Fade to Grès

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Scotland Office, Dover House, Whitehall

This silkscreen print on cotton fabric is based on one of three commemorative lambswool travel blankets produced by Atelier E.B in collaboration with artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz as souvenirs for the 2014 Commonwealth and 2012 Olympic Games, commissioned by Panel for the Scotland Can Make It! range of merchandising. These playful re-imaginings of popular souvenirs engage with the nature of mass events. While marking generational shifts, these historical gatherings are also simply outings shared by friends and family, like the Glasgow Garden Festival of 1988 where Atelier E.B first encountered Chaimowicz’s work, and Glasgow’s Year of Culture in 1990.

Creating a dialogue between the fine and applied arts, and life, Beca Lipscombe’s monochrome design Fade to Grès is a pastiche of classical perfume packaging. Lucy McKenzie’s How D’you Know Me? features a trompe-l’oeil turkey rug complete with house cat, as if sleeping by an open hearth. Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s Emma... extends his study of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary with a bucolic palette and celebration of 19th and 21st century leisure time.

Since 2007, the designer Beca Lipscombe and the artist Lucy McKenzie have collaborated under the name Atelier E.B. Their project 'Atelier E.B: Passer-by' examines the use of mannequins and retail display, and the hierarchies which have historically separated the spheres of art and design. It has been staged in changing iterations at the Serpentine Galleries, London (2018–19); Galeries Lafayette, Paris, (2019); and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2020). Selected exhibitions are 'The Inventors of Tradition II' fashion collection and exhibition, The Palace of Art, Glasgow (2015); '33 – ‘29 – ‘36', UM Gallery, Academy of Architecture, Art, and Design (AAAD), Prague (2016); and 'Faux Shop', V&A, Dundee (2020).

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

fibre, cotton, screenprint, silkscreen print

Artist

Atelier E.B
Beca Lipscombe (1973 - )

Title

Fade to Grès

Edition

One of an edition of 20 plus 10 artist's proofs

Date

2012

Medium

colour silkscreen print on cotton fabric

Dimensions

height: 106.4 cm; width: 81.0 cn; depth: 4.5 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist March 2021, through the Art XUK project 2020-21

Provenance

The artists; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 18 March 2021

GAC number

18940