Another Place
Sunday afternoon painters have their place – usually with still lifes and landscapes – but how riveting to see the cutting edge of contemporary art in Brompton Design District. A Softer World, this year’s curated strand, is directed by British Italian writer and gallerist Alex Tieghi-Walker. Exhibitions, installations, talks and workshops explore design through empathy, tactility and interdisciplinary collaboration. His emotionally resonant approach challenges how we experience and respond to the material sphere. In a world that often demands certainty and control, A Softer World posits: what if design moved with care and made space for us to do the same?
A most exciting exhibition – or is it multiple installations? – is at 237 Brompton Road. Tender Revolution showcases furniture, textiles and objects by designers, artists and makers from the Royal College of Art. It presents design as an act of care, connection and rebirth. The participating creatives challenge rigid systems that suppress complexity and erase stories beyond the binary. They embrace contradiction, vulnerability and embodied experience as powerful sites of renewal.
“The designer of today reestablishes the long lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing. Instead of pictures for the drawing room, electric gadgets for the kitchen. There should be no such thing as art divorced from life, with beautiful things to look at and hideous things to use. If what we use every day is made with art, and not thrown together by chance or caprice, then she shall have nothing to hide.” Not a contemporary commentary but rather 29 years old relevance written by Bruno Munari in Design as Art. Tender Revolution succeeds by inviting us in thought provoking and sometimes even humorous ways to reimagine the role of design in shaping more compassionate futures – that are free of chance and caprice.
Featured exhibitors: Ana Maria Alarcón, Carmen Danae Azor, Alexander Clark, Avis Dou, Natalie Dubrovska, Ruwanthi Gajadeera, Audra Grays, Linlin Guan, Menghyan Guo, Miyuki Guo, Ruikun Guo, Lydia Hill, Shino Hitosugi, Sahym Hussain, Huili Jin, Patrycja Koziara, Hyein Lee, Maxim Lester, Lydia Lin, Alexandre Manko, Luca Maremmi, Eileen Morley, Ellen Nacey, Sofia Ortmann, Sarah Tibbles, Rosalie Valentino, Yang Xiao, Yidan Xu, Zhibo Yang, Chenrui Zhang, Zinjin Zhang, Shaming Zhang, Shumeng Zhang.
