‘Who Will Provide’ Exhibition at The Crypt Gallery
31/10 – 4/11 2018
Our group of thirty three MFA students explored and responded to themes relating to charity and its place in today’s world. The exhibition presented a collection of site specific works, ranging from painting to sculpture, assemblage to video through to performance and photography.
Before the summer break preparations started by putting together various teams to properly organise and execute the event. The members of the research team responded to the site by looking into its history, connecting it to its past and designed the theme ’Who Will Provide?’ around the wish list, a document from 1995 which outlined the desired purpose for the building. This included shelter and provision for the homeless, serving the nearby student population and a focal point for community activities.
I volunteered to join the Installation Team. Over the summer I visited the crypt twice with the view to inform myself about the site (wall space, wall and ceiling heights, location of electrical outlets etc.) and to explore a potential location for my own work.
Two weeks prior to the event the curating team got in touch and supplied our team with a list of required tools and materials. We also received technical information on some more complicated works and installing requirements from The Crypt Gallery itself (No drilling of new holes!). There was very good collaboration between curating and installation team and minor installation problems were efficiently dealt with.
SKILLS: HANDLING ARTWORK, COLLABORATION, PROBLEM SOLVING, ATTENTION TO DETAIL,
SITE SPECIFIC WORKING
‘Designing the Living’ (Fabrique du Vivant) Centre Pompidou, Paris
20/2/2019 -15/4/2019
This group exhibition- part of ‘Mutations/ Creations’ at Centre Pompidou - examines the transformation of living things in biotechnical times into subjects of art, design and architecture. In our digital era, creation is presented as a new kind of interaction with life sciences. The concept of the ‘living’ lends itself to a new form of artificiality, where matter itself is explored.
Showing works by some fifty exhibitors with over a hundred works, it presents the most significant creations and innovations in the field of art, design and architecture.
Biotechnologies have been used in various fields and in this excellent exhibition four areas present the diversity of perspectives: design seen as a living artefact, capable of creating structures from bio-materials; a bio-computational architecture which models the living; the search for new materiality and the development of innovative social and political eco-systems and the programming of the living.
On entering the exhibition one is greeted by David Benjamin’s project ‘Living Bricks’ and the distinctive smell of fungi! It employs a new construction principle to develop an architectural structure in which mushroom-mycelium bricks grow and join together in a form of bio-welding.
Close by, designer Eric Klarenbeek uses a 3D printing process to create a chair made entirely from mushroom mycelium; Officina Corpuscoli ‘The Growing Lab’ aims to create environmental-friendly objects such as lamps, bowls and vases.
These projects in organic matters contribute to the quest to find new sustainable and recyclable materials.
Running out of space here but a few more projects definitely need mentioning:
Julian Charriere’s ‘Somehow, They Never Stop Doing What They Always Did’, 2019 , small architectures bricks made out of plaster, fructose and lactose and moistened by the waters of nine major rivers. These structures develop bacteria which change their appearance, provoking a slow process of decay.
Julian Melchiorri designed his bio-receptive chandeliers based on photosynthesis; designer Teresa van Dongen presents lamps powered by a bacteria battery.
Heather Barnett’s project, who works in London, focuses on ‘Physarum Polycephalum’, a single-cell organism with learning abilities. It is found on the surface of forest floors and is considered to be a primitive form of intelligence capable of self-generation, movement and also memorising a path or exchanging information.
This exhibition proposed new ideas, new possibilities and realities, with high standards of inventiveness, creativity
and experimentation and intriguing, astonishing results.
