‘Paradigm Store’
HS Projects curated the second major group exhibition at 5 Howick Place, ‘Paradigm Store’. ’Paradigm Store’ examines the interface between art and design and the latent socio-economic and political forces that underpin it through new and recent work by seventeen UK and international artists.
Spread over five floors and 80,000 sq ft, HS Projects brings together a diverse line-up of emerging and established artists to explore issues of the decorative and the functional through a mixed range of media, proposing new ways of re-considering our environment and social structures. From immersive, site-specific installations and large-scale sculptural works to paintings, performance and film, the exhibition aims to investigate artists’ unrivalled engagement with art and life through reference to the readymade, 20th Century Modernism, architecture, specific histories and origins, as well as the subversion of language and modes of popular culture.
Highlights of ‘Paradigm Store’ include a new ‘still-life’ ceramic arrangement by British artist Simon Bedwell; an ‘art store’ installation by artist duo Cullinan & Richards; an animated rock garden by Harold Offeh; a collage installation of cut-up fragments and clay bricks by Paula Roush; a sculptural relief by Theo Stamatoyiannis which questions the boundaries of sculpture and architecture; a free-form installation by Beatriz Olabarrieta that combines low-fi building materials with video; and new collage sculptural structures by Anne Harild. A film by Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes inspired by Japanese ‘sangaku’ is shown in the UK for the first time, courtesy of the Cartier Foundation, alongside other works making a UK debut by Kendell Geers, Claire Barclay, Nike Savvas and David Shrigley. Other participating artists include Yutaka Sone, Maria Nepomuceno, Ulla von Brandenburg, Elizabeth Neel and Tobias Rehberger.
During the private view there was a performance by artist collaborators Meta Drcar and Dori Deng featuring three female dancers responding to the architecture of the space; as well as a live performance of sculptural objects by Harold Offeh based on his series of work looking at elements of historical 17th and 18th century gardens as sites of artifice, spectacle and theatre.
‘Paradigm Store’ was funded by Invesco Real Estate (IRE) and Urban & Civic, the joint developer behind 5 Howick Place with Doughty Hanson & Co Real Estate.
‘Paradigm Store’ was at 5 Howick Place, Victoria London, from 25 September – 5 November 2014.
‘Open Books’, Paula Roush
Working within the framework of CoolTan Art’s support for therapeutic art workshops, Paula Roush established a collective under ‘Open Books’ as a participatory photo book project. ‘Open Books’ explored the narrative development of how a photographic collection can be viewed and interpreted through the different media of hand made editions, printed editions, and public exhibition. The photo book project was developed to address a sense of time and place through the incorporation and display of images, consisting of home, personal identity, memory and a sense of history.
The participants worked with a mix of found, sourced and individual photographs with the outcomes incorporated into a collective exhibition of photo books.
The photo book is an ideal medium by which to express one’s individuality and also enter into a dialogue with others. The visual juxtaposition of newly made images with personal memorabilia enabled the participants to develop personal narratives with both an artistic and therapeutic value through the exploration of memory, autobiography and cultural identity.
The process of creating the photo book project encompassed a variety of skills, from image making and composition, to the study of personal archives and family albums, the selection and editing of the material, including writing and drawing, and the physical construction of handmade book proofs that included sewing and other craft-related skills.
The final outputs of the photo book project included the creation of artist newspapers and a case bound book. For the exhibition, loose pages from all the publications were stitched and mounted into frames to evoke the physicality of the publications. The process of decision-making and selection was part of the working process resulting in both the personal/private books and a collective public exhibition of both books and prints on the wall.
‘Open Books’ was commissioned by HS Projects and funded by the Insight Community Arts Programme (2002 – 2015).
The project ran from January to June 2013.