04/04/2019
Objectspace’s major exhibition ‘The Room’ explores how interior space is constructed and expressed through ornamentation and design. Knight Associates contribution to ‘The Room’ examines ideas of waste and production inherent to the architecture and design industry, and how these can be reinterpreted through craft and making processes.
Untitled (Presque Rien) references Duchamp’s readymades and composers of the Musique Concrète period through the manipulation of found materials. The space consists of over three-thousand timber off-cuts laid to form an elaborate parquetry floor and collected woodchips and sawdust – combined with a natural clay and silica mixture – to create a rough, stucco-like plaster finish to the walls; all materials salvaged from the construction process of ‘The Room’ itself.
The space creates an environment that demonstrates the immersive potential of material craft and tactility through processes of reclamation and reuse. The interior bears no further intervention beyond its surface treatment and seeks to reevaluate waste material demonstrating that, within excess, we can find further expression.
‘The Room’ is a series of interconnected built structures designed by Knight Associates, featuring curator decorative art and design at Te Papa Justine Olsen in collaboration with contemporary jeweller Karl Fritsch, curator and writer Emma Ng, artist and curator Ane Tonga in collaboration with artist Ani O’Neill, and interior designer Rufus Knight with architect Mijntje Lepoutre.
With special thanks to Calavera Ltd. and Ambitec
Objectspace ‘The Room’, 6 Apr–19 May 2019. Photography by Simon Wilson.
