‘Regeneration!’, Jessie Brennan
HS Projects commissioned ‘Regeneration!’, a community outreach project by Jessie Brennan with people who lived, worked and played on the Robin Hood Gardens estate in Poplar, East London, before it was demolished. ‘Regeneration!’ included an exhibition of drawings, conversations and photographs and a limited edition artist publication.
Jessie Brennan worked with residents and caretakers to record their personal memories and feelings about Robin Hood Gardens, a ‘brutalist’ social housing estate designed by architects Alison and Peter Smithson in the late 1960s and due for demolition in 2016. Together they produced a body of drawings, conversations and photographs that explore the qualities of a lived-in brutalism, the impact of redevelopment and the politics of regeneration.
The conversations, inside homes and workspaces, illuminate the personal qualities of responses shared by individuals. They reveal private memories – the glowing light from windows across the face of the block, the flight of a red star returning to nest, the shape of a tree good for reading under – and intimate feelings towards the estate, gently animating the blocks, giving human presence to grey concrete.
The drawings entitled ‘Conversation Pieces’, were made on site by rubbing graphite across the surface of a sheet of paper, revealing the pattern and everyday wear and tear of a doormat beneath. They visualise a literal and metaphorical threshold between semi-public and private spaces; from the street deck to a home’s interior. The photographs, all made at dusk, during the fleeting interval between daylight and darkness, are a symbolic gesture towards the estate’s imminent demolition. They capture the human interactions with the blocks, presenting a kind of poetic drama of the estate through intensely coloured and thoughtfully framed compositions. The responses reflect on different experiences of the community, past and present, and the rapid demographic and social changes taking place across the East End, brought on by regeneration.
A special publication with texts by Owen Hatherley and Richard Martin, as well as drawings, conversations, archive material and photographs, continues the project’s discussion on lived-in brutalism, the impact of redevelopment and the politics of regeneration. ‘Regeneration!’ brings together plans and images from several archives, two essays, two series of drawings, personal experiences of long- and short-term tenants and a caretaker in the form of interviews, and a series of photographs by former tenant Abdul Kalam. The text by Owen Hatherley charts the political decisions that led to the rise and fall of Robin Hood Gardens and their wider implications for social democracy. Richard Martin’s essay contextualises the project through an analysis of Jessie’s artwork ‘A Fall of Ordinariness and Light’ and proposes a broader set of questions around the politics of regeneration.
‘Regeneration!’ was funded by the Insight Community Arts Programme (2002 – 2015).
The project ran from January to June 2015.
‘Utopias’, Yinka Shonibare CBE (RA)
Following the commission of ‘Wind Sculpture’ for Howick Place, Yinka Shonibare’s first permanent work in the public domain, HS Projects presented ‘Utopias’, an exhibition of some of the artist’s emblematic works. An interesting dialogue is created between ‘Wind Sculpture’ and the works in the exhibition, continuing Shonibare’s focus on themes of colonialism, trade, race and his signature use of batik Dutch wax fabric designs, better known as ‘African Textiles’.
In ‘Ms Utopia’ (2013) Shonibare presents a tall female figure clothed in the artist’s signature Dutch wax batik fabric, with a celestial globe in place of a head. Conceived as a symbol of peace, she offers the viewer an oversized bunch of hand-made flowers. As in much of Shonibare’s work, the aesthetic allure and vivid patterns of the figure’s costume and bouquet serve as a façade to the complex truths that the artist is exploring. ‘Ms Utopia’ wears a brightly-hued dress with puffed sleeves and cuffs echoing the extravagance of the Rococo period, made from a fabric associated with African identity. However this cloth is in fact a mass-produced textile manufactured by the Dutch after original Indonesian designs. Having described himself as a ‘post-colonial’ hybrid, Shonibare questions the meaning of cultural and national definitions and employs the device of the Dutch wax batik fabric to demonstrate the complex and inter-related nature of industry, society and the modern geo-political environment.
The vibrant bunch of gardenias, camelias, peonies and roses is also created from this African cloth and appears to burst with life. However the flowers also serve as a memento mori and their ephemeral nature is designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the fragility of human life. This duality is typical of Shonibare’s work.
Shonibare’s ongoing fascination with the cosmos also plays a significant role in his work. ‘Ms Utopia’ bears a globe head which displays the planetary alignments, referencing the senses of wonderment and curiosity that epitomize the human condition and lending a sense of endless possibility to the sculpture. Shonibare’s mastery is in creating politically and culturally relevant work which seduces with its colour and beauty. Coined for the 1516 book of the same name, the term utopia describes a fictional island proposed by Sir Thomas More as an ideal society. Shonibare’s work frequently explores the theme of revolution, drawing a stark contrast between the utopian ideals inherent in anarchic action and the darker realities of its consequences. As the artist explains, ‘In the short term, on an individual level, you have to work to get yourself to a better position; even if it’s some kind of utopia, you make an effort, you don’t sit back and allow yourself to be oppressed, you fight. I think that’s important. People have to judge history later on’.
‘Adam and Eve’ (2013) is one of Shonibare’s most compelling tableaux, in which he brings to life the biblical tale of utopian ideals and the stark reality of their consequence. Shonibare often references historical moments, art history and well known stories to comment on today’s global climate of social and political disillusionment. He explores both historical and contemporary cycles of revolution, seeking to demonstrate the destructive patterns of human behaviour that repeat themselves through time.
Shonibare’s romanticised version of the story is reimagined in a theatrical form. The figures are headless, referencing the beheadings of the French Revolution, which has come to be a hallmark of the artist’s work. Their luxurious clothes are remade in his trademark Dutch wax batik fabric, which was inspired by Indonesian design, mass-produced by the Dutch and eventually sold to the colonies in West Africa. In the 1960’s the material became a new sign of African identity and independence. While the scene set may appear idyllic, Shonibare weaves in fragments of sin and decadence. The female figure’s soft bustle gown is beautifully embellished with bunches of flora, and capped with delicate ivy-shaped sleeves. At the same time, her pose cleverly mimics the diabolical snake cloying at her from above. The male dandy figure steps away, removing himself from the scene and permitting the destined act to take place. This work is a complex and nuanced comment on the state of today’s globalised world and how it is dictated by individual choice.
‘Totem Paintings’, (2011) combine Dutch wax African textiles with thick, impasto paint, juxtaposing vibrant patterns against an intense jet-black background. Shonibare’s tactile paintwork alternates between the side and front of the batik canvases. The tall and slender rectangular forms are framed with a multitude of colourful steel nails that pierce the edges of the canvas. The nails are a direct reference to African ‘minkisi’ voodoo figures made by the Congo people of west-central Africa. Notably, these ‘minkisi’ figures were seized from the indigenous peoples by the colonial forces as they were deemed sinister. As a pop interpretation of African fetish objects, the works speak of artificial exoticism. Through the use of industrially produced textiles, nails and paint, Shonibare explores the stigma associated with the emblematic form of a totem as a means to investigate cultural identities and histories and combines it with his usual ironic expression.
‘Utopias’ was at 5 Howick Place from January to June 2018.
‘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.