UAL: CSM – Interrogating The Brutiful

22 May 2015 to 12 June 2015

Centeral Saint Martins BA Culture, Criticism and Curation with 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning are pleased to present INTERROGATING THE BRUTIFUL, an exhibition revolving around the concept of debating buildings.

This exhibition explores the “Brutiful”; the beauty often overlooked in decking architecture. The selected works within this show expire the allure of ruin and a fascination with visual urban structure that have become vacant over time and left to decay. Human interactions with these sites, wether through art or by merely recognising them, are vital as changing state from operative to vacant encourages a unique experience for those who enter them, thus evoking a kind of curious nostalgia within us, a wonder about a time that isn’t our own and a drive to find within them a sense of the past.

The artists in this exhibition consider the “Brutiful” in these sites, proposing different views of the places. The photographs of Andrea Pappagallo explore harmony and balance, the thrill of risk and discovery, the emotive present upon entering a site of ruin. Sam Walker’s photographs are passionate comment on the London housing situation with perspective and colours permeating his photographs with an evocative melancholia. Daniel Linnik–Zhuravliev and Pavel Hrodskyi’s video work guides the viewer into an unusual exploration of a space by giving light to its neglected elements. Sam Walker nd Serena Emtiaz’s video work investigates how major cities have been used as roadways to changing the way people view their own communities.

At the core of these works is a collective experience of continual change that occurs as humans move through space and time, altering our places ad evoking emotive responses to our senses of place. INTERROGATING THE BRUTIFUL draws on these emotions to encourage the acknowledgement of vacant buildings as key elements in a story of a city at a time when cities are changing rapidly before our eyes.