February 2012

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Diary editor: Riya Patel \| riya@icon-magazine.co.uk


Swept Away	Design Indaba	Designs of the Year 2012
Museum of Arts and Design, New York	Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town	Design Museum, London
14 February – 12 August 2012	29 February – 2 March 2012	8 February – 15 July 2012
Dirt, ashes and dust are the grimy subjects of Swept Away, an exhibition at New York's Museum of Arts and Design. Twenty-six international artists have been selected for their critical thinking in the field, taking the detritus of everyday life and transforming it into poetic installations, paintings, performances and objects. New and site-specific works by Catherine Bertola and Igor Eskinja will be on show, as well as Phoebe Cummings' works in unfired clay (pictured). www.madmuseum.org	The speaker line-up for 2012 is strictly under wraps until the end of January, but we are sure there will be more than a few big names from the worlds of architecture, design and graphics at February's Design Indaba. Last year, the lively Cape Town conference and expo inspired us with talks from a diverse range of speakers, including Dutch furniture designer Dirk van der Kooij, South African knitwear designer Laduma Ngxokolo and software designer Ben Fry (Icon 095). www.designindaba.com	The annual awards of the Design Museum in London celebrate the best and most innovative of the year's architecture, fashion, furniture and graphics. Past winners -— such as Samuel Wilkinson and Hulger's Plumen, a redesign of the low-energy light bulb (pictured) — have always been surprising, smart and stylish, so we look forward to seeing which clever concept takes the title in 2012. Visit the Design Museum to judge the shortlist yourself before the ceremony takes place in April. www.designmuseum.org



David Shrigley: Brain Activity	Yayoi Kusama	Song Dong: Waste Not
Hayward Gallery, London	Tate Modern, London	Barbican Centre, London
1 February – 20 May 2012	9 February – 5 June 2012	15 February – 12 June 2012
One of Britain's wittiest artists, David Shrigley is known for his deliberately childlike drawings and wry sense of humour. You have probably come across one of his cartoons on a postcard or the pages of the Guardian's Weekend magazine. This month, 175 of his works go on show in his first major UK retrospective, including previously unseen drawings and films that illustrate the absurdities of life, death and everyday situations. Expect to be enlightened by Shrigley's acute way of thinking. www.southbankcentre.co.uk	Eighty-two-year-old Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has lived with hallucinations of dots and repetitive patterns all her life. She communicates these visions through paintings, film, sculpture and immersive mirrored installations that allow the viewer a glimpse into her inner world. Kusama was active in the 1960s New York art scene, organising "happenings" that involved flag-burning and painting naked bodies with dots in protest against the Vietnam war. www.tate.org.uk	This month, Chinese artist Song Dong will fill the Barbican's Curve with more than 10,000 everyday objects. Collected by his mother over five decades, the assortment is an expression of political instability in China during the Cultural Revolution, where objects were hoarded for potential reuse under the philosophy of "waste not". Previously shown at New York's MoMA in 2009, these objects are elevated into art by the gallery setting, which fulfils the prophesy of reuse and sheds a light on this era. www.barbican.org.uk



Martin Creed	Stockholm Furniture Fair	RCA Architecture Lecture Series
Sketch Gallery Restaurant, London	Stockholmsmässan, Stockholm	Royal College of Art, London
27 February 2012	7 – 11 February 2012	2 February 2012
British artist Martin Creed is taking over the restaurant of London's Sketch Gallery this month. The eccentric redesign will house four large-scale paintings by the 2001 Turner Prize winner, as well as a zigzagged floor laid with 96 different types of marble. Furniture, crockery and cutlery will be plucked from different periods and styles, with no two items the same. We are expecting something like Work 925 (pictured) on a grander scale. The menu will also be inspired by Creed's art. www.sketch.uk.com	Last year, Stockholm's annual design fair impressed with its creative lighting installations, but it looks like the focus for 2012 will be on textiles. Fredrik Färg's bar design is inspired by the extravagance of fashion shows, emphasising the role of textiles in furniture. Find new talent in the Greenhouse, the showcase of young designers that gave us the likes of female trio, Front Design. French designer Inga Sempé will be designing the entrance hall as this year's Guest of Honour. www.stockholmfurniturefair.se	The RCA's annual architecture lectures are always a breeding ground of ideas, critical thinking and fierce debate, and this year's speakers have been chosen to continue that tradition. Sir Peter Cook, Michael Sorkin and Carlo Ratti feature in lectures that pair up leading minds under the theme Future Frontiers. The second lecture presents a clash of parametricism and postmodernism as Patrik Schumacher and Charles Jencks discuss the volatile subject of architectural style. www.rca.ac.uk