Hasta La Ideas

Currently showing at the Pump House Gallery in London is an exhibition curated by Paul Gravett that celebrates the work of four artists known for their experiments with comic book art: Dave McKean, Warren Pleece, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, and Adam Dant…

Daniel Merlin Goodbrey describes a hypercomic as “a webcomic with a multi-cursal narrative structure. In a hypercomic the choices made by the reader may influence the sequence of events, the outcome of events or the point of view through which events are seen.” Gravett has attempted to bring this proposition to life in a gallery context at the Pump House by introducing interactive elements to the work, and playing with the way visitors navigate through the space.

The show opens with a work by Warren Pleece, which illustrates the lives of four dysfunctional tenants in an apartment block, Montague Terrace. The wall display in the installation follows a conventional comic book style (shown above, with detail top), but the piece also includes a series of animated films of the characters, which visitors can activate by pressing different door buzzers on the wall of the space.

One floor up is a display of works by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, which form “an alternative history for the gallery as an archive for infamous glam-rock dictator Hieronymus Pop and charts a day in the life of its lone archivist”. Three large works are shown – illustrating the archivist’s ‘work’, ‘play’ and ‘dreams’ – and their comic strips can be read in a number of different ways, depending on the viewer’s choice. Goodbrey is also exhibiting scenes from an imaginary Hieronymus Pop concert in the boating shelter next to the Pump House, and new elements to the work will be added online throughout August and September, at e-merl.com/archivist.

Dave McKean combines narrative illustration and sculpture in his installation for the Pump House (details shown above). Titled The Rut, the work describes a disturbing childhood event through a series of drawings and large sculptural works. McKean’s work blends into Adam Dant’s work for the show, due to the architecture of the Pump House, which has a mezzanine floor in the top space. On the top floor, Dant also exhibits a narrative piece, which takes the audience on an anatomical  journey across the city via the library works of the fictitious Doctor London. The piece consists of a number of wooden bookcases that house a series of unusual tomes, painted in oil on canvas (detail from the work shown below).

With Hypercomics, Gravett has managed to successfully take comic book art out of its traditional book setting and expand it into the gallery space, without losing its core narrative themes. The show will be on at Pump House (which is located in Battersea Park, perfect for a late summer stroll) until September 26, and is accompanied by a number of talks, events and screenings throughout its run. For more details, visit pumphousegallery.org.uk.

Photographer Logan MacDougall Pope has sent us his images of this lakeside retreat in Sri Lanka made using a stray shipping container and timber from weapon boxes.

Holiday Cabana at Maduru Oya, designed by Sri Lankan architect Damith Prematikake, sits on an army training camp surrounded by jungle and faces onto a lake with mountains beyond.

The dwelling is made only of materials found on-site such as timber from weapon boxes and railway sleepers.

Built for a lieutenant, it was constructed without skilled labour, employing soldiers under the architect’s instruction.

All photographs are by Logan MacDougall Pope.

Here’s some more from the architect:

Holiday Cabana at Maduru Oya

The architect handled the renovation project at ‘Maduru Oya’ Army Camp where the training school for Special Forces of the Sri Lankan army is located. The camp is surrounded by jungle and faces the lake front of Maduru Oya.

‘Maduru Oya’ lake front was is the back drop with a range of mountains making the contextual enclosure towards the land side of the camp. The visual axis towards the mountain range takes the visitor’s mind into different settings due to the water of the lake front, the solid mountains with the green belt under a canopy of blue sky. It is an inviting place to relax.

While the architect & the client were having a discussion on the renovation project near the lake front, the client did not forget to talk about the tranquility of the surrounding setting. The discussion took place an idealist setting, endorsing the need to enhance architecturally a place for relaxation with the lake front.

There were some containers abandoned after the war. They were lying without being made use of. The containers with their enormous interior space could provide the architect an excellent opportunity to design a setting using them as part of the created space.

Click above for larger image

The conceptual sketch was done by the Architect considering all the natural and man made elements already available in the setting. The Client was advised to find the material such as timber strips form the old bunkers and weapon boxes, old used ‘H’ irons, rods, used railway sleepers for the interior and exteriors. The idea was to create the space using the available resources within the surrounding environment.

Click above for larger image

But the most challenging task in this scheme was to create a resting place that could enable the visitor to experience the environmental quality and the space without making any interruption or damage to the existing natural ambience. Further, there was no trained skilled construction team undertake the project to make it a reality except the soldiers’ who were in the camp. The architect must ensure that the soldiers are able to transform the imagined abstraction into reality.

At the end holiday cabana at Maduru Oya became the ideal destination for the traveler seeking a relaxing and rustic vacation by specious, quiet, and tranquil.

Click above for larger image

Holiday Cabana at Maduru Oya
Principal Architect: Damith Prematikake
Associate Designer: Anil Arumpura
The total Project area: 700 Sq.ft
Project Period: One month
Client: Lieutenant Colonel Chandimal Peiris (SF Camp – Maduru Oya)

See also:

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Container Studio by MB Architecture	OceanScope by AnL Studio	Cop15 pavilion by MAPT

Those working in or visiting central London recently may have noticed the newly-redecorated Wardour News in Soho.

To help promote Creative Review, we funded the redecoration of the shop front and the addition of a new blind.

Before anyone accuses us of ‘ripping off’ our idea from Wallpaper* or Monocle, both of whom have also given central London newsagents similar treatments recently, this kind of thing has been standard practice for magazines for years: Wardour News was previously done out in the red and white of Cosmopolitan, for example.

What has changed, though, is the importance of such activities. As well as being hit by the rise of the internet, magazine newsstand sales, particularly small titles such as ours, have also felt the knock-on effect of changes in retail. Finding the title, even in central London, is now much harder as fewer shops see value in devoting large amounts of space to magazines. The closure of Borders, especially the Oxford Street branch, hit the smaller magazines in particular very hard. It’s a vicious circle – sales drop, so shops give them less space, so sales drop further.

Which all means that sticking our logo on the front of a newsagent in an area where a high proportion of our readers work and visit has practical as well as promotional value.

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