In many cultures, weddings are colourful affairs with costume changes and other colour-adding traditions dating back hundreds of years. In the Westernized world, however, weddings usually bring up visions of a lacy white bride and a black-suited groom. Lots of white flowers, gauze and princessy embellishments.

Weddings are big business with various sources reporting that in 2018 the average wedding in the U.S. cost a staggering $32,000 – $44,000. And in the U.S. alone, the wedding industry is worth an estimated $72 billion while the global wedding market is an estimated $300 billion.

Big business indeed, with magazines, blogs and bridal shows fuelling the flames. So it is no wonder that even otherwise frugal couples seem to go crazy in their quest for the perfect fantasy wedding and that they generally opt for a white wedding.

In this light, it is refreshing to see a couple deciding to go completely their own way with their event yet still manage to accomplish most of the things that weddings generally do – the ceremony with the dressed-up couple and their dressed-up guests, and a boisterous party afterwards.

But for Von and Ryan Bishop’s wedding, there was no white. It was all black and bright colours to reflect their contrasting personalities. Von is all black, Ryan is all colour.

After knowing each other for 12 years, the couple got engaged last year and married this August. Initially they didn’t want a wedding at all, but then decided to please their parents and have a real party but make it into a bit of a work-related project, too. Von is a graphic designer and owner of Ivy creative. Ryan is a printer and owner of Boom Studios. Both are in Collingwood neighbourhood of Melbourne, Australia.

The project started with the two finding a space they liked, Neon Parc an art gallery in the Brunswick neighbourhood. It is not for rent but they managed to convince the owner that a wedding built for one night only is really an exhibition.

They set to work designing their wedding within the confines of the 30 x 7-metre (98.5 x 22 ft) empty, grey space. The concept idea was a collision of neon-bright colours against black. They build everything from scratch including a kitchen in the parking lot behind the gallery. Only a 23-metre (75 ft) table fit in the space so that determined the number of guests: 74.

The table was designed by Boom’s industrial design team and built on site from leftover materials from other projects. The table setting was designed by Von and her sister, interior designer Danica. They scoured second-hand shops, flea markets and garage sales for statues and toys that were painted and/or velvet-flocked at Boom.

Each of the couple picked out their personal favourite graphics. Boom printed and installed in total 552 square metres (5,942 sq. ft) of graphics made of heading-to-garbage material donated by various suppliers.

The guests were told nothing in advance, except the couples were asked to select either all colour or all black. Single guests were told which colour to wear so that they would match the décor perfectly. They didn’t even know where the wedding would be, until the day of the event. 
Upon entering the space they were served a colour cocktail and a dark cocktail. After a short mix-and-mingle and a super-short ceremony, the real party started with food served banquet-style. “We had the best party of all time, and we ate and drank till 4 a.m.,” the happy couple says. Tuija Seipell.

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No Sunrise No Sunset is a spellbinding pavilion installation created by Kamin Lertchaiprasert, a Thai artist whose works are included, for example, in the Guggenheim collection. To create the pavilion for Thailand’s first Art Biennale held in Krabi he collaborated with architect Suriya Umpansiriratana of Bangkok-based Walllasia Ltd.

The Krabi province consists of a group of 80 islands known for their exceptional natural beauty. The Biennale’s theme, “Edge of the Wonderland”, required that all artworks were created for the location to highlight the rich nature and cultural context of Krabi. 

The mirror-walled 50 square-metre (538 sq.-ft.) rectangular box that Lertchaiprasert and Umpansiriratana call a cave is located by the Andaman Sea at the end of Ao Nang Beach where local lovers often watch the sunset.

The artist considers art as a ritualistic practice to achieve a greater understanding of oneself, nature and the world as a whole. In an interview about No Sunrise No Sunset, the artist has said that the work is not really site-specific but more “life-specific.” He says the work can be installed anywhere because “the sun doesn’t move, but the world is spinning by itself.”

The box’s exterior walls are covered in mirror which makes the entire piece thoroughly enticing, even without the captivating story unfolding inside. The mirrors recreate and transform the box by reflecting the surroundings in a constant, never-ending shift of serene and beautiful images as the sun rises and sets and the clouds come and go. But the cave also creates an eerily exposed and disorientated sensation and forces the visitor to be extra careful stepping on the low concrete steps that lead into the cave.

Inside, a love story unfolds. The artist imagined a love story of Yai Sa and Mr. Krabi and illustrated the inner walls of the cave with modern love-related graffiti. According to Thai tradition a man needs to be ordained at the age of 25 before he can get married. In this story, Mr. Krabi leaves town to seek the truth of dharma. It seems that he never returned as the elderly Yai Sa still waits for him on the beach. She is represented by a fiberglass figure standing in a pond with the sea behind her. She is a symbol of love and waiting.

We love the ethereal, otherworldly and experiential feeling the pavilion evokes through its refreshingly analog means. No screens, no AI or VR and yet we are transported and inspired. Tuija Seipell

Photo credits: Spaceshift Studio/ Pirak Anurakyawachon

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Since the early 1980s, Fuorisalone events and exhibitions during the Milan Design Week have grown grown from just a few happenings to an entire week’s worth of programming.

