past events/future projects

Lost In Space

takes its title, not from any direct parallel with the 1960s sci-fi series, but from the various meanings of space as they relate to the architectural space in which the work exists and the space within the works themselves, both real space and illusionary. Space exists both within and between the works. We are lost in this space, in the sense that it is often difficult to pin down. In Pernilla Iggstrom's work veils of colour and surface reflections further disorientate our sense of depth. In Bol Marjoram's work actual physical planes constructed from linen, canvas and paper challenge us to read across the space. Ashley Fitzgerald's books seem to speak of the ways in which spaces change. They appear to have been arrested in a process of deterioration which would have led to their disintegration and obliteration.

Space is a resonant word for architects, and never more so than in the 1960s when Wayland House was built. The building is the product of the engineering and technology of its era combined with the design ideas of modernism, which emphasised the importance of light and space. Technology and design produced a new city in the 1960s and enabled new perspectives and vistas from the new tower blocks. This undervalued and overlooked part of the urban fabric was designed in the early 1960s by the Architects Department The Greater London Council under Edward Hollamby and follows the basic precepts of modernism. In this instance, on each floor, a series of maisonettes are arranged along either side of the building with a light airy double height corridor running through the middle of the block and terminating in a giant window. It is typical of many of the buildings of its time and its design embodies the social idealism and the internationalising tendencies of modernism.

The effect of applying this style in many different locations, in different climates and geographies, is to produce cities that at first sight can seem barely distinguishable. If the places where we live appear interchangeable, then the psychological result might be a sense of groundlessness, like the 1994 paintings of Peter Doig which show a classic Le Corbusier’s apartment block surrounded by a tangling wilderness.

This is what conservative thinkers describe as rootlessness, but it can equally be thought of in a positive way as freedom, a place where external markers of difference are stripped away and where one story or identity is not privileged above another. The three artists in Lost in Space are concerned in different ways with the idea of collage, an idea which in its modern form we can trace back to Dada, where one image or thing is placed against another in a way which often disregards pre existing categories or hierarchies.

Pernilla Iggstrom is a painter whose work reflects on the power of photography to create a sense of who we are. Using silhouettes traced from personal photos, she suggests the shifting outlines of identity. She evokes scenes from her childhood, building up the images with thick layers of paint and shiny, transparent resin. Her painting Gissa Vem (The Prophet) shows her head, as a shape without features, a coloured plane, onto which we can project whatever we please.

Ash Fitzgerald shows two books that have been subjected to various processes of change. The result is two sculptural objects that speak to us about the mutability of the physical world and fragility of human systems for storing and retrieving knowledge. Alongside the books is a small object elevated on a plinth - we read it as a kind of figure, an idol or a totem perhaps.

Bol Marjoram displays two versions of his ongoing project, The Price of Admission. The earlier version is a one off book. Shown in an at The Tel Aviv Museum in 2009, it is carefully designed and constructed to present a series of fragments that cohere into a narrative which reflects back on itself. The latest version is too large to be contained within the structure of a book and pushes outward into the space. The pages have become a series of planes which bisect the room. The elements of a comic strip reach a point of near disintegration, which is mirrored in the pages themselves. It has become difficult to reconstruct the narrative, which earlier versions celebrated as a form of unifying journey.

Pernilla Iggstrom was born in South Korea, adopted by Swedish parents and lived for many years in Singapore. She now lives in London and graduated with a B.A. Hons in fine art from City and Guilds of London Art School in 2011.

Ashley Fitzgerald, born in 1964, is based in London. He graduated with a BA (Hons) Fine Arts in 1995 and completed his MA in fine art at the City and Guilds of London Art School in 2011.

Bol Marjoram, born in 1957, graduated in M.A. Printmaking at Camberwell College 1992 and obtained a Post Graduate Certificate in Animation from Central St. Martins in 2000. His artist’s books are represented in a number of international collections including, in London, The National Art Library, at The Victoria and Albert Museum and The Library of The Tate Gallery