Taut Programme & Events

The details of the Taut- Fashion & Art programme are listed below. For details of the other events at Trajector Art Fair 2011, please click here.

The full programme of 2011 events will be added as they are confirmed, so please check back regularly.

The key events in Taut this year are:

Exhibited Screening Programme – Catherine Anyango

Exhibited Screening Programme – Tomo Brejc

Solo presentation – Yves De Brabander

Emmanuelle Dirix and Sadie Murdoch:
Knitting an Image of Fashion (1919 to 1939) - Talks & Conversation

Exhibited screening programme - Kristian Schuller

Lewis Klahr- Engram Sepals (1994-2000)

Exhibited Screening Programme - Julie Verhoeven

Exhibited Screening Programme – Catherine Anyango

Catherine Anyango is a Swedish/Kenyan artist whose multidisciplinary practice has often centred on – but is hardly limited to –film. Within this medium too, she is something of an eclectic spirit, working in a range of contexts from producing works as collaborations engaging with other disciplines; switching effortlessly between more traditional cinematography and animation.

Catherine Anyango has frequently collaborated with designers, including fashion designers. For example, one of her ongoing collaborations has been with Dutch product and shoe designer Eelko Moorer and it will be two of these works that are screened as part of this year’s Taut.

But, in ensuring that a suitably broad picture is given of her practice as a filmmaker, the exhibition screening programme will also include her ‘Soldiers & Lovers’, a work arising more from within the oeuvre that has less to do with collaborations centred on design. In this work – which deploys both live action and animation- enigmatic notions of a bittersweet doomed love play out against the background of historic political history. One of the key motifs in the piece is the kind of cutout boards that were once a favourite attraction at fairgrounds or seaside amusement parks; the kind that enabled someone to have his or her photograph taken in the guise of a dashing hero or comedy fat lady. Drawing on psychoanalytic notions of public and private personae, the film raises questions about relationships. Even the editing is meant to play with our perceptions of inner psyche and outward appearances as it conjures up the lead female character’s realities and narratives. Yet even here, dress codes and vintage fashion become an intrinsic part of its visual communication. The implication that men and women play out social roles, even more heightened under the conditions of war, in which clothing plays an important role is intrinsic.

Catherine Anyango has produced live film events around London, including those the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Film Theatre and has exhibited work internationally and across London in a range of locations including the ICA, Shunt Vaults and the English National Ballet. Most recently she has shown work at the London Design Festival and set design at Design Miami/Basel. Her publication of a graphic novel adaptation of Heart of Darkness was met with critical acclaim including the Observer’s Graphic Novel of the Month.

Exhibited Screening Programme – Tomo Brejc

Tomo Brejc is a photographer and director who settled in London after completing his studies in Slovenia. Since 2002 he has increasingly worked with the medium of the moving image as a director of TV commercials and pop videos in addition to his work as a photographer. His work for prestigious clients such as Selfridges, Esprit, Falke, Japan Raggs, Diesel, Garnier, Mobitel, Nissan, Plein Sud, Renault, Toyota, T-Mobile and Vodafone is frequently marked by an elegant wit that we associate with European cinema traditions. And, indeed, his work as a fashion photographer seems to carry within it a certain narrative sensibility that relates to his underlying engagement with cinema.

Although Tomo Brejc is entirely competent at restricting the image to a formal presentation of clothing, it is soon clear to anyone who examines his work that he is far more interested in telling stories about clothes when working with fashion. In his shoots meticulously selected locations photographed with the same attention to detail as the models and clothing constitute a loaded mise-en-scène through which the desirability of the fashion operates with much the same mechanism as subjective identification with a character when viewing cinema.

The close relationship between the two, highlighting both similarities and difference, is nowhere clearer than in the short film project he undertook as a complement to a menswear shoot in a recent issue of So Chic magazine. To call it a ‘making of’ film belies its languid operatic unfurling that is every bit as powerful as that in the fashion story composed of static images.

