A pair of British interior designers are creating a buzz in the art world with their mashups of discarded antique chests and broken mirrors, reworked with modern junk to create original sculptures.
You may not have heard of James Russell and Hannah Plumb in the Ribble Valley – but your Victorian dining chairs may well end up in a top-end art gallery – if they’re tatty enough. Collectively known as JamesPlumb, the London art designers have already made a name for themselves with their abstract Victorian-inspired interiors. They have just completed their first solo exhibition, giving their reworked antique chests and Victorian sofas a platform of their own. Called Goodnight Day, it ran until 17th February at the Blancpain Art Contemporain gallery, in Geneva.
JamesPlumb first came to the public’s attention when their work for designer menswear store Hostem won them the retail category Inside award at the World Festival of Interiors last year. At the time, many Tweeters declared the exquisite “Dickensian punk bricollage” theme was more an installation artwork than an interior design project – and so it would seem. At Geneva, they cast off the interiors mantle completely, with spell binding assemblages that melded abstract functionality with timeless appeal – such as a Victorian suite stripped down and “reupholstered” in concrete, and a chimeric antique chest-of-drawers and broken mirror ensemble.
JamesPlumb’s passion for the past is evident in everything they create, suggesting that even the most unloved pieces can have a new story to tell. Maybe JamesPlumb furniture will sit alongside more conventionally restored Victorian oak partners desks , in Preston antique dealers of the future.