My favourite Shops in London

Since I started posting on the London art scene, I often thought of posting my favourite top lists of best shops, galleries, artist's books, restaurants since food or shoes can be like a piece of art itself. Starting with a topic that is closely linked to art – commerce – you’ll find my 10 picks from the 40.000 shops in London below:

Koenig’s Bookshop
Having been a loyal customer for a decade to its Cologne branch (best art bookshop in the world hands down) I was delighted to find their little London branch in the Serpentine Gallery. Sunday morning 10am, a short stroll in Hyde Park before the crowds flock in, followed by the free exhibition in the gallery, and then the ritual of exploring and screening through this tiny space crammed with monographs and catalogues of current exhibitions around London with a sale section is in the back room. Serpentine Gallery, Hyde Park

ICA Bookshop
This is the best place in London for independent, artisan-led magazines and other underground-style periodicals such as Ken360, Greenwich Emotion Map, Daydream Magazine and other ‘secrets’. You wander what else is out there…
The Mall, West End

Bookshop @ Photographer Gallery
Not surprisingly, the best stop for publications on photography. You might spend hours. Great Newport Street, West End

Miller Harris
Tranquillity. Enthralling shop design. Charming sales person. Captivating scents. Miller Harris is a heaven for perfume aficionados, and the whole thing feels like a holistic art installation for your senses. Unique! Needham Road, Notting Hill

Jeffery West
Gents: Fed-up with assembly line output of yet expensive high street brands? Ladies: bored with ‘try-to-fit-in’ footwear of your beloved City Adonis? Jeffery West of Northampton make shoes for ‘Dandies’ as they say, but for me they are simply the most flamboyant shoes to turn a great suit into an artwork or a to get you into a fancy place with your jeans on. My favourite colour is “honey leather”. Classic shapes are Chelsea Brogues and pointy Budapesters. Piccadilly Arcades, West End

Nino’s
You can spend £75 on a decent Boss shirt and the chances are 1:10 you’ll see another one on the tube the next day. Or, you spend £100 on a limited edition shirt at Nino’s and you have a guaranteed one-off in your size for a particular colour. My favourite is a dark brown shirt with each button hole stitched in various colours. The Quality? You still look 9am even after dinner! They also have great cufflinks made from porcelain marbles and LEGO cubes. Quadrant Arcade, Regent Street

HG Walters
Voted the best family butcher by so-and-so association, I am endlessly thankful to only live a stone throw away. The display cabinet wants you to eat it raw on the spot, there are great cheese for vegetarians as well. It is not even expensive given that it is organic and local produce. Palliser Road, Baron’s Court

Stanford’s
London’s No. 1 temple for travel publications. But the geek in me comes back for the abundance of maps of everything in the basement. The detailed Landranger maps are invaluable to soul surfers keen to explore secret surf spots. Long Acre, Leicester Square

The Library
This men’s boutique in Chelsea sometimes feels like a test lab for Harrods and Selfridges. In the past, you could find Trunk t-shirts, Dries van Noten Jackets, Margiella jumpers or Dirk Schoenberger shirts at least a season earlier. The price tags can make you nauseous though. Brompton Road, Chelsea

Grace & Favour
A great ‘life-style’ store that sells candles as well as clothes. I got my favourite blazer there, an eccentric Gibson Jacket with 70s-style leather elbow pads and red and yellow lines crossing the tweed pattern. North Cross Road, East Dulwich

Art Show: Karen Kilimnick

Well, this review is actually more about the Serpentine itself rahter than about Karen Kiliminck's interesting collection of mainly oil paintings and room environments, which refer to classic painting from the 16th to the 20th century. Granted, this is good and consistent work, and her installations such as table, chairs, fireplace, curtains, wood work on the walls and a painting depicting...eh... exactly this scene are nice food for thought, but do not exactly tickly my fancy.

However, this exhibition confirms (again) what a versatile space the Serpentine Gallery really is. Most of the rooms are purpose-changed to resemble gardens, stables, dining and ballroom of Tudor mansions. I wonder how many people who enter the Serpentine for the first time really know the installation and where the regular features of this 1934 original teahouse begin.

