Phantom railings

In a garden in Bloomsbury an interactive sound sculpture is using the movements of pedestrians to evoke the ghost of a lost iron fence.  The railings at Malet St Gardens were removed during the 1940s as part of a wartime initiative to democratize parks and gardens – and never reinstated.  Using sensor-based acoustic devices, the installation makes evident the absence of railings by creating a resemblance of the familiar sound produced by running a stick along an iron fence. 

Through enlivening the stumps of the railings, the project engages with a centuries-old debate about public space and accessibility.  It aims to bring these subjects into question, and to promote a critical awareness of the social and spatial history of the city in a way that is innovative, entertaining and accessible to all.

The project has been developed by public interventions, an interdisciplinary collective working at the Centre for Creative Collaboration (C4CC), University of London.  It will remain on site until the 14 October.

for more information: http://publicinterventions.org/

James Pyman

In the gardens of The Hepworth Wakefield the artist James Pyman has wrapped an early 19th-century watermill in a life-size drawing of the mill.  Pyman’s meticulous illustrations detailing the features of the façade of the mill have been reproduced at life-size scale and printed on to a building wrap that shrouds the actual building. 

It is not yet clear whether within its wrapper the mill is decaying further or whether it will be unwrapped in new glory, but either way the drawings preserve for the moment both the history and status or the industrial mill.  Furthermore, the graphite marks rendered as brick and mortar stand in contrast to the polished concrete of The Hepworth; the hand-drawn holding its own in the shadow of the new museum.  Pyman’s drawings capture the watermill between its splendour and ruin.

James Pyman

Upper Mill, 2011

images courtesy the artist and Maureen Paley, London

Robert Hughes, 1938-2012

‘The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It’s not something that committees can do. It’s not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It’s done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world.’

Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New

Wiggins

The sideburns are almost architectural...

Pursuit of Perfection

Timed to coincide with the 2012 London Olympics, South London Gallery’s new exhibition ‘Pursuit of Perfection: The Politics of Sport’ opens on Friday.

Included in the exhibition, displayed individually and in groups on plinths and the floor, piled on top of each other like rubbish, are 2,529 trophies from every genre of sport, dating from the 1970s onwards, and collected by Aleksandra Mir for her work Triumph.   Inspired by a friend who had been a famous athlete in his youth and who kept mementos of his achievements as he was visibly ageing, Aleksandra placed an ad in the local newspaper in Palermo, Italy, asking the general public for their old sports trophies.  Triumph explores the power of the trophy, both a coveted symbol of accomplishment and a garish, mass-produced item of little real value.  The work is also a powerful visual statement of our tendency towards nostalgia, and the temptation to wallow in memories of past youth, vitality and joy.

Aleksandra Mir

Triumph, 2009

2529 trophies

copyright the artist

'Pursuit of Perfection' continues until the 14 September and also includes work by Michel Auder, Roderick Buchanan, John Gerrard, Lucy Gunning, Janice Kerbel, Jonathan Monk, Ariel Orozco and Paul Pfeiffer. 

A selection of Aleksandra’s collages, from her series The Dream and The Promise, featured in the most recent issue of P.E.A.R.  In these, the artist combines religious iconography with that of space travel, to ask what would happen if angels and astronauts shared the same sky. 

Mogadishu - Forgotten Pasts and Distant Futures

Over the course of its history, Mogadishu has been influenced by the diverse cultures of its various rulers, residents and visiting traders; a combination of influences that strongly informed the city’s subsequent social, cultural and physical characteristics. However, Mogadishu’s pre-civil war architecture and built form largely owes its morphology to the region’s former colonial power, Italy, the last of the European powers to join the ‘scramble for Africa’.

Forgotten Pasts and Distant Futures is an installation that charts the urban transformation of Mogadishu, from the late 19th century to the first few decades of the 20th century. The unique, site-specific presentation in Swiss Cottage Library – one of London’s iconic modernist buildings – allows, for the first time, a broader audience to engage with this aspect of the city’s history. The project is designed and curated by P.E.A.R. co-editor Rashid Ali.

Bold Tendencies

This summer, on the top floors of a disused multi-storey car park in Peckham, Bold Tendencies is again showcasing new sculptural commissions by six international artists.  On the very top level of the car park, works are sited in the open air, exposed to the elements and responding more to the urban landscape of Peckham and panoramic vistas of London than the brutalism of the structure itself. Underneath, though, on a lower level, the work of the Glaswegian artists Mary Redmond offers a visceral response to the weighty concrete of the car park.

Redmond positions found objects together with manipulated industrial materials that have been shaped, bent and painted.  There is a consideration to this assemblage that belies the low-key materiality and hints at a narrative that is yet indecipherable.  The weight of the concrete sits heavily on the bowed forms which are held in a delicate balance, close to collapse.  The poignancy of this installation is both physical and emotional.

Bold Tendencies 

continues until Sunday 30 September 2012

Thursday - Sunday 11am - 10pm

Level 7-10, Peckham Multistory Car Park, 95A Rye Lane, Peckham, London, SE15 4ST

Mogadishu

Rashid's project 'Mogadishu - Forgotten Pasts and Distant Futures' opens tonight at the Swiss Cottage Library.  We'll have images very soon!  Hope to see you there.

P.E.A.R. 4.5

The Hackney Bureau

For one night only P.E.A.R. will be live at The Hackney Bureau on Wednesday 27 June.  This live issue will include contributions by Edwin Burdis, who will perform his sound work ‘For it is a pear’, and Matthew Butcher, who will present his conceptual architecture ‘The Filter House’.  There will also be plenty of time and opportunity to quiz the contributors and the editors.  The full line up will be coming soon…  It will be a really interesting evening and lots of fun!  We look forward to meeting you there.

P.E.A.R. 4.5

Handlung Events at The Hackney Bureau

3 Mare Street

London E8 4RP

Wednesday 27 June, 7.30pm

The event is free but seating is limited.  Please rsvp to handlungevents@gmail.com

And to whet your appetite here is the feature on Matthew’s ‘Filter House’ – published in the most recent issue of the paper.