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<strong>Gathering</strong><br />

Creative Practice Portfolio<br />

Detail of <strong>Gathering</strong> structure, photo: Jack Cornish<br />

Julia Heslop & Ed Wainwright


4 Description / Reserch Questions<br />

5 Statement<br />

6 Overview of Outcomes and Dissemination<br />

Factual Information<br />

Contents<br />

8 Research Context: Hatton Gallery & Schwitters’ Merzbau<br />

10 Improvisation and Adhocism<br />

11 A Circular Material Ecology<br />

14 Research and Making Process<br />

Relations between Art & Architecture<br />

15 Collaborative Conservations<br />

19 Collaboration and Prototyping<br />

22 An Itinerant Practice<br />

25 Unfinished Objects and Spaces<br />

Immersive and Intimate Spaces<br />

26 Improvisational Geometries<br />

27 Hatton Install<br />

28 From Use to Reuse<br />

29 <strong>Gathering</strong> Lives<br />

30 Outcomes and Dissemination<br />

52 Testimonials<br />

55 Bibliography<br />

Development and construction process, studio, photo: authors<br />

2


Detail of armatures, Hatton Gallery, photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

3


Description<br />

<strong>Gathering</strong> was an architectural installation and exhibition space, commissioned<br />

by and installed in the internationally significant Hatton Gallery, Newcastle<br />

upon Tyne, from September 2018 to February 2019 as part of the exhibition Exploding<br />

Collage. Built from reclaimed, recycled and adapted materials of timber,<br />

metal and fabric, the work consisted of seven ‘grottoes’ or ‘pods’, each hosting<br />

the work of artists responding creatively to a historically significant, but canonically<br />

ignored, female collage artist. <strong>Gathering</strong> was digitally scanned to produce<br />

a non-exact digital copy - Re<strong>Gathering</strong> - which was presented in an immersive<br />

installation at Newcastle University in mid-January 2020.<br />

Research Questions<br />

1. How can we rethink material value in art and architecture through the<br />

retrieval and reuse of waste materials?<br />

2. How can we rethink space, form and function through art-architecture<br />

collaborations which involve improvisational making practices?<br />

Prior to artist interventions, Hatton Gallery, photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

4


Statement<br />

Placed at the intersection between art and architecture, the work explores material<br />

reuse and value through a process of retrieval, improvisation and adaptation.<br />

The issue of waste is a key concern within the fields of art and architecture,<br />

which produce material as a matter of course, whilst the building and construction<br />

industry is the industrial economy’s biggest consumer of material resources<br />

and the biggest producer of waste. Through <strong>Gathering</strong> we aimed to explore the<br />

material and aesthetic potentials of ‘waste’, examining how disparate materials<br />

could be combined, ‘made good’ and refined through a purposeful yet improvised<br />

process of rescue and reuse. There are three key areas that this work<br />

contributes to:<br />

1. Improvisation: Engaging with Kurt Schwitters’ MerzBau – immersive<br />

collages of found and rescued materials - and Jencks and Silver’s work<br />

on Adhocism (2013 [1972]), we explored processes of ‘intentional adhocism’<br />

by gathering and sorting materials and experimenting with their<br />

material and structural possibilities. Yet through a process-based ap<br />

proach we explored the ‘gap’ between planning and improvisation,<br />

understanding that adhoc processes are rarely wholly spontaneous.<br />

2. Circular material ecologies: <strong>Gathering</strong> was also influenced by recent<br />

work on degrowth (D’Alisa et al., 2014; Oslo Architecture Trienalle, 2019),<br />

scarcity (Till, 2014) and circular economies (Baker-Brown, 2017), which<br />

explore the limits to economic growth in an ecologically finite world. We<br />

examined the creative potentials of material limits – an area which is<br />

under-developed in practice - and explored how this could offer new improvisational<br />

processes, as well as new forms of use value and aesthetic<br />

value through the integration of waste materials.<br />

3. Art-Architecture collaboration: Collaboration across the boundaries<br />

of art and architecture was significant. Through this we challenged the<br />

object-centred approach to art and architectural production, or as Ingold<br />

(2010) terms it the ‘hylomorphic schema’, which imposes finished, predefined<br />

form on the material world. Instead, a creative studio process was<br />

key to experimentation and improvisation, allowing us to follow a loose<br />

plan, but with no predefined object in mind.<br />

5


Overview of Outcomes and Dissemination<br />

Made/installed<br />

1. A large-scale installation running over four months.<br />

2. Re<strong>Gathering</strong> – the creation of a digital replica of the structure.<br />

3. Exhibition and installation of Re<strong>Gathering</strong> with invited artists.<br />

Presented/hosted<br />

1. Series of artist events.<br />

2. Talks – a public seminar and a de-installation event.<br />

3. Interactive digital replica to be hosted on Hatton Gallery website.<br />

Factual Information<br />

<strong>Gathering</strong> is comprised of an interconnected sequence of flexible ‘grottoes’ or<br />

