Exhibition
F.O.A.M. | Obelisk
14 Nov 2020 – 5 Dec 2020
Regular hours
- Saturday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Wednesday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Thursday
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Friday
- 11:00 – 18:00
Address
- 39 Loughborough Rd
- London
- SW9 7TB
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- §
- 10 minute walk from Brixton station or Stockwell Station
- 10 minute walk fromLoughborough Junction Station
Obelisk is a site specific installation by architectural collective F.O.A.M.
About
San Mei is pleased to announce Obelisk, a site-specific, architectural scale exhibition by architectural collective F.O.A.M. (Laurence Lumley and Rory Sherlock).
Obelisk is a monument to form and beauty in the industrialised, highly wasteful and financially driven context of contemporary construction. Using rapid, on-site assembly and the cheap readily available materials concealed behind every polished surface of the developed world, the large-scale sculpture will mark a highly relevant questioning of the continuous development of the built environment. Obelisk will be collectively ripped apart at the end of the exhibition and the materials repurposed.
“Trash is taking over. Today’s production is tomorrow’s problem; utility and disposability inch closer and closer together, if they have not already become conjoined entirely; the built environment proliferates exponentially, with financial investment and expected capital return ensuring the consolidation of a cheaper/faster/more mentality; ‘beauty’ (a dirty word, tainted by its general ambivalence towards the market) has long-since been sublimated by a plethora of seemingly weightier concerns, reduced to a mere skim-deep coating.” - F.O.A.M
As COVID19 invites artists and galleries to examine not only their outputs but also their definitions of the term ‘exhibition’, San Mei and F.O.A.M look to showcase Obelisk as a way of re-assessing the problematic properties of rubbish, establishing its promising potential. Acknowledging the significant lifespans of many disposable materials, the exhibition will include a digital public workshop and panel discussion. The workshop will involve participants collecting and posting images of interiors onto a shared online drive, to then be projected in the space as a collective research tool.
At the end of the exhibition, fragments of the obelisk will be repurposed as functional and sculptural objects. In line with the design and construction methodology of F.O.A.M., the process will attempt to again tease disposability and utility apart, ensuring waste is at a minimum.