Other great end-to-end shows blending in artwork and 'work on the place' include Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset Welfare Show and Ilya and Emilia Kabakov Houses of Dreams. My favourite Serpentine show so far was Gabriel Orosco, and he used the space more like a couple of white cubes.

Perhaps, the key success factor for attracting 750.000 visitors per year is access: located in Hyde Park and free for all, it attracts figures from all sorts of life, ranging from sunbathers seeking a break to Charles Saatchi assessing the latest shadow projection of Tim Noble & Sue Webster. One of my all-time London favourites!

Until 9 April at the Serpentine

Concert: Bonobo at The Forum

Bonobo has become my favorite band of late. I discovered them for myself on a bodyboarding DVD soundtrack about two years ago. Hence, my exitement to get tickets at The Forum in Kentish Town from my goddess fiance for Valentine's Day.

To understand the name, Wikipedia provides a clear answer: biologists have called bonobo's pygmee chimpanzee until recently... What kind of music? Hard to say - I'd call it downbeat jazz with a pinch of chillout lounge.

However, they don't fit into boxes. Neither are the jazzy elements really improvised, nor does the collective sound of keyboard, bass, guitar, Sax, drums and various electronic effects sound cafe-del-mar-hotel-costes-supper-club at all. It is just brilliant. Very imaginative and very idiosyncratic. They look that as well, particularly the Sax player. The 90 minute show was all in all honest, perfectly played music that gets your senses going but doesn't tickle your limbs further than little, gentle and almost introvert moves. So it is not for dancing, yet it's groovy.

The third album is called day to come and features Bajka, a lovey German singer who joined the guys on stage for the four vocal songs. Her voice and style is very hard to define as well. Perhaps a fusion of Berlin Variete and Moloko.

My favourite album is 'Dial M for Monkey', but my most loved tune is 'Silver' on Animal Magic. The closest match in my collection in terms of style are certain tracks of Loka, DJ Krush and Sofa Surfers. If these names ring any bell, can anyone recommend anything vaguely similar?

Art Show: Tino Sehgal at the ICA

The Trilogy - Part Three

Yeah - he is back. Not as clever as last year. Therefore creating links to the upper floor piece of his phenomenal first appearance in 2005.

"I have decided that this artwork is called 'success'." As suggested by the image above, this year's performance (is it really performance art, or more like a Beuys' Social Plastic where everyone is an artist - I don't know...) involves children. That's as much I wish to reveal. You need to experience yourself what it is all about: just sit down somewhere in the corner and observe - you will find inspiration, guaranteed!

Until 4 March, 2007 at the ICA, Pall Mall

Art Show: Artists Anonymous - Drugs

What happens when you gaze at an image and then suddenly look away? You see an after image, but this time the colours are inverted.

According to wikipedia (on 22 January 2007, 23.20 GMT) "afterimages are caused when the eye's photoreceptors, primarily known as cone cells, adapt from the overstimulation and lose sensitivity".

The latter - overstimulation and loss of sensitivity - have something to do with the content of the artworks displayed in this new space in Vyner Street: drugs. Artists Anonymous is a Berlin-originated group of 'clean' drug addicts who have moved to London to show their fascinating art. It's a clever and playful idea on a serious issue, the impact of drugs, and the successful battle to get rid of them:

First, there is the painting (picture at top here), depicting a hallucinatory scene of drug-infested sex, nonsense, games, dreams and nightmares - through inverted colours. It feels cold, like being 'on turkey' (detox) or in the wrong movie, on the wrong party, the wrong side of life. Then, the painting is photographed (picture above), and the process of shooting on negative film refers to the afterimage turning yellow into blue and green into magenta etc - negative into positive. Now the figures seem to be made of real flesh, there is warm glow, it feels better. However, the content is the same. But since the negative also shows the image mirror-invertedly, the photograph now appears to be wrong side (if it had text in there you'd realize). Right or wrong? Positive or Negative? That is the question....that survivors of drug addiction can only assess and answer for themselves.

Having tried to help a friend at university getting clean from heroin and cocain, I got some painfully close insights into this matter. I truly hope for Maya and her colleagues that the afterimage remains their daily reality, and that their memory of surreal hallucinations remain afterthoughts on seeing the wrong coloursof life. (Well done, and good luck for the next five years and beyond!)

