Brick Lane, Sunday 17 June

Hsu Chiui – Naif

What do Paris and Taiwan have in common? Refinement. The finest European fashion and the care of the oldest Oriental tradition.

Hsu Chiui was educated at the ENSAD in Paris, after a degree in Fine Arts in her native country. Her art is a melange of these two experiences.

She doesn’t waste material. She uses small pieces techniques on big pieces of cloth and she adapts the cutting to the matter. As a result her line is cutting edge but also backed up by history.

The technique is the traditional indigo dyeing, developing a peculiar shade of blue. The design are the mountains in central Taiwan. Hsu Chiui uses this skill in her garments and in the huge waves designs.

Indigo was once really precious because the blue colour was otherwise difficult to reproduce. Today it can be synthetic, but Hsu Chiui uses only natural indigo that comes from plants grown in certain farms in Taiwan.

What do Paris and Taiwan have in common? Feeling. The romantic allure of Paris in the rain and the Oriental thought that starts from the heart. How do you feel? Hsu Chiui starts her inventive process from an emotion, she explores it and then synthetize it into her art. Because her creations are a melange of Paris and Taiwan, but also of fashion and art.

Hsu Chiui is a designer for her brand Naif and also a painter.

Hsu Chiui with Jerry Yen (CampoBag)

Hsu Chiui and the other Taiwanese artists will showcase the product of their London creative experience in a pop up catwalk on Sunday 24 June in Brixton.

Irma Pellegrini

“I was in Brixton park, thinking ‘How am I gonna pay my rent?’ when I saw the leaves falling down from the trees and the people holding their umbrellas.”

Recycled materials and natural colours in a design that is always different. The eternal renewal of seasons and the feeling of  being just like a leaf in the wind. People caught in their daily London life, who through the magic of art are unified with pieces of nature found elsewhere.

“This comes from Spain.

This comes from Vienna.

This falls down only at the beginning of autumn.

This is very special. It comes from a fig tree I used to play with when I was a child. My family had to sell the house and the new owners wanted to cut the tree and I kept a piece.”

This is Irma Pellegrini. Memories of her native Argentine infuse intensity into her work. The warm colours of autumn and of South American sunsets, the pathos of leaving your land and the strength of floating in the English rain.

“In London if you have an idea you can do it.”

Irma Pellegrini at Sunday UpMarket, Brick Lane

More wood carvings at the Sunday UpMarket in Brick Lane and irmapellegrini.com

Bring Art Go: Creative Exchange in London

Brick Lane is a catwalk of fashion, multiculturality and bohemian life for Londoners and tourists, a window on the artistry seething in the East End. For this reason it has been chosen as the location of an exhibition showcasing the work of 12 Taiwanese creatives for the first time in London.

Their skills belong to Illustration, Fashion, Jewellery, Embroidery, Handcraft, Product Design and Interior Design and they are here to know us, make themselves known and get inspired. The name of the pop-up event is Bring Art Go, embodying the concepts of origins, skills and sharing. It takes place in Brick Lane on Sunday 17 June from 11am until 5pm at the Sunday UpMarket.

This exhibition is part of a 13 days project in collaboration with the London Printworks Trust set up by CampoBag, a company based in Taipei. During this journey the Asian artists will collaborate with 12 English artists to share views on identity, imagination and creative process and shape new products.

The experience develops from Friday 15 June until Wednesday 27 June. The grand finale is a pop-up catwalk on Sunday 24 June in Brixton, other artistic hub in London, summing up the achievements of the designers. The purpose of this exchange is to create a space of multicultural and interartistic inspiration and improve oneself through extremely different approaches derived from a different cultural background, in contrast with the current alienating financial globalization.

The mission of CampoBag is:

Bring art to people

Make everyone’s life better

Add value to business in art.

Poster Design by Mischa Lee

For more information on CampoBag visit campobag.com/en

London in Creative Writing - The British Library: Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands

Cultures’ Clash

An exhibition about literature in a library is a lovely redundancy, like writing a poem in Montparnasse. The exhibition Writing Britain at the British Library is a necessary tautology.

The room seethes imagination, Britishness and vacuum packed paper.  Stories and notes and images stimulate our memory of past afternoons spent with the eyes on the pages, while we lived many days before the sun would set. The darkness sleeps on the walls, like it did when my child self used to read at night before going to bed, falling into Arcadia following a painter of words. Some still think creativity cannot be learnt.

“The exhibition is over” is announced. Literary culture stops at 5 pm to let our minds sink into British drinking culture. While the library shuts the gates, the pubs stretch their alcoholic arms towards us. Too bad that at the price of the ticket you can barely have a Pimm’s.

The exhibition Writing Britain is at the British Library until September 25.