Hasta La Ideas

Accept & Proceed has curated an exhibition by set designer Gemma Tickle as part of a project to turn leftover space at its East London studio into a gallery.

Tickle, who has designed ad and editorial sets for MTV, John Lewis, British Airways and Nike, has created a multi-coloured installation inspired by balloons. Her work will be on display to visitors and passers-by from September 5 until November 8.

“The brief for the project was to create something big, bold, thoughtful and engaging on a stretch of what could be described as a very drab road,” she explains in a video on the making of the project (below).

“[Gemma] is a master of creating objects which are on first glance simple and understood however it’s on the second look that you see there’s another level to the work … with ‘Pop’, she has created a series of objects which represent the essence of fun: party balloons, however, these have been turned on their head slightly,” says A&P creative director Matthew Jones.

Tickle’s exhibition is the third Accept & Proceed have hosted at their studio since late 2012 – the first, a collaboration with Sennep, was inspired by street scenes projected onto the gallery’s walls by car headlights. “We recorded this live, and then re-mixed and re-presented the scenes onto the gallery wall, thereby highlighting something which would usually be missed or overlooked,” explains Jones.

This was followed by an exhibition with architect Carl Turner earlier this year, which featured a deconstructed version of his RIBA award-winning sliphouse that housed plans, scale models and an iPad walkthrough of the building.

After Tickle’s show, the studio will be working on an exhibition with Swiss sound artist Zimoun and photographer Giles Revell.

“We had been in the studio for a few months when we realised just how many people travel up and down the Kingsland Road from Shoreditch to Dalston – the ground-floor of our space is a window onto East London. We always had people shading their eyes and peering in, so thought it would be good to give them something great to look at,” says Jones.

“Every exhibition shown has at it’s heart an intriguing narrative to tell, revealing hidden and layered beauty within the subject matter whilst being appropriately challenging to the norm. We choose people who have similar values to their work as we do. These don’t need to be graphic designers, in fact we think it’s better if they’re not. It’s given us the opportunity to speak to people outside of our usual sphere of work, which has been really rewarding,” says Jones.

Accept & Proceed has also launched a website to promote the project, named 43m3 after the cubic area of the space, and the studio’s designers will be taking it in turns to create window graphics and invitations for each event. As well as brightening up the office, Jones hopes it will lead to a number of collaborations with creatives from different fields.

“Since working with Sennep on the first exhibit, we’ve partnered with them on several live briefs. We’ll hopefully get to work with Gemma in the future on a concept store or pop-up space, and as for Carl, he’ll be the first person we call to look at at our new studio in the distant future,” says Jones.

See Pop! By Gemma Tickle from September 5 until November 8 at Unit 2 Sheldon Building, 1 Baltic Place, Kingsland Road, N15AQ. To find out more about the 43m3 project click here.

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