My home is your home

I’m happy to have contributed a text to this gorgeous book ‘My Home Is Your Home’ - houses as sites for artistic production.

Edited by Peter Carl, Torange Khonsari, Hugh Pearman, Olivia Sheringham, Jane Rendell, published by public works publishing 2016.

‘Murdered with Straight Lines’ in the press

We’ve had the most amazing response to our book ‘Murdered with Straight Lines: drawings of Bristol by Garth England’, a lot of which came out of this fantastic piece by Tim Burrows in the Guardian. It’s also been covered in New York by Hyperallergic and more locally by the Bristol Post, Bristol Life and BBC Radio Bristol.

I’m most proud of the fact that the book is selling like hotcakes at the local newsagent in Hengrove and is on sale at the Arnolfini, Tourist Information Centre (Bristol), the AA bookshop and RIBA bookshop (London). A wonderfully eclectic range of audiences.

Flood House

VERY excited to be working with Matthew Butcher and Focal Point Gallery on this project.

Flood House is a prototype structure that is both a practical and poetic investigation into the living conditions of a seasonally flooded landscape. It will function as part projected future dwelling and part practical laboratory, monitoring the very particular tidal conditions of the Thames Estuary.

Artists Ruth Ewan, photographer Frank Watson, and writer Joanna Quinn have been commissioned to make work in response to the structure, which will be roaming the estuary through April and May this year.

See Flood House website for details of mooring points, commissions and events.

Image: Flood House at Wakering Boatyard, April 2016. © Brotherton-Lock

‘Murdered with Straight Lines: drawings of Bristol by Garth England’

Really delighted to announce that ‘Murdered with Straight Lines: drawings of Bristol by Garth England’ has been published.

The book is made up of drawings by Bristol local Garth England (1935 - 2014) and tells the poignant story of a childhood lived through a world war and its aftermath; the development of Britain’s Welfare State and social housing provision; vernacular architecture, indoor toilets and fitted kitchens.

I co-edited the book with curator Theresa Bergne - it’s part of the Future Perfect
programme of commissions Theresa and I have been working on in Bristol over the last three years.

Published by Redcliffe Press and designed by Polimekanos, copies of the book can be ordered here.

Read a Guardian article on the book here

Guardian piece

I wrote this piece about being a freakishly tall woman. Not strictly work-related, but gives you a sense of the person behind this website.

Pic: Me, aged 17, Edinburgh 1986

Creation from Catastrophe: how architecture rebuilds communities

Creation from Catastrophe opens at the RIBA next week.

The exhibition takes a look at the opportunities offered by natural disasters for architects to rethink the design of cities and communities.

It starts with Wren’s plan for London after the Great Fire of 1666 and concludes with 21st century examples in Chile, Nigeria, Pakistan and the USA.

Nice piece in the Evening Standard by Rob Bevan on the exhibition.

Image: Jules Guerin’s watercolour of Chicago’s lakeshore, developed after the fire of 1871, produced in Daniel Burnham’s Plan for Chicago (1907).

Call for proposals: Creation from Catastrophe

I’m curating an exhibition at the RIBA next year on cities + destruction - take part in the public programme!

More info: here

Commissioning: cultural institutions, artists and the community

Crafts Council & Norfolk Museums Service
Friday, 20 November 2015, 10:30 to 16:30
Norwich Castle Museum

This professional development day focuses on commissioning as a means for cultural institutions and artists to engage with local communities.
Curators, creative producers and artists will present their work, reflect on their practice and explore the dynamic relationship created between artists and cultural institutions when developing new work for and with the community.

Contributors include curator and writer Jes Fernie, curators of Build Your Own Clare Cumberlidge and Lauren Parker, Casco curator Sanne Oorthuizen and artists Linda Brothwell and Verity-Jane Keefe.

More info: here

Image: Punch Hammer, Acts of Care, Linda Brothwell. Park of Build Your Own Exhibition.
Photo: Mark Campbell

Art & the Home

I’m chairing a talk at The Cass (London Metropolitan University) on the subject of art and home.
It’s a collaborative initiative between Balin House Projects and Public Works.

6 October, 6.30pm
The Cass, 59-63 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7PF ROOM No: CE1-16

Speakers:
Prof Gill Perry, Art History, Open University
Torange Khonsari, The Cass - LMU, Public Works

RSVP: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

More info: here

Direct Urbanism: book review

I’ve written a book review of Direct Urbanism, Transparadiso: Barbara Holub and Paul Rajakovics. Published in Art & the Public Sphere, Vol 3, No 1, 2015.

As well as being a book review its also a call to arms for architects to assume civic responsibility in an age of greed and consumerism, and for planners to start using word like ‘ambivalence’, ‘disruption’ and ‘desire’ in their working day.

You can read the review here

Image: Steirischer Herbst, Graz, 1996, Transparadiso