‘pods’ assembled from found, given and recycled material. The structure was<br />

approximately 8 x 8 metres in size, and the grottoes ranged in size, with heights<br />

between 2.5 and 3.8 metres. The installation was formed from planed pallet<br />

sections for the main vertical and horizonal elements of the grottoes; 3mm<br />

mild steel plate sections, plasma and laser cut, for precision-engineered joining<br />

elements; ethically and sustainably sourced cotton fabric for the interior<br />

skin; found and reclaimed plywood and medium density fibreboard (MDF) for<br />

cladding; reclaimed pallets for the flooring substructure; found and reclaimed<br />

plywood, MDF and chipboard for the flooring surface coated in non-toxic, water-based<br />

floor paint. Each grotto was lit inside and was designed as a blank<br />

canvas. Every fortnight the work accommodated the artistic intervention of a<br />

new artist, each responding to the work of an under-represented female collage<br />

artist, including: Sonia Allori, Ruth Hemus & Vaia Paziana, Marian Casey, Tess<br />

Denman-Cleaver, Jackie Haynes, Mani Kambo, L-INK, Heather Ross, and Anka<br />

Schmid. An original Kurt Schwitters collage was also housed in <strong>Gathering</strong>. The<br />

work was commissioned and funded by the Hatton Gallery through £7,000 from<br />

Tyne & Wear Museums and Archives. Newcastle University School of Architecture,<br />

Planning & Landscape’s Architectural Research Committee also granted<br />

£2000. A follow-up research project with graduate students, Re<strong>Gathering</strong>, explored<br />

LiDAR scanning and duration, and will form an online, digital legacy<br />

sponsored by Tyne & Wear Museums and Archives.<br />

6


Detail of armatures, Hatton Gallery, photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

Kurt Schwitters, MerzBau<br />

Photo: Wilhelm Redemann, 1933 © DACS 2007<br />

7


Research Context<br />

Hatton Gallery and Schwitters’ MerzBau<br />

Exploding Collage explored how avant-garde artists of the early 20th century<br />

expanded the notion of collage into immersive, often ephemeral, formats. The<br />

exhibition aimed to foreground the hidden stories and the ‘blindspots’ in the<br />

history of collage, which have often left out women. The contemporary artists<br />

in the exhibition drew attention to the work of these artists, such as Dora Maar<br />

(1907-1997), an early pioneer of photomontage whose promising career was<br />

overshadowed by being seen as Picasso’s muse, and the Surrealist artist Meret<br />

Oppenheim (1913-1985).<br />

Exploding Collage was the second exhibition to take place in the Hatton Gallery<br />

after a major refurbishment. It followed on from a programme of exhibitions<br />

and wider activity (such as artist Toby Paterson’s ‘Hatton Pavilion’). This activity<br />

examined the central role that the Hatton Gallery and its large collection played<br />

in the history and development of the avant garde after World War II, and<br />

particularly the role of artists working in the Fine Art department at Newcastle<br />

University at the time, whose practices often merged art and architecture, such<br />

as Schwitters, Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton.<br />

Kurt Schwitters. Merz Barn Wall. Image © Hatton<br />

Gallery, 2017. Photo: Colin Davison.<br />

8


A central reference point of this commission was Kurt Schwitters’ MerzBauten<br />

(Merz Buildings). Schwitters is often considered the founder of installation art,<br />

and the word Merz was created by Schwitters to describe his collage and assemblage<br />

works based on scavenged scrap materials. Schwitters’ Merz Barn Wall - a<br />

three-dimensional artwork made from plaster, paint and found objects (itself<br />

an ‘exploded collage’ on an architectural scale) - is the largest surviving portion<br />

of the MerzBauten and is on permanent display in the Hatton Gallery. His first<br />

MerzBau in Hannover was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943, but within this<br />

work Schwitters built around 40 niches or ‘grottoes’ that acted as shrines dedicated<br />

to his artistic influences. These grottoes were constructed into the walls of<br />

the building and combined geometric forms with fluid, organic shapes. Schwitters’<br />

MerzBau contained ‘shrines’ to (amongst others) iconic female Dada artists<br />

Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943) and Hannah Höch (1889-1978).<br />

<strong>Gathering</strong> referenced the Hannover MerzBau, being a space to host and celebrate<br />

the work of artists with obscured legacies, yet the work also amalgamated<br />

found and repurposed materials and experimented with collage as an expanded<br />

practice through installation.<br />

<strong>Gathering</strong>, in process of installation,<br />

Hatton Gallery. Photo: Authors<br />

Kurt Schwitters, MerzBau<br />

Photo: Wilhelm Redemann, 1933 © DACS 2007<br />

9


Improvisation and Adhocism<br />

The collaging of found, recycled and reclaimed materials was a process of improvisation<br />

and testing – in essence an adhoc material process. Jencks and Silver<br />

(2013 [1972]) discuss ‘retrieval adhocism’ - the finding, gathering or ‘gleaning’<br />

of materials, and the recycling of them for new uses. This is both a creative<br />

and resourceful process - a ‘make do’, bricolage approach. <strong>Gathering</strong> emerged<br />

through a process of collecting and sorting materials and then experimenting<br />

with their material possibilities through intuitively improvising, playing and<br />

testing them, as well as through drawings, paintings, models and 1:1 prototypes.<br />

