School of Life

Food for Thoughts

Now, here’s an interesting one: The School of Life.

An organisation that devoted itself to developing emotional intelligence. Sounds a bit esoteric?

Fret not.

They offer a wider variety of surprisingly sensible programmes and services with the focus being on how to live thoughtfully, wisely and well.

Sounds vague enough?

The organisation was originally founded in 2008 in swinging Londontown and has since grown to spread its operations via Paris, Amsterdam, London, Melbourne, Antwerp, Belgrade, Instanbul and Sydney.

Apart from offering classes, workshops, retreats, intensives, secular sermons, and therapies in the third dimension and through facilitating it themselves, they publish books, an arm of the operation that shall form the focus of this feature.

What is refreshing about School of Life’s approach to publishing is that they are not trying to corner you with dogmas, au contraire: The tenet is to get you thinking and to provoke a process that will let you come to your own conclusion. This is something I can attests to, as I have had a chance to read a range of their books on different topics and the way it is presented is holistic, matter-of-factly, undogmatic yet offers a gentle guidance for those in need thereof.

Claiming that The School of Life’s offerings are diverse is an understatement par excellence – from philosophy to literature via psychology to the visual arts – nothing is off limits and somehow they manage to block out the white noise of a world overflowing with information and distil and boil down relevant matters down to their essence without falling prey to becoming an overbearing preachy voice that batters you with its ideological contracts.

School of Life’s emissions are stimulating, encouraging and their careful curation helps to weed out a lot of unnecessary elaborations as somehow their range of writers find their own distinctive voice with writings being structured according to the situations of your own life.

Different angles are taken and while some of them might not be your preferred ones, they more often than not resonate, lend perspective and with their calm and reasonable voice encourage you to leave your limitations behind and expand your horizon.

For a lack of a singular, fitting term, I find the School of Life to be a repository of attitudes that are elusive, but much needed, as they are here to stay and meant to be revisited.

Denfair

Hordern Pavilion

Sydney, Australia

August 16-18, 2018

Over the last three years, Denfair has established itself as a yearly curated design destination event in Melbourne for professionals in the realms of architecture, interior styling and art. Showcasing hundreds of design related brands is has become a hub not only for trade but a marketplace and incubator of new ideas.

The platform for all things design incarnated for the first time in Sydney this year and while the offerings and visitor numbers were lower than what usually materializes on a yearly basis in Melbourne, the Sydney Denfair event showed promise with its curated offerings covering a wide range of styles and approaching to all things design.

Love for design pervades the event and the breadth of what is on display not only instils the value and positive impact well thought through design can have apart from being visually and aesthetically pleasing, but also the positive contributions it can make to our lives in terms of sustainability.

With exhibitors being an eclectic mix of cutting edge tastemakers, considerate and engaging conversations are to be had in every nook and cranny of the exhibition hall once you enter no matter if you are an expert in furniture, homewares, materials and art pour l’art or if you randomly pop in out of sheer curiosity.

Brands we discovered during our visit were e.g. King Living. Them joining forces with local Australian designers, i.e. Tom Fereday, resulted in a minimalist aluminium framed table desk with timber finish that generates integrated power and offers both charging and lighting, making it one utilitarian, stylish and useful piece of design furniture. Honest design at its best.

Presented under the umbrella of Cult Design, Danish designer Peter J. Lassen’s layered Montana system is a thing of beauty: It can be customised to accommodate your personal preferences including all components being able to be modified, including shelves, lightning, trays, doors and materials used. Classic design that is simple yet functional.

Tait’s elegant Seam Collection is based on a design process that puts emphasis on using a seam not unlike in the tailoring of garments. The resulting collection of shaped and sculpted chairs, chaise lounges and tables designed by Adam Cornish is versatile as it is suitable for both indoor and outdoor use.

Lightspace is a fairly new brand in public and workspace furniture that is focused a creating an idiosyncratic melange of Eastern and Western Design that is fun, collaborative and playful.

The first Sydney incarnation of Denfair showed more than promise as it is more than a mere design exhibition: One cannot help but feel invigorated and inspired having delved into the creative community that Denfair manages to attract and nurture.

