They are deliciously indulgent. Sadly, they don’t have a shop in Shanghai – yet. The last item I added to my wardrobe is a pair of black trousers by Maison Martin Margiela for H&M. They are a classic cut and take me through from day to evening. .An unforgettable place I’ve travelled to in the past year is the Dêgê border between China and Tibet, which has breathtaking mountain views and makes me forget that – being a city girl – I’m allergic to nature. The Tibetan monks were very surprised I made it so far in my platform shoes.And the best souvenir I’ve brought home is a Baltic Sea amber bracelet. I bought it from one of the street stalls in Valnu Iela, Riga, selling a huge range of beautiful amber jewellery, which Latvia is famous for. The last music I downloaded was Madonna. My PA downloads music for me so I have no idea about the names of songs, albums or artists, but, as he is a Madonna fanatic, she’s inevitably all over my playlists. I like house and techno music with a beat – but I don’t keep track of who does what.
The people I rely on for grooming and wellbeing include my Hong Kong hairdresser, Ivan Chow, who comes to visit me at home; he has been doing my hair for years now and knows exactly how I like it styled. For facials, manicures and pedicures, I find Antonia Georgiou, who comes to my home in London, is always very reliable and keeps things simple. Ivan Chow, Time Salon, Central, Hong Kong (+852-2810 4778). A recent “find” is Yu Shi Yu in Beijing. I call it the fish-head restaurant. It serves Dongbei, a style of traditional cooking, or peasant food, from northeastern China. It consists of a steaming bowl of fish, vegetables and chilli in the middle of the table with corn patties cooking on the side. There are also cold noodles, mounds of Dongbei tofu and “1,000-year-old eggs” [pickled and preserved for several weeks]. For dessert they serve sweet filled bread and caramelised sweet potato. Jiuxianqiao Beilu, 2 Hao Yuan, Yishu Qu, Beijing 100015 (+8610-6438 5355).The books on my bedside table are Umbrella by Will Self, which is brilliant in its originality and energy – my brain seems to work in the same way as the author’s, jumping from place to place – and Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth Century Chinese Art by Gao Minglu.
The western world generally assumes that Chinese abstract art is derivative of western expressionism, but Gao shatters such notions by outlining a new way of looking at the processes of Chinese artists that are rooted in Taoism and other Chinese philosophies. This is of particular interest to me as I like to share this viewpoint by promoting Chinese abstract art through exhibitions in my galleries. If I had to limit my shopping to one neighbourhood in one city, I’d choose the Shibuya district in Tokyo, where you can find all the latest designs from fashion to beauty, electronic devices to industrial design. It’s a wonderful place to shop, with well-known brands and totally new discoveries. Tokyu Hands is one of my favourite stores because I can find anything I need there and more – stationery, gadgets and accessories I never knew I needed. And Shibuya 109 is always great fun. I keep up with trends at this mall for teenage girls and buy lots of strange make-up and lotions and potions.
It’s full of little stalls and shops so I spend time wandering in and out, looking at anything that takes my fancy. Shibuya 109, 2-2 9-1 Dogenzaka, Shibuya, Tokyo (+813-3477 5111; www.shibuya109.jp/en/top). Tokyu Hands, Times Square Building, 5-24-2 Sendagaya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo (+813-5361 3111; www.tokyu-hands.co.jp/en).The one artist whose work I would collect if I could is Mark Bradford because it embodies Chinese philosophies about the meditative process. He studied Chinese calligraphy, which explains why his work has elements that are similar to Chinese abstract artworks that focus on process. He trims and glues multiple layers of street posters onto his pieces to reflect current socioeconomic issues, while Chinese artists also use paper to represent their culture. .My favourite room in my house is my living room in Shanghai. Some of my favourite artworks are here, including Jason Martin’s luxuriously tactile work, pieces by Zhang Huan and a dining table designed by XYZ Design that can seat up to 70 people for dinner.
.In my fridge you’ll always find Diet Coke, which I drink like water, and super-energising blueberries. If I didn’t live in London, I would live in Paris or Rome. To me, Paris is like a woman with perfect make-up, while Rome is like a naturally beautiful woman with no make-up. I’m always enchanted by Rome’s ancient architecture, the delicious food and carefree spirit of the local people. In Paris there are great museums, wonderful shops and I have lots of friends who live there – all the ingredients for a happy life. If I weren’t doing what I do, I would love to be a designer, artist or architect since I need an outlet for my eclectic tastes and creativity. I’m never satisfied with the status quo. I like to mix various styles to make something new. I think there is something beautiful about contradictions.Simon Starling has been revisiting the history of forms and objects for two decades, creating installations, films, photographs and sculptures that unearth connections across space and time.
His Glasgow exhibition, Nine Feet Later, includes a series of site-specific daguerreotypes titled Recursive Plates – an ongoing series that Starling began in 2014 in Mexico. The Recursive Plates are made for and in particular spaces – in this case, The Modern Institute’s Aird’s Lane gallery space. The daguerreotype process is one of the earliest techniques for making photographic images and was developed in France by Louis Daguerre in the 1830s. Each of these daguerreotypes has been produced on a highly polished, mirror-like sheet of silver-plated metal and each surface now holds a ghostly echo of the recent exhibition history of the space in which it was made and is now exhibited. The now phantasmagorical works that jostle for position on the reflective surfaces of the Recursive Plates have themselves been re-photographed from a number of fixed camera positions. These images orchestrate a form of temporal overlay that connects the space’s past with its present and with the sculptural element of the exhibition, which occupies the space in front of the photographs.
Taking its starting point from a nine-foot long sheet of Japanese cedar wood veneer on which two Japanese scene painters were invited to paint an image of a length of bamboo (the world’s fastest growing timber), the title work Nine Feet Later is a loose assemblage of affiliated objects that constitute a time machine of sorts. Along with the fast growing bamboo (some varieties grow at 90cm a day), sits the trace of a 15 million year old tree trunk, a nine-foot long piece of petrified wood, turned to stone. Somewhat younger is a plank of 45,000 year old Ancient Kauri wood, pickled for millennia in a New Zealand swamp, and here transformed into 9ft of Gerrit Rietveld’s Zig-Zag Chair (a still-futuristic design from 1932-34). Together with an octagonal oak housing, a powerful reflecting telescope, and a copy of a birch branch – which, unlike the petrified tree trunk, was deposited layer by layer in a matter of hours in a high-tech 3D printing machine – this collection of objects begins a conversation with the artworks from the recent past of the exhibition space reiterated on the mirrored surfaces of the Recursive Plates.