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by Penny Martin .

Previous Arrangements

We popped in to the opening of Previous Arrangements last night, a new photographic exhibition by husband and wife team Tim Gutt and Shona Heath. If you could squeeze past the world and his wife, who had rocked up to bStore on Savile Row in support, you'd find 7 characterful prints inspired by Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, and featuring items of clothing drawn from the archive of Peter Jensen, with whom the pair have a longstanding creative relationship. I'll have to go back to get a better look, but there was a very interesting essay by Alistair O'Neill on photography and the zen concept of 'satori', or loss of meaning. A very useful conceit for image-makers you don't enjoy interpreting their work, methinks!

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1 comment

  • timgutt
    16:04 15 Mar 2008
    Miss Martins' blog entry reporting from the private view of 'Previous Arrangements' professed to do what most of us do on similar occasions, namely not look at the work on display. The observations on the essay that accompanied the exhibit written by Alistair O'Neill are however enlightening which is as it happens what the concept of 'Satori' ultimately encompasses.
    This raises an interesting point, which touches on the very subject of the photographs on display at the b store. By contriving to play and subvert the rigid rules of this popular Japanese art form- we, the makers have tapped into a capricious and rather esoteric activity known as creation.
    The staging of pseudo-events at the periphery of the floral arrangements serves to employ the viewer to 'try on' the different vantage points of the representational practice. The omni presence of fashion imagery with artistic pretence and the consequent desperate search for meaning often results in a self destructive process of referencing for its own sake. On the other side of cultural (fashion) production, writers struggle to give meaning and credibility to the increasingly inconvenient and un P.C glorification of celebrity and consumption of goods and youth.
    I am reminded of the old tale of the sartorial adviser to the king who in the shimmy of the parade got lost amongst the crowd and in the heat of the moment mistook themselves to be a little boy. Tim Gutt, on behalf of all Wags and Habs