Ingold (2010) challenges what he terms the ‘hylomorphic model of creation’ -<br />

the creation/replication of finished forms that are already settled. Instead, matter<br />

is not passive, and artists and architects must follow the lines of material<br />

flow through an ongoing, generative process of improvisation and rhythm. We<br />

explored how this approach is actively applied methodologically, through collaborative<br />

art and architecture studio processes, drawing attention to the relationship<br />

between plan, process and outcome. We found that this was more than<br />

a process of blind chance or a mere assembly of disparate parts; instead it was a<br />

purposeful process of intentional adhocism - the creation of an integrated whole<br />

through the careful selection of a simple combination of materials, the refinement<br />

of the waste materials and the interplay of use value and aesthetic value.<br />

The contrasting of materials (fabric, timber and fixings), forms (hard structures<br />

and soft enclosing envelopes) and light created this intentional adhocism.<br />

A gleaning site, photo: authors<br />

Reused sheet material for flooring, marked<br />

out prior to painting, photo: authors<br />

10


A Circular Material Ecology<br />

<strong>Gathering</strong> also explored how, through the reprocessing and remodelling of<br />

obsolete matter, material is put back into a cycle of use. In Baker-Brown’s (2017)<br />

words this is ‘mining the anthropocene’ or ‘urban mining’- the creation of a circular<br />

material economy through waste. With regards to resource consumption<br />

the building and construction industry is the industrial economy’s biggest consumer<br />

of material resources, and the biggest producer of waste. Therefore this<br />

process of reuse and a consideration of the whole lifecycle of materials redistributes<br />

values and challenges a linear industrial economy. As a result there was<br />

an important ethical dimension to this work (Fox, 2000), one that resonates with<br />

work on political ecology, degrowth (D’Alisa et al., 2014; Oslo Architecture Trienalle,<br />

2019) and scarcity (Till, 2014). This work challenges the hegemony of economic<br />

growth, suggesting that there are also ecological limits to this. Through<br />

a process of ‘urban mining’, improvisation and reuse (through the creation of<br />

a flexible and adaptable design system), <strong>Gathering</strong> draws attention to material<br />

limits in particular, and explores how, through processes of improvisation,<br />

these limits can offer both aesthetic and use value in art and architecture production,<br />

where issues of waste are particularly pertinent.<br />

Reused sheet material for flooring, marked<br />

out prior to painting, photo: authors<br />

11


<strong>Gathering</strong>, occupied grottoes, February 2019, photo:<br />

Matthew Pickering<br />

12


13


Research and Making Process<br />

Relations between Art & Architecture<br />

Our process emerged from a shared interest in the relationship between art<br />

and architecture. We sought to explore the commonalities in our approach to<br />

making and specifically how experimentation and improvisation (often seen in<br />

more strictly defined terms in architecture) are central to both our approaches.<br />

Our approach to collaboration was built upon a common ground of dissatisfaction<br />

with the traditional, object-based approach to architectural design and<br />

construction (what Ingold (2010) refers to as the ‘hylomorphic schema’), that<br />

privileges the architectural object as preformed idea over that of process. Finding<br />

this common ground, we sought to discuss and develop a process of making/<br />

design that would allow for improvisational methods of working. We sought<br />

to expand the studio-based practice of design-through-making, working on 1:1<br />

scale prototypes and assemblies in a way that we considered not separate from<br />

the making of the installation itself.<br />

As a result we developed an approach that saw the installation as a point in<br />

time of a process of gleaning, testing, playing, assembly, use, disassembly and<br />

reuse of the material. We committed to follow the possibilities of found materials,<br />

adapting and evolving our initial ideas as new processes were found and<br />

new aesthetics conceived, thereby using these processes to fundamentally shape<br />

the forms and spaces that emerged.<br />

‘To improvise is to follow the ways of the world, as they open up, rather<br />

than to recover a chain of connections, from an end-point to a starting-<br />

point, on a route already travelled.’ (Ingold, 2010, p.97)<br />

Our interests in material use and waste led to a form of ‘gleaning’ of our immediate<br />

environment. Looking to glean the leftover scraps of timber, metal, fabric,<br />

etc., following the university’s end of year degree shows, and from local construction<br />

sites, we committed ourselves to a process of material improvisation<br />

and play from what we could find.<br />

14


Collaborative Conversations<br />

The brief from Madeleine Kennedy allowed us early on to engage with the artists<br />

involved in eventually occupying and inhabiting the grottoes. Each artist,<br />

working with their chosen figure from collage practice, had a set of ideas for<br />

manifesting their own practice in the structure we were proposing. Through beginning<br />

conversations with the artists, and exchanging sketch proposals for general<br />

layouts and forms, the specifics of the grottoes’ scale and scope for acting as<br />

a host for new works was developed. We were careful to allow time and space<br />

for both the very specific technical requirements of some installations (a need to<br />

