Today’s unconventional solutions in visual art often become tomorrow’s fashion trends—emerging talents with their avant-garde thinking and unpredicted approaches to unleashing creativity are one of the biggest treasures for the world of fashion. Knowing that, Louis Vuitton teamed up with a dozen of aspiring artists to provide young geniuses from across the city with an opportunity to demonstrate what they can and learn more about the contemporary art at the awesome website called REcreative.
The new online hub was devised and developed as part of the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project, the three-year contemporary art-focused initiative for young Londoners aged 13-25, which was launched in 2010 by the Hayward Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts, the South London Gallery, Tate Britain, the Whitechapel Gallery and the fashion giant. A group of 12 young people, who are taking part in the program, wanted to create a website that would «inspire interest in contemporary art amongst their peers, that would offer information and insight into the workings of the professional art world and that, most importantly, would be an online community for young people to share and showcase their own work.” It took one year to develop REcreative—for this, the team of young artists collaborated with the design agency SIFT to have everything done properly. The online destination features artwork as well as news, information on the upcoming events and interviews with industry experts. “REcreative is a word that was invented to reflect the interest of the participants in creating new work that references or reinterprets existing works and concepts. It refers to process and that’s what this website explores and celebrates.”
On June 9, the fashion brand hosted a special party dedicated to the launch of the new destination—the event arranged in Covent Garden saw a number of celebrated artists (Michael Craig-Martin, Mark Titchner and Sam Taylor-Wood to name but a few), who supported the new online community and even designed tees, which will be given away to the first users of the website (to win one of them, users are to sign up until July 9).
“This truly is a project by young people for young people with the aim of inspiring greater involvement and interest in contemporary art. Over the past year young people from the five partner institutions have worked hard to create a website which is genuinely ground-breaking in concept and scope. The website already exceeds the initial expectations of all involved in the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project and we are excited to see how it will develop as young people start to use and shape it in the months ahead,” commented Margot Heller, Director of the South London Gallery.
Louis Vuitton’s REcreative project is similar to illy sustainArt program, which also supports emerging talents—unlike the initiative by the fashion giant, which primarily targets London creative youth, the coffee brand helps artists from developing countries.
www.REcreativeuk.com from REcreative on Vimeo.