Hotel Elephant’s temporary gallery space, in the old doctors surgery on the Heygate Estate, provides an unusual and poignant location to create and exhibit artworks.
Awaiting demolition, the Heygate Estate was once home to more than 3,000 people. It is simultaneously volume and void, a mass that dominates its surroundings, yet also a vast collection of empty and functionless spaces.
Nathan Murphy is a sculptor whose focus is the creation of participatory experiences through site-specific, sculptural installations.
Murphy was asked to create a piece, which reacted to or interacted with, the physical, material and architectural nature of the Heygate.
His interest in Modernist sculptural language, architectonic and Geometric form is brought together in his response to the neo-brutalist architecture of the site.
Cheryl Field’s ‘breathing’ inflatable structures present an interesting juxtaposition to the works of Murphy and Powell.
The installation at Hotel Elephant will draw inspiration from the sinuous spaces and voids that the various spiraling bridges create around the Heygate estate. Wanting to play with the physics of filing space, but do so with the most insubstantial and temporal of materials; air, sound and light.
Reuben Powell’s work is concerned with the weight and scale of his environment and the impact on the individuals that experience it. His recent project documenting the regeneration of the Elephant and Castle comprises of large-scale drawings of construction and demolition site ‘s and paintings on to tin-plate steel. Powell’s studio is in the old community centre adjacent to our gallery space, and will be open for visitors to explore.
Volume & Void is part of the Art Licks Weekend & Elefest, the annual creative festival for the Elephant and Castle.
