- Venue
- Passen-gers
- Starts
- Friday, May 12, 2017
- Ends
- Sunday, June 11, 2017
- Address
- The Brunswick Centre (Entrance 3) 110 Foundling Court, Marchmont Street London, WC1N 1AN
- Location
- London
- Organiser
- Passen-gers | www.passen-gers.co.uk
If I was the door handle the corner would be in front of me. There would be no more than one square metre of the herringbone floor between us, as the corner is more or less in the middle of the room, and a little bit more to the right.
If I was the chipboard bed with the polka dot cover, the corner would be next to me, a bit closer to the light blue wall where the pillow would lie. The distance between us would be more or less the size of a regular bedside table with two drawers.
If I was the french balcony door the corner would be on my right. It would be only the bed keeping us apart. It wouldn’t be too far from me though as the bed is just a normal single size bed.
If I was the wardrobe with the layers of paint and the broken hinge, the corner would be in front of me. The space between would allow one side of the balcony door to open, plus two thirds the distance of the bed.
If I was the light bulb fitted to this charred holder, stinking somewhat like fish and hanging from the ceiling, the corner would be underneath me. I would be in the middle of the room and the corner would be slightly to my left, if I face the window, and close enough to me, as the ceiling is not that high because the building is from the late 60s.
If I was the shop, then a one way road, two pavements, a balcony, a one bedroom flat, staircase, an elevator shaft and some floor would separate me from the corner. All those are kind of diagonal as the corner is on the second floor.
The residential spaces of The Brunswick Centre are, generally speaking, not accessible to the public. Stamatogiannis’ knowledge of them has been gathered from various floor plans and pictures found on the websites of estate agents who rent out its high-end apartments. In response, the artist’s text (below) imaginatively maps one of these interiors from the viewpoint of the relativity of its objects. This playfully contrasts with the geographical coordinates that give both the title and location of the exhibition. Sculptures such as argon door handles and shopfront light boxes represent the thresholds we ordinarily have to cross at such borders between the public and the private. Through this layering of objective and subjective mappings, Stamatogiannis explores how we physically and psychologically experience the urban environment, as well as the boundary between sculpture and architecture.
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Events
Fri 12 May, 6–9 pm: Private view
Sat 20 May, 12 pm: Tour of the public and private spaces of the Brunswick Centre with architect and resident Brendan Woods
* This event is free but places are limited. Please email [email protected] to book a place.
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Theodoros Stamatogiannis studied Sculpture in the Athens School Art, where he graduated in 2006, and in 2009 he received his MFA from Glasgow School of Art. He has exhibited in Europe and the US, including SPACES Gallery (Cleveland, USA), Laurent Muller Gallery (Paris, FR), DESTE Prize (Athens, GR), Bloomberg New Contemporaries (UK), Florence Trust (London, UK), Flux Factory (NYC, USA), No Longer Empty (NYC), David Dale Gallery (Glasgow), State Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki, Greece). He is currently based in Berlin. www.artmap.com/theodorosstamatogiannis
Passen-gers is a site-specific exhibition series that explores the historical, social and material context of the Brunswick Centre. Artists present work sequentially to explore the real and imaginative associations of the site. The title references the 1975 film The Passenger by Michelangelo Antonioni that uses the Brunswick Centre as a powerful and otherworldly mise-en-scène. The plot follows a journalist who assumes the identity of a dead businessman while working on a documentary in Chad, unaware that he is impersonating an arms dealer with connections to the rebels in the current civil war. This notion of a ‘passenger’ as someone who inhabits transient identities and spaces, relates to how each artist is rendered a passenger within the larger exhibition structure – a structure that is generative and multi-directional, allowing different ideas, themes and narratives to emerge, overlap and intersect, creating dialogue over time. www.passen-gers.co.uk
