Style Council Members
Name: Maggie Ellis
Occupation: Film
Training:
About: Head of Production, Film London. Maggie is responsible for the Production Unit of Film London, vertically integrating all of the agency's commissioning of film and audiovisual production. She has particular responsibility for developing the challenging and innovative Micro Budget Digital Feature Film Fund.
Name: Amanda Nevill
Occupation: Film
Training:
About: Director, BFI. Amanda became the Director of the British Film Institute in 2003, where she has led an ambitious programme of change evolving the organization to prioritize the Archive and Collections, create an international focus for film in London, and increase reach across the UK, primarily through co-productions and on-line initiatives.
Name: Philip Ilson
Occupation: Film
Training:
About: London Short Film Festival. Philip Ilson founded The Halloween Society in April 1994 with colleague Tim Harding, as a regular showcase for short film. In 2008 the Festival changed its name to the London Short Film Festival. Philip continues to work freelance on programming at the summer music festivals, such as the Big Chill, Leeds, and Latitude Festival, where he works with on-going multimedia music and film projects. Since 2006 he has been Short Film Programmer at the BFI London Film Festival.
Name: Lucia Helenka
Occupation: Film
Training:
About: Film Maker. Lucia Helenka is a London based artist specialising in film and photography. Her varied projects include a special commission for The Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair 2004, a grime road movie featuring Hackney's Roll Deep Crew, teaching and co-ordinating skate and BMX video workshops with young people at film festivals across the UK, and a short film narrated by Catherine Deneuve. She has worked on a number of projects for Vauxhall including the VX Collective and the VX Auteur Theory Award at the Halloween / London Short Film Festival.
Name: Gity Monsef
Occupation: Fashion
Training:
About: Director, Glass Loves. Gity Monsef is formerly Creative Director of the Fashion and Textile Museum, founded by fashion icon Zandra Rhodes. Gity was instrumental in the start up, development and delivery of a pioneering exhibition and award winning education programme. Gity left to start Glass Loves, a digital production company specialising in developing digital content focused on fashion, art and music. She is currently working on an online film for MySpace entitled 'The Town That Boars Me' starring Sadie Frost, Kelly Osbourne, Sophie Ellis Bextor, Zandra Rhodes, Natt Weller, Jodi Harsh, Dee C Lee and Andrew Logan.
Name: Nicki Bidder
Occupation: Fashion
Training:
About: Managing Director. Nicki is Managing Director for Starworks, an agency that connects the fashion world with high profile talent and luxury brands. Previously she was Editor-in-Chief of Dazed and Confused Magazine for 8 years. At Dazed and Confused, Nicki was instrumental in the growth of the magazine and the brand at large. In addition she has been an ongoing consultant for Topshop for over four years and continues to work closely with them.
Name: Sandy Black
Occupation: Fashion
Training:
About: Professor of Fashion and Textile Design, London College of Fashion. Sandy's research interests are in knitwear, fashion and textiles design with particular emphasis on 3 dimensional aspects of design and realisation, incorporating mathematical principles. Sandy is developing projects that integrate old and new technologies and seek new ways to approach the design and creation of fashion-related products through the relationship between craft practices and advanced technology.
Name: John Walford
Occupation: Fashion
Training:
About: Director, Vauxhall Fashion Scout. John has been producing fashion shows for a number of years, including producing over fifty shows for Vivienne Westwood. John was also one of the three founders of Graduate Fashion Week, a unique event in the world fashion calendar, promoting the UK's fashion students to a global audience. A champion of young and interesting designers, John set up Vauxhall Fashion Scout with his business partner Martyn Roberts which has become the largest dedicated off schedule venue in London. John lectures extensively, including a period as a senior Lecturer in Fashion and Textiles at The RCA.
