Tsvetnoy Central Market, Moscow
Civilian: These floral pieces you’ve created for the Tsvetnoy Central Market are vast, and while they’re beautiful, they also loom through the space – ominous purple triffids. It’s an extraordinary project. How did it come about?
Simon Costin: Well, the people at Tsvetnoy knew of my set design work with people like Tim Walker and Paolo Roversi, and liked the fantasy aspect to it. I am usually approached by clients who are looking for something dreamlike; it’s never for a grey wall. Mahipat Singh, the Director of Tsvetnoy Central Market, approached me just before Christmas last year, and then I went to Moscow to see the space. They were looking for a creative to come in and re-evaluate what they were doing with their identity.
And what was your visual jumping off point?
As with most of my projects, I like to start by looking at the symbolism of the place. What are the stories to be drawn out? Was there anything about the site and surrounding area I could use? I was intrigued by the fact that the seven-storey building occupies the space that was the old flower market, and that the name “Tsvetnoy” means “colourful”. Apart from the clothes on sale, there is not a huge amount of colour inside the building, and there are no windows on the ground level, so its history and the name were my starting point. We had all talked about creating something with impact in the atrium space. It’s a very dramatic open area that you see as soon as you walk in. It was a challenge. What could you possibly put in there to create drama, when there are so many other things to compete with? Over a three month period I worked up some ideas along with my brilliant assistant, Jenna Rossi-Camus. One thing was apparent from the beginning though – I wanted the flowers to reclaim the building.
Once you knew it had to be flowers, how did you develop what kind of flowers they were going to be?
There is a legend that Moscow is built on seven hills. There are lots of other cities which claim that too but with the store itself having seven floors, there seemed to be a nice synergy. If I really wanted the flowers to reclaim the store, then seven flowers wouldn’t be enough so it turned into 107. 107 flower installations, placed throughout the store. It’s easy to be twee with flower imagery so I had to be careful. So – what’s exotic, rare and a little decadent? Orchids. Huge, seven-storey orchids! I knew they had to be beautifully made and lifelike, but constructed on a massive scale. People had to walk in and be confronted with something totally unexpected and then look up and up and up. I looked at lots of pictures of orchids and found the darker, almost black ones the most seductive. There’s something quite rude about some orchids, isn’t there?
Retail projects like this obviously have a big budget behind them, but are the creative parameters restrictive? Compared to some of the very dark work you did with the likes of Alexander McQueen in the past, how edgy can you be?
Well, I never try to start a project with any restrictions in my mind. It’s better to work out the idea, however insane, which makes the most sense to me, and to then work out how best to make it reality and still tell the right story in the right way. Of course it all comes down to the nitty-gritty of budget and timescale and logistics, but you don’t think about that initially, or you run the risk of strangling the baby before it’s born. And what do you mean by edgy? Do you mean provocative?
I wanted to try and make something magical and strange – something that people might think back to and wonder if they dreamt it because it was so odd or startling
Yes, I suppose so. We remember the Sinn Fein-themed Andrew Groves catwalk show that you art directed in the 1990s. The audience came out of the catacombs in Camden and were confronted with huge flaming crosses.
Well, in this instance it wasn’t really about being edgy. I wanted to try and make something magical and strange – something that people might think back to and wonder if they dreamt it because it was so odd or startling.
Were you surprised the store in Moscow agreed to something so ambitious?
I was so happy that they got it. I think it was brave and imaginative on their part and I was delighted they trusted me. It was, of course, a huge team effort. Creating 107 installations, ranging in scale from something that would fit in the palm of your hand to something 24 metres tall, took a lot of planning. We had to find all the right people to build and make everything in a really short space of time, and also to shoot an advertising campaign. Luckily, one of my best mates is the ridiculously talented filmmaker Ruth Hogben. Ruth was free the week we needed to shoot so that was a huge relief. I’m also lucky to know some very creative set-makers who were each given 20 sculptural pieces to construct.
