Tomorrow, Today: Art, Architecture and the Future

I’m chairing a session with Amalia Pica and 6a Architects at a Whitechapel Gallery symposium on 15 February 2019.

The event is part of the public programme for Is This Tomorrow? - the current exhibition at the gallery which takes as its model the landmark Whitechapel exhibition This Is Tomorrow (1956).

More details here

Image: Amalia Pica + 6a Architects, Is This Tomorrow?, Whitechapel Gallery, 2019. Photo: Rafael Ortega

Curator in Residence, Flat Time House

I’m Curator in Residence at Flat Time House in Peckham, south London, for bits of January and February 2019. I’ll be developing my Archive of Destruction project.

I’ll be rifling through the Flat Time House archive, looking into the work of John Latham (particularly his Skoob Towers project - see pic), as well as reading material commissioned and gathered by FTH (specifically the NOIT journal and Ivor Davies documents). I’ll also be working on funding applications for a three year programme with organisations in London, Great Yarmouth and Amsterdam.

Photo: one of John Latham’s Skoob Tower Ceremonies (1964-68). Image courtesy of FTH.

House Taken Over book launch

BalinHouseProjects would love you to come to the launch of our book ‘House Taken Over’, the culmination of a year-long project about:

artists making work beyond the institution
the artist as host in a domestic setting
systems of control
bypassing the market economy
collective play

The book is edited by Jes Fernie and includes contributions from writers Holly Corfield Carr and Lorena Muñoz-Alonso, artists Harold Offeh and Martin Cordiano, and theatre director Ada Mukhina. It is beautifully designed by Sarah Boris.

Thursday 10 January, 2019
6 - 9pm
Welcome speech at 7pm

Matt’s Gallery
92 Webster Road
London SE16 4DF

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

Rathbone Square commissions

We now have photos of Alison Wilding and Robert Orchardson’s commissions for Rathbone Square, London. It’s fantastic to see the drinking fountain being used throughout the hot summer months and the movement of people through the gates at Newman Street and Rathbone Street.

More information on both commissions, plus photos here.

Photo: Robert Orchardson, ‘Infinite Geometry’, 2018. Rathbone Square gates. © Thierry Bal

And We Are Everywhere

We’ve made a film about Nathan Coley’s new commission for Råängen, ‘And We Are Everywhere’, 2018.

Nathan, the Bishop of Lund, Jake Ford (from White Arkitekter) and myself talk about the work, the context and the broader Råängen programme.

Cut Your Nose Like Your Hair

I’ve written a piece called CUT YOUR NOSE LIKE YOUR HAIR for Helen Stratford and Idit Nathan on radical art practices, privatisation, social isolation, the Enclosures Acts, Pokemon Go, Dada and absurdity.  Published in Art & the Public Sphere, Volume 7, Number 1, 2018

Read the full text here

Image: ‘Excursions & Visites Dada’, Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Paris, France, 1921

The Thingness of the Thing

I had such a good time writing this text for Richard Grayson’s embroidery project with Matt’s Gallery - now brought together in this gorgeous book.

Amateur craftspeople and local residents each embroidered a letter of Guy Debord’s declaration: BOREDOM IS ALWAYS COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY. It’s a beautiful project that encompasses collective endeavour, craftsmanship, commitment, tedium, dream-like states and the search for meaning in contemporary life.

Read the text here

More information on Richard Grayson’s ‘By Our Own Hand’ project here

‘And We Are Everywhere’

An absurdly beautiful day for the launch of ‘And We Are Everywhere’ on 2 June - a new commission in Lund by Nathan Coley. We made a pilgrimage from the steps of Lund Cathedral to Brunnshög - an area on the outskirts of the town, to see the work, eat ice cream and hear a talk between myself and the Chaplain of Lund Cathedral, Lena Sjöstrand.

The sculpture will remain in situ until March 2019.

Photo: Peter Westrup, 2018

More information here

10 years

I’ve produced a booklet about a selection of projects I’ve done over the past ten years. The publication includes stories by Joanna Quinn and Joanna Walsh plus, a text by me about my fabulous, cross-dressing great aunt who ran away from Essex to Australia.

Thanks to the amazing Lisa Stephanides and Stefan Kraus from Polimekanos for inspired design collaboration.

Let me know if you’d like a copy.

Rathbone Square commissions installed

I’ve been working with Great Portland Estates on a programme of art commissions for Rathbone Square, off Oxford Street, London, since 2014. A series of three gates by Robert Orchardson and a drinking fountain by Alison Wilding have just been installed. Robert’s bronze gates are collectively titled ‘Infinite Geometry’ and stem from the artist’s long-held interest in repeated structures that extend towards a vanishing point, articulating infinity through single perspective.

Alison Wilding’s bronze drinking fountain, called ‘Herm’, is a public offering to users of the square. The fountain provides water at different levels to children, adults and people using wheelchairs. A historic spring is located at Rathbone Square which was used by 18th century chemist Henry Cavendish to campaign for access to clean water in the capital. 250 years later, Wilding’s drinking fountain is one of a growing number of fountains that have been installed in London to reduce the environmental impact of plastic bottles.

More photos coming soon!

Photo by Rebecca Heald