London’s Victoria and Albert Museum is set to open an exhibition on the modernist architectural style that emerged in 1940s West Africa. Titled Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence and located at the V&A South Kensington, the examination will reflect on how the hot, humid.
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The floral and the classical
Whether or not you’re a fan of Coronation Chicken, it’s hard not to admire the woman credited with inventing it. With ‘Constance Spry and the Fashion for Flowers’ (17 May–26 September), the
Garden Museum celebrates a figure with as many unexpected facets as that curious dish has ingredients. I’m looking forward to seeing some of Spry’s exuberant and unusual floral arrangements recreated (kale and artichoke extravaganzas, Instagrammers? Spry got there first), and discovering more about this one-time Hackney headmistress who provided blooms for the Queen’s coronation and inspiration for the floral paintings of her romantic partner, Gluck.
James Barnor s Sick Hagemeyer shop assistant, Accra (around 1971) Courtesy of Autograph
The British-Ghanaian photographer James Barnor made his start on the streets of Accra in pre-Independence Ghana using borrowed equipment. By 1953 he had started his own studio called Ever Young in the Jamestown area of Accra, which was visited by civil-servants, dignitaries, artists and newly-weds alike. The images he took there were ostensibly formal portraits but set against elaborate painted backgrounds and, thanks to his rapport with his sitters, they fizz with energy.
“He said his studio was a little bit like a community centre,” says Lizzie Carey-Thomas, the curator of a forthcoming survey of Barnor’s work at the Serpentine North Gallery in London. “[The studio] was next to one of the most well-known hotels in Accra, and so he had a steady flow of people dropping in to see him all day and all night.” Visitors would come for a variety of reasons: p