immuremnet
exhibition
For this exhibition, titled The Immurement every artist was required to make work correspondent to a brief that was created by research team. This team was responsible for research about St. Pancras Church, the Crypt, and its surroundings.
Verblist by Richard Serra
The theme was centred around ideas of provision and preservation of services, safety, shelter, guidance. This was based upon the church community’s 1995 “Wish List” detailing their hopes and desires for the church’s future in response to the regeneration of the Euston-St Pancras-Kings Cross area at the time. Ideas that artists could use as inspiration include: - What this church has (or has not) provided throughout its existence - How the St Pancras community, as opposed to government institutions, have approached and interacted with social issues - Ideas of preservation or protection, whether of the physical structure in time or of the spirit and soul - The concept of sustentation (the act of sustaining, or the state of being sustained) - The crypt as a rock/strong foundation and its potential for more concrete actions of goodwill.
The word Immurement (from Latin im- "in" and murus "wall"; literally "walling in") is a form of imprisonment, usually for life, in which a person is placed within an enclosed space with no exits. This includes instances where people have been enclosed in extremely tight confinement, such as within a coffin. When used as a means of execution, the prisoner is simply left to die from starvation or dehydration. This form of execution is distinct from being buried alive, in which the victim typically dies of asphyxiation.
I decided to lean on all these historical facts about the crypt and create this cement pillows that represent all of those who suffered in this space, telling through there form the story of these men, women and children, that were forced to find shelter on this walls and slept in this space. The pillows were chosen to mirror those nights spent in the crypt, that were obviously devoid of comfort, rest, repose, sleep…among others, these privations will be manifested by the cement, this material represent all of the discomfort felt by these people, the fact that it is hard, not malleable, and for carrying a huge contrast with pillow features.
Click the arrow on the right side to see more pictures of the pieces
I also made part of a group called Dogma 19, The group members were Nicola Siebert-Patel, Hamish Pringle, Claire Michel, Fio Admson and me, Joana Passos.
The idea behind committing to strict rules for our group shows is to inspire more creativity.
We can get trapped under the weight of our individual styles, and it can be liberating to put them aside. In addressing an exhibition theme, we wish to set ourselves an additional challenge and will all use thesame medium. Our objective is to achieve greater impact by a more holistic body of work integrated not only by site, and theme, but by material too, in these case cement. Coherence is key.
The group began to meet last term to see the space, discuss the conditions, planning and preparation of the exhibition. It is not easy to gather 37 people to work on the same project, since the opinions and working methods vary so much from one to another.
So right at the beginning we were divided into groups, to which specific group, responsibilities were assigned. There were 8 tasks, there for 8 groups: Coordination, Finance, Research, PR/Marketing, PV/catering, Curation, Installation and Transport/Logistics, Car Hire, Invigillation.
I was a member and “leader” of installation team. Our role was to be aware of every kind of artworks that were going to be exhibit. Organized them in categories, like painting, sculpture, installation, video, performance, and understand in collaboration with curation team how that work was suppose to be install and what would be needed to do it. After the show we were also responsible to de-install everything, pack and rap the pieces so they could be load on the van with safety.
I have learned a lot by this participation, one of the reasons was because we artists were the ones who were responsible to take this project and make it ours. I took a lot of lessons for the future, about communication and agreements between the teams, artists and coordination. There were regularly meetings with all the group leaders and also whoever wanted to join too. It worked pretty well!
It is very hard to organise an exhibition, essentially if it is in a very special space like the crypt. The space was not perfect for the meaning, but its raw, dark, severe charisma had a lot of potential. I tried to integrate my pieces with the space. Using and playing with materials. I believe that the way we install our work is very important and so I did my best to combine the space and my sculptures so the viewer could understand and feel the message and the connection between space, theme and the sculptures.
"Pillows Talk"