stories’ runs until 19 May 2017 at The Fine Art Society, Mayfair, London