Chris Moore, Catwalking 2 December-10 February 2012
Kings Place Gallery

Born in Newcastle, Chris Moore moved with the rest of his family to London when he was four years old. He entered the world of fashion at the age of 18 and became a Vogue photographer’s assistant, working with luminaries such as Henry Clarke, Norman Parkinson and Cecil Beaton. His early career was spent documenting the intimidatingly exclusive Paris couture shows in the late 60s and continued with the advent of the Ready to Wear Collections in Milan, London and later New York in the 80s. By the mid 90s, with the expansion of the circuit to include menswear in Paris and Milan, photographing the catwalks became a full-time occupation.

Moore moved on, was represented briefly by the Camera Press Agency, but became a freelance photographer and has worked independently ever since. As a person he is extremely grounded and in appearance is unobtrusive, almost invisible. This ability to ply his craft unobserved might indeed, be part of the secret of his becoming ‘King of the Catwalk’, as he has been dubbed by the fashion industry. During his phenomenal career he has captured images of every conceivable catwalk event from the Paris
Couture houses of the sixties with Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Cardin and Courrèges to the extravagant, theatrical spectacles staged by Hussein Chalayan and Alexander McQueen.

In 2000, Moore launched www.catwalking.com the successful online photographic library which is used by all major fashion and broadsheet titles internationally during the fashion week circuits. His photographs appear regularly in every major newspaper and magazine including The Guardian, Observer, The Times, and Independent as well as Vogue and Harpers Bazaar and the International Herald Tribune.
This exhibition celebrates Moore’s remarkable career with a collection of his iconic images.

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Ann Cathrin November Høibo, Christopher Burden On My Shoulders, 2012

Ann Cathrin November Høibo, Christopher Burden On My Shoulders, 20 January – 18 February 2012
Standard (Oslo)

Having graduated from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts last year, Høibo has made herself known for installations that rely on a layering of disparate elements and combining among others sculptures, framed works and textile works. While starting off studying the craft of tapestry weaving, her first solo exhibition aims at diffusing the distinction between that which is industrially, mechanically, or manually produced.

In 2002 the Belgian actor Olivier Gourmet was given the award for Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his role in the movie “Le fils”. Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne the film had Gourmet portraying a carpentry teacher in a training school for troubled teenagers. With the camera entirely in synch with his pace we would follow him around the workshop and with an equally extreme attention to details we would learn of the trade and manual labour of woodworking – the grain of timber, the density of various wood types, and the mundane, yet meticulous, work of cutting and carrying planks. The result was a sheer ordinariness where matter-of-factness turns materials into facts.

Høibo’s choice of objects, such as instant noodles, synthetic leather and IKEA shelving units, have in common that they fit the description of ‘inferior goods’. The term stems from consumer theory and refers to a good that decreases in demand when consumer income rises (as opposed to normal goods, for which the opposite is observed). Inferiority would here apply to an observable fact relating to affordability rather than a statement about the quality of the good. “As a rule, these goods are affordable and adequately fulfill their purpose, but as more costly substitutes that offer more pleasure (or at least variety) become available, the use of the inferior goods diminishes”. These make-shift industrial materials objects serving during times of less, could not be at a further distance from the trade that Gourmet’s character is teaching in “Le Fils” or the trade that Høibo learnt herself. The textures and rhythms of manual labor, whether it be weaving and carpentry, are at once irreducibly physical and saturated with an almost spiritual significance. Contrasting in both method and matter are four framed fragments of tapestries.The work process allows Høibo a material and methodical research that in itself pushes towards permutation. Here, the four weaves are stripped down beyond structural foundation towards disintegration, willingly accepting the category of fragment. Juxtaposed with the bronze sculptures and synthetic leather monochromes they make an odd conversation about a renewed relevance of ‘arte povera’; not necessarily true to stylistic traits of the original movement but true to a time of actual poverty. If a term as ‘recessional aesthetics’ ever had a sense of purpose, there never was a more apt sculptural response than a cast of instant noodles.

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