Oxford Brookes University

EXHIBITION PLAN

I’ve put together a first draft mock up in Photoshop of how I could exhibit the different elements of my work within the degree show. These designs are very basic (and I hope to spend a little more time using SketchUp to create more sophisticated designs) however, they have been really useful in helping me to visualise and think about important decisions I need to make.

Wall 1: The stacked materials that occupy room 2 will be partly visible through the doorway however, the audience will not be able to access this room. They will be able to catch glimpses into room 2 via a live feed on two monitors.

Wall 2: A series of diagrams which are an important part of the unbuilding process. These digital prints will present half-built, precarious and fragmented compositional diagrams of the site.

Wall 3: A series of three photographs of the site along with a guide to Dallam House and my set of tools.

SENSING SPACES

I recently went to the Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Here seven architectural practices have transformed not just the Royal Academy but also our perception of space and the potential for unexpected experiences of our built environment. Curator Kate Goodwin revealed that these works ‘explore the essential elements of architecture’ and simultaneously connect with the academy’s interior. When experiencing the exhibition myself, I felt a heightened awareness of the sensory importance of architecture within our lives. We often discuss the built environment in social and political terms rather than looking at its emotional and psychological effects too.

During my visit, I was reminded again of Jane Rendell’s discussions surrounding ‘critical spatial practice’, a term that allows us to define large-scale works that often transgress the limits of art and architecture, engaging with both the social and aesthetic. Rendell has also argued that artworks which engage with the ruin are in a position to be ‘critically productive and provide the potential for new and different futures’.

At present I’m exploring ways in which the ruptured innards of the building can occupy the interior architecture of the gallery. By reducing the site to its physical reality, these materials become architectural remnants of its past but also the potentiality of what built spaces can become. These stacked materials are load bearing the physical and contextual burden of time, site and materiality. Audience experience of space is a crucial part of my practice. Therefore, I’m carefully considering how my work will bring a new way of appraising this existing building in addition to experiencing the site within a different context.

Due to a lack of space, I currently have the materials stored in different areas around the university building. However, over the next few days I will be bringing all the materials together to carefully refine my ideas in relation to space, material and audience experience.

SPACE AND PLANNING

Now it really starts- we’ve just been allocated our exhibition spaces for the show. Everything seems more real now as I begin to measure up my space and start to think about the different possibilities of exhibiting my work.

The area I’ve been allocated is two larger self-contained spaces that are located next to the upstairs corridor and slightly separate from the larger shared spaces. There are two elements to my work at the moment: my site investigations and documentation (tools, photography and video) and my material findings so I feel that this space could work well. I anticipate that I will use the smaller of the two rooms to bear the physical load of material from Dallam House. At present, I see the larger room as a space that brings together elements of this process.

I have also been using SketchUp, a 3D modeling software which has been extremely helpful in visualizing the space and has really encouraged me to think about the decisions I will have to make before and during installation.

RUINS

At the moment I’m reading Ruins: Documents of Contemporary Art edited by Brian Dillon. I have been contemplating these following quotes in relation to my own work:

‘…sense immediately of a place in progress, not so much derelict as half-built and heading towards an uncertain future.’

‘I see buildings falling in Glasgow. I see rubble. I ask myself where that rubble goes. I discover that its crushed and then used to build pedestrian streets- so people are walking on the ghosts of tower blocks.’

MATERIAL

After intervening in Dallam House and deconstructing its rooms, I transported the building materials 157 miles back to my studio in the Richard Hamilton Building.

I sometimes have a tendency to overthink my work, so to loosen up and enjoy the ‘making’, I’ve spent the last few days playing around with the materials and discovering their possibilities. Whilst working I began to think back to the When Attitudes Become Form exhibition at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Here I became witness to a project that reconstructed a previous show curated by Harald Szeemann at the Bern Kunsthalle in 1969. Artists including Carl Andre, Bruce Nauman and Joseph Beuys were united by an exploration of materiality in addition to the relationships between artworks and the space they occupy. Within my own practice, I’m carefully considering these associations between materials, space and the juxtaposing sculptural qualities of hard and soft, cold and warm materials.

I have included some images here of my material experiments.