Name: Brigitte Stepputtis
Occupation: Fashion
Training:
About: Head of Couture, Vivienne Westwood. Brigitte Stepputtis has been with the Vivienne Westwood brand since 1990, when she started with the label as head of the studio. Having begun her career in fashion as an apprentice tailor and ladies pattern cutter, she went on to study MA in Fashion Design at the Hochschule Fuer Kunst und Musik in Bremen, Germany, where she graduated with distinction. Her innovative style and fashion expertise has earned her numerous positions as a judge on many international fashion events such as the Lancome Competition at Central St.Martins, London; School of Fashion and Textiles Sweden; Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium and in 2007 The Scottish Fashion Awards.
Name: Willie Walters
Occupation: Fashion
Training:
About: Fashion Course Director, Central St Martins. Willie Walters is the Fashion Course Director at Central St Martins College of Art and Design, which has turned out some of the world's biggest fashion names including Matthew Williamson, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. Willie studied at St Martin's herself in the 1970s.
Name: Elliot Grove
Occupation: Film
Training:
About: Director, Raindance. In the late 1980s Elliot launched the Raindance Film Festival, a festival devoted to independent filmmaking and its emerging talent. Elliot is proud of the fact that last year's Raindance line-up included 70 independent features and 150 shorts from 40 countries. Elliot founded the prestigious The British Independent Film Awards in 1998, which Britain's film industry regularly describes as the most important in the UK. He firmly believes that success in the moviemaking business is a simple matter of demystifying the process of breaking into the film industry and allowing individual talent to prosper.
Name: Tamsin O'Hanlon
Occupation: Craft and Design
Training:
About: Founder Director, Free Range Graduate Art and Design Show. Tamsin O'Hanlon is the Founder Director of 'Free Range Graduate Art and Design Show' (now in its eighth year) as well as Events Manager at the Old Truman Brewery. On completion of her graphic design degree at the London College of Printing in 2000, she founded Free Range as part of her remit to promote the Old Truman Brewery as an international venue and platform for the creative industries. She has been instrumental in bringing to The Brewery events such as Body Worlds, Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair, Tent London, Carnesky's Ghost Train, Red Bull Art of Can, Saatchi's New Sensations, Tribe Art with Hussein Chalayan and Julian Opie plus two series of Hell's Kitchen as well as assisting with the development of projects such as Fashion East, London Design Festival and the East Festival.
Name: Henrietta Thompson
Occupation: Craft and Design
Training:
About: Freelance Journalist. Henrietta Thompson is a journalist, author and curator, based in London and Barcelona. Henrietta has worked as an editor for Blueprint, Dazed and Confused, Winkreative and Phaidon, and now contributes features on architecture, design and innovation for Arena, Business Life, the Independent, Monocle, Wallpaper, the Guardian and the Architects Journal, among others. As a curator her exhibitions include the annual 100% Norway exhibition in London, and the influential Hearwear exhibition at the Victoria and Albert in 2005. Having written two books already with Thames and Hudson she is currently writing a new six-book series on resourceful design and living.
Name: Isobel Dennis
Occupation: Craft and Design
Training:
About: Group Director, Upper Street Events. Isobel Dennis has been with Upper Street Events for 5 years and has grown New Designers into the largest graduate design event in Europe encompassing over 20 design disciplines. Prior to this she was at Clarion Events for 8 years working across Top Drawer, Harrogate Home and Gift and new event business. Isobel has a BA in Ceramics and trained at Camberwell College of Arts and ran her own business for 8 years before joining the exhibition industry. During running her own business she also worked on a freelance basis for Designers Guild and latterly with Kevin McCloud. She is also Director of New Designers as part of her role at Upper Street Events.
Name: Danielle Proud
Occupation: Craft and Design
Training:
About: Danielle Proud is a Sunday Times columnist and interior designer. Danielle's work creates ripples in the design world - and has been featured in Vogue, Sunday Times, Style Magazine, Dazed and Confused, Marie Claire, In Style, Living Etc and the Guardian. She was the first interior designer to be supported by Topshop, who commissioned her to design a range of craft kits for making lampshades, cushion covers and racy cross stitch samplers to launch Topshop Home. She is also the author of House Proud: Hip Craft for the Modern Homemaker.