keep a highly valuable original Schwitters collage in view of security cameras,<br />

for instance in Heather Ross’s installation) and the need for more flexible forms<br />

to respond to evolving works from the artists (eventual sheltered and enclosing<br />

spaces for intimate tattoos from Marian Cassy) in our initial conversations and<br />

subsequent emergent spaces and forms.<br />

Working with the artists through these close dialogues and in a non-linear form<br />

of design development afforded us the opportunity to carefully shape the structure<br />

around the needs and desires of the artists in relation to the qualities and capacities<br />

of the materials found. We would listen to and hear the artists’ needs, and<br />

return to them following a dialogue with the technical and formal possibilities of<br />

the materials we found. This allowed us to have a design process that was in a state<br />

of emergence throughout the project, as some of the artists responded to the space<br />

in different and unexpected ways following its construction (Jackie Haynes, for<br />

instance, occupied a space that was initially a fallow void in the structure, but that<br />

through Haynes’ engagement with the project became a carefully finished nook<br />

between grottoes that would hold collaboratively made sculptures).<br />

Drawing<br />

We began the development process for the structure through an exchange of<br />

drawn ideas, initially asking questions of form and organisation of space within<br />

the traditional exhibition format; how we might draw on the improvisational,<br />

collage practice of Schwitters; and the articulation of small- and medium-scale<br />

spaces to ‘explode’ the gallery environment. Our explorations looked at how we<br />

could use light and shade, openness and enclosure, to create a range of ‘holding<br />

spaces’ that would afford invited artists opportunities to take over and inhabit<br />

the structure through their practices.<br />

15


Initial drawing exploring light and dark spaces and<br />

enclosures, pen and ink, scan: authors<br />

16


Development of the planning of grottoes, pen<br />

drawing, scan: authors<br />

17


Initial drawing exploring light and dark spaces and<br />

enclosures, pen and ink, scan: authors<br />

Development of the planning of grottoes, pen<br />

drawing, scan: authors<br />

18


In parallel to our gleaning (which went on throughout the process of development<br />

and construction), we began a prototyping process in the school’s workshop,<br />

drawing again on leftover sheet metal, salvaged pallet timber sections,<br />

found and borrowed screws, bolts and nuts. Based on a loose design of a skeletal<br />

structure of vertical armatures, connected together through horizontal jointing<br />

elements, we experimented with junctions that would be capable of holding<br />

timber sheet cladding or fabric enclosures. These armatures emerged through<br />

playful testing of the flexibility and stability of various types of junction and<br />

thickness of material, leading to a junction that allowed for three-dimensional<br />

movement and that could be disassembled with ease, allowing for an improvisational<br />

approach to the assembly of variegated scales of grottoes.<br />

Collaboration and Prototyping<br />

This prototyping led to the development of a joint that could be repeated across<br />

the structure, allowing formal variation across the installation, and permitting<br />

us to test out a variety of layouts in the studio environment.<br />

After refining the junction - exploring plate thickness and bending moments -<br />

we began digitally modelling the junction and plasma cutting and testing the<br />

junction’s performance as a flexible unit. The modelling and plasma cutting enabled<br />

us to experiment and improvise in almost real time with the metal, making<br />

minor modifications to bolt holes, angles and fixing plate positions in the software<br />

and then cutting multiple iterations in rapid succession.<br />

This ‘itinerative’ (Ingold, 2010) improvisational approach formed the basic pattern<br />

of working throughout the project, taking material elements, forming and<br />

shaping them in real time, and exploring their relationship to the forms and<br />

enclosures we aimed to create. Once a core junction type had been defined, we<br />

were able to fabricate the first 150 plus units on the plasma cutter, sending the<br />

remaining 100 plus units for rapid laser-cutting off-site.<br />

The joint, then, became the centre of the improvisational approach, allowing<br />

for the material conjunctions that occurred, and for the informal geometries<br />

that emerged. This allowed a form of inhabitation and use that afforded multiple<br />

and unexpected opportunities for the invited artists to occupy the structure<br />

in curious, adhoc and improvisational manners (see L-INK installation, Jackie<br />

Haynes, Marian Cassy et al.).<br />

19


The ‘arms’ for each frame could be adjusted to make the whole higher or wider,<br />

depending on the artwork being presented. The design of the metal armature<br />

which was sandwiched between the lengths of wood, allowed for this, through<br />

a series of holes into which the bolts could be fixed. This design also meant that<br />

each arm was fully retractable, making them easy to transport.<br />

The digital fabrication of the junctions allowed for modifications during the<br />

protoyping phase to be structurally tested at 1:1 and refined. The resulting form<br />

allowed the reclaimed timber sections to become malleable during the installation<br />

phase.<br />

Detail of <strong>Gathering</strong> armature, photo: Jack Cornish<br />

20


Detail of <strong>Gathering</strong> armature, photo: Jack Cornish<br />

21


An Itinerant Practice<br />

Ingold speaks of itineration - the walking through the world as a process of<br />

putting ideas, things and materials together as an artistic, improvisational practice.<br />

