What were you doing last Friday? Well, in case you missed it, MCM launched it’s latest exhibition-stroke-collaborative series with 5 emerging artists and designers in the London flagship. In celebration of the luxury brand’s 45th anniversary, the project sets out to look towards and shape the future, by embracing the present.
MCM has been known to champion collaborations which span culture and arts in the past, and in this new venture, the brand invited five artists to explore and deconstruct their iconic designs, as well as embracing narratives of identity, youth-culture and future-luxury. As with most post (can we say that yet?) pandemic launches, the project was situated as a response to a period of separation and remoteness, engineered to highlight the power of a shared community.
The five London-based artists part of the project were selected and invited to highlight the “fibers and strands of connectivity that joins the multi-disciplines and practices of the creative arts”. In essence, each artist was challenged with reinvention and upcycling of the iconic MCM backpack, with the side instruction of approaching the creation through the lens of exploring ‘what contemporary British identity means to self’.
By unpacking and repacking the distinctive design-codes of MCM, each artist was able to navigate and generate a piece of evocative art that encourages its audience to reflect upon sustainability, design and identity.
The artists in question were Denzel Currie, leading multidisciplinary artist, who used the signature MCM monogram to create artwork that explored unity, music legacy and victory. Imogen Frost created distinctive pieces which celebrated and centred materials and found objects. Her work deconstructed the MCM backpack, highlighting individual components of it in a new design.
Meanwhile, Ted Le Swer was inspired by the intersection of music, fashion and art – producing artwork using 3D scanning technology to create a piece entitled ‘MCM Metaverse’. This spoke to the universal aspect of the brand, as it was able to exist in both the physical and digital realm. Mixed-media artist Jess Cochrane invited the audience to explore beauty in a non-conventional format, whilst Joe Sweeney’s art placed luxury inside the humble carrier bag, as a nod to the reworking of contemporary culture’s view of function and fashion.
If you missed them at the launch, catch all of the art-works at the MCM London flagship store, in a pop-up exhibition from the 18th-31st October. You can even buy them with a clear conscience, with each piece available for bid auction and purchase and all sales being donated to charity.
More on CULTED:
See also: MCM’S 3D PRINTED LUXURY BIKE: COP OR DROP?
See also: OTTOLINGER DELIVERS FUTURISTIC SENSUALITY FOR SS22