Name: Rosy Greenlees
Occupation: Craft and Design
Training:
About: Rosy joined the Crafts Council in 2006 following her role as Director of the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise, a collaboration of seven Higher Education Institutions that develop partnerships within cultural sectors. She has previously worked in independent arts centres and local authority galleries both as a curator and public art manager. She then became the Director of Visual and Media Art and Deputy Chief Executive at Eastern Arts Board before moving to the Greater London Authority to lead on the development of the Mayor's Culture Strategy.
Name: James Bierman
Occupation: Theatre
Training:
About: Acting Executive Director, Donmar Warehouse. James Bierman has spent his working life in the theatre world – both in the commercial and subsidised sectors. He is currently the Acting Executive Producer for the Donmar Warehouse, where he works alongside the Artistic Director Michael Grandage, and will see the company into its new seasons both at its Covent Garden home base and into the Wyndham's theatre for a one year residency. Bierman was previously the General Manager for the Aldwych Theatre and prior to that the theatre's Technical Manager and Deputy Box Office Manager.
Name: Nina Steiger
Occupation: Theatre
Training:
About: Writers' Centre Director, Soho Theatre. Nina Steiger is Director of the Writers' Centre at Soho Theatre. The Writers' Centre is an invaluable resource for playwrights, offering a range of programmes to help produce the work of emerging writers. Nina has worked as a director, dramaturg and script reader in New York and South Africa, developing new work by established and emerging writers. As a playwright, she is the recipient of the Clark Lewis Prize and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation commission for The True Facts as well as a developmental bursary for Slangrivier which was premiered at the New York International Fringe Festival. She is on the boards of On Theatre, Birds' Eye View and the editorial board of Brand Magazine.
Name: Kevin Cummins
Occupation: Photography
Training:
About: Photographer. After studying photography for four years in Salford, Kevin embarked on a career that was to encompass a wide range of photographic work. Kevin was instrumental in establishing City Life, Manchester's 'what's on' guide and was a founding contributor to The Face, the influential style magazine where he won an award for Magazine Cover of the Year. His work can be seen gracing many record sleeves and book jackets and he regularly contributes to publications worldwide and for ten years was the chief photographer for NME. In 2006, Kevin finally exhibited a selection of his Joy Division photographs – at London's prestigious Paul Stolper Gallery.
Name: Rick Mayston
Occupation: Photography
Training:
About: Director. European Book Publishing, Getty Images. Rick Mayston is Getty Images' National Account Manager for the UK book-publishing industry. He joined the company in 1996 and manages Getty's publishing internationally, across their offices in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Dublin and Barcelona. Before working at Getty Images he was a graphic designer at Wolff Olins, JWT, Saatchi and Saatchi, DDBA and Newell and Sorrell amongst others.
Name: Rankin
Occupation: Photography
Training:
About: Photographer. Photographer, publisher and most recently film director; Rankin established his reputation when he launched Dazed and Confused with his business partner Jefferson Hack in 1991. As well as magazines Rankin has produced a string of highly successful exhibitions, ad campaigns and books. He has shot front covers for German Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Arena and GQ and charity campaigns for Amnesty International, Everyman, Special Olympics, Refuge and Women's Aid amongst many others.
Name: Sue Steward
Occupation: Photography
Training:
About: Freelance Journalist. Sue Steward is a journalist and broadcaster and photo-editor. She writes about photography, other visual arts and World Music for the Telegraph, Observer and Guardian, and for the BJP, Wire and Songlines magazines. She was photo-editor for the Telegraph for almost ten years, and for the UNAIDS 10th anniversary book which will be published in November. A regular reviewer for BBC R3's World Routes, and occasional guest commentator on Woman's Hour and Front Row, she is Photography Critic for the Evening Standard, and Art Correspondent for British Airways inflight channel, Highlife. She was a judge on the National Portrait Gallery's 2007 Photographic Portrait Prize, and wrote the catalogue notes for the exhibition. She is currently working on a book about the London artist, Albert Louden.