This describes well our process of working - quite literally walking through<br />

and around the university campus, adjacent building sites and waste recycling<br />

yards, gleaning the by-products of others’ making processes. We were itinerant<br />

makers across our workshops and studios, moving between the prototyping<br />

space of the architecture workshop with its laser-cutters and handsaws, and the<br />

metal workshop with its plasma cutters, sheet benders and guillotines. We were<br />

driven by the material properties of the things we found, as well as the processes<br />

with which we experimented. We made our way through that ‘taskscape’ that<br />

Ingold speaks of, without following an object prefigured in our minds, but rather<br />

allowing the structure and form to emerge through this chance and playful<br />

process. Taskscape becomes a useful category to describe the environment of<br />

making, the term referring to ‘an array of related activities’ that is navigated<br />

and experienced much as a landscape, being ‘qualitative and heterogeneous’ as<br />

Ingold describes it. (Ingold, 1993)<br />

Central to our approach was a resistance to the prefigured - the hylomorphic -<br />

and a desire to allow things considered as ‘waste’ to have other lives and define<br />

other forms. We aimed to consider the work not as an artistic or architectural<br />

object - ‘finished’ and ‘completed’ at a point in time where the gallery dictated<br />

the show ‘open’ - but as an inherently unfinished project. The curatorial brief<br />

developed by Madeline Kennedy allowed for this process-oriented approach to<br />

the installation, seeing it as a site that would come alive throughout the fourmonth<br />

duration of the exhibition as invited artists, guests and visitors installed,<br />

performed and contributed to the life of the structure. Speaking of painting, but<br />

equally applicable to the conventional architectural object, Ingold suggests a<br />

misreading of the process of making, whereby artistic ‘intentions’ are privileged<br />

over the potentials and possibilities latent in the material and the artist’s practices.<br />

(Ingold, 2009)<br />

We sought to allow the ‘finished’ object (if there is such a thing) to be an index<br />

of its making. The articulation of the jointing and armatures, the exposed fixings<br />

and the pencils marks, cut lines, machining patterns and exposed jointing of the<br />

flooring allowed the artwork to express both its making and the possibility of<br />

unmaking latent in its structure.<br />

22


‘Artists—as also artisans—are itinerant wayfarers. They make<br />

their way through the taskscape [...] as do walkers through the<br />

landscape, bringing forth their work as they press on with their<br />

own lives. It is in this very forward movement that the creativity<br />

of the work is to be found. To read creativity “forwards” entails a<br />

focus not on abduction but on improvisation.’<br />

(Ingold and Hallam, 2007, p. 3).’ (Ingold, 2010)<br />

Julia Heslop operates the plasma cutting machine,<br />

Fine Art workshop, photo: authors<br />

23


Prototype foot, photo: authors<br />

Plasma cutter enables efficent use of sheet material. Junction elements<br />

in process of production, photo: authors<br />

24


Unfinished Objects and Spaces<br />

We gathered pallets and plywood sheet, MDF and chipboard, in order to form a<br />

solid flooring base from which to build. Assembling these found objects in the<br />

studio environment (working at a 1:1 scale, developing and making the installation<br />

in its first incarnation), allowed us to bring together the components of the<br />

armatures, the footings and the floor in a process of experimental space making.<br />

Driven by conversations with the invited artists, we crafted the grottoes in<br />

response to their individual practices, ensuring routes through the spaces that<br />

would accommodate a range of mobilities, from ambulant to wheelchair users,<br />

whilst allowing for intimacy and spatial differentiation within the grottoes.<br />

Immersive and Intimate Spaces<br />

Our interest in the materiality of the aesthetic experience was reflected in<br />

how we used light, shade and enclosure. Working with found sheet material<br />

and semi-translucent fabric allowed us to alternate dense enclosures with<br />

more diaphanous, light grottoes. Organic, fair-trade cotton, cut and sewn into<br />

cocoon-like forms, was hung from the universal junctions of the armatures,<br />

delineating and articulating dense and lightweight spaces through materials.<br />

In direct contrast to traditional gallery walls, we provided light, fabric surfaces<br />

and inclined timber planes for artists to respond to. These at once afforded artists<br />

opportunities to use gallery surfaces in unconventional manners, and encouraged<br />

a viewer experience that was immersive and surrounding - you enter<br />

into the space of the artworks and performances, invited and welcomed into the<br />

interiors of the grottoes. Furthermore, participants and visitors were actively<br />

encouraged to immerse themselves within the curatorial programme - not just<br />

static observers, but intimates with the work itself.<br />

Pallets and sheet material for flooring, studio,<br />

photos: authors<br />

25


Creating a series of intimate spaces within the installation was crucial - drawing<br />

on Schwitters’ manner of accommodating and holding artworks within his<br />

MerzBau, and also a desire to produce both a functional and emotive environment.<br />

