Kudu Magazine

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Welcome to the f irst issue of KUDU. This Spring/Summer we have invited photographers, art ists and

styl ists past and present, to give us their take on the avant-garde movement. We aim to provide you with

an irreverent and thought provoking take on the ever evolving worlds of art , music, fashion and popular

culture.

Avant-garde represents a pushing of the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo,

primari ly in the cultural realm. The notion of the existence of the avant-garde is considered by some

to be a hal lmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism. Many artists have al igned themselves

with the avant-garde movement and sti l l continue to do so, tracing a history from Dada through the

Situationists to postmodern artists such as the Language poets around 1981.

Through the work of each of our contributors we can see how our efforts to navigate the avant-garde

movement, places us way ahead of the t imes.

CONT

ENTS

BREAKING NEW GROUND

CONT

ENTS LEIGH BOWERY

A cherry pie tribute to Leigh Bowery and a fruit dessert with the Australian

performance artist.

[7] MCRThe [7] duo are Manchester based dj’s

and producers making headway in 2012. With an avant-garde music style driven by the ever-evolving realms of pulsing techno and tech-house, [7] provide a dance floor not for the faint hearted.

SHADES OF SUMMERTaking a look at this seasons colour-ful horizon of joyus, upbeat style. It’s

re-energising-a new lease of life that’s going to make your heart race and your

eyes sparkle.

WHERE’S ME JUMPER?Where’s me Jumper make one product,

a jumper, one style, any fit. You just send them your own design or image and they

create a custom made jumper that will be unique to you. They’ll never knit the same thing twice, so you’ll have a one

off item. No sweat (shop).

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERGA tribute to the wild and crazy painter,

photographer, painter, printmaker, choreographer, on stage performer, set

designer and even composer - Robert Rauschenberg.

BREAKING NEW GROUND

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LEIGH BOWERYA cherry pie with

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Leigh Bowery was the original karma chameleon, a self-styled freak and notorious icon of the late-1980’s London club culture. Among his fans was the artist Lucian Freud, who captured his outsize frame on canvas.

Mr. Bowery died of AIDS in 1994. But his balmy spirit has been resurrected in ‘’Leigh Bowery Looks,’’ a collection of photographs by Fergus Greer (Violette Editions, 2002), which document the metamorphoses of Mr. Bowery, a performance artist, via spangly costumes, bulbous body padding and garish paint.

Something of Mr. Bowery also survives in ‘’Taboo,’’ a musical about his life that is now being performed in London by his friend Boy George, and in the work of a handful of renegade fashion designers.

‘’Every designer I visited in Paris last month had the little Leigh Bowery book on his desk,’’ said André Leon Talley, Vogue’s editor at large.

In the not-so-distant past, Mr. Bowery influenced Vivienne Westwood, Viktor & Rolf and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons. But the artist’s reckless theatricality was most evident this year on the John Galliano runway. Mr. Galliano’s spring 2003 collection was a fever dream of hoops and cascading flounces, lurid blue and green makeup, exploding hair and neck ruffs and a profusion of saris, the latter inspired by Bollywood, one of Mr. Bowery’s favorite points of reference.

Cultural sampling was a Bowery signature that seems especially relevant now, said Andrew Bolton, associate curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also shares with other influential designers ‘’an over-the-top theatricality and escapism that speak to our own unstable time,’’ Mr. Bolton said.

Mr. Talley chimed in: ‘’The models with balloons in their hair, the powder falling off their clothes, the blue makeup -- they represented something fashion needs. A sense of optimism, hope and humor.’’

Not all his colleagues were in on the joke, though. ‘’You should have seen the retailers’ faces fall,’’ Mr. Talley recalled. ‘’They can tell you what’s selling, but they cannot tell you what really is unique.’’

A cherry pie with

Leigh Bowery lived on the 11th floor of Farrell House, a block of Stepney council flats often referred to as Feral House, where I first visited him in 1987-ish. “Would you care to join me in a digestive biscuit?” he enquired, standing 6ft 6in a spectacular sequined costume covering all but his eyes, mouth and nostrils.

“Nicola – get digestives,” he ordered his friend/slave/sewing assistant, seemingly happy to play a Madge Allsop to his Dame Edna. He’d call her “the fag hag”, sometimes “the poor cow”. Dry biscuits, Leigh explained, were the safest things to nibble on when dressed to the nines. Or wholemeal bread, semi-toasted. These he bought on trips to the local Sainsbury’s, enjoying the anger/confusion it stirred in youths on the estate. “But usually I’ll eat in the nude,” he noted.

Prior to becoming “the most eccentric dresser in London”, Leigh’s first job was working the night shift at Burger King on the Strand, where he was judged trainee manager material, then caught fiddling the till. His dream was to relocate to Paris – to Burger King on the Champs-Elysées.

“Some weeks I’m really poor, living on brown rice and parsley,” he told me. “But a cheque will come soon and I’ll be all right.”

Leigh changed into leopardskin, then ordered Nicola to fetch a cherry pie from the kitchen, even though he was probably saving it for a special nude occasion.