While the Design Week’s main showcase is still the furniture and furnishings event, Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Fuorisalone events are now covering many other segments including automotive, technology, art, fashion and food.

One of the intriguing pop-ups included in this year’s Fuorisalone was the four-day Cartier Precious Garage installation at Garage Sanremo on Via delle Fosse Adriatine.

Created for Cartier by Desi Santiago, the Puerto Rico-born visual and performance artist based in New York, Precious Garage was a fantastical mix of gold, mechanics and jewellery.

Everyday mechanical shapes and tools have long been Cartier inspiration and the garage references worked in this installation perfectly.

The pieces of jewellery on display were from the new Juste un Clou and Écrou de Cartier collections inspired by nuts and nails, but the visual centerpiece was the gold-painted 1978 Corvette C3 hovering over the precious pieces.

Santiago used elements of a garage – the car, car parts, tools – and slathered it all in gold creating a jewellery-like space that felt as luxurious as each of the Cartier pieces.

A luxe garage with a seriously splendid parts department, the inside of a timepiece, an art installation – Cartier Precious Garage evoked all of these. What it was NOT, is a boring, prissy showcase of jewellery. Tuija Seipell.

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Many fascinating stories of colonialism, manufacturing, selling, trading, culture, design and art make up the 170-year history of the iconic Dutch fabric design brand, Vlisco.

An exhibition “Vlisco 1:1 Un à Un” at the Helmond Museum recently celebrated the anniversary of the company by telling many of the colourful stories and in particular elaborating on and celebrating the link between Vlisco and Africa.

Founded in Helmond in 1846 by Pieter Fentener van Vlissingen, Vlisco merges Dutch and African art and design to produce objects and fabrics. Surprisingly, the first bright, graphic patterns of roller-printed wax fabrics popular in West and Central African culture have their origins in the Netherlands and Indonesia.

While the incredibly vibrant African textile patterns in themselves would have given the exhibition visitors’ much to look at, Vlisco’s creative director, Zara Atelj, gave the exhibition design team the kind of freedom that most commercially slanted exhibitions seldom have. They were asked to “Go crazy, please.”

In an article, former Vlisco designer and a key member of the exhibition team, Michiel Schuurman, was quoted as saying about the creative process that “I just like the whole maximalistic approach. Just a bunch of truly creative people hanging out, with no commercial hindrance, makes for a truly radical exhibition.”

The most radical and head-ache-inducing part of the exhibition were the ‘skins’ of designs by Schuurman with which the exhibition design firm Studio Harm Rensink covered the floors, walls and pillars.

The overall effect of the exhibition, that sheds light on an intriguing collision of colours and cultures, was delightfully overwhelming, immersive and informative. Tuija Seipell.

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His installations, often focused on water, air, sound and light, are thought-provoking and as close to scientific innovation as they are to art.

A good example of this is Andrea, one of his two pieces included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He describes it as ‘an indoor air purifier that absorbs, through the plant which is housed inside the unit, toxic particles released by plastic, wood, fabric or metal items in the places where we live.’
Lehanneur works with well-known brands as well, including Veuve Cliquot, Cartier, Poltrona Frau, Issey Miyake and Nike, and with hotels and public institutions.

Our recent favorite of Mathieu Lehanneur’s work is the commission he completed for Galerie Chenel, the well-respected gallery of archaeological objects and Roman antiquities on Quai Voltaire in Paris.He created the eye-catching framework and concept to display the prestigious objects at Galerie Chenel’s 60 square meter booth at this year’s Biennale des Antiquaires at the Grand Palais, Paris.

Lehanneur conjured up a fascinating mix of specific and sublime, allowing the art pieces to remain the main focus, yet clearly indicating that something new and fresh is going on. – Tuija Seipell.

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Pink is a polarizing colour. Everyone has a reaction to it. While you haven’t seen much pink on these pages in the past decade, we are all for fairy tale princesses, baby girls and cupcakes.

But we have a strong reaction to the kind of chalky, cold (yes, pink can be cold), dead pink that reminds us of digestive medication, or worse. And strangely, that is the kind of pink that tends to be overused. As if it were impossible to stop once you start using it. Tacky.

So, let’s just say it takes a lot to impress us with a pink interiors. Especially pink beauty parlour interiors. Full marks, therefore to MA Allen Interiors of Raleigh, North Carolina, for their subtly elegant work on PaintBar Nail Bar’s first salon, also in Raleigh.

The powdery, soft, peachy pinks, the coppery golds, warm greys and calming white evoke a feel of luxury and serenity. The designers are skilfully not overdoing the pink. It’s just enough. And that is an art in itself with any colour, but especially with the polarizing pink. Tuija Seipell.

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Yayoi Kusama’s two fascinating mirror room installations are currently on exhibit at Victoria Miro Gallery’s in London (on till July 30, 2016, at 16 Wharf Road, free admission).

