While nature is repressed, certain elements are included in the plans of the 'new reality'...
In his book Beyond the Plan, Stephen Willats observes the ways architects and town planners attempt to control the untamed, disorder of nature within the fixed framework of the urban environment; how the 'repression' of nature is achieved in housing estates or office complexes – trees and plants isolated within cement borders for example; and how natural elements are appropriated and encoded into 'symbols of order' through the use of Utopian materials such as aluminium and glass.
But these hints of nature, however separated, controlled or repressed, are welcome in an inner city environment. Tessellating concrete hexagons that are a reminder of the ideal building block; the communal garden in my estate that, despite being fenced off, provides a playground for children in the summer...
In her 2012 film Pageant Roll, Jessica Warboys introduces fixed frameworks and modernist geometries to an 'untamed' Cornish landscape. A bright red wooden block balances on an ancient standing stone, imitating an almost-square opening in the rock; a plastic hula hoop creates an elliptical frame through which to view the branches of a bare winter tree. They are surreal juxtapositions, elegant, poetical. The angles and arcs of the man-made objects contrast with the disorder of nature, configuring the scene like a geographer's quadrat.
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Ernst May, German pioneer of modern city planning, designed the Oceanic Hotel in Mombassa, Kenya in the late 1950s. Matthew Houlding's meticulous MDF and Perspex constructions shown recently at Ceri Hand Gallery, describe beautifully the idealism of May's vision: Despite their bright colours, complex layers and playful geometries, Houlding's works are rigid and lifeless. Model swimming pools are empty; draped Hawaiian shirts are completely still. There is no movement in this world from wind, sunlight, water. These blueprint structures remain unpopulated (or have been abandoned): "The dream is forever present, forever promising, forever withholding."
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Ernst May, German pioneer of modern city planning, designed the Oceanic Hotel in Mombassa, Kenya in the late 1950s. Matthew Houlding's meticulous MDF and Perspex constructions shown recently at Ceri Hand Gallery, describe beautifully the idealism of May's vision: Despite their bright colours, complex layers and playful geometries, Houlding's works are rigid and lifeless. Model swimming pools are empty; draped Hawaiian shirts are completely still. There is no movement in this world from wind, sunlight, water. These blueprint structures remain unpopulated (or have been abandoned): "The dream is forever present, forever promising, forever withholding."
After visiting the show I bought a roll of yellow tracing paper, which I've been using in my collage experiments.