Other Rooms - Camden Art Centre

Challenging modes of representation, Milan-based artist Nathalie Du Pasquier traverses boundaries between art and design.

Du Pasquier became known in the early 1980s as a founding member of the Italian design collective Memphis. Since 1987 she has focused on painting, creating bold, abstract and still life compositions which play with architectural planes and perspective.

In Other Rooms, Du Pasquier expanded beyond the canvas to inhabit the entirety of the gallery spaces as a field of composition. Modular designs and geometric shapes covered the walls, transforming the galleries into an immersive environment of constructed landscapes. As with her early design work, these vividly-coloured compositions examined the expressive relationship between two- and three-dimensional forms, space and representation to navigate ways of viewing the world. The installation also housed a new series of drawings made daily throughout the summer alongside seven new ceramic sculptures, one for each day of the week, developed from Du Pasquier’s sustained interest in the subtle autobiographical nature of the still life.

Other Rooms represents Du Pasquier’s desire to transform spaces with her own means, devoid of architectural rules and utilising the tools of the painter – line, colour and form – to transport the viewer to another place.

Images Artist Film Related Events The Artist

Talk: Antoni Malinowski

8 November, (2017)

Artist Antoni Malinowski presents an illustrated talk on colour, space and time within the work of Nathalie Du Pasquier.

Antoni Malinowski is an artist who works with pigment, light, movement and time, investigating the dynamic relationship that exists between pictorial and architectural spaces. Malinowski works in a variety of media including painting on canvas and walls and video. His paintings have been exhibited internationally. Following his major solo exhibition at Camden Arts Centre, London in 1997 Antoni Malinowski spent several months as an Abbey Scholar at the British School at Rome researching  ancient Roman wall paintings. This triggered many collaborations with architects on permanent interventions in architecture. Last year Malinowski completed a large commission for the foyer areas at the Rafael Viñoly designed Mathematical Institute, Oxford. Spectral Flip is a two part mural painted directly onto the south and the north facing walls.

Performance: Yong Min Cho - Other Objects

Various dates and times throughout the duration of the Nathalie Du Pasquier exhibition.

Dance performer Yong Min Cho transfered objects selected by Du Pasquier throughout the galleries.

Art Theory: Space, Structures and Society

15 – 29 November (2017)
In response to the current exhibitions, this three-week course led by Stephanie Sutton examined how artists, designers and architects have responded to and often challenged dominant forms of urban and social space. Taking a chronological approach from 1945 onwards, it introduced the idea of space as socially ‘produced,’ constructed and often contested by different groups over time. Alongside examples from architecture and design history, participants also considered everyday practices which challenge and (re)produce space, such as playgrounds, self-build communities and local history groups.

Week 1 introduced key ideas on space and place, focusing on the post-war city, self-build communities and the ‘right’ to inhabit and occupy land.

Week 2 explored design for alternative living and sites of collective action. This session will consider how designers and practitioners were responding to shifting socio-political contexts, from post-war anxiety to the influence of pop culture in the making of radical alternatives.

Week 3 will examine how space can be represented, with a particular focus on the non-existent and imaginary. We will think about how different groups reimagine and relocate space and place.

Stephanie Sutton is a curator and researcher, working across art, design and architecture. Her research has focused on post-war architecture, urban history and the material culture of childhood. She has worked with organisations including RIBA, Focal Point Gallery, Camden Art Centre, V&A Museum of Childhood and the Royal College of Art. Stephanie holds an MA in Design History from the RCA/V&A and will be undertaking a collaborative PhD at Queen Mary, University of London and the V&A Museum of Childhood, entitled Adventures in the City: The Politics and Practice of Children’s Adventure Play in Britain, c. 1955 – 1997.

 

The Artist

Nathalie Du Pasquier was born in Bordeaux in 1957 and relocated to Milan in 1979. Until 1986, she worked as a designer and was a founding member of the design group Memphis. In 1987 painting became her main activity. Between 1989 and 2008 she worked regularly with Le Cadre Gallery, Hong Kong, allowing her to develop from her early still lifes to more abstract compositions. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions, including The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (1992) and Pace Gallery, London (2017). The first comprehensive exhibition of Du Pasquier, curated by Luca Lo Pinto was held at Kunsthalle Wien in 2016 and a second iteration will take place at the ICA Philadelphia in September 2017.