Art is better than any LSD! Vyner Street, E2

Art Show: Andrew Bracey - Freianlage

I love animals, preferably in free nature, rather than in a Zoo. That said, the Zoo plays a pivotal role in saving certain species from being extinct (think Panda) as well as educating humans about animals so that we take better care about our little (and big) friends.

Andrew's Freianlage is about Zoos and our relation to it. Just as observing social interaction of monkey tribes in their cages is like being shown the mirror of human behaviour (funny, sad, nasty, cheeky, egotistic, altruistic etc.), this well-curated show in this small space in Hackney exposes the imbalance of power in the battle for living space between our globalized consumer society and the billions of other species around.

His wall installation "Migrate" uses found objects, discarded, binned, thrown away, taken out of the consumer cycle, as a substitute for canvas or paper to paint birds in miniature scale. As a whole, a microcosm juxtaposing icons of nature (kingfisher, flock, robin etc.) with standard leftovers of the waste economy (cigarette boxes, screwed paper, plastic and other usual suspects). Looking at the individual piece, it is a sad yet motivated cry to mankind that battling for habitat is a zero-sum game - that our earthmates are loosing right now.

The monkey in the magnifying glass device, which looks like a robot from a car manufacturing assembly line, reminds me of the safari holiday quest: on the one hand there are the 'bad' types that leave a terrible ecological foodprint, on the other hand there are responsible tourists that understand and respect the animals' need for some remains of privacy, thus, only watching and filming animals from a decent distance with the help of this technological achievement.

My personal favourite is a tiger painted in oil on the tail end of a game dart - penetrated into a corner of the gallery walls. The arrow/dart missile is still the dominating hunting form for indigineous tribes in the rain forest across the globe - silent, efficient and deadly - just like the tiger itself who is known and respected as the king of the jungle, and only killed if attacking a human.

A real discovery! Until 28 January 2007 at Transition Gallery, E8

Art Show: Ricky Swallow

On my last exploration tour through Hackney, I found a couple of good shows in Vyner Street, the most impressive being Ricky Swallow's wood carvings. The sculptures of this Australian artist and Venice Biennale representative are a result of extraordinary craftsmanship. There are arms, shoes and other small scales pieces mounted on the wall or positioned on the floor.

My favourite is 'Younger than Yesterday', a skull that grows barnacles out of its vessel. Both outstandingly beautiful and disturbing at the same time. Swings and balances. Giving and taking. "The deterioration of the skull's former life becomes the root from which the barnacle's macabre decoration pushes forward and flourishes." It definetely invokes some scary thoughts on brain tumour and the notion of getting older.

What a shame that the gallery rep on the day was very uncommunicative - otherwise a nice conversation could have blossomed...(post note: as happened at the current exhibition:-)


Until 21 December 2006 at Modern Art

Art Show: Carsten Hoeller at Tate Modern

The annual turbine hall craze. Mass gatherings. Corporate Sponsorship (Unilever Series). Big Names. Monumental Scales. Art Experience. Free Entry. Media Hype. Or, in Joseph Beuys' world: a social plastic.

All installations I have seen so far in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall (Anish Kapoor Marsayas 2003, Olafour Eliasson's Weather Project 2004, Bruce Nauman 2005, Rachel Whiteread and now Carsten Hoeller's Slides) were installations that facilitate social interaction, self-assessment and geo-whatever (physical, psychological, economical, historical...) contemplation. The latter refers to the unique scales, concepts, forms and materials of these site specific commissions. They were all interesting. The white sugarboxes a bit boring. The 'sun' was magic. But the German's slides are different.

Rather than seeing or hearing, you can touch them. Finally something for the kinaesthetics amongst us. Moreover, a form of interaction and experience with art that is forbidden in most of the art shows that you will ever enter in your lifetime. Like the forbidden fruit in paradise - I have once been kicked out of the Abteiberg Museum in Germany's province because of daring to touch a specially surfaced part of the museum's white wall (oi - minimal art...!). And for a hands-on experience, what could be better than the slides? They are action, they look great (the craftsmanship make them appear to be requisites of a science fiction movie), and they tickle our mischieveous desire to be kid again and to play. And how handy that you have to accompany your off-spring for safety reasons. Excuse me, could I borrow your son please?


