Ben Cove, Emma Holden, Rob Olins, Jeanine Coupe Ryding

14 Oct-8 Nov 2009

Overview

The word 'compound' means both some thing formed by compounding or combining parts, elements, etc. and a building or buildings set off and enclosed by a barrier. The first is additive whilst the second is exclusionary. Our exhibition 'Compound' explores this stasis by creating a walled garden with man-made objects. It is an environment that references those of English landscapist Capability Brown, the statuary and stone platforms of Easter Island, Wolf Hilbertz's 'Strategies for Evolutionary Environments' (1972) whose technology is being used to re-build depleted coral reefs, and Dubai?s artificial Palm Islands, amongst others. Environmentalists may take our message to be a commentary on environmental damage; modernists, as the creative power of man. We take it to be inter-permeant, a compound.