Look Over, guest publication - Anne Tallentire and JOAN Publishing
Description
Organising the book’s chronology around the time log of a public event, Anne Tallentire invites us into the activity of plotting a number of (1:1) diagrams of domestic rooms across the emptied-out ICA theatre in London.
Upon this joyous illumination of the stains of past productions and mass gatherings appears a new assembly of enactors, who summon the social sediment of the ICA as a spirit of communal activity. This new event butts against the extremities of the room. A laser level and tape measure cut across the seams of dusty bricks, the patchwork painted floorboards, a leftover bass bin, electric cables, and plywood stage to inscribe abstractions of interior spaces in builder’s graphic tape.
These ambiguously intentioned drawings gain political purchase when we imagine ourselves residing within the cramped dimensions being unfolded. We remember the premise of our lives upon the buildings that we have subsided into, and those responsible for them. This act of contextual comparison is a key leverage of the book. A socialist motivation that ignites the agency of our collective imagination to participate in the language and critique of housing provision.
~~
The red laser beam sears a question in my mind: for whom is this architectural tool of measure working? Anne Tallentire invites us to mitigate the inevitable division in the answer to this question with her chilling sketches-in-tape of “habitable” living spaces permitted under current government legislation. This book’s rendering of these spaces is temporary, porous, and contestable. It is designed for us to become part of its manifestation; a democratic exception that compels me to believe it is possible again.
– Joseph Noonan-Ganley
~~
Anne Tallentire is an artist whose work seeks to reveal systems that inform the overlooked working practices of everyday life. She was a recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists in 2017 and is represented by Hollybush Gardens, London.
Look Over coincides with Anne’s solo exhibition ‘Material Distance’, at the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, 8 October 2022 – 14 January 2023
Look Over is published by JOAN in collaboration with Kingston Fine Art Stanley Picker Programme.