Lawson Park Library

Lawson Park Library was commissioned by Grizedale Arts and is permanently installed at their HQ in Cumbria, UK. It follows a non-alphabetical, project-related categorisation system that considers the ethos, themes and methods of Grizedale Arts in its parallel activities as arts organisation and active local farm. as part of this collection, Guestroom created an additional category, Ways of Living, that could reflect on the site and ideas raised in the library from a more external point of view, looking at motivations and concepts of built environments and corresponding ideas of freedom and transformation. The library was built to include mobile shelf units, which continue to appear in different contexts to unfold different aspects of the collection. 

images: Lawson Park Library, Grizedale Arts; mobile shelf unit, Subvision, Hamburg, 2009

ways of living

two-part installation including a reading room developed from a mobile library category conceived for Lawson Park Library at Grizedale Arts and an adjacent screening room showing two video works. videos are based on interviews that reflect from a reader’s perspective how certain books or writers have influenced the personal conduct of life or shaped specific experiences. focusing on one person and writer at a time, readers appear as both protagonist and narrator:

1. I do this I do that (Charles Bainbridge on Frank O’Hara)

2. La possession du monde (Jane Lee on Georges Duhamel)

Subvision, curated by Brigitte Kölle, a project by HfbK Hamburg and Kunsthalle Hamburg, 2009

Choir

the two-part installation and event responded to Louis Malle’s film My Dinner With Andre. The film evolves from a dinner conversation in a New York restaurant that circles around different approaches to theatre and by extension conduct of life. Installed in the gallery is a film montage that juxtaposes specific viewpoints of the characters in the film relating to notions of how to live. The repetition of oppositional text and image is played out as two voices swap characters between two monitors that play a slideshow of found images from library books. 

For the second part of the project, Guestroom is hosting a small private dinner and film screening for watching the actual film, instigating some of the ideas of the film into the space and discussion.

developed for the exhibition It’s not for Reading, it’s for Making, FormContent, London, 2009

Space Studios

The Librarians, Space Studios, London curated by Paul Pieroni, London, 19 March - 17 April, 2010

Paperplane

Caline Aoun, Niall De Buitléar, Guestroom, Vera Klute

paper visual arts journal

review of PAPERPLANE: THE JOINERY, DUBLIN, 3-9 FEBRUARY 2010, curated by Mary Conlon

papervisualart.com/?p=1516

the librarians

8 individual portraits of artists and writers introducing their private collections. the video installation uses the selections to reflect on the relationship of practice and influence, at the same time building a complex constellation in its own right as relationships and correalations develop between individuals and ideas. originally commissioned by Grizedale Arts for Afoundation, London, 2008

with: Rebecca Bligh, Lorenza Boisi, Pablo Bronstein, Michael Leslie, Tom McCarthy, Shaun Pubis, Adam Sutherland, Isabel Waidner

Reading Room

Reading Room comprises a video collection of reading performances. recordings juxtapose the scenario of a public reading stage with those private settings. Readers choose their own material and their readings form episodes of an evolving, self-building library. origianlly commissioned by Grizedale Arts and Afoundation, UK, 2008

Passerby

a project curated by Ruth Höflich & Maria Benjamin that took place between 2007 and 2008 in our studio, a former shop in East London. artists were invited to respond to the specific location including the bay windows facing the street and a nearby unused billboard. The work was shown successively, with each contribution standing alone, at the same time forming part of a rotating narrative through the repeated use of space and the overlaps that occurred as a result. 

participating artists: michael dean, clare gasson, claire hooper, rowena hughes, athanasios argianas, majia timonen

nought to sixty

an ambitious, fast-moving programme of exhibitions and events that presenting solo projects by sixty emerging British- and Irish-based artists over the course of six months

Guestroom, Nash and Brandon Rooms on Monday 2 June at 7pm, curated by Richard Birkett, ICA London, 2008

images: The Librarians, Maria Benjamin & Ruth Höflich, installation view; Reading Room, adjustable reading stage with live performances

We

new and ongoing developments in contemporary collaborative practices including interactive performance, self-run publishing, art objects and curatorial practices.  

curated by Jen Liu, Lizabeth Olivera Gallery, Los Angeles, 

5 July - 16 August, 2008

with: Dexter Sinister, Guestroom, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, OJO, Public Holdiay Projects and others. 

toadball tv

curated and commissioned by Grizedale Arts, GSK Contemporary, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2009

toadball.tv/works/

“The station will evolve and develop over the next 2 years with a programme of artist projects and audience response. On this site you will find process, thinking and criticism of evolving art works. Each work will be presented from a series of different perspectives, not necessarily the artist‘s own vision of how their work would look best… Are the visual arts really as unpopular as we think they are, is there a purpose for art outside of the gallery/consumer arena, does art making actually impact on culture and society?…”

zoo London 2009

A change of venue and focus for this year’s Zoo Art Fair as they relocate East to Shoreditch High Street to show a mix of commercial, non-commercial and project spaces alongside curated exhibitions and booths

image: Guestroom booth presentation, Zoo, London, 2009