Food and clothing coupled harmoniously during a visit from his mother. After encouraging her to make her “best meringues”, Leigh completed a “look” by gluing them to his cranium – something Lady Gaga won’t be emulating until at least 2013.

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Born in 1961, in Sunshine, Australia, Leigh Bowery studied fashion and design in Melbourne, before leaving for London in 1980. After running a clothes stall, and working in Burger King, he did commercials for Pepe jeans, promos for pop artists (most notably David Bowie’s Ashes To Ashes video), collaborated on costumes with dancer Michael Clark and established himself as a cult figure in London nightlife, helping launch Taboo (the seminal sex, drugs and fetish club) in the mid-Eighties.

Gay, 6ft 3ins, and 17 stone, Leigh was hardly the shy, retiring type. At one party, Mick Jagger, thinking Bowery was dancing too close to him, said: ‘Fuck off, freak!’ Leigh instantly replied: ‘Fuck off, fossil!’ Over the years, Leigh became infamous for dressing (and undressing) to chill, with ‘looks’ such as a giant turd emerging from a toilet seat, and for performing live enemas onstage. He often emphasised his size with viciously cinched corsets and enormous gaffer taped ‘cleavages’, finishing the ‘look’ by popping on a fake vagina that made it impossible for him to urinate all night. No wonder the world couldn’t decide whether Leigh Bowery was a genius or a prat. Boy George, the creative force behind the musical Taboo, featuring Leigh, observed: ‘The rest of us used drag to hide our blemishes and defects, he made them the focal point of his art.’ Nicola agrees: ‘Initially, he just wanted to shock. He often used to say: “That’ll spook ‘em.” But it was never without an aesthetic point of view.’ Part of Bowery’s later work, perhaps the most enduring part in mainstream terms, was posing for a series of portraits by Lucian Freud, acting as his muse from 1990 until Bowery’s death, from an Aids-related illness.

Bowery’s condition was kept secret - even after he died on New Year’s Eve, 1994, instructions were left to tell the world he’d gone to Papua New Guinea. Was he disgusted with his illness, or did he view it as an inconvenience? ‘Disgusted, yes. I think he felt that such a big body shouldn’t succumb to such an illness. But it was definitely much more of an inconvenience. He still had so much more to do. How would he like to be remembered? I suppose by his classic quote.

I don’t want to be remembered as a person with Aids, I want to be remembered as a person with ideas..

“

”

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when the lights go down, [7] come out

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If you’re a young Manchester based dj waiting for your breakthrough better look away now, you might not want to see who you’re competing with: The up and coming avant-garde talent Ollie Collinge one half of the duo [7] photographed and portrayed by Rebecca Swarbrick doesn’t look like he has stepped out of the catalogue of cool for nothing. However until the day that [7] make it big with their currently fast moving and ever-evolving pulsing techno and deep-house vibes, they just make a bit of bread on the side with some modelling here and there. Yes, some guys have all the luck. One to watch out for.

Photography Rebecca Swarbrick

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Location of photoshoot Pathway under Mancunian Way

Ollie wears shoes from Foot Asylum

Ollie wears jumper from Topman Trousers from Asos

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Summer’s coming and long days will leave ample time for dreaming. Set your mind free and wander into fashionable times past: the nuances of the sweet 70s. Fringed kimono, crochet waistcoats, shrunken denim and micro-printed silk will make you wish you were rive gauche. Or, revel deep in grunge-endorsed, gypsy rock à la Hendrix. Don’t worry no one’s watching.

Photography Rebecca Swarbrick

SOME GET S T O N E D , SOME GET STRANGE.

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Josie wears coat Vintage, trousers Zara

LEIGH BOWERY INSPIRED MOMENTS

From the unforgettable masks at Sister by Sibling to the statement makeup at Meadham Kirchhoff, Leigh Bowery was a constant source of inspiration, so it seems, for designers at London’s 2012 fashion week. Need a brushup? Immerse yourself in Charles Atlas’s multipart documentary, The Legend of Leigh Bowery and, for a quicker fix, watch the “South of Watford” series—both can be found on YouTube.

LEIGH BOWERY INSPIRED MOMENTS

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A flurry of twinkling disco ball twinsets, apricot leopard-print sweaters, and a gargantuan red fox stole were shown during Sister by Sibling’s London Fashion Week presentation at Somerset House on models hidden behind Leigh Bowery style sequined masks. Without a lackluster gray V-neck or doleful brown crewneck in sight, what the London-based trio—Sid Bryan, Joe Bates, and Cozette McCreery—did, instead, was offer something playfully maverick that succinctly paired humor

with practicality. While the wit factor was clear, one needs to break down these looks into individual pieces to appreciate not only the promising warmth of those Fair Isle mohair and lurex knits, but also the ease with which most could be worn when thrown together with jeans or more subdued closet staples. Nevertheless, everything this triumvirate does has an underlying tongue-in-cheek approach, which was taken to another level this season with diminutive versions of those eye-catching pencil

THIS REALLY

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IS UNIQUESS12

skirts, leggings, and sweater dresses lovingly made to fit Barbie dolls, too.