Casting Vincent Chaillet, the charismatic star dancer of the Paris Opera Ballet, as Jacques Chazot, dancer, writer, erstwhile boyfriend of Françoise Sagan, France’s first real gay icon and overall overlord of Paris’ 1970’s nightclub scene, Brejc’s film uses actual locations dripping with veracity to construct an extremely complex fashion discourse. This is post-modernity in overdrive. Contemporary fashion is elaborated on a contemporary cultural celebrity whilst very consciously constructing an imagined image of the past; playacting, homage and renewal occupy the frame simultaneously.

Tomo Brejc has had editorial published in top international publications including GQ UK, GQ Style UK, Telegraph Fashion, 125 Magazine, Elle, Annabelle, So'Chic, ES-Magazine, Esquire, Flash, Loaded and Vision. He has exhibited work at, amongst others, The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Photography of the Year, Ljubljana; Maison du Danemark, Paris; Gallery A+A, Venice; Contemporary Slovenian Photography Salon, Ljubljana, Slovenia; PavelHouse; Castle Kodeljevo, Ljubljana; Gallery Infra, Stockholm; Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana; K2, Izmir and the Museum of Modern Art, Maribor. His work has been presented at a range of international art fairs including Viennafair, Berliner Liste and Paris Photo

Solo presentation – Yves De Brabander

Taut has invited a solo presentation by Yves De Brabander, the Antwerp-based photographer and filmmaker whose training and initial achievements in fine art photographer have more recently been complemented by a growing reputation as a fashion photographer.

Even in his initial bodies of work he often introduced vehemently sensual subject matter. Yet, the erotic is often shown as coexisting side-by-side with its own self-conscious reflection. In the particular staging and through odd domestic or other elements introduced into his images there is something that seems to be pointing us in the direction of recognising that the erotic fundamentally remains an unrealisable idea; that in trying to realise the ultimate image of the erotic, there is always some element of the realisation that will forever draw the reality back into the realm of Readers Wives. Sexuality may be normative and normalised and yet, simultaneously, this is what divorces it from the entirely cerebral form of excitement that seemingly simple images can produce.

Neither his fashion nor non-fashion works are easily placed into a single category. Drawing on art history, erotic traditions or the iconography of other media forms – such as cinema- they often have a narrative aspect built into their manifestation without ever being transparently illustrative or suggesting a singular reading.

In both his fashion photography and the works that exist more in the realm of photography as an artistic medium, there is a certain framing and tone that is cinematic. This is not surprising given that film often seems to inform his work, readily seen in fashion stories with titles such as ‘French Movies’. But, this is less in the sense of either being a means of reconstructing imagery from recognisable films or using the fashion shoot as a storytelling device – a photo-roman with good clothes – both of which approaches are now familiar territory within fashion’s canon. Rather there is something in Yves De Brabander’s work in which it is not that which is fully explained that is important but rather that which is not that forms a central part of its communication, operating at times, exactly like the kind of French cinema to which the title of a particular fashion series refers.

Taking this intersection with cinema in his work as a starting point, Yves De Brabander will present a solo project at Trajector 2011 as part of the Taut programme.

Yves De Brabander is represented by Munch Gallery, NYC. His work has been shown internationally and both his fashion and art photography has been published in leading international publications.

Image Gallery

Emmanuelle Dirix and Sadie Murdoch: Knitting an Image of Fashion (1919 to 1939) - Talks & Conversation

Saturday 30 April –commences 15:00

Coinciding with the recent opening of a substantial exhibition at the Fashion Museum in Antwerp that examines knitting in fashion, Taut has collaborated with the MoMu to present a programme that extends the discourses explored at the MoMu in that exhibition. The event will focus on how knitting in fashion during the interbellum period was harnessed to elaborate some of the Modernist ideas in the ether that informed all aspects of cultural life and, indeed, how artists and photographers of the period, in turn, gave back fashion an image of itself during the same period.

The event will open with individual presentations by Emmanuelle Dirix and Sadie Murdoch.

The cultural historian Emmanuelle Dirix (a co-curator of the MoMu exhibition) who is well known for her work examining the relationship between fashion’s representations of women and the cultural narratives arising around them will focus on the how knitting was deployed by designers and clothing manufacturers of the period eager to bring modern ideas into the realms of fashion.