Courtney Barnett

Opera House

Sydney, Australia

August 23, 2018

Going to Melbourne is never not a delight.

Apart from culinary discoveries, its arts and music scene always produces something new and original or at least emissions that add an idiosyncratic twist on the tried and tested and infuse it with fresh blood and originality.

Case in point: Victorian indie darling Courtney Barnett, who also operates the record label Milk! With her partner and artist in her own right Jen Cloher.

With her contemplative and at times launig-ironic and pithy approach to dissecting everyday observations, backed by her trademark singy-spoken vocal delivery and a dual guitar attack serving the counterpoint to her sweating the small stuff, her debut album, along with her collaboration with Kurt Vile from 2017 found themselves on heavy rotation on the mobile device I was utilising during my travels.

Given that Courtney Barnett’s oeuvre seamlessly transitions and manoevours between poppy tunes and heavier, feedback laden grungy Pixies / Breeder-esque nuances, it is not further wondrous that it did not take long until songwriter Courtney Barnett became a worldwide sensations in the indie-scene.

In a live environment, of which  tonight’s audience welcomed her enthusiastically, Courtney Barnett incarnates with a tight band, the sheer force of which propels her show constantly forward like a well-oiled machine. Not counting on winning the crowd over by playing her upbeat radio hits too early, her set seemed to have been well thought through with deliberate ebbs and flows navigating her catalogue.

Being more of an introvert and despite a lack of stage banter, her engaging and nonchalant delivery along with the urgency of her innate energy and the personality of her strong voice is reflected in her reception as the nearly sold-out crowd celebrates every note, swaying and dancing along in equal measures.

A fantastic evening by a woman who is firmly in touch with who she is and is at the top of her game.

You would do yourself a major disservice if you did not make an effort to catch her if she ever holds court in your neck of the woods.

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Photos by Prudence Upton (provided)

Big Poppa’s Cheese Club

Big Poppa’s

Sydney, Australia

August 19, 2018

The result of separating the curd of milk from the whey.

C2H5OH.

Recurring, insistent beat patterns providing both the foundation and counterpoint for boastful rhyming patterns intoned by a vocalist.

In layman’s terms “cheese”, “drinks” and “rap music” - who’d have doubts that the melange of the three would make for a geschmaecklerisches, sparking restaurant / bar?

The trio of themes the Certainly not the founding fathers of Big Poppa’s Lewis Jaffrey (ex-Shady Pines, The Baxter Inn) and Jared Merlino (Lobo Plantation), who centered their empire around aforementioned trio of themes.

The name of the haunt being a thinly veiled homage to Notorious B.I.G., the boutique-y dark wooded upstairs bit of the two-storied affair on Sydney’s Oxford Street in the old Hello Sailor digs is dedicated to Italian cuisine under the guidance of executive chef Liam O’Driscoll and its yang is the moodier, candle-lit cocktail den downstairs with an expertly curated bar, cocktail menu, cheese plate menu and an international wine list to match.

Musically, visitors are serenaded by, guess what?

Hip Hop. You got that right, Sherlock. Exclusively, if the name of the etablissement did not give it away already.

Now, cheese is of major importance within the confines of Big Poppa’s with it being omnipresent not only on the main menus but also alongside about twenty-five cheeses to indulge in before, during or after dinner.

Big Poppa’s Cheese Club is a monthly curated affair, which shows Big Poppa’s exploring pairings in the beverage world with cheese under the curation of Kieran Took.

Enter Ruinart Champagne - founded in 1729, it is the oldest Champagne house yet definitely not the most prominent one. This might be due to the fact that after World War II. Ruinart almost disappeared and struggled decades building itself from the ground up again by focusing on the local French market, where it became a respected brand yet was dwarfed on international terrain by the other giants under the umbrella of LVMH, the entity that it owns Ruinart these days, which is not further wondrous given the small production.

