Beyond Surface Appeal: The Cosmetic World of Art and Design at Isamaya Ffrench’s Studio Iron

Honor Cockroft

Blurring boundaries at Saatchi Yates... Photo: Courtesy of Saatchi Yates

Make-up artist Isamaya Ffrench blurs the boundaries between art practice and the practical at Studio Iron.

There is something deliberately unstable about Studio Iron, the inaugural exhibition of Isamaya Ffrench’s newly launched design company. Installed at Saatchi Yates, the show unfolds across the vast open gallery space in a convergence of art, design and installation. Materials and surfaces dissect the white walls of the gallery but the exhibition’s real identity occupies a new space between the functional and non-functional, the structural and the cosmetic. 

Ffrench, best known for her sculptural make-up, has built a career subverting beauty standards. Her distinctive aesthetic of bleached brows, metallic lips and dewy skin has decorated the faces of figures such as Rihanna and Madonna. Uninterested in the disguising nature of conventional beauty, with its masking foundations and plumping fillers, her work prioritises outward expression and form. 

This sensibility extends into Studio Iron, where Ffrench presents a kind of brutalist gesamtkunstwerk: furniture, fine art and installation arranged into what the gallery describes as a “post-industrial landscape”. The title itself carries symbolic weight. The name Isamaya comes from the medieval-Germanic for ‘iron-strength’, tangible here in the severe nail reliefs of Gunther Uecker or the chainmail tapestry of Wretched Flowers which hangs heavy across a wall. 

Steel and iron dominate. Reflective, brushed and burnished metals flash against the exposed pipes and raw architectural frame of the St James gallery. Yet underneath the hard surfaces, lurks something surreal. Hair is draped over a steel stool with an unsettling intimacy, whilst cracked eggs lie beneath a latex mimic of a voluptuous female figure. Beneath the fabric skin of Manon Wertenbroek’s work a force appears to wriggle and writhe.

The curation clamours for attention, but the room remains oddly quiet. The air is cut only by the whirring motor of Paul McCarthy’s Brancusi-esque monolith, its gold surface a mirroring satire of the taboo object it depicts. An exposed black wire trails to a plug socket, puncturing the illusion. It is one of several times throughout the exhibition wherein the tension between the made object and the realities of materials is laid bare. 

At times, the exhibition risks collapsing into pure aesthetic gesture. Materials belie an intended use whilst furniture is estranged from its practical purpose. Moulded glasses melt into red polystyrene, no longer suitable for drinking. Elsewhere, the tangled knots of Kelly Wearstler’s marble chair invites praise but offers no comfort. Benches, chairs and stools are positioned under studio lights, serving only a compositional role.   

According to Saatchi Yates, Ffrench handpicked a roster of “artisans”, many of whom had never designed furniture. Her role appears not just as curator but also collaborator, guiding artists through unfamiliar forms and processes. The naming of Ffrench in the exhibition’s title suggests a deeper engagement, partially endemic of the active role of the modern curator, beyond that of blatant promotion. 

The eponymous exhibition holds an unusual place in Saatchi Yates’ programme. A far-cry from the vulnerable and fluid explorations of female identity in the preceding paintings of Joanna van Son, Studio Iron nevertheless continues the gallery’s commitment to showcasing raw, emerging talent. Yet at 14 Bury St, evidence of the blue-chip art world is still clear, tethering the project and its gallerists to the integral structures of the contemporary art market. 

Stepping through the large glass doors and entering the gallery, a bronze-cast bench by German artist Anne Imhof creates a direct sight line to the earthy tones of Pietro Della Vecchia’s 17th century Head of a Philosopher. The work hangs low, directly confronting us with its large, grotesque head. Nearby an impish Pinocchio-like boy stands proudly, intended by Ffrench to create a dialogue between the works. The contrast is provocative, poking at our preconceptions. 

Beyond mere juxtaposition, visual parallels also exhaust the eye. The orange fibreglass eyes of Benjamin Kustow’s wolf, its back flexed in confrontation, echoes the piercing gaze of Benjamin Spiers’ female figure. Spiers in particular, reconciles the devotional clarity of Renaissance portraiture with something altogether more grotesque, and fractured. The figure, captured undressing, is suspended between ritual and performance. 

To its left hangs an epic and somber work by Anselm Kiefer. The three-panelled painting acts almost architecturally, offering a portal to the next room, where the exhibition overflows into a smaller space. Here, the curation softens. Carpets, aqua-walls and ambient lighting replace the industrial severity of the large gallery space. The works appear denser, overlapping with an uncertainty that feels both careful and chaotic. 

It's a suitable home for the casual, self-taught style of Peter Doyle, whose Portraits on a Yellow Wall greets you with a figurative familiarity. The Irish painter presents a charmingly intimate scene depicting a group of figures, or characters, gathered around a bar. The encounter, all movement and mannerism, gently glows in the darkened room. Beside it, Phil Hale’s sexually charged Record Separator sinks into something darker, laced with a lurid, poisonous green. Known for his isolating portrait of Tony Blair, here he presents something altogether more sinister, as desire yet again rises to the surfaces.

In the exhibition’s second room, the paintings feel at home, hovering between the commercial and the domestic. Here, the exhibition’s tensions only sharpen, as objects linger between art and design without fully committing to either category. Nothing is resolved in Studio Iron, which invites a kind of restless looking, looping the viewer repeatedly through its surfaces and materials. 

The liminal space between art and design feels more like rediscovery than revelation, but in the stripped back setting of Saatchi Yates, it feels fresh and new. Studio Iron produces a sense of unease that lingers long after and leaves you - overwhelmed, perhaps, but somehow still wanting more. 

Studio Iron runs at Saatchi Yates to June 7