The cult knitwear label Sibling further launches its first ever womenswear range onto the high-street, continuing its avant-garde take on knits. With roots in punk and high fashion, Sister by Sibling celebrates both these virtues with a collection of jumbo knits and macabre illustrations. Classic knitwear styles are subverted with

twinsets in bright yellow whilst the designs reference punk culture, Christmas jumpers and Noel Edmonds. Founders Joe Bates, Sid Bryan and Cozette McCreery have collaborated with everyone from Alexander McQueen, Lucian Freud, Galliano and Lanvin; this latest collaboration with Topshop delivers Sibling’s craft in reconfiguring knitwear to the high street. The only female in the trio behind the label, Cozette McCreery spoke to Dazed Digital.

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So there are those days when FINALLY it’s the weekend AND you’ve been paid and it makes for the most perfect combo ever meaning you can literally spend the whole day shopping! But even then sometimes disaster strikes – you hit the shops and you just can’t seem to find what you want. You’ve got this idea of the perfect item in your head – yet alas – it cannot be found anywhere.

That’s when you need Manchester based brand ‘Wheres Me Jumper’.

ubmit your ideas / images / designs along with your measurements to WMJ and their self-titled ‘Knitter in Chief ’ Beki Rymsza will produce you your very own jumper (or

jumper dress) within 4 weeks! You can literally have ANYTHING – from football playing pandas to elephants to pom-poms galore, as well as illustrative designs and even optimums prime himself ! WOW!

So we of course had to have a mini office poll here at KUDU of what our jumpers might look like, and it has to be said there were a few strange

requests: Rainbow Brite and Starlite (complete with tufted yarn mane), a typewriter with stick on keys, some kind of optical illusion (this one wasn’t very clear but I think that’s the point – maybe?), a self portrait (creepy), and no list would be complete without a request for an animal capable of playing an instrument – preferably a giraffe with a violin in this case.

There you have it folks – Wheres Me Jumper – bespoke knitwear, unique to you. They’ll never knit the same thing twice. Check it.

S

BeHIND THE

EAMSS

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Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died on Monday night at his home on Captiva Island, Fla. He was 82.

The cause was heart failure, said Arne Glimcher, chairman of PaceWildenstein, the Manhattan gallery that represents Mr. Rauschenberg.

Mr. Rauschenberg’s work gave new meaning to sculpture. “Canyon,” for instance, consisted of a stuffed bald eagle attached to a canvas. “Monogram” was a stuffed goat girdled by a tire atop a painted panel. “Bed” entailed a quilt,

sheet and pillow, slathered with paint, as if soaked in blood, framed on the wall. All became icons of postwar modernism.

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the

traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.

Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he helped obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography

and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.

Mr. Rauschenberg was also instrumental in pushing American art onward from Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement when he emerged, during the early 1950s. He became a transformative link between artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and those who came next, artists identified

with Pop, Conceptualism, Happenings, Process Art and other new kinds of art in which he played a signal role. No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Mr. Rauschenberg. Mr.

Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Mr. Rauschenberg, without sharing exactly the same point of view, collectively defined this new era of experimentation in American culture.

Apropos of Mr. Rauschenberg, Cage once said, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.” Cage meant that people had come to see, through Mr. Rauschenberg’s efforts, not just that anything, including junk on the street, could be the stuff of art (this

wasn’t itself new), but that it could be the stuff of an art aspiring to be beautiful — that there was a potential poetics even in consumer glut, which Mr. Rauschenberg celebrated.

The Wild and Crazy Guy

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I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly,” he once said, “because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.

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“”

The remark reflected the optimism and generosity of spirit that Mr. Rauschenberg became known for. His work was likened to a St. Bernard: uninhibited and mostly good-natured. He could be the same way in person. When he became rich, he gave millions of dollars to charities for women, children, medical research, other artists and Democratic politicians.

A brash, garrulous, hard-drinking, open-faced Southerner, he had a charm and peculiar Delphic felicity with language that masked a complex personality and an equally multilayered emotional approach to art, which evolved as his stature did. Having begun by making quirky, small-scale assemblages out of junk he found on the street in downtown Manhattan, he spent increasing time in his later years, after he had become successful and famous, on vast international, ambassadorial-like projects and collaborations.Conceived in his immense studio on the island of Captiva, off southwest Florida, these projects were of enormous size and ambition; for many years he worked on one that grew literally to exceed the length of its title, “The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece.” They generally did not live up to his earlier achievements. Even so, he maintained an equanimity toward the results. Protean productivity went along with risk, he felt, and risk sometimes meant failure.

The process — an improvisatory, counterintuitive way of doing things — was always what mattered most to him. “Screwing things up is a virtue,” he said when he was 74. “Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”

This attitude also inclined him, as the painter Jack Tworkov once said, “to see beyond what others have decided should be the limits of art.”

He “keeps asking the question — and it’s a terrific question philosophically, whether or not the results are great art,” Mr. Tworkov said, “and his asking it has influenced a whole generation of artists.”

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Nothing can avoid changing. It’s the only thing you can count on. Because life doesn’t have any other possibility.

Everyone can be measured by their adaption to change

“”- Robert Rauschenberg