The Neighbour was a commission by the Arts Catalyst UK, in partnership with P3.
Production: Gillean Dickie, Stewart Gough
Automation: Cory Burr Design
Photography (Southampton, Bristol, London): Carla Wright, Ashok Sukumaran
Curator: Rob La Frenais
Many thanks are due to:
Nicola Triscott, Nahum Mantra, Richard Couzins, Michael Maziere, Shaina Anand.
The Neighbour is an installation in P3, a 14,000 sq. foot basement deep under the University of Westminister, in Central London. This hall used to be a concrete-testing facility for the UK's highway system.
The work consists of two walk-in objects: mobile habitats that were built in the early 1980's, around the end of a period of intense imaginations and activity around caravaning, travellers, architectural speculations on mobility, and low-income prefab housing, in the UK. The first object is a "static" mobile home, which now moves slowly down the length of the room. It slides past the neighbour: a camper van, which, as it turns out, is quite obsessed with the former. Together they alternately assemble or stretch thin a "neighbourhood" - a nearness in time, a bug or two (an eavesdrop), some english lace - and an acknowledgement of our inability, historically, to escape each other.
The two "homes" additionally contain objects, books, paperwork and audio tapes that were found in them, or were removed from one to the other.
Artist's note on the project is here.
The Neighbour Forum: Wednesday March 25, 6pm.
Discussing ideas raised by the exhibition The Neighbour, the neighbour forum features talks by:
Ashok Sukumaran, David Garcia (Dean, Chelsea College of Art, co-initiator the Next 5 Minutes conferences) and Murray Fraser (architectural historian, University of Westminister).
More images and info coming shortly.