Name: Camilla Brown
Occupation: Photography
Training:
About: Senior Curator, The Photographers' Gallery. Camilla Brown gained her BA in History of Art from the University of Leeds and her MA in History of Modern Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She is currently Senior Curator at The Photographers' Gallery London and before then was Exhibitions Curator at Tate Liverpool. Last year she attained a Postgraduate Diploma in Cultural Leadership at City University, for which she received a scholarship. She also contributes essays to books on photography and writes for specialist magazines. Published essays include Once more with feeling; recent photography from Colombia (The Photographers' Gallery, 2007): House by the Sea in Marjorlaine Ryley's Villa Mona (TRACE editions 2006): Looking at the Overlooked in Stilled contemporary Still Life Photography by Women (Iris publications 2006). Forthcoming Cast a monograph on Dryden Goodwin's work (Steidl/ Photoworks 2008).
Name: Emma Quinn
Occupation: Fine Arts
Training:
About: Director of Live and Media Arts, ICA. Emma Quinn has been interested and involved in live and media arts since 1996 when she studied MA Digital Arts at Middlesex University. She has subsequently worked as Content Manager for the Mind Zone at London's Millennium Dome, as well as organising exhibitions with the art group Spore, including 'sQuawl' at the Oxo Tower and 'White Noise' in Brick Lane. Following a period working with the artists' group Soda, Emma joined the ICA in 2005 where she is now Director of Live and Media Arts.
Name: Tom Morton
Occupation: Fine Arts
Training:
About: Curator, Hayward Gallery. Tom Morton is a curator at The Hayward, co-curator of the 2008 Busan Biennale, and Contributing Editor of Frieze Magazine. He was previously curator of Cubitt Gallery, London (2006-7) and co-curator of Man in the Holocene, London (2004-5). In 2007, he curated the exhibition 'How to Endure' as part of the 1st Athens Biennale. He is the author of numerous exhibition catalogues, and is a regular contributor to the magazines Metropolis M, Bidoun, GQ Style and Tank'.
Name: Virginia and Tot
Occupation: Fine Arts
Training:
About: Directors, Riflemaker. Virginia Damsta and Tot Taylor. Directors, Riflemaker. Opened in May 2004 by collectors Virginia Damtsa and Tot Taylor, Riflemaker is housed in the West End's oldest public building, a Georgian riflemaker's workshop dating from 1712. Riflemaker exhibitions have been both critically acclaimed and extremely well attended by art insiders as well as the general public. Last October, in excess of 30,000 people visited the William Burroughs exhibition following major attention for Jamie Shovlin, Marta Marce and Jaime Gili. Shovlin has recently had a solo show at Tate Britain and also in New York (at Freight and Volume).
Name: Simon Rumley
Occupation: Fine Arts
Training:
About: Simon Rumley with Zavier Ellis are co-curators of a museum scale exhibition of young progressive artists' work called The Future Can Wait which compliments and completes London's Frieze week. Both Simon and Zavier have plans to take the exhibition to Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and are discussing projects in LA and Hong Kong. Simon Rumley founded New London Kicks in 2005, an annual exhibition sponsored by The Armoury Show promoting contemporary and emerging London based artists in New York in collaboration with Soho House NY and Wooster Project. Rumley has also produced, written and directed four feature films and works on various London based committees including Macmillan De'Longhi Art Auction and Lambeth Academy Local Career Advisory Board.
Name: Zavier Ellis
Occupation: Fine Arts
Training:
About: Curator, The Future Can Wait. Zavier Ellis with Simon Rumley are co-curators of a museum scale exhibition of young progressive artists' work called The Future Can Wait which compliments and completes London's Frieze week. Both Zavier and Simon have plans to take the exhibition to Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and are discussing projects in LA and Hong Kong. Zavier Ellis opened his first gallery in London at the age of 24. He is also an artist with a Masters in Fine Art, and has worked with several renowned international collectors including Anne Lewis (Sydney), Peter Nobel (Zurich) and Helmut Schuster (Frankfurt, Berlin). In 2006 Ellis launched Charlie Smith, a curatorial dealership specialising in young, contemporary artists.
