Artist Research

Mary Katranzou

Mary Katrantzou is a Greek fashion designer who currently lives and works in London.

She moved to the United States in 2003 in order to attend Rhode Island School of Design to study architecture. She then transferred to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design where she completed both her Bachelor and Master's degree. Graduating from her Bachelor course in 2005, she switched her focus from prints for interiors to fashion prints. 

Katrantzou's graduating show in 2008 mapped out her signature style. It was themed around trompe l'oeil prints of oversized jewellery featured on jersey-bonded dresses. these pieces created the illusion of wearing giant neckpieces that would be too heavy in reality.

Mary Katranzou (cont)

Her thematic collections revolve around an icon of luxury, an object from art or design that a woman would not be able to wear if it were real. Mary has based the collections on perfume bottles, artisan blown glass, eighteenth century society paintings, and interiors while keeping the printed image central to her aesthetic.

In November 2011 Mary was awarded the British Fashion Award for Emerging Talent: womenswear and in February 2012 was awarded Young Designer of the Year at the Elle Style Awards. February 2012 saw the release of her much anticipated collaboration

Mary Katrantzou (cont)

Yinka Shonibare

Yinka Shonibare, MBE, (born 1962) is a British-Nigerian artist living in London whose work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. A hallmark of his art is the brightly coloured fabric he uses.

Yinka Shonibare was born in London in 1962. His family moved to Nigeria when he was three years old. At 17, he returned to Britain to do his A-levels. Shonibare contracted transverse myelitis, an inflammation across the spinal cord, at the age of eighteen, which resulted in a long term physical disability where one side of his body is paralysed. He then studied Fine Art first at Byam Shaw School of Art (now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design) and then at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Yinka Shonibare (cont)

Shonibare’s work explores issues of colonialism alongside those of race and class, through a range of media which include painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, and, more recently, film and performance.

Shonibare's first solo exhibition was in 1989 at Byam Shaw Gallery, London. During 2008–2009, he was the subject of a major midcareer survey in both Australia and the USA; starting in September 2008 at the MCA Sydney and toured to the Brooklyn Museum, New York in June 2009 and the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC in October 2009.

Yinka Shonibare (cont)

Timorous Beasties

Timorous Beasties is a design led manufacturing company based in Glasgow, who specialise in fabrics and wallpapers. Timorous Beasties was founded in 1990 by Alistair McAuley and Paul Simmons. Winners of the Walpole Award for 'Best Emerging British Luxury Brand' in 2007 and 'British Luxury Design Talent' in 2010, they have branded showrooms in London and Glasgow, and export their luxury products and design talent worldwide.

Timorous Beasties studio mixes design and production under one roof allowing them the freedom to create their own unique style, their fabrics catching the eye of museum collections such as the V&A (London), Cooper-Hewitt Museum (New York), and Gallery of Modern Art (Scotland).

Timorous Beasties (cont)

They are known for their take on the Toile de Jouy fabrics of Napoleonic France, Timorous Beasties’ toile designs include a balance of decorative, architectural, and human contexts. 

Recently they have produced two collections of hand tufted carpets and rugs for Brintons Carpets, engraved a building and collaborated with brands such as Nike and Famous Grouse. More recently Timorous Beasties have collaborated with design duo ‘Nobody and Co’ on a revolving tablecloth, designed wallpaper for the Chicago Art Institute and exhibited at Sheffield’s Millennium Galleries with a Ruskin inspired installation.

Timorous Beasties (cont)

Brian Dettmer

Brian Dettmer, born in 1974, was raised in Naperville, Illinois. Until 2006, Dettmer lived in and around Chicago, where he earned a BA in fine arts from Columbia College Chicago in 1997.

In college, Dettmer focused primarily on painting. When he began to work in a sign shop, his work began to explore the relationship between text, images, language, and codes, including paintings based on braille, Morse Code, and American Sign Language. He then began to make work by repeatedly pasting newspapers and book pages to canvas and tearing off pieces, leaving behind layered fragments.

Brian Dettmer (cont)

A large body of Dettmer's current work is created by altering books, including older dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, science and engineering books, art books, medical guides, history books, atlases, comic books, wallpaper sample books, and others. Dettmer seals and cuts into the books, exposing select images and text to create intricate three-dimensional derivative works that reveal new or alternative interpretations of the books. Dettmer never inserts or moves any of the books' contents.

Brian Dettmer (cont)