Private View / Wednesday 14 July 2010 6:30 - 8:30pm All residents of Golden Lane Estate & Barbican are Welcome.

Societea II - Tea, Time & Interiors
Exhibition continues 15 - 31 July 2010

In the seventh exhibition of the SUPER ESTATE PROJECTS, British artist, Camilla Brueton, extends her body of work on examining the relationship between people and architecture. Resulting in a series of drawings and photographic montages that highlight how the individual lives and makes their mark within the uniformity of high-density housing. The living spaces within Golden Lane Estate are compact but thoughtfully designed. A change in flooring delineates an ‘indoor balcony’ within some studio flats, doors slide rather than open in places, light and air flow through.

Fifty years on from their original conception the design of Golden Lane Estate is still relevant to contemporary living, and Brueton’s work goes some way towards celebrating and highlighting these design features. This exhibition follows on from ‘Societea’, a 2-week community event last summer which transformed the gallery into a ‘tea-hut’, exchanging tea and homemade cake for conversation with the residents of the estate. In the run up to ‘Societea II: Tea, Time and Interiors’, Brueton has turned the tables this time and invited herself round to people’s homes for a cup of tea and a chat exploring how they live, what they think about their space and the Estate, and giving her the chance to document the layout of their living space.

Focusing mainly on studio flats, where intelligent design is paramount due to the limitations of space, Brueton explored resident’s living rooms, the primary social space within a flat. This is where you eat, socialise, and the place you welcome visitors to, in effect the most ‘public’ area of your home. Using photography Brueton captures the different styles, layouts, tastes and personality’s residents project into this space allowing the viewer to get a glimpse into the duo personal and private life of a home. Scratching beneath the uniform exterior of high-density housing, Brueton has been privileged in seeing what it looks like behind some of the colorful front doors of the estate.

Brueton has also produced a series of delicately hand drawn ‘maps’ of various flats visited during her residency. Using mapping extensively in her work, Brueton exploits a system already inherent within our visual vocabulary (a floor plan, a metro map …) to communicate something of the way space is actually used by people and capture an essence of a place, time and activity beyond typical cartography.

Previous examples include a project mapping the use of the Mexico City metro as a site for exchange (beggars, buskers, health care professionals immunising children, political activists spreading the word…), and a large scale text map capturing a snapshot of Roman Road in East London (a vibrant mix of constantly changing shops juxtaposed with businesses which have been in families for generations) and its history, as told by its shopkeepers. Using architects drawings and detailed floor plan as a starting point, Brueton’s maps draw attention to the realities of living compactly and contrast the architect’s imagined spaces with the realities of cotemporary habitation.