’14:30’, Faisal Abdu’Allah
HS Projects commissioned ’14:30′, a collaborative project between Faisal Abdu’Allah and the Pembury Estate Youth Club. The title of the project, ‘14.30’, was taken from the distance (14.3m) Nadia Williams (New Delhi Commonwealth Games Bronze medallist, 2010 and number 2 in England) had to jump to be included in Team GB for the 2012 Olympics and came about in discussion with the young people, who found Nadia’s challenge something they could relate and aspire to in the challenges they face.
‘14.30’ was a collaborative project whereby the content is shaped by the participants’ experiences, encouraging them to look at their own identity through the lens that focuses on an athlete preparing for London 2012, identity, home and the concept of community.
‘14.30’ was a project that chronicled two parallel journeys. Seven young participants from Pembury estate in Hackney were encouraged to look at their own identities through the lens of portraiture and social engagement. The broker that enabled them to map their cerebral thoughts was Nadia Williams. Nadia Williams took time from her Olympic qualification schedule to train the young people in the art of triple jumping. With this rare access, they witnessed, participated and soon realised their own ambitions could be achieved through determination and dedication.
Through a series of workshops, Faisal Abdu’Allah enabled them to assemble ideas, take portraits and place themselves at the core of their chosen works like a signature. Conscious of how society perceives ‘young guns’ from the Hackney estate, they clearly wanted this challenged. The final works were selected by a rigorous edit process that reflects the transition in the young people, as a result of their interaction with Williams.
The colour palette reflects the GB colours, each triptych is a metaphor for a Beginning, Middle and End, just like the Triple Jump. Screen printing the work by the young people at the London Print Studio, immediately changed their relationship to their work. More importantly it changed their perception of the process of making ‘Art’ for the rest of their lives. Knowing how to think, compose, scale, colour and physically print, really splintered their own understanding of how art is made. Opposed to clearly being of a generation that prints immediately via dry technologies.
’14:30′ was funded by the Insight Community Arts Programme (2002 – 2015).
The project ran from January to June 2012.
‘Sex and Friends’, Tobias Rehberger
HS Projects presented an exhibition of recent works by Tobias Rehberger. Rehberger draws inspiration from modernist art history, fashion, architecture, 1960’s and 1970’s design to create quirky and interactive objects, sculptures and environments, principally revolving around the concept of transformation. Rehberger is well known for his provocative ideas such as his proposal to refashion a Donald Judd sculpture into a bar and his questioning of authorship such as in sending basic sketches of luxury cars to a Thai car manufacturer who created inevitably imperfect versions of the vehicles based on the drawings. Working with industrial processes and technological innovations, and drawing on a repertoire of quotidian objects appropriated from everyday mass-culture, Rehberger translates, alters and expands ordinary situations and objects with which we are familiar.
‘Untitled (Sex)’, 2012 is a brightly coloured, abstract, quasi-anthropomorphic sculpture with retro, kitsch, Op like qualities. Depending on the ambient light, the work casts an eloquent word shadow on the floor, which reads ‘SEX’, accentuated by the sculptural configuration of its fleshy crests. The shadow word and its disappearance in space plays a kind of visual trickery on the beholder and acts as a good metaphor for transportation, for shifting from one place to another. As with all of Rehberger’s works, the viewer plays a vital role in the interpretation and meaning of the work and is invited to enter into a dialogue on perception, authorship and temporality.
‘Untitled (Anne Frank)’, 2011, which comprises of two works, is a brightly coloured, fluorescent sculpture and neon-environment machine, where the slick, glossy perfection of the manufactured is paired with the intentional imperfection of the crafted and the hand made. One work, Frank, composed of yellow, orange and transparent eclipses speckled with dots, creates an enjoyably kitsch, colourful, modulating abstraction, while the other work, Anne, is an upright of cubist wooden geometry which casts a shadow spelling the word ‘Anne’.
As with ‘Anne’, ‘Untitled (Never)’, 2011 is an upright of cubist wooden geometry which casts a shadow spelling the word ‘Never’. At first glance the sculptures seem abstract; they seem to question the functionality of an art object. Then, at regular but very brief times of the day, the amorphous shadows suddenly come together to form a previously hidden message.
‘Sex and Friends’ was at 5 Howick Place from May 2013 to March 2014.
‘Throwing Caution’, Chris Wainwright
We commissioned Chris Wainwright in 1996 for a series of site specific works for Heathrow Airport Terminal 4. Wainwright works primarily through photography and video as a means of addressing issues related to light and energy, both natural and artificial, in urban and rural environments. The work is made as a direct response to ‘place’ and is often the result of an intervention, a temporary action or construction made for the camera as a unique form of witness for the recording of light.
For Heathrow Airport Terminal 4, Wainwright produced a series of photographic studies entitled ‘Throwing Caution’ and a pair of images entitled ‘The Lower Lake’ which explore making marks with light within the Scottish landscape.
We commissioned ‘Throwing Caution’ and ‘The Lower Lake’ as part of the BAA Art Programme in 1996.