Exhibition

Sam Jacob: Empire Of Ice Cream

26 Jan 2019 – 9 Mar 2019

Regular hours

Saturday
12:00 – 17:00
Wednesday
12:00 – 18:00
Thursday
12:00 – 18:00
Friday
12:00 – 18:00

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Betts Project is pleased to present ‘Empire of Ice Cream,’ a solo exhibition by British architect Sam Jacob.

About

 This is the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery, and showcases a series of drawings made on graph paper along with three sculptures that altogether explore the significance of fragmented architecture and our ability to recollect.

Conceived between 2011 and 2019, ‘Empire of Ice Cream’ is a series of thirteen meticulously filled graph paper drawings that show the remnants of architectural plans gathered from an assortment of historic and contemporary references. These elements are sometimes grand and monumental, others banal and generic, but all are summoned impromptu from Jacob’s memory; segments from Ancient Greek temples, football pitches, something Meisian, parts of a church, orchards, fountains, straightforward corridors, a chunk of Parliament, and a Buzzcock’s single cover are some examples.

Jacob first conceived the series in 2011 as part of an invitation to participate in the second edition of San Rocco Magazine: ‘The Even Covering of the Field,’ which explored the idea of ‘the field is where we live’. In their own description of the field, these drawings investigate space as a sprawl of fragments that stretch to the horizon. They probe contemporary space as an all-consuming territory, an inescapable terrain that encrusts the earth and assimilates everything – the densities of cities, the grandest of monuments, the conventions of everyday life, everything built, and even what might be left of the wilderness. They are maps of empires with enclaves and exclaves, borders and passageways, and ever-amalgamating components that make up a sprawling world of conglomerations and aggregations.

‘Empire of Ice Cream’ sits in a tradition that includes Piranesi’s “Campo Marzio” and Archizoom’s “No-Stop City”; drawings that elucidate architectural ideas as much as they do real places, and that give graphic form to concepts and sensations as much as physical structures.

As Sam Jacob describes:
’Every piece of architecture is a world. Each an empire within its own borders. But outside of these perfect islands of architecture the city they make up renders them fragments. We experience them as fragmented sequences of different worlds. And as the city itself remains in a constant state of construction and destruction.’

Jacob’s synthesis of fragmented structures and half-located memories take physical form through the three sculptures in the exhibition. They were initially conceived for the exhibition ‘pieces’ at the Soane Museum in 2015 as a response to the museum’s collection of ancient sculpture fragments. Lenin’s Urn explores “the effect of history on objects,” and takes its cue from the shape of a Victorian railing finial outside the Tavistock Square house inhabited by Vladimir Lenin – the communist politician that led Russia and then the Soviet Union from 1917 until 1924. The finial piece was 3D-scanned, enlarged and then carved on a computer-numerically-controlled (CNC) router to produce a faithful recreation of the original object. Two sculptures both entitled A False Description of the Thing Destroyed combine found fragments from antiquity with fired plasticine, one a Roman pottery jug 1st century AD found amongst a ship wreck and the other a 3rd century BC Greek ceramic shard.

Gallery open: Wednesday—Friday 11-6pm, Saturday 12-5pm or by appointment

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Exhibiting artistsToggle

Sam Jacob

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