Architect, interior and furniture designer, sculptor and artist Max Clendinning (1924-2020) was one of the most enigmatic and intuitive creators of the British Postwar Modern movement - a daringly liberated creator whose restless inquisitiveness sparked a touchstone to the popular zeitgeist. "It'll be a great day when furniture and cutlery swing like The Supremes", opined Michael Wolff RDI writing in the Society of Industrial Arts Journal in 1964. Clendinning however, had already weighed anchor - his course plotted to voyage yet further.
Together with his lifelong partner, the Slade-trained painter and theatre set designer Ralph Adron (b. 1939), Clendinning delivered some of the most sumptuous and wildly exotic domestic interiors of the era, employing their Georgian home in Islington as platform and canvas to an ever-evolving tableaux of shape, structure and colour. Journalists, writers and photographers, Norman Parkinson and Tim Street-Porter included, responded to these assured and highly personalised schemes, ensuring that it was one of the most consistently published interiors of its era.
An influential 1967 publication records totemic plywood furniture, delivered as if machine-readable hieroglyphs, punctuating Pop Deco murals that roamed freely over walls, doors and ceilings. In a subsequent iteration of their home, all surfaces dissolve to a uniform palette of universal white, living components indistinguishable from walls and floors, an oversized illuminated Tulip offering an unanticipated gesture of familiarity. Then as now, these interiors continue to resist easy classification - post-modernist or pop, yet neither; transcendental classicism unfastened from structure - landscapes of the unexpected.
As part of the London Design Festival, Sadie Coles HQ will present Max Clendinning: Interior Eulogies, an exhibition curated by Simon Andrews and undertaken with the support of Ralph Adron. The exhibition will assemble previously-unseen works of furniture and sculpture from the collection of Ralph Adron, and from other private collections, along with archival photography documenting Clendinning's interiors and original works on paper by Adron.
A panel discussion on the occasion of the exhibition
Max Clendinning: Interior Eulogies. curated by Simon Andrews
Join us for a discussion on Clendinning's work, its legacy and influence on contemporary design with Simon Andrews, Ben Kelly and Bethan Laura Wood, moderated by Libby Sellers.
Lutyens Room, 2nd floor
Royal Institute of British Architects
66 Portland Place W1
Thursday 15 September 2022, 7-8pm
To attend please email: rsvp@sadiecoles.com
Max Clendinning:
Born in County Armagh in Northern Ireland, Clendinning originally trained as a painter before qualifying as an architect in 1953. Early projects had included furniture and exhibition designs for both the 1948 Britain Can Make It, and the 1951 Festival of Britain exhibitions. Significant architectural commissions were to follow, including Manchester Oxford Road train station, completed in 1960 and Grade II listed, and Crawley Civic Centre, 1964, which featured a boldly-designed interior that soon attracted new commissions from influential London clients. Establishing his own studio in 1965, Clendinning now focussed on interior and furniture design. With the exception of a limited series of innovative furniture that was briefly produced for retail in the latter half of the 1960s, most pieces were one-offs or prototypes. These were often hand-made together with Adron, and produced either for their own use or for the private clients that increasingly represented Clendinning's commissions onwards from the 1970s. During this period commercial interior design projects included the celebrated all-grey interior of the Christian Dior boutique on London's Mount Street in 1972, and numerous shop interiors undertaken during the redevelopment of Covent Garden, of which Clendinning's 1982 facade for Christina Smith's The Tea House currently remains intact. Restlessly active until the end, Clendinning never stopped designing furniture, and unfailingly continued to reimagine his own living spaces.
Furniture designed by Max Clendinning is retained in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh; and the Ulster Museum, Belfast.
Simon Andrews:
Simon Andrews is an internationally respected expert with over 30 years' experience in the global market for Design. Previously Senior International Specialist for Christie's, Andrews has served on the authenticating committees for major international art and design fairs in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Basel, Miami and Maastricht. A bilingual Anglo-French national, who has lectured widely and written extensively, Andrews is based in London and is the founder of Andrews Art Advisory Ltd.
Panellists:
Libby Sellers is a design historian, consultant, curator and writer. She was former curator at the Design Museum, London and supported concept-led design through her eponymous gallery for 10 years. Now Libby focuses on writing, client consultancy and freelance curation for institutions including the Serpentine Galleries and commercial galleries in UK, Europe and USA. Her last exhibition was the first-ever design contribution to Frieze New York 2020. She has authored a number of articles and publications on design and her book Women Design (2018) is now available in three languages and paperback. Libby was nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Breakthrough Fund for cultural entrepreneurs and in 2014 she was honoured by the Women of the Year awards as a Woman of Achievement in the Arts (find out more),
Ben Kelly:
Ben Kelly is one of the UK's most influential designers. He has directed successful and innovative projects across the UK, Europe and Asia. He is best known for his interior design of the legendary nightclub, The Haçienda in Manchester. He is a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI), Visiting Professor in Interior Design at The Royal College of Art and Professor in Interior Design at Kingston University. He was Chair of Interior and Spatial Design at University of the Arts London (UAL 2013 - 2016), and has been nominated for the Prince Philip Design Prize for outstanding achievement in Design for Business and Society by D&AD. He graduated from The Royal College of Art in 1974 and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Design from Kingston University in 2000 and an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal College of Art in 2018 (find out more).
Bethan Laura Wood:
Bethan Laura Wood is a multidisciplinary designer who established her UK-based studio in 2009 after gaining her MA at The Royal College of Art. Fascinated by the connections we make with the everyday objects that surround us, Bethan's work motivates engagement and interaction to explore cultural conduits alongside critical approaches to sustainability. Her innovative and intuitive skills have been rewarded with prestigious international residencies and location-based projects that have included Nilufar Milan, Perrier-Jouët, Rosenthal, Abet Laminati, Moroso, Valextra, Kvadrat, Bitossi Ceramiche, Design Miami, Tory Burch, CC-Tapis, Tolix Peter Pilotto, Hermes and Dior. Her work has been widely exhibited and examples of her designs have been acquired for the permanant collections of major international museums to include The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, The Art Institute of Chicago, and The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (find out more).