The artist and writer Dr Sadie Murdoch, whose own work as an artist frequently engages with Modernism and its histories in many different ways, most frequently constructs works in which the recognisable or abstracted imagery of Modernism’s archive is directly appropriated into her own photography-based practice. She will talk about how the new medium of fashion photography was one of the areas in which women artists connected with the various art movements of the day were able to both earn a living commercially and sometimes, through such neglected works, able to bring the agendas of Modernity into images of fashion disseminated by the mass media of the day.

The individual presentations will segue into a conversation in which they touch on the historic redefinitions of gender roles in relation to fashion and its imagery and, quite literally, how the reinterpretation of traditional crafts and materials reflected the period’s shift in women’s daily lives. Similarly, they will also examine how women impacted on the early development of fashion photography as a medium, a perhaps offering a revisionist insight into a field that was to prove so male-dominated in the period after World War II up until fairly recently.

Exhibited screening programme - Kristian Schuller

Kristian Schuller is primarily a fashion photographer, a professional photographer whose sumptuous and precise work has found a natural demand in the worlds of glossy fashion magazines and mainstream commercial clients including the likes of Laura Biagotti and Swatch. In his commercial work for clients or editorial for magazines, there is no doubt that what we are dealing with are slick and professional visualisations of seductive and glamourous fashion. It’s not hard to see why any client would want to harness the power of his work for their brand. It’s operatic spectacle and lyrical grandeur is impossible to ignore.

And yet, perhaps it is also possible to approach these images of fashion from another position. Even when working with the static image, Kristian Schuller’s images are constantly dealing with movement. Frozen moments, maybe, but it’s almost as if his camera demands that we understand his images as a tiny moment in a living drama playing out before us. Time frozen stands for time in motion in almost all of his shoots whether the frenetic energy of the circus or a model in full evening dress working out on an outdoor beach gymnasium. Looking even further, we notice still other features. The leitmotifs of the circus or the road movie recur often. It’s almost as if the essence of a particularly German cinema – and Wim Wenders in particular- has informed these images, not as homage or direct reference, but rather as a form of osmosis that taps into the same well of a cultural sources.

Circus, cabaret, opera or fairground sideshows, for example, have often appeared in German film, even from its earliest years, as amplified metaphors for society or the world at large. And, indeed, the allure of the open spaces of America, perhaps because of its promise of something so completely different from the traditional formalities of German society, were a constant feature of German culture since Modernism. For example, America as both a place and an idea was frequently imagined by Brecht and first wound its way into early German films before later cropping up in various early works by Wim Wenders.

Kristian Schuller’s vision of fashion connects with all these traditions almost intuitively and is actually nowhere more evident than in the film works he has made. In one in particular, we see the hints of Expressionist chiaroscuro in a work made for Showstudio and in another he casts a top model as the ambiguous heroine of a road movie.

Krisitan Schuller’s book ’90 Days One Dream’ published by Viermament GmbH was awarded the silver medal in the prestigious Deutscher Fotobuchpreis 2011.

Lewis Klahr- Engram Sepals (1994-2000)

Screening Programme. Sunday 1 May –commences at 14:00

As one of its key project’s for this year’s programme, Taut invited the young London-based curator and writer Rebecca Collins to develop a project in response to this year’s themes.

Taking the notion of the moving image and fashion in its broadest cultural sense, she has developed a very special project indeed. Taut is particularly delighted that she will screen a number of key works from the seven-film cycle of the work of the American artist Lewis Klahr, a timely Belgian premiere of this full body of work.

“Taut presents a screening of key works from master collagist Lewis Klahr’s lauded seven-film cycle Engram Sepals. Conceived as a history or American intoxication, the films use cutout animation and music to transport viewers into the world of the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Images of stylish heroines and fetishized material goods merge and interact in film noir landscapes and fashionable interiors. These works evoke bygone eras not through text or action, but through familiar products, clothing and other desirable objects. Thus these tapestries reveal to us just how fashion and material obsession can dominate our memories and epitomize a time, place or feeling.