In terms of the function, fundamental to the brief was the creation of a<br />

central ‘forum’ space, where visitors, artists and participants could gather to<br />

take part in workshops, talks and performances.<br />

Improvisational Geometries<br />

Developing the installation through improvisation in the studio environment<br />

first allowed us to move, open out and form the structure around potential activities<br />

and uses, whilst not overly delineating the use of the spaces. Therefore<br />

our approach was not about prefiguration but working in a site-responsive way,<br />

responding to the wider gallery context. Deliberately avoiding formal geometries<br />

became both an expression of our making process as well as of the spatial<br />

type we were employing - grottoes, nests, nooks - which became our ‘holding’<br />

spaces (Donald Winnicott (1960) a therapeutic term, but one that carries over<br />

into the idea of spaces that can hold, nurture and contain in an active form).<br />

Grotto frames, studio, photo: authors<br />

26


Hatton Install<br />

Following prototyping and development in the studio, the structure was disassembled<br />

and carried to the Hatton Gallery, where the process of installation<br />

lasted two weeks, working with Jemma Hind as our technical support, and the<br />

team of the Hatton Gallery. Pre-assembly in the studio enabled a rapid installation<br />

process in the gallery space.<br />

Frames being installed in the Hatton Gallery,<br />

photo: authors<br />

27


From Use to Reuse<br />

When the installation closed in February 2019, we documented and deinstalled<br />

the work. Over a period of four days, the process of dismantling was opened<br />

to view by visitors, and simultaneously scanned with LiDAR (laser scanner)<br />

technology. Recording each key stage of disassembly, artists were initially invited<br />

to be recorded taking down their work, producing a digital archive of the<br />

process of removing the interventions within the structure, and subsequently<br />

the dismantling of the cladding, armatures and flooring was recorded through<br />

the laser scans. The timber from the armatures was salvaged by Julia for use in<br />

future artworks; the steel plating within the joints was partially sent for metal<br />

recycling, used as weld-testing pieces in the architecture workshop, and stored<br />

for future use; the cloth salvaged for future artworks; and the pallets and flooring<br />

collected by Newcastle Wood Recycling Yard – a local charity. No elements<br />

of the installation were sent to landfill, the majority of the structure going on to<br />

have another life.<br />

LiDAR scanning in progress, February 2019,<br />

photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

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<strong>Gathering</strong> Lives<br />

The LiDAR scan has now been assembled by graduate students Josie Foster and<br />

Sarah Hollywell into a set of archival models of the installation/deinstallation.<br />

These found a life in an immersive digital installation in the School of Architecture<br />

in January 2020 - effectively the third life of the <strong>Gathering</strong> structure. Its<br />

first life - in the studios of the School of Architecture - lasted approximately two<br />

months, from July to September 2018, until it moved on to its second, occupied<br />

life in the Hatton Gallery until February 2019. Its fragments are now living their<br />

own object lives elsewhere, perhaps incorporated into other artworks; perhaps<br />

forming the structure of a seat somewhere; or wrapping another artwork in a<br />

fabric embrace. What we see is the expanded lives of this work - an evocation of<br />

the temporal, changing and never-really-static states of an artwork in process.<br />

LiDAR scan of the process of deinstallation, Hatton Gallery,<br />

image: Josie Foster & Sarah Hollywell<br />

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Outcomes and Dissemination<br />

<strong>Gathering</strong> was a central part of the wider Exploding Collage exhibition at the<br />

Hatton Gallery which attracted 8784 visitors between October 2018 and February<br />

2019. The installation hosted a series of eight artist interventions during<br />

the exhibition through performance, video and projection and drawing/collage/painting.<br />

These worked to ‘activate’ the structure, calling into action the<br />

material and formal design properties of the grottoes. The overview of these<br />

interventions can be seen at https://hattongallery.org.uk/gathering-so-far, and<br />

is discussed as part of an interview with curator Madeline Kennedy in Aesthetica<br />

Magazine https://aestheticamagazine.com/expansive-presentations. During<br />

the exhibition, two seminars were convened, to discuss the curatorial position<br />

behind the Exploding Collage/<strong>Gathering</strong> exhibition and the design and construction<br />

of <strong>Gathering</strong>. Furthermore, a digital legacy in the form of an archive<br />

of LiDAR scans now exists, held by Newcastle University and the Hatton Gallery,<br />

with a soon to be online digital model of the installation and the process of its<br />

deinstallation.<br />

A version of this portfolio has been available since 2020 at https://www.ncl.<br />

ac.uk/apl/research/case-studies/creativepractice/<br />

View into grottoe, with work of Marian Casey in the foreground,<br />

and L-INK in the rear grottoe, photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

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Working between Art & Architecture<br />

