Page 66 - Flaunt175-diana

CLARKE & REILLY
LIMITLESS ROOTSTOCK
Written by Matthew Bedard
growing up on the great plains, the idea of perennial plants
always fascinated me. Out in the expansive, geographic center, you’ve two realities—freezing and hot—with wind and annual temperatures ranging from around -40 to 110 degrees Fahr- enheit. Rather extreme. That a small seedling might withstand these two poles, that it might languorously splay in the August sunshine after months below a frozen topsoil—is something
just so god damned cool. One such perennial maverick out in the endless flatlands is the Blue Wild Indigo, that mysteriously medicinal, mystical, and marvelous herbaceous shrub, with its stunning wealth of blues and its stubborn taproots—a historical- ly treasured plant worldwide and a desirable host, as it were, for queen bees and their dominion-obsessed colonies.
For design duo, Clarke & Reilly—whose practice embraces the essence of the perennial—indigo is also something of an obsession. The radical dyeing power of the plant, its centuries’ old integration in far-flung cultural ceremony, and its poetic near-opacity as a color hue, has lead the reclamation at the heart of their artistic practice down a handful of azure-intoxicated tun- nels of discovery. Recently, the partnered duo—David Grocott and Bridget Dwyer—collaborated with director, Alexa Karolinski, and musician, James Lavelle (UNKLE), to present short film, AD2021, which stars Clarke & Reilly’s new furniture collection.
AD2021 features 11 new works and seven rare objects, filtered through the perspective of undulating and disorienting indigo-dyed fabric, as a hypnotic soundscape supports a cocoon- ing of the viewer. The film’s location? The eerily brutalist and bunker-like former LA home of 20th century film, aviation, engi- neering, and healthcare tycoon, Howard Hughes—as thematic a “four walls” as possible, given Hughes’ late-life reclusiveness, and isolation, of course, being our lifestyle de rigeur in this latest trip round the sun.
Following a viewing of AD2021, I enter venerable design destination, Blackman Cruz—in the heart of Hollywood’s Media District—and the same indigo-soaked fabric from the film hangs in the showroom’s entry foyer. David Cruz—whose voice can be heard intermittently in AD2021, and who lent antiques (a mirror
Photographed by Emma Lewis
and a cross from Oaxaca, MX, for instance) from his personal collection for added texture—walks me through Clarke & Reilly’s objects, peppered about the large showroom. Objects originate across a few recent centuries and boast modern reincarnations, the resulting auras sent into a sort of sublime, romantic tough- ness and functionality. One such remarkable piece is a large, mid-20th century Italian cabinet, sheathed corner to corner with an abandoned oil canvas discovered in a school in Northern En- gland. Uniquely—and perhaps true to the spirit of every Clarke and Reilly endeavor—not a square inch of the canvas went unused. The unlikely combination was meant to be.
The canvas motif similarly envelops a groovy, 1960s fiber- glass chair (photographed amongst the wildflowers of the Hol- lywood Hills herein), and the technical treatments of the objects sing with a kind of brute longevity, finish, and renewed purpose. The stuff is cool! The indigo? Integrated thoroughly throughout, in the silk of a regal chair and footstool, and as a sort of dining table lacquer. “Everyone thinks indigo is this one thing, but it’s so complex and different,” Dwyer remarks. “It’s difficult to truly show the intricacies of it.”
As a duo, Grocott and Dwyer function in a nimbly contem- porary manner, leaning on one another’s strengths and under- standing that the tensions there are not limitations, but opportu- nities. Dwyer’s historic experience in the fashion industry bears fruit for Clarke & Reilly when it comes to presentation, image, and strategy, whereas Grocott’s decades of experience as an artist—with textiles, objects, and furniture—supports the duo’s ambitious yet simple credo, as stated by Grocott: “Time and age adds beauty to things.”
Amidst the alarming proliferation of throwaway commodity culture and scaled means of production, distribution, and out- put, most people want to agree with the declaration. But where Clarke & Reilly make the consideration not just a situational practice, but an inspirational ethos by which to live, comes back to our consideration of the recalcitrant, dogged perennials of planet Earth. Things, objects—and the ideas they purport—are only dead when the spirit of creativity deadens. At a moment
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CLARKE & REILLY. “SINGLE USE PLASTIC TA- BLE”. PLASTIC, METAL, AND 24 CARAT GOLD LEAF. COURTESY OF BLACKMAN CRUZ. PHOTOGRAPHED BY JIM TURNER.