To celebrate Annely Juda Fine Art’s 35-year tenure at 23 Dering Street and move to new premises at 16 Hanover Square, acclaimed Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata has created a unique and unprecedented site-responsive installation, Demolition. This installation radically deconstructs both Dering Street exhibition spaces and will be the last show in this space.
Constructed over a period of 14 days from materials cut and salvaged from demolishing the existing gallery walls and panelling, visitors are invited to navigate the semblance of a building site in a state of demolition. Built in the 1920s, Dering Street has been the gallery’s home for 35 years and the artist’s deconstruction of the top two floors’ interior exposes layers of memory and history. Kawamata has a longstanding relationship with the gallery and we’re delighted that he will offer a symbolic final installation for Dering Street, having first installed a site-specific sculpture on the exterior of the gallery’s last location – Tottenham Mews – in 1990 before it moved to Dering Street.
A number of maquettes in this exhibition will be made by the artist on site during the course of installation and shown on remaining walls, alongside existing maquettes made in preparation for previous exhibitions at the gallery, offering another insight into the history of the gallery. Kawamata’s “maquettes” are in fact wall-based, three-dimensional works that sometimes relate directly to his site-specific projects but are works in their own right. They blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture, often protruding 20-30cm from the wall in undulating irregularity.
Kawamata’s sculptural installations are direct responses to their environment. Mostly made from reclaimed, locally-sourced wood, his site-specific projects have been installed globally, each in conversation with their surroundings. Existing somewhere between art and architecture, Kawamata’s installations appear to grow independently out of their surroundings and give rise to questions about traditional forms of shelter and the effect of socio-economic contexts on the built environment. His signature bird’s nests and tree huts, for example, point to the possibility of reconstruction and protective habitats. His works are both structurally solid yet fragile and give the deliberately ambiguous impression of both construction and deconstruction, inviting us to re-evaluate and consider the fragility of our everyday built surroundings.
