Unthreading Mandela
– Installation –
A travelling flat-pack exhibition based on the idea of looms, for Totem Media’s “Unthreading” series.
Installations & Exhibitions
Unthreading Mandela / AZA 2010 Pavilion / FNB Art Fair: 12 Bar / AZA 2010 Pavilion / FNB Art Fair: 12 Bar / Passport for Gretchen Wilkins / Mies and the Hut
AZA 2010 Pavilion
– Installation –
Sarah Calburn was the Program Director of the first South African Biennale of Architecture in 2010. Questions around sustainability and the innovative provision of social housing were part of the agenda, which generally constituted a re-imagination of Johannesburg.
With her partner Dustin Tusnovics, Space Matters constructed a ‘pavilion’ on Mary Fitzgerald Square, which aimed to demonstrate the realistic provision of a ‘gap’ / ‘rdp’ house in an Integrated Housing Model using innovative cement-free building materials at the same time as providing a seminal architectural structure in the manner of ‘Festival Pavilions’ world-wide.
The Pavilion was built by teams of women and teenagers from a local squatter community (TinaSonke on the East Rand, organised via the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP)) who through this process gained “on-site training” in sandbag construction . The Pavilion was dismounted by these same teams for re-erection in their community as a community centre.
Installations & Exhibitions
Unthreading Mandela / AZA 2010 Pavilion / FNB Art Fair: 12 Bar / AZA 2010 Pavilion / FNB Art Fair: 12 Bar / Passport for Gretchen Wilkins / Mies and the Hut
FNB Art Fair: 12 Bar
– Installation –
A bar for the FNB Art Fair, 2012. At all previous Art Fairs the queue for drinks was untenable. Here, a giant lampshade lights up a figure of 8 racetrack bar.
Perimeter is long, and drinks are fast.
The original design would have liked to house a projection artist upstairs inside the ‘shade’. Old fashioned airplane stairs were envisaged. The first floor was not to be.
Installations & Exhibitions
Unthreading Mandela / AZA 2010 Pavilion / FNB Art Fair: 12 Bar / AZA 2010 Pavilion / FNB Art Fair: 12 Bar / Passport for Gretchen Wilkins / Mies and the Hut
Passport for Gretchen Wilkins
– Installation –
Out of Melbourne, the American architect Gretchen Wilkins initiated a laporello project between architects in various cities around the world. A travelling project, it gathered moss.
Sarah’s project talks to her theory that Johannesburg is really a series of Wolrd Class Interiors – as opposed to its spurious branding as a ‘world class African city’.
Installations & Exhibitions
Unthreading Mandela / AZA 2010 Pavilion / FNB Art Fair: 12 Bar / AZA 2010 Pavilion / FNB Art Fair: 12 Bar / Passport for Gretchen Wilkins / Mies and the Hut
Mies and the Hut
– Installation –
Conceived as a series of stills for an Exhibition in 2005, this video examined the hypocrisy of white South Africans using vernacular African house forms as garden stores, pool rooms, or pavilions.
Installations & Exhibitions
Unthreading Mandela / AZA 2010 Pavilion / FNB Art Fair: 12 Bar / AZA 2010 Pavilion / FNB Art Fair: 12 Bar / Passport for Gretchen Wilkins / Mies and the Hut