Name: Anthony Bennett
Occupation: Fine Arts
Training:
About: The A Foundation, a registered charity, was established by James Moores in 1998. The primary purpose of the Foundation is to support the development, production and exhibition of contemporary visual art and, in particular, to focus on the enrichment and regeneration of Liverpool through culture and the arts. The Foundation was the vehicle through which James Moores established the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, the first and now the largest visual arts festival in the UK; in 2006, it attracted over 300,000 visitors to the city. A Foundation has extended its work in Liverpool, to Rochelle School in the heart of London's East End. The School is home to a thriving community of artists and creative industries housed in studios created from the School's former classrooms.
Name: Anna Harding
Occupation: Fine Arts
Training:
About: Founded in 1968 by artists Bridget Riley, Peter Sedgley and Peter Townsend, SPACE was created to meet the need for affordable studios in London to support professional visual artists. This bold experiment started with the conversion of St. Katharine's Dock and is now seen as a pivotal point in contemporary British art and urban development; a model that has since been consistently adapted and modified. The first and largest studio provider SPACE has supported an enormous number of British Artists throughout its history and has grown exponentially, constantly developing new strategies to support artists' changing needs, including an increasingly digital and international art scene. In addition to managing 17 studio sites across East London, SPACE today provides a wide range of support services for visual artists, art-related creative enterprises and communities local to SPACE buildings.
Name: Graham Phenix
Occupation: Fine Arts
Training:
About: Director, Duck-Art. Graham trained as a draughtsman before spending 20 years in the City. He left as a Director of one of the world's largest banks to support developing artists and youth art groups/projects. He joined the Aquarium Gallery in London as the Managing Director and is the founder and director of Duck-Art and 'the-situation modern' a live art/music/literature series of events. Graham is currently setting up a new art/literature/music publishing company which will include a regular magazine.
Name: Jonathan Tuchner
Occupation: Fine Arts
Training:
About: Director of press, Arts and Business. Jonathan Tuchner is director of press and public affairs at Arts and Business, an organisation that aspires to be the world's most successful and widespread creative network. The organisation helps business people support the arts and the arts to inspire business people.
Name: Alan Montgomery
Occupation: Fine Arts
Training:
About: Senior Specialist, Contemporary Art and Design, Bonhams. Alan Montgomery studied history of art in his home town of Glasgow. Throughout his career he has worked in various areas of the art world, both with dealers and an auction house. His current position with Bonhams involves putting together a number of sales of Contemporary and Post War Art and Design , currently five sales a year and growing rapidly.
Name: Karen Ashton
Occupation: Fine Arts
Training:
About: Director, Ashton and Hayward. For over ten years Karen Ashton has been producing, curating and PR-ing bespoke art events and projects in London with numerous arts and business clients including Finlandia Vodka, Royal College of Art, Beaconsfield, Lux Gallery, Finnish Institute in London, White Cube, Lisson Gallery, Sonera, Smart Trust, Olympus, Bloomberg, Vauxhall, Sony, I-D magazine. With a special interest in contemporary photography she has curated several exhibitions in this field, and in 2003 she was producer of the first Brighton Photo Biennial. More recently she has been focusing on boot fairs and salacious story writing, she also knows a lot about toxic chemicals. Karen is also curator of the Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair.
Name: Alex Fleetwood
Occupation: Theatre
Training:
About: Producer, Hide and Seek. Alex Fleetwood is a producer and games designer. He founded Hide and Seek with Gideon Reeling in 2007 after attending Come Out and Play in New York and believing it was the future. As well as Hide and Seek he works with artists and broadcasters on lots of things, including The Eternity Man, a film opera for Channel 4, and The Soho Project, an ARG for the London Games Festival.