Julie Verhoeven: Fannying Around

About

In a playful return to gaudy kindergarten materials, Julie Verhoeven creates a disorienting collage of decorated paper plates, undulating and overlapping in The Hayward's Concrete. With a flirtatious wink at the solidity and the hard contours of the building, she embraces the overload; bringing in a baroque visual language that is at once naive and crude. Yet beyond this clash between the rigidity of the concrete itself and Verhoeven´s chromatic fireworks, there is a desire to elevate the plate to its old decorative role. Here the quaint British tradition of mounting and hanging china is reintroduced and twisted as Verhoeven brings her crudely feminine punkish picnic to Southbank Centre. Julie Verhoeven is a multi-disciplined designer working across art and fashion; from illustration and creative direction to design consultancy, her work is known for its bold avant-garde quality and surreal details. After graduating from Medway University, UK, in 1987, Verhoeven started out as John Galliano's first design assistant, a role she continued with Martine Sitbon in Paris. She went on to head Italian brand Gibo and has collaborated with international fashion brands including Louis Vuitton, Mulberry and most recently Versace. Since 2002 she has also exhibited extensively, with solo shows in Amsterdam, Cologne, Brussels and London.