The work demonstrated that through a purposeful yet improvised process of<br />

rescue and reuse, materials can be ‘made good’, refined and reimagined. The<br />

focus on designing and making through an embedded studio process of testing<br />

and improvising highlights the valuable nature of art-architecture collaborations<br />

in solving design challenges. Through this, the work challenges the<br />

way that materials are valued in art and architecture projects, highlighting<br />

the amount of waste usually produced. This provides a framework for further<br />

art-architecture projects and exhibitions.<br />

Through the close collaboration with both artists involved in the curated programme,<br />

and the following through of the potentials of materials gathered, we<br />

have established a method for developing an alternative to prefigured gallery<br />

installations. The available materials ‘gleaned’ from around the campus and<br />

city, in relation to the practices of the involved artists, led to a method whereby<br />

ideas and materials came into close conjuction - a form of material, technical<br />

and programmatic improvisation. These ideas - gleaning from site, collaborative<br />

conversations, technical development through improvised prototyping - are<br />

informative to developing an ecological architectural practice. What materials<br />

are immediately available; how they can be reponded to through fluid ideas and<br />

programmatic constraints; what their technical capacity offers a design; how<br />

their adhoc combination creates a site-specific form and aesthetic: these design<br />

parameters combined offer an orginal way of initiating and developing an<br />

architectural project outside of the gallery setting. They will form the basis for a<br />

research-led creative-practice project exploring retrofit and refurbishment in a<br />

residential setting.<br />

An Ecological Material Practice<br />

The wider role of the project - communicated through the artefact itself, as<br />

well as the seminars and tours (with graduate architecture students, staff and<br />

architectural visitors) has been to establish a new mode of design for times of<br />

material abundance and economic scarcity: an ecological design method that eschews<br />

the technical paradigm of ‘sustainable’ design for malleable, responsive,<br />

improvised tectonics and aesthetics. This has already been seen to be influential<br />

in postgraduate level research (a related PhD is in the process of application),<br />

architectural practice for Heslop & Wainwright, and through the responsive and<br />

ongoing work of artists (see the practice of Jackie Haynes, grotto for Mina Loy).<br />

The design framework will now be developed in a live-build project in<br />

Newcastle’s West End district of Elswick.<br />

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Sustaining a legacy of practice<br />

As part of the Exploding Collage programme, <strong>Gathering</strong> sits within a legacy of<br />

exhibitions at the Hatton Gallery led by ‘live’ on-site practice. As well as hosting<br />

the internationally significant Merz Barn wall from Schwitters, the Hatton’s<br />

historical legacy (which dates to the 1830s and the establishment of a school<br />

of art in Newcastle) is one of radical spatial art practices. Under the tenure of<br />

Robin Darwin, the Hatton Gallery was used by artists including Victor Pasmore<br />

and Richard Hamilton to develop the historically significant works Man, Machine<br />

and Motion, and An Exhibit. Both of these used the gallery space itself as a<br />

testing ground for new modalities of art practice: exploding the pictorial frame;<br />

using architectural elements and spatial conditions to explore changing social<br />

and cultural themes.<br />

Our work sits within this context and contributes to the ‘living’ and vital culture<br />

of arts practice within the gallery setting. Documentation of the structure is now<br />

in the Hatton archive, and digital reproductions of the installation are in development<br />

as an online archival resource. <strong>Gathering</strong> contributes to this significant<br />

historical legacy, itself responding to a period of rapid social change, setting a<br />

scene for ongoing work around material use, climate crisis and the role of the<br />

architect and artist.<br />

An Exhibit, Hatton Gallery, image:<br />

Newcastle University<br />

Man, Machine & Motion, Hatton Gallery, image:<br />

The Independent Group<br />

32


Frames being installed in the Hatton Gallery, with Julia Heslop<br />

Jemma Hind and Ed Robinson (technical support),<br />

photo: authors<br />

33


<strong>Gathering</strong> (detail), 2018, Julia Heslop & Ed Wainwright. Courtesy the artists. Photograph Jack Cornish.<br />

<strong>Gathering</strong><br />

An architectural intervention by collaborators<br />

Julia Heslop & Ed Wainwright.<br />

29 September – 16 February 2019<br />

Free entry, donations welcome<br />

Mon - Sat, 10am - 5pm<br />

hattongallery.org.uk<br />

Hatton Gallery, Kings Road, Newcastle<br />

University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU<br />

Exhibition poster, Hatton Gallery, Tyne & Wear Museums and<br />

Archives design team<br />

34


Jemma Hind & Julia Heslop, <strong>Gathering</strong> opening, photo:<br />

Ed Wainwright<br />

35


Anka Schmid intervention, photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

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37


Heather Ross intervention, photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

38


39


Mani Kambo intervention, photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

40


41


Sonia Allori, Ruth Hemus & Vaia Paziana intervention, photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

42


43


Jackie Haynes intervention, photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

44


45


Armatures and junctions, with working drawings visible, photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

46


47


Jackie Haynes intervention, photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

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49


Structure following deinstallation, photo: Matthew Pickering<br />

50


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In a curator statement about <strong>Gathering</strong> Kennedy wrote:<br />

Testimonials<br />

‘Their approach to the commission demonstrated generosity and forethought<br />

in designing a space that would accommodate and enable a diversity of<br />

artistic media, as well as operate as a welcoming site where audiences could<br />

gather and undertake activities collectively. The success of <strong>Gathering</strong> was<br />

evidenced by its accessibility, usability and adaptability. It balanced two<br />

qualities often treated as mutually exclusive in the presentation of artworks<br />

in museums: an expertly crafted, interesting and novel spatial design (as<br />

opposed to a white cube or traditional hang), that safely houses and does<br />

not overshadow the oftentimes fragile, high-value, autonomous artworks it<br />

presents. As such, <strong>Gathering</strong> captured the spirit of the work by Schwitters<br />

without being at all derivative’.<br />

Contributing artist and arts educator Zoe Allen, wrote on the L-INK intervention:<br />

