February 2011

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


Cory Arcangel: Beat the Champ	Brit Insurance Designs of the Year 2011	Miranda Donovan: The Home Unleashed
Barbican Centre, London	Design Museum, London	Lazarides Gallery, London
10 February 2011 – 22 May 2011	16 February 2011 – 7 August 2011	24 February 2011 – 26 March 2011
Cory Arcangel is a Brooklyn-based media artist who meddles creatively in the digital world of video games, computer software and the internet. His latest installation for the Barbican's Curve gallery is a chronological series of 14 bowling video games from the 1970s to the 2000s, hacked to play a loop in which the bowler fails to score. The result is a cacophony of electronic sounds: Nintendo bleeps, Atari static and PlayStation swooshes all try to simulate the bowling action. www.barbican.org.uk	Once again the Designs of the Year award brings a bit of excitement to the cold winter months, pitting renowned designers against the up-and-coming in a huge range of disciplines. Last year, Min-Kyu Choi took the accolade for his neat folding plug design, so even the humblest projects have a shot at the grand prize. Accompanying the main event will be a Pecha Kucha evening on 18 February where award nominees will each present 20 images for 20 seconds – a fast and furious benefit in aid of reconstruction in Haiti. www.designmuseum.org	Artist Miranda Donovan's multi-layered reliefs bring together elements of decadence and squalor with an unsettling effect. Her second solo exhibition focuses on the domestic interior, bringing the contemporary and political subject matter of the street into the relative refuge of the home. Numb, for example, portrays a grand fireplace overflowing with beer cans as a way to communicate lost innocence. Donovan paints the effects of decay and filth with a scholarly precision that makes her detailed artworks a must-see. www.lazinc.com


From Germany to Argentina: German Influences in Architecture	Surreal Objects: Three-Dimensional Works from Dalí to Man Ray	Stockholm Furniture Fair
German Architecture Museum, Frankfurt	Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt	Stockholmsmässan, Stockholm
5 February 2011 – 20 March 2011	11 February 2011 – 29 May 2011	8-12 February 2011
Architects and engineers of German descent have shaped the building traditions of Buenos Aires and the Rio de la Plata region for centuries. This exhibition traces the European influence in Argentina from the post-war era back to the German Jesuits, who arrived as immigrants in the late 17th century. The work of Willi Ludewig (1902-1963) is prominent: the architect emigrated from Berlin in 1935, bringing with him the ideals of the New Objectivity movement in German city planning. www.dam-online.de	An abundance of Surrealist artworks are on show at the Schirn Kunsthalle this month. 150 objects by the likes of Duchamp, Magritte, Dalí, Picasso and Miró have been selected for their "interplay of bizarre contrasts" and manifestation of theory in three-dimensional form – think Dalí's Lobster Telephone or Meret Oppenheim's Table with Bird's Legs. By keeping the focus purely on objects rather than paintings, there's been room to include the work of lesser known (but equally intriguing) artists too. www.schirn.de	This year, lighting designer Alexander Lervik gives us yet another reason to visit the bar. Dimension, his sculpture of 1,728 individually controlled coloured heads that form a three-dimensional screen, will be the showpiece of the new Light Bar. Elsewhere, 35 hand-picked independent designers will exhibit works in the Greenhouse space; all looking to get themselves noticed ahead of Milan. Multi-disciplinary designer Arik Levy will be this year's guest of honour. www.stockholmfurniturefair.com


Antony Gormley RA on the Hayward Gallery	Post Fossil: Excavating 21st-Century Creation	Design Indaba
Royal Academy, London	Design Museum Holon, Holon	Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town
15 February 2011	Until 30 April 2011	23-27 February 2011
As part of the "Critic's Choice" lecture series, artist Antony Gormley will make a case for the Hayward Gallery as London's most significant building. Opened in 1968 on the South Bank, the gallery has long divided Londoners over its brutalist architecture. For a sculptor whose distinguished career has fixated on the human body, it should be interesting to hear what Gormley sees in the austere Hayward, the gallery that housed his Blind Light exhibition in 2007. www.royalacademy.org.uk	Trend forecaster Li Edelkoort has curated a stimulating selection of "future fossils" by more than 60 contemporary designers including Nacho Carbonell, Studio Job, Julia Lohmann and Droog. With an era of design decadence rapidly fading away, these products have been inspired by traces of our primitive past rather than expensive future technologies. The exhibition has been expanded since its debut in Tokyo earlier this year to include exhibits by emerging Israeli designers Reddish Studio and Raw-Edges. www.dmh.org.il	Danish designer Jens Martin Skibsted, Google's creative director Robert Wong and Dror Benshetrit of Studio Dror head up the bill of speakers at this year's Design Indaba. The five-day South African conference and expo has a good reputation for bringing together interesting and inspiring talents from the design community to talk about their current projects. Young designers can get in on the action too as talks are broadcast live to a second auditorium, where students and those under 25 can listen in for a reduced rate. www.designindaba.com