The exhibition provokes us to think about the conditions of social and psychological instability in which we currently live. It draws attention to the vital role of public services, whose fragility has been exposed by the ongoing pandemic. For example, one of Yass’s films documents a hospital undergoing demolition from the perspective of the dying building, revealing a beleaguered NHS; in another film, the BBC appears vulnerable as its visionary TV Centre is dismantled for real estate. The sensory impact of these works will be fully experienced when exhibited in Ambika P3.
Since its inception, Ambika P3 has been developing innovative methods for forming a distinctly experimental art site, rather than a gallery or cinema. This exhibition will further question the multiple relationships between artist, image, space, and viewer, as well as the collaborative role of the curator as designer and co-producer.
Falling Away is co-curated by film-maker and Ambika P3 curator Michael Mazière and Davide Deriu, Reader in Architectural History & Theory at the University of Westminster. The exhibition is informed by Deriu’s research into vertigo in the city as well as Maziere’s interdisciplinary curatorial practice. It will be accompanied by a symposium, secondary school and community workshops. An exhibition catalogue, freely available in print and open access, comprises essays by art writers, historians and critics as well as by the curators.
Falling Away at Ambika P3: a video by Catherine Yass and Michael Maziere, with Nick Gordon Smith (camera), is available here