The dizzying room titled ‘all eternal love I have for the pumpkins’ has many of Kusama’s hallmarks: dots, mirrors and pumpkins. It consists of wood, mirror, plastic, acrylic and LED lights. It creates the disorienting feelings of infinity and upside-downness while also being both fun and disturbing. There is a sense of menacing threat and desperation. The room is a full-body experience with so many senses engaged. Alice of the Wonderland fame would feel right at home here.

The other room, titled ‘chandelier of grief’ is a space created with steel, aluminum, acrylic, plastic, one-way mirror, a chandelier, LED lights and a motor. Similarly, it evokes feelings of fear and panic, as well as splendour and awe. The mirrors ensure that the experience is both disorienting and overwhelming. It is the Haunted Mansion without the mansion.

The prolific, multitalented Nagano, Japan-born Kusama has produced art, installations, fashion shows, films, books and other creative work around the world for more than four decades. Her obsession with dots, pumpkins and infinity patterns are repeated in many of her works throughout her career and are based on childhood hallucinations. She describes this as a form of ‘active self-obliteration.’ – Tuija Seipell.

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German-born abstract artist Peter Zimmermann’s current exhibition is a fantastical mix of a traditional art exhibition and an experiential show.

The exhibition, open till June 19, 2016, at the Museum für Neue Kunst, is Zimmermann’s first solo show in his Black Forest home town of Freiburg, Germany.

Known for his colourful abstract ‘blob art’, the 60-year-old Zimmermann has created a unique, large walk-in art experience in the 1902 museum building that once housed a girls’ school.

The installation consists of several white-painted rooms where bright abstract artworks on the wall appear quite harmlessly traditional, but upon entering the spaces, the guest is confused by the highly reflective floors that not only seem to interact with the paintings, but also make the guests feel part of the art itself.

The entire installation takes up some 425 square meters (about 4,575 square feet) and each of the white-backgrounded paintings was newly created for this special exhibition.

According to the Museum, the artists is deploying digital filters and computer programs, and uses templates – such as photographs, film stills or diagrams – in unusual ways, transferring them onto canvas in several layers of transparent epoxy resin.

Peter Zimmermann has titled the installation ‘Freiburg School.’ This refers to the museum building’s past but it also reflects his musings on education and visual communication in today’s computerized and digitalized world. – Tuija Seipell.

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The work of an extraordinary artistic talent such as CJ Hendry deserves and demands more than plain white walls for its showcase.

That was the approach The Cool Hunter took right from the beginning with her meticulous hand-drawn art work.

TCH first introduced her in Sydney, Australia, as part of the Art Hunter experience in conjunction with Jaguar.

This was followed by her first solo presentation, a four-day exclusive art and food reception at a private luxury residence in Sydney.

Following that successful sell out debut, TCH has just launched CJ Hendry’s 50 Foods in 50 Days Gourmet Experience in Melbourne.

Every one of CJ Hendry’s pieces has been sold out prior to the three events, and such was the case with 50 Foods in 50 Days as well. Each of the 50 square black-and-white hand-drawn pieces, depicting photo-realistic French designer plates with various food items, was sold as soon as the series was announced. The hunger for her art seems to be insatiable!

The CJ Hendry Gourmet Art Experience takes place from March 27 to April 12 at 166 Gertrude Street in Fitzroy, Melbourne’s most interesting neighbourhood. The space used to be a paint store until Kalex Boutique Property Development transformed it into an event space.

To create an arresting milieu for the art and the food, The Cool Hunter briefed its go-to event designer extraordinaire, Sydney-based Natalie Longheon, to create a minimal monochrome gourmet food store stocked with the best packaged food products from Australia and around the world.

As usual, Natalie more than delivered. Dramatic black envelopes the viewer and draws all attention to the mesmerizing art and intriguing gourmet food. The dramatic launch event build and production was by Moth Design.

Catering for our opening was by Melbourne’s best caterer, Georgina Damm from Damm Fine Food. Black cones filled with Parmesan and horseradish gelato topped with caviar and flowers.

Adding to the dark-theme, make-up artist Kate Radford applied smoky eyes for all the waiters. Water for the event was by San Pellegrino, beer by Sample and wine by Handpickedwines.

Coffee is provided by Melbourne’s coffee tasting specialists at Sensory Lab who created a pop up coffee store for the duration of the CJ Hendry experience.

The event branding and graphic design was created by Paper Stone Scissors and the paper for the Art Catalogue was provided by Spicers Australia.

Photography by Peter Tarasiuk.

CJ Hendry Gourmet Art Experience

166 Gertrude St
Fitzroy

27 March – 12 April
Monday’s – Closed
Tue to Friday – 12pm – 8pm
Sat/Sun – 10am – 4pm

Closed Good Friday and Easter Sunday – open Easter Saturday

CJ Hendry is exclusively represented by thecoolhunter)

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Pen of Paper artist CJ Hendry Debut solo show in Sydney.

CJ Hendry is exclusively represented by thecoolhunter

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