For a Show in the Former Home of a Sculptor, Designers Respond to His Works and Collection

In 2019, when the British flamenco dancer and sculptor Ron Hitchins died, he left behind a small pink Victorian house in Hackney, London, whose interior was absolutely covered in wall tiles, sculptures, and other artworks spanning his long career. For their first exhibition, Atelier LK — a newly formed interior design studio helmed by Lisa Jones and Ruby Kean — has taken over Hitchins’s former home, leaving intact a curated selection of the artist’s work and augmenting it with 20th-century furnishings as well as the work of some 36 contemporary artists and designers, ranging from new American talents like Minjae Kim and Nick Metzler to some of our British faves, like EJR Barnes, Lewis Kemmenoe, and Fred Rigby.

The brief for the exhibition was for each artist to respond either to the space itself or to Hitchins’s work, and while many of the artists chose to show existing pieces from their own collections, those objects still tend to mimic Hitchins’s vernacular. (Look at how the rounded arms of EJR Barnes’s caned-steel chair reflect the curves and circles in Hitchins’s wall relief, below). The show is on view through October 3. ◆

Photography by Richard Round Turner

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Pieces from Atelier LK’s collection

A Javed_O Chanarin

Screenprint by Oliver Chanarin, sculpture by Abid Javed

Hermentaire_O Cook

Painting by Hermentaire, dining table by Axel Einar Hjorth

Rooms_Hermentaire_R Hitchins

Painting by Hermentaire, Ron Hitchins aluminum sculpture, Wild Minimalism chair by Rooms, Lovö dining table by Axel Einar Hjorth, Dordogne dining chairs by Charlotte Perriand, Italian Butterfly lamp by Tobia & Afra Scarpa

D Reynolds Dea Clay_G & Knot_A Javed_J Murphy_C Macgreevy

Works by Dea Domus, Christabel MacGreevy, Grain & Knot

M Zadra_D Reynolds_G & Knot_Rooms

Mobile by Daniel Reynolds, painting by Maddalena Zadra, credenza sculptures by Grain & Knot 

L Kemmenoe

Lewis Kemmenoe

R Hitchins_EJR Barnes_K Thatcher

Chair by EJR Barnes

J Tomlin_EJR Barnes_R Hitchins_Branagan

Daybed by EJR Barnes, sculpture on stool by Ben Branagan, wall relief by Ron Hitchins

R Hitchins_O CookK Smagulova210810_AtelierLK_0250