work / MEADMORE DECONSTRUCTION PROJECT 2011

The First Show

March 10 – April 30 2011

PinUp @ Something Together

Architecture & Design Project Space

The Compound Interest 15 – 25 Keele Street, Collingwood, Melbourne

ABOUT PINUP @ SOMETHING TOGETHER

Established by Fleur Watson and Martyn Hook of creative studio Something Together, PinUp is an independently curated space dedicated to exhibiting, communicating and promoting the importance of quality architecture, art and design within our culture. Firmly engaged with promoting local debate yet with an international outlook, PinUp aspires to present experimental and new work with a particular focus on architects and designers pursuing a cultural investigation of how design can contribute to our everyday experience. PinUp takes its name from a studio approach where designers ‘pin up’ their design process in order to reveal ideas through presenting them to others and, in turn, develop a richer, more meaningful understanding. PinUp provides a flexible space for the communication of design ideas and builds on a collection of collaborative projects that aspire to present architecture and design in an intelligent, accessible and inspirational environment.

THE FIRST SHOW

PinUp’s inaugural exhibition ‘The First Show’ will open on March 10, 2011. To celebrate our future, we are inviting twenty of Melbourne’s architecture, art and design studios to reflect on their work – past and present – to communicate and encapsulate the moment when they arrived as a creative individual/practice. We ask you to identify the ‘first’ project, building, scheme, object that focussed your practice on an evolving line of enquiry or ‘big idea’ that continues to underpin your collective work today. In pinpointing this ‘moment’ you may discover that it is not your first commission or even solely represented by a singular design. Instead this reflection may reveal an assemblage of influences, concerns, preoccupations or commitments that you are able to communicate to others in order to reveal and engage a wide audience with your design process.

HARRIS / ATKINS 'MEADMORE DECONSTRUCTION PROJECT'

This project by Dana Harris and Peter Atkins - the first as partners / artists / collaborators provides an excellent insight into the ideas that underpin both practices. They appropriate as a departure point the iconic ‘Corded Chair’ c1952 designed by Clement Meadmore. The process involved deconstructing the chair down to its seven fundamental structural parts, and, using the unaltered components, reconfigured them into new variations. ‘The Meadmore Project’ presents us with five concept models of chairs and stools that remind us of the continuous possibilities of lineal narratives associated with existing materials and structures. These new designs sit somewhere between furniture and sculpture – a hybrid of ideas – a lateral approach to material and structure that has been and remains a core conceptual tenet in both practices. This exhibition presents us with the premise that nothing is static and everything is evolving. Artists Dana Harris and Peter Atkins are both interested in the appropriation and deconstruction of readymade forms. What both of these artists are attempting with their work is an investigation into familiar, often incidental elements of our day to day lives, re-interpreted and re-presented back to the viewer as something new and unexpected. This is evident as seen in recent projects exhibited in Melbourne. Dana Harris’ recent residency at the Australian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne saw her develop a new series of works which involve the deconstruction, thread by thread of her fathers tie collection. Left behind are exquisitely delicate, feathery echoes - skeletal reminders of their former structure. Peter Atkins’ most recent exhibition titled the ‘Hume Highway Project’ involved the documentation over a five year period of roadside signage along the Hume Highway between Melbourne and Sydney. The subsequent series of abstract paintings based on these references where exhibited by Tolarno Galleries at the recent Melbourne Art Fair. The entire series is now in the collection of the Lyon Housemuseum, Melbourne.

Meadmore Deconstruction Project 2011