And even for the spectators, who choose not to take the burden of queueing away their Sunday afternoon for a 10 second episode of accelerated happiness, it is a spectacle. Being an observer and assessor of family dynamics, fashion trends and social behaviour, in an art palace like that, with no entry fee, good light to capture the scenes by camera, that's pretty priceless. And here, I think Hoeller's piece continues where the others ended (maybe Eliasson came closest); it is a happening, a social plastic, and everyone is an artist for a day, part of a masterplan: to make art more accessible, understandable and enjoyable for a wider audience.

For those who know me, I have nothing against conceptual art or other hard to digest forms of creative expression, but I do loathe some of these high-brow art farts dominating the magazines (writing) and biennales (curating), master-of-the-universe investor-collectors, star-gazing Frieze groupies, and the ridiculous art market that is more inflated than the global property bubble. Therefore, Hoeller's art is a funny yet smart piss-take on the whole scene itself: this hilarious circus | zoo | kindergarden called 21 century art world.

Until 7 April 2007 at Tate Modern

Art Show: Susanne Treister - Hexen 2039

I have discovered Susanne Treister at Frieze 2005 and immediately fell in love with her series of conceptual waterlolours and drawings based on the NATO Supply Classification system. Who on earth would have known that an organisaiton such as this geo-political military aliance would have a number code for literally everything on this planet, the stuff above is labelled as no 3805 - Earth moving and excavating equipment. I wasn't primarily impressed by her style of painting (even though its good), but by the simple fact how unusual her drive and talent is to challenge us, the average citizen, to question the world we live in; it makes you think what the hell is out there.


This winter, the artist has a multi-site exhibition going called Hexen 2039: 'New military occult technologies for psychological warfare - a Rosalind Brodsky research programme. Yes, it sounds nuts. But it's brilliant! Not only is she taking on an alter ego - in the future - but the whole thing is a fantastic 'phantasm'. The complex drawings and diagrammes (a bit like those of Mark Lombardi) are based on combining interesting and often unknown facts about subjects such as the Metro Goldwyn Mayer film company, Radio Towers, The London Science Museum, Mussorgsky's music Night on Bald Mountain, Rasputin, as well as urban myths about Freemasonry, the MI6 and The German Walpurgisnacht where witches (hexen) fly on brooms on the 1st of May.


Or in her words, "This work uncovers or constructs links between conspiracy theories, occult groups, Chernobyl, witchcraft, the US film industry, British Intelligence agencies, Soviet brainwashing, behaviour control experiments of the US Army and recent practices of its Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (PSYOP), in light of alarming new research in contemporary neuroscience..."

Most of the 'interventions' have been closed by now, but the matter of Hexen 2039 - mind reading and mind control - is discussed at the Dana Centre on 13 February 2007

Art Show: Gabriel Orozco

Remember the chess board-like texture drawn on a human skull in the Serpentine a few years ago. That was my introduction to one of Latin America's most prolific artist. For the opening of the new White Cube in St. James, the Mexican artist has applied the same technique - but on an exponentially larger scale.

There is only one "drawing" - called dark wave - that fills the biggest gallery room in the West End, and that is on the sceleton of a whale. The exhibition is called 12 paintings and a drawing; the paintings displayed on the ground floor are from his famous undertaking to "examine the range of permutations possible within a defined spatial and colour system based on circles.

Having seen whales in Samoa (a 60ft humpback) and others in South Africa, but from a distance, I got completely overwhelmed to be able to walk around the sculpture (takes about a minute at moderate gallery-strolling pace!) which makes you able to grasp its 'real' size. Monumental, given that this guy is of a similar tree of animal species, a mammal, like us humans. And when you stand underneath the hanging installation of this multi-ton construction of nature with a man-made graphic pattern drawn onto it, then even a Christian-turned agnostic person might easily recall the biblical story of Jonas and the whale in a moment of awe.

Unmissable! (it was until November 2006)