Thinking Through Three Building is a testbed and ‘provisional’ exhibition. The artist’s ongoing transdisciplinary project Three Building employs material and textual processes to think about decommissioned and redeveloped institutional architectures such as those of hospitals and asylums in relation to institutional observation and confinement and patient autonomy, and memory and historical erasures of experience through architectural redevelopment.

For Thinking Through Three Building the gallery space will include the on-site assembling of ‘provisional paintings’, using abstraction and painted surfaces on papers drawn from discarded online shopping packaging and other retrieved materials, photographic projection onto recycled surfaces, writing performances, and participatory events.

The first week (26 – 29 July) is open by appointment only. The artist welcomes informal conversations around the work, its ideas, processes, methods, and edits of making, and the processes of installation as practice. They also welcome the donation of discarded packaging papers (not cardboard, bubble-wrap, or plastics). Email E.Bolland@shu.ac.uk if you would like to be part of any of the above.

The second week (31 July – 5 August) is open to the public with the exhibition provisionally ‘fixed’ and will include two events:

1. 1. Thursday 3rd August, 2 pm – 4.30. Deep Dive #1 is a space for artists and writers to come together to undertake an ‘archaeology’ of their sketchbooks and notebook (physical or digital). The event will be hybrid, with participants both in the gallery space and joining remotely via Zoom. We will ask ourselves: What did I note that was so important? Is it still of interest? Or not? What has time done to this material? What have I forgotten? What threads/webs are to be found? Deep Dive is not intended as a space for having to share the content of our archives, but rather as a space to be together as we undertake these processes. If conversations and configurations naturally and safely emerge, these could be built on, but this would not be the primary aim of the group in the first instance. There will be a google doc for participants to add notes and thoughts on the process should they wish, but there is no obligation. Places for physical participation are strictly limited, with remote joining more plentiful. If you are interested in being part of Deep Dive, email E.Bolland@shu.ac.uk.

1. Thursday 3 August 6 pm – 7.30 pm Speaking Architectures: readings by the artists and other artists and writers on the concepts of ‘architectures’ and other kinds of construction. Line up tbc. Booking is not essential but it would be helpful to email to get an idea of numbers.