Within these material landscapes glossy characters from comic strips and magazines are removed from their original static scenes and come alive, drifting across lush fabrics, falling in love. This is not the real past, but one populated by only the most beautiful, the most melodramatic, the most fashionable. Characters communicate with controlled frozen gestures and sultry sideways glances. In Downs Are Feminine this animation of the static is taken to the extreme, with figures from pornography interacting sexually with not just each other, but also their kitsch 70s home environment. Kitchen utensils are caressed, cabinets kissed. Passion for people and materials is blurred, bringing to mind Richard Hamilton’s 1956 collage Just What is it that Makes Today's Homes so Different, so Appealing?. Whilst Hamilton’s work is a constructed still-life of perfection, Klahr gives emotion and movement his collage, capturing a sense, not just a view.”

Rebecca Collins, 2011. excerpt from her curator’s text for Taut.

Lewis Klahr has been making films since the 70s and is ranked by Film Comment as the 4th most important avant-garde filmmaker of this decade. He has been screened extensively in the United States and Europe, including twice at the Whitney Biennial and for the past 3 years at the New York Film festival. He received a fellowship from the Guggenheim in 1992 and a special citation for experimental work from the National Society of Film Critics in 1994 for his epic film The Pharoah’s Belt (1993). He is currently a faculty member at CalArts.
In October 2010 his film cycle Engram Sepals had a special screening at the Tate Modern in association with the BFI London film festival, curated by Mark Webber.

To read the full text, please click here

The screening of Engram Sepals will be introduced by the curator.

Exhibited Screening Programme - Julie Verhoeven

Julie Verhoeven is an artist and designer; one of those individuals whose practice and achievements are the exception to the rule that creatives need to define themselves in singular terms in order to be successful. Furthermore, her practice defiantly refuses to apply easy rules of separation to make it easier for boundary-neurotic cultural audiences to commodify her work. Her various practices as an artist, illustrator or designer overlap and share certain commonalities. Amongst these are a certain camp relish in the power of pop culture and a spirit that owes a lot to British underground culture or, indeed, punk.

Within her work – whether film, illustration, installation or even clothing- we often encounter startling or even confrontational images of femininity that can be read as ‘post-feminist’. Yet on more closely approaching their frequently graphic nature we nonetheless find the eye of a formalist. Vaginas straight out of a 1960’s issue of Screw magazine might nestle uneasily next to wispy images of fey fairies on the representational level; rough cartoon forms beside materials such as rubber with its fetishistic connotations. But, standing back, we often find them used as component building blocks of an overall structure. Similarly, in film works, dreamy faces of women reminiscent of a 1970’s Biba-esque sensibility may be interrupted with cut-up collage involving both photographed real objects and manufactured surfaces. In numerous ways, Verhoeven’s work often reminds us that the textile designer’s craft or that of the abstract painter – or, indeed, painters from certain schools of Pop- originate in the same human drives towards aesthetic construction or choices of order. Their mode may seem devil-may-care and yet they intuitively understand complex principles akin to scientific theories on pattern recognition or Chomsky’s notions of primates being ‘hardwired’ for language. They effortlessly expect that we can comprehend narratives, insight and meanings within their apparent chaos and the skill of Julie Verhoeven is that we do.

Verhoeven has exhibited internationally since 2003, including solo shows at MU, Eindhoven; ZINGERpresents, Amsterdam; The Hayward Gallery, Galerie Vera-Gliem,Cologne; The Economist Plaza, London and Taché-Levy Gallery, Brussels. Her work has also been exhibited in group exhibitions at The Whitechapel Gallery, London; Gimpel Fils, London; Somerset House, London; The Drawing Room, London; Hales Gallery, London; Deitch Projects, New York; Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes; Emily Tsingou Gallery, London Ritter Zamet, London; House of Voltaire, London and Lucy Mackintosh, Lausanne, amongst other spaces.

After studying fashion she began her career assisting John Galliano and worked in a broad range of capacities for some of the world’s most highly-regarded brands such as Martine Sitbon. Verhoeven’s own fashion label, Gibo by Julie Verhoeven, was launched in September 2002, and she went on to collaborate with global brands including, Louis Vuitton, Versace, Mulberry and H&M.

Special Projects...