Context for –scape, 2014
In collaboration with Variant Office
Dimensions variable
Turf, rubber bark chippings, steel, rubble sacks, local herbs, layflat hose, hardware fasteners
Architecture of Enjoyment, Marcelle Joseph Projects, Horatio Jr. London, Fokidos 21, Athens, Greece
Horatio Junior and Marcelle Joseph Projects are pleased to present Architecture of Enjoyment, an exhibition of contemporary art and design made by an international selection of artists, architects and designers, curated by Marcelle Joseph. This show is a travelling exhibition that was first staged at Fokidos 21, an artist-run space in Athens, in October 2014.
Inspired by French philosopher Henri Lefebvre's forgotten manuscript entitled Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment written in 1973 and published for the first time in 2014, this exhibition will feature the visual art of six artists displayed alongside chairs and a daybed designed by six designers or architects. In this text, Lefebvre argues for a "concrete utopia" removed from the everyday, the workplace and the market economy as well as all things political and governmental, seeking to conceive of a new space centred around enjoyment. Using the city of Benidorm along Spain's Mediterranean coastline as a point of departure, Lefebvre sought to extend the notion of architecture to include furniture, gardens, parks and even landscapes and to obliterate the monotony of repetitive elements in twentieth-century architecture co-opted by the powers of capitalism.
In this exhibition, replacing the Costa Blanca high-rises of Benidorm with an artist-run space along the Thames in southeast London, each of the six artists have been paired with a designer or architect to create their own mini- architectural "environment of enjoyment".
Rachael Champion's large-scale, dramatic site-specific installation on the roof terrace, consisting of a carefully orchestrated arrangement of industrial materials (steel tubes and rubble sacks) and ecological matter (turf and blue mulch) is paired with a chair made out of coloured lay-flat hose and steel by the London architectural practice Variant Office, creating an otherworldly urban garden of sorts - a place for reflection while enjoying the skyscape of Athens.