New Currency has come together with S_.ein, a creative studio founded by Bior Elliott to release a special magazine project, titled “BODIES”
This is an oeuvre that reflects on the human body, both in actuality and through the realms of our imagination.
In the most apparent sense we’ve endeavoured to profile a host of exciting designers using fashion as a medium to break new ground: people like Arlette who create clothing purely from metal, Graysha Audren pioneering 3D weaving to reduce waste in manufacturing and Rosie Broadhead who is developing techniques to affect and regulate bodily health. We also used the theme of bodies to explore how nationhood and identity manifest itself through the works of creatives like Plantation and Mowalola, whose archive was lensed by Gabriel Moses. In a more abstract sense we have artists like Jamie Shilvock, Erica Ohmi and Anna Pesonen using digital means to portray warped and alternate representations of the human form, flirting with ideas of absurdity and sexuality. The resultant publication feels like a conversation between a group of far flung designers, artists, writers and photographers expressing their take on what it means to be human in a way which mirrors our common reality of being physical beings.
The design of the magazine is also representative of the publication’s bodily theme: every front cover depicts the front of a body while every back cover depicts the rear of one. Inscripted on the spine of the project is a James Massiah poem in order to repurpose this often ignored part of a magazine into a metaphor for how our spinal cord transmits information from the brain to the rest of our body. Lastly, we created a limited edition sleeve in the shape of a worker’s jacket as an allusion to the universal need for our bodies to be sheltered and protected.