From June – October 2008 Outset supported UP Projects‘ production of Portavilion, a mobile, expanding public art project, commissioning artists to create temporary structures throughout Central London’s parks. A group of world-class contemporary artists, Dan Graham, Annika Eriksson, Toby Paterson and Monika Sosnowska, were invited to present their own “pavilion” specially created for a park environment as a celebration of the city’s most treasured public places.
Portavilion 2008 was one of the most ambitious contemporary art projects to take place in London’s public realm, linking the four different boroughs of Westminster, Camden, Southwark and Kensington & Chelsea. The trail could be navigated by bike, on foot or public transport for three months before each pavilion was relocated to a new environment.
Dan Graham: Triangular Pavilion with Circular Cut-out Variation H 1989-2008
Holland Park – 7th June – 28th September 2008
Triangular Pavilion with Circular Cut-out Variation H comprises an equilateral triangle with a circular central opening, allowing the visitor, or ‘spectator’, to enter and have an interior view. There are equal sized circle of glass centred in relation to the sides of the triangle and to the central opening. The walls of the pavilion are a combination of transparent glass and two-way mirror, and the ceiling is clear glass. The centre of the composition becomes an image of the spectators themselves. Depending upon the overhead sky and sun conditions at a given moment, the half-transparent/half mirrored two-way mirror walls show the superimposition of the surrounding park, in relation to the spectator’s view of their own reflection.
This work referred to Chinese garden pavilions which employed circular openings to frame a perspective of the next walled section of the garden. They were portals allowing access to the next enclosed section of the garden circuit. Strong overhead sunlight produced ellipsoid projections of both sunlight and shadows on the ground near the windows. The moon gate opening made it necessary for visitors to step into the garden over the curved bottom of the circular form and to move straight towards the centre of the composition.
Dan Graham (b. 1942) lives and works in New York, USA. He is a highly influential figure in the field of contemporary art, both as a practitioner of conceptual art and as a well-versed art critic and theorist. His oeuvre spans over 40 years and he is considered the “guru” of artists’ pavilions having consistently interrogated the concept since the 1970s. Graham’s work questions the relationship between people and architecture and the psychological effects it has on us.
Annika Eriksson: The Smallest Cinema in the World – For the Wealthy and the Good
Regent’s Park – 21st June – 28th September 2008
The Smallest Cinema in the World – For the Wealthy and the Good has developed out of research Eriksson conducted in Regent’s Park. As a visitor to London, she was particularly intrigued by the concept of a ‘Royal Park’ designed by crown architect, John Nash, and originally destined to be an estate for the rich – a private, picturesque residential setting for ‘the wealthy and the good’. The plan was never fully realised as pressures of the expanding city raised concern in Parliament about the need to use such open spaces for recreational purposes. Regent’s Park was therefore developed as a public park and is now one of London’s most popular public spaces.
The Smallest Cinema in the World – For the Wealthy and the Good presented a series of films made by Eriksson during the summer that reveal the lesser known activities that take place in Regent’s Park. The films pay homage to public spaces that are still free for everyone, they are poetic, extraordinary but with their point of departure in reality. The tiny six seat mobile cinema was found in different locations around the park. To design the structure, Eriksson has worked with Hopkins Architects and Expedition Engineering and it has been constructed by ISG InteriorExterior with specialist joinery by Wood Newton.
Annika Eriksson (b. 1956 Sweden) lives and works in Berlin. She is now of Sweden’s most widely exhibited artists internationally and her work spans film, photography, performance and site specific installation. Eriksson is interested in social structures and human behaviour and often realises her work through various kinds of collaboration – a frequent starting point is the ever varying functions of the city, its public spaces and inhabitants. Her focus on everyday settings and situations often reveal the extraordinary and an almost absurd sense of comedy.
Toby Paterson: Powder Blue Orthogonal Pavilion
Potters Fields Park – 5th July onwards
Inspired by the language of Modernist architecture Paterson’s Powder Blue Orthogonal Pavilion introduced a new feature into the multifaceted ‘townscape’ of the Southbank. The pavilion is less a discrete ‘building’ and more a sculptural collection and arrangement of planes that allow light and space to flow through and between them, allowing a continuous visual interaction with the surrounding environment of Potters Fields Park.
The pavilion is an open, interpretable and non-prescriptive form developed directly from the visual and formal vocabulary that Paterson has developed in his work for some time. Reference points would include the optimistically light touch of the 1951 Festival of Britain, and in particular structures such as Erno Goldfinger’s kiosk designs and the Regatta restaurant, as well as exhibition designs by Basil Spence, Berthold Lubetkin and Frederic Kiesler. Other more traditional park architecture, such as bandstands and kiosks also exert a background influence. Powder Blue Orthogonal Pavilion was both a functional shelter and an aesthetically intricate floating structure. A work of art that was as much to be seen as experienced.
Toby Paterson (b. 1974) lives and works in Glasgow, UK. His exploration of architectural forms and structures stemmed from skateboarding in urban public spaces. From this perspective he experienced cities and buildings as spaces to navigate; a collection of isolated forms and surfaces that could then be translated into paintings and sculptures. He works in a variety of forms, from large-scale sculptural assemblages and architectural wall paintings to small paintings on paper and Perspex. Paterson’s work explores the integration of art and architecture. He is influenced by his experience of the built environment, with a particular focus on post-war architecture and an interest in the processes of abstraction within visual art.
Monika Sosnowska: The Wind House
Primrose Hill – 26th July – 19th October
Sosnowska’s installations and sculptures echo the formal language of the Constructivist and Minimal art of the 1960s and 1970s as well as that of Modernist architecture. She challenges the formal aspects as well as the emotional intensity of spaces and architectural environments, often resulting in architectural failings or dysfunctional spaces – for example her earlier corridor works physically and psychologically transform orderly gallery spaces into a composition of claustrophobic and ambiguously looping corridors. Her recent ‘1:1’ installation at the 2007 Venice Biennale jammed the steel architectural skeleton of a Modernist pavilion inside the Polish pavilion building to create a parasitic architectural hybrid.
The Wind House by Sosnowska was influenced by Primrose Hill, where people come to fly kites, and the structure appears as if it has literally been sculpted by the wind. The form of the pavilion looks semi deconstructed, the walls are bent and the roof mangled and squashed appearing to have fallen down from the top of the hill. But rather than destroying an architectural building, the structure has been carefully composed from small, multi-faceted wooden shapes to create an immaculately crafted, geometric, expressionist form.
Monika Sosnowska (b. 1972) lives and works in Warsaw, Poland. She is one of Poland’s leading contemporary artists and in recent years has attained international renown. Her work consists mainly of installations that are conceived for a specific site or event, and then disappear when the event is over. Sosnowska’s work has a direct link with architecture, but she approaches it from a very different perspective – it is in a sense ‘anti-architecture’ something that is disruptive, and often brutal but also poetic and beautiful. Unlike architecture, her structures and spaces serve no function, instead, they create a physical experience and an opportunity for the play of imagination. Her manipulation of form, planes and surfaces often makes you feel as if you have walked into an off-kilter Constructivist painting.