And you created flat images for the space too.
Yes, I worked on 45 photographic images to be blown up and hung around the store. I found a fantastic Russian illustrator who created a very special flower girl picture. The 107th piece in the series was the giant orchids themselves. We had teams working here in London, and technical drawings and renderings made in Scotland. The largest pieces were created by set-builders in Moscow. They were the people who make the sets for the Bolshoi Ballet.
How do you coordinate something like that? Where were you when all this was going on?
I have to say, this project would never have been able to be made in time were it not for computers, iPads and the like. Wherever I was in the world, I was able to react to questions and suggestions really quickly. We were firing things off to each other at every hour of our respective days and nights. It was all a bit bonkers, but it worked. The creative director from Tsvetnoy, Olga Dobrovolskaya, made quite a few trips to London and I made quite a few trips to Moscow and between us all it came together. It was very exciting to wake up in the morning, turn on the computer and see the first tests come through. Giant petals started to take shape in the Bolshoi workshops, and between Olga and myself, we were able to steer them in the direction we wanted. The paintwork they did on the flowers was really exquisite, I must say: it made them come to life completely.
What’s been the visitor reaction? I understand you’ve frightened a few children.
It’s about being dwarfed by something that we shouldn’t be dwarfed by. It gives you a sense of wonder
People really seem to love them. It’s funny to watch people’s expressions. Some visitors stride in, head down, and then notice that the marble floor is smashed and that something’s not quite right. Then they stop and look up. The look of bewilderment is hysterical. It’s about being dwarfed by something that we shouldn’t be dwarfed by. It gives you a sense of wonder. And yes, some poor kiddies did find those giant blooms looming over them a bit much.
Had you worked in Russia much before this project?
I had been to Moscow once, briefly, for a project that never happened. I didn’t get a sense of the place. It was winter and I remember it being absolutely freezing and quite bleak. And the woman at the hotel reception desk looked a bit too like Rosa Klebb for comfort.
What have been your impressions of the place and the people during this project?
The changes that the country is going through are very apparent. On the one hand you have the people becoming more westernised, but on the other you have this very reactionary government who are pushing gay rights back into the dark ages and imprisoning the Pussy Riot girls. While I was there in June a law came in which enacted a 100-year ban on gay pride marches. I couldn’t believe it. So on the one hand you can see everyone trying to move forward and on the other you have these draconian laws pushing people back. It makes for a heady mix, politically, which is why culturally they have quite a lot to struggle for, hence the Pussy Riot girls making their protest in the church.
And what do the people on the street think about Pussy Riot?
It was surprising talking to several younger people about it. I had to do a talk about my work at the Strelka Institute. It was terrifying because it’s famous in Moscow for being a hugely creative thinktank for the artistic intellectuals of Russia. I looked up the other speakers and there was Reinier de Graaf and Stefano Boeri talking about architecture, and then I was going to come along and waffle on about creating fantasy, folk tales and fairy stories. There’s a big noticeboard outside the college with details of talks like “A Discourse on Emerging Tectonic Visualization and the Effects of Materiality on Praxis”. Then there was me showing them pictures of Humpty Dumpty split in two and a model riding on a lifesized horse made out of cardboard boxes.
But did they take you seriously?
They were really responsive and asked some really interesting questions after the talk. Anyway, where was I going with all this? Oh yes, the Pussy Riot girls. So after the talk I ended up chatting to several of the students and asked them what they thought of the protest. I was quite surprised to hear that most of them thought it was misguided and should have been done in a more formal manner. They said that the minute they heard it had happened in a church, they knew Putin would change the emphasis away from himself and make it seem as if they were protesting against the church, which is exactly what happened. So I can see their point. The students did go on to say that they appreciated someone doing something to kick against the state. They said all they ever do is talk about it.
Simon Costin’s installation continues until the middle of January 2013
Tsvetnoy Central Market, 15 Building 1, Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Moscow, 127051
(495) 73 777 73; tsvetnoy.com