Potential Architecture
11 March – 19 April 2015
Potential Architecture fuses art and architecture in four site-specific commissions for Ambika P3 by international artists/architects Alexander Brodsky, Sean Griffiths, Joar Nango and Apolonija Šušterŝič. Utilising recycling, craft, and low-tech processes as well as performance, video, sculpture and installation, the works explore the social and material aspects of living environments during the unprecedented large-scale transformation of cities and towns globally.
Potential Architecture draws on the interconnected histories and cultures of renowned practitioners from Russia, Slovenia, Norway and the UK working at the increasingly diverging interface of art and architecture. Each has an interdisciplinary practice that enables heightened responses to ideas of how communities evolve, how social spaces are used and buildings made. Cultivating new ideas and alternative approaches around the built environment, their commissions for the exhibition indirectly respond to a growing critique on the negative effects of property speculation.
Potential Architecture is a collaboration between Ambika P3, the University of Westminster’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Faculty of Media, Arts and Design and guest curator David Thorp.
An iteration of Potential Architecture will take place at Tromsø Kunstforening during 2016.Tromsø Kunstforening is one of the premiere arenas for contemporary art in the circumpolar north.
This exhibition is supported by Arts Council England, Hobs Reprographics, The Norwegian Embassy, Overbury and Ambika P3, The University of Westminster.
Talks and Events Programme
Sunday Afternoon Talks
Joar Nango in conversation with David Thorp
Sunday 15 March, 3pm. Free, no booking necessary
Joar Nango recently returned from Mongolia where he produced his work Nomads Won't Stand Still for Their Portraits. Nango is an ethnic Sami whose home is in northern Norway high above the Arctic Circle. In conversation with guest curator David Thorp, he discusses how his nomadic heritage has had a profound effect upon his thinking and approach as an artist.
Focus on Apolonija Šušteršič
Sunday 22 March, 3pm. Free no booking necessary.
Taking place within the installation, participating artist Sean Griffiths and P3 Director Katharine Heron will continue the Underground Discussion Club discussing the architectural development of London.
Focus on Alexander Brodsky
Sunday 29 March, 3pm. Free, no booking necessary.
Talk by Robert Mull who has known Brodsky since the days of Paper Architects and regularly meets him in Moscow. Robert Mull is Professor of Architecture and Spatial Design at The Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design. He was a co-founder of NATO (Narrative Architecture Today).
Sandie Macrae in conversation with Sean Griffiths
Sunday 12 April, 3pm. Free, no booking necessary.
Sandie Macrae is Director of ROOM Artspace where an installation by Sean Griffiths has recently been on show.
Evening Events
Creative Practitioners: A look at the Medium of their Practice
Monday 30 March, 6:30pm. Free, no booking necessary.
Talk and discussion with Potential Architecture Guest Curator, David Thorp; Ambika P3 Curator, Michael Maziere; Ambika P3 Director, Katharine Heron and Visiting Professor Leon van Schaik.
Wayward Geometry
Monday 13 April, 7:30pm. Free, to book please email p3.exhibitions@westminster.ac.uk
Curated by Dissolve Specific Objects, a London-based event series promoting improvised electronics and computer music. Set within the exhibition itself, Wayward Geometry explores the intersection between architecture, space and sound. Features a site-specific performance of The Geometry of Sentiment by saxophonist John Butcher, as well as a programme of acousmatic and computer music diffused over an 8 channel loudspeaker system.
Artists Close to Architecture - Architecture Close to Art
Tuesday 14 April, 6:30pm. Free, no booking necessary.
Potential Architecture, Artes Mundi 6, 2015 and last year’s Sensing Spaces at the Royal Academy all included artists and architects whose work exists in the mid-ground between art and architecture. The curators of these three exhibitions; David Thorp (Guest Curator, Potential Architecture), Karen Mackinnon (Artes Mundi) and Kate Goodwin (Royal Academy), discuss their approaches, the issues explored in the exhibitions, and the artists and architects involved.