‘L-INK made their intervention into <strong>Gathering</strong> on 2nd February. The group<br />

spent several weeks researching the work of New York Dadaist Elsa von<br />

Freytag-Loringhoven (also known as ‘the Baroness’). They worked with artist<br />

Heather Ross who invited them to consider the language of different objects,<br />

with reference to Schwitters’ ideas around collage, and Dada making & editing<br />

techniques.<br />

Their research and discussions focused on gender & LGBTQ+ issues, feminism<br />

and what that is/means today, national & cultural identity, and artworks<br />

& rituals associated with ‘making’ or with other aspects of our identities<br />

outside of being an artist. They have also explored the role of men and<br />

women generally in society, in art and within the family.<br />

The group’s intervention explored the theme of ‘bravery’, inspired by the life<br />

and work of the Baroness. Each group member contributed to <strong>Gathering</strong><br />

their own artwork and objects which held personal significance to them.<br />

During their intervention, members of the public were invited to add objects<br />

of their own or alter items within L-INK’s grotto. Thirty-five people attended<br />

their event and contributed to their intervention.’<br />

52


Tess Deman-Cleaver, artist and writer, comments on her involvement in the<br />

programme:<br />

“I responded to the “shrine-like” structure of the space I was given within the<br />

gallery, creating a piece that was in part homage to Gertrude Stein, whose<br />

language gathers ideas and sounds via associative and subjective meaning<br />

and who has greatly influenced collage practices within contemporary art.<br />

The shrine being a place for collecting, or gathering, votive offerings and<br />

thoughts. The text I wrote for the exhibition, presented as performance and<br />

sound installation, also responded to the institutional context of the show<br />

and became an important opportunity for me as an artist to explore a more<br />

overtly personal and political voice within my work. My use of a 1930s radio,<br />

contemporary in its design to the writings of Stein, grew out of an interest in<br />

how communications technology affects language, literary experimentation<br />

and landscape by “gathering” disparate content in a manner articulated by<br />

Heidegger in his theory of “things”. The work I created for <strong>Gathering</strong> continues<br />

to inform my practice and ideas within this work have evolved and been<br />

included in subsequent projects.’<br />

Mani Kambo, the final artist in the programme to develop work in <strong>Gathering</strong>,<br />

writes:<br />

‘I was the last artist/researcher to work in the space after various individuals<br />

had left their mark one at a time seeing each space filled over time. Each very<br />

different to the next yet the link of the structure [held] them all together in<br />

place as one.<br />

During the creation of the work, having people visit through the process of<br />

creating was different to the usual way artwork is created: usually isolated<br />

in a space detached from where the work will sit then brought into the space.<br />

I worked in a compulsive way during the creation of the work in the grotto<br />

which was a different to my usual methods of creation. The immediacy of<br />

pasting up an image and then another and layering each on top of the next<br />

and linking sections with tape. I took into consideration the space, as mine<br />

had solid boards that could be pasted across rather than beams and fabric so<br />

I focused on a more 2D collaged grotto.<br />

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I worked with the structure of the grotto through collaging my own imagery<br />

of my own previous work, taking still elements from prints and films<br />

and re-imaging them in the space to tell a new story. Taking influence from<br />

Claude Cahun, her work acts like a “hunt” through her text, imagery and<br />

photography: all that is revealed and given, much is still hidden or has been<br />

lost.<br />

The Re<strong>Gathering</strong> event was great to bring back to life the structure of the<br />

grottos and explore them after a period of time. Like a relic lost in time<br />

you’re re-discovering and remembering. The fact that the grottos could then<br />

be re-exhibited and shared in another space is fascinating through projection<br />

or even possibly online.’<br />

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Bibliography<br />

Baker-Brown, D. (2017) The Re-Use Atlas: A Designer’s Guide Towards the<br />

Circular Economy, London: RIBA<br />

D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F. and Kallis, G. (eds.) (2014) Degrowth: a vocabulary<br />

for a new era, Oxon: Routledge<br />

Fox, W. (ed.) (2012) Ethics and the built environment, Oxon: Routledge<br />

Ingold, T. (1993) ‘The temporality of the landscape’, World Archaeology,<br />

25(2), pp.152-174<br />

Ingold, T. (2010) ‘The textility of making’, Cambridge Journal of Economics,<br />

34(1), pp. 91-102<br />

Jencks, C., and Silver, N. (2013 [1972]) Adhocism: the case for improvisation,<br />

Cambridge: Mit Press<br />

Till, J. (2014) ‘Scarcity and agency’, Journal of Architectural Education,<br />

68(1), pp. 9-11<br />

Winnicott, D.W. (1960) ‘The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship’, The<br />

International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 41, pp. 585-595<br />

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