Tonight’s tasting of Ruinart’s impressive line-up of cuvées gave indication of a discreet expansion on terra australis with a focus on outlets that afford exposure to discerning consumers with sophisticated, developed palates who pay more attention to what is in the bottle than on the label – and in the bottle are bubbles of exquisite quality:

Garth Foster, a charismatic man wearing many hats who tonight incarnated as the Brand Ambassador and conferencier for Ruinart, MC-ed in his trademark knowledgeable yet accessible manner through the evening, proffering three kinds of Ruinart Champagne, which were accompanied by three French cheeses, hand selected by Big Poppa’s executive chef Liam Driscoll and elaborated on by turophile par excellence Kieran Took.

The proceedings were started with Ruinart’s pale yellow Blanc de Blanc, which is crafted from 100% Premier Cru Chardonnay vineyards producing a simple yet elegant, accessible yet delicate wine with a very fine bead and a borderline fruity lemonade-y appeal courtesy of nine grams of residual sugar. A more than suitable companion to the creamy, soft and bulging off-white Brie Fermier Cow’s Milk from Ile-de-France as it highlighted its vegetal flavours.

Things were taken up a notch with the next course: A blend constructed on the marriage of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, resulting in the pomegranate pink coloured Ruinart Rose. Its delicate fruitiness, which runs the gamut from more exotic kinds to red ones was quite something to be tasted alongside Comté hard mountain Cow’s Milk from the Jura Massif. A cheese that depending on where it was tackled unfolded quite a range of taste sensations, e.g. the parts closer to the rind were crystalline in nature, nutty and earthy while moving towards the centre was a transition into softer, more creamy brown buttery territory with a sweet finish.

Next up was my favourite Ruinart: The signature Brut blend comprised of Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes. Sustained effervescence is always something I hold in high esteem when it comes to Champagne, which in this case is underpinned by a fruity nose and a hint of butterscotch and brioche on the nose. With its long finish and the Chardonnay component being the dominant part, it accentuated one of the oldest French cheeses, i.e. Fourme D’Amberts’s creamy Auvergne farmhouse buttery blue cheese.

With the evening being framed in a bit of light-hearted education about both the bubbly emissions and the rationale behind matching them with the respective cheeses, it made for an engaging event that was rounded out with a delicious Champagne based Old Cuban cocktail, showcasing the mixology skills of Big Poppa’s bartenders.

Not married to merely wine or bubbles, fromage lover Kieran Took alluded that great things are in the making, which piqued one’s curiosity and desire to learn about Big Poppa’s next instalment of its cheese club.

While a visit to Big Poppa’s should be mandatory for your Sydney and specifically Oxford Street visit, the monthly Cheese Club events should earn themselves a place on everyone’s culinary calendar whose fancy is remotely tickled by the prospect of consuming carefully chosen cheese and quality tipples in an enjoyable atmosphere.

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Photos by @k.a.vv

Gerhard Richter: Abstractions

Prestel Publishing

With its telling title, there is not a whole left to the imagination as to what this beautifully illustrated and curated book zeros in on:

Gerhard Richter’s abstract emissions from the mid 1960ies to the current day with a well-balanced mix of prominent works but also artefacts from private collections and some pieces that have been undug and see the light of the public for the first day around.

It is interesting to explore how the book weaves its way from Richter’s first experiments with paintings, which consisted merely of grids or prime coloured squares and rectangles, via his grey and colour chart paintings, and sculptures to enlarged photographed patterns depicting what was dried on canvas after he let go of control, which is one of the methods that is dominant specifically in his abstract body of work.

After perusing the book I got a real sense of the richness of the material that was used and how imperfections become welcome features, adding another dimension and “je ne sais quoi” factor to the artworks that is nearly impossible to replicate without losing its authenticity and magic.

Now, if you are not familiar with Gerhard Richter and his oeuvre at large I’d probably recommend approaching him via a more mainstream take on his art, as the abstract aspect is only a mere half of what made him as an artist.

For the initiated enthusiasts, this book holds merit as it shows unreleased works and makes connections that are rarely highlighted in other releases on this subject, starting with the trajectory from Richter starting out as a realistic painter to the evolution of an abstract, experimental visionary, who never stopped questioning the status quo of painting, trends and the motivations behind it all – with his internal discourse taking the centre stage.