British Modern Remade – Style Design Glamour Horror

Biannual curatorial competition Select.ac is run by the Southbank Centre on behalf of The Arts Council Collection – the largest loan of modern and contemporary British art in the world.

Kaplinsky’s winning idea is to open up a conversation between style, visual art, decorative design, and hand-crafted work.

According to the Southbank Centre, the artworks she has chosen ‘hark back to a British Arts and Crafts tradition who’s ethic returned to Britain during the height of Modernism via Bauhaus.’

Earlier this week Design Week cast an eye over the Barbican’s Bauhaus: Art as Life exhibition

Kaplinsky’s exhibition will be housed in the show flats of a redeveloped housing estate in Sheffield.

Here the artworks will ‘act as indicators of style and glamour in an aspirational domestic environment. Horror appears as a symptom of our uncanny relationship with style,’ says the Southbank.

 Some works featured in the exhibition by artists including Kenneth Armitage and Lynn Chadwick were featured in some of the Arts Council Collection exhibitions of the 1940s and 1950s.

Kaplinsky says, ‘Working with a collection which holds the most influential modern and contemporary British artists is a privilege and the context of the redeveloped Park Hill gives the question of what constitutes British Modern urgency.

‘The commercial and domestic setting for the modern, postmodern and contemporary artworks, underlines the historical tie in Britain between style, visual art and decorative design.’

British Modern Remade – Style Design Glamour Horror takes place at Flats 32 and 33 Norwich Street, Park Hill Estate, Sheffield, S2, from 4 may – 16 June.