Posts Categorized: Exhibitions
Four Slade MA Graduates
HS Projects commissioned Jenny Chong, Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen, Dominic Lewis and Emily Webber for a site specific exhibition to create visual responses to Cable & Wireless’ headquarters in Theobalds Road, London. The exhibition examined ideas around corporate identity, process and the physicality of the office environment.
Jenny Chong was inspired by the different hand gestures captured in a series of commissioned photographs in the company’s Report and Accounts and transformed a list of stated corporate goals and objectives into questions that provoked thoughtful engagement.
Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen explored the iconography of the various software programmes used by Cable & Wireless employees in their day to day activities. Larsen worked the app icons into a series of individual colour saturated large framed images installed in sequences to challenge the perception of this otherwise mundane imagery. At times in a playful manner, as with the ‘Bin/Trash’ icon installed in the lower right corner of the lift lobby.
Emily Webber was inspired by the collections of family photographs and holiday postcards used to personalise and demarcate an individual’s space. Focussing on the concept of holiday postcards, she distilled the variety down to four generic types installed in sequences high on the walls, evoking the personalisation of the work spaces and their screens.
Dominic Lewis took his inspiration from the interior architecture of the Theobalds Road building. Lewis installed Cable & Wireless blue coloured silk ribbon behind perspex strips into the architecturally decorative grooves running along the walls creating a dialogue between the idea of corporate identity, branding and space. He also worked with instructional texts, such as the ‘Override’ button in the lifts, installing the command in large red lettering onto the wall next to the lifts in the lift lobbies.
Works by Jenny Chong, Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen, Dominic Lewis and Emily Webber were exhibited in 2002 as part of the Cable & Wireless Exhibition Programme, 1992 – 2006.
‘Cluedo’, Artlab (Charlotte Cullinan + Jeanine Richards) with Dave Muller
We commissioned ‘Cluedo’ by Artlab (Cullinan Richards) for a site specific exhibition at the Marks & Spencer headquarters in Baker Street in 2000.
’Cluedo’ is the result of a collaboration between Charlotte Cullinan, Jeanine Richards and Los Angeles based artist, Dave Muller. It is a mixed media, multi-layered, parodic installation of 3 mannequins from Marks & Spencer dressed in the artists’ clothes, set against a background of an installation of paintings and drawings of their own and other artists’ works. The installation fuses personal histories with fiction and live performance as sculpture, while acting as a conceptual framework for an exhibition of other artists’ work.
“Charlotte Cullinan together with Jeanine Richards has produced, since 1997, collaborative work from traditional means: painting, sculpture, performance, drawing, film, video and photography. Much of this production has entered the world under the heading Artlab. Their medium is largely context. History–personal, family, geo-political, and that socially and culturally shared, or fictitious–is their primary material. The art that results–a fusion of documentation with fiction, lived personal histories and live performance–is often deployed, even when built from paintings, as a sculptural scenario and structural support for the incorporation of other work and documentation, as well as a platform for other artists.” – John Slyce, Contemporary, September 2006.
‘Cluedo’ was exhibited in 2000 and was part of the Marks & Spencer Head Office Cultural Programme, 1993 – 2004.
‘Cluedo Part II’, Artlab (Charlotte Cullinan + Jeanine Richards)
‘Cluedo Part II’ was an exhibition of recent work by Artlab (Cullinan Richards), a London-based artistic collaboration between Charlotte Cullinan and Jeanine Richards, who since 1997 have been producing work ranging from painting to performance to film, fusing personal histories with fiction to confront shared social and cultural issues.
The exhibition included a specially commissioned piece, double self portrait ’Cluedo’, of the artist-pair dressed in Marks & Spencer clothes, as a comically self-mirroring partnership, as well as photo-documentation works from their art programme at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, during which they built structures in which to house the practices of other artists.
‘Artlab’s practice and production is complex and multi-layered and one where the art product – if not indeed the situation created, support structure erected, or social scenario enacted – often takes on the final form of documentation, as in their nearly invisible installation at the Marks & Spencer headquarters in Baker Street which surfaced as photo-documentation contextualised within the installation of an improvised cardboard dressing room and strip-lighting for a show in Cologne’ – John Slyce, Artlab 021.
‘Cluedo Part II’ was exhibited in 2001 and was part of the Marks & Spencer Head Office Cultural Programme, 1993 – 2004.