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By Edwin Heathcote
Published: October 3 2006, The Financial Times
London's capacity to support emerging
artistic quarters is apparently limitless. Recent years
have seen the white walls of the galleries march relentlessly
eastwards, each enthusiastically touted as the next
big thing.
Westward expansion, though, is the next next big thing.
No more convincing proof of the trend can be needed
than the huge new gallery about to open in the shell
of an old coachworks buried among an uninspiring but
very London low-rise blend of distribution centres,
affordable housing andarterial roads in that odd, indefinable
bit of the capital between White City,Shepherd's Bush
and north Kensington.
The building is the result of about £20m of investment
by the Louis T. Blouin Foundation. For those unfamiliar
with the name, Louise T. Blouin MacBain is chief executive
of the LTB Group, a media empire that embraces the influential
art magazines Art at Auction and Modern Painters, as
well as the website www.artinfo.com. Her foundation,
created only last year, has the admirable, if vague,
aims of encouraging "a better understanding of culture
beyond borders through international co-operation, exchange
and dialogue" and exploring "the broader practical
significance of creativity".
This all sounds nice and a bit fluffy - until you see
the foundation's first building. The brick shell of
the old Barker's Coachworks (where chassis for Rolls
Royce and other top-end automobiles were made from
the 1920s) has been preserved, conserved and enhanced,
the evidence of years of use and abuse, decline and
adaptation stripped away and the original, starkly
functional repetitive rhythm of the façades reinstated. The substantial
structure buried in this hitherto forgotten piece of
the city had undergone a series of insertions and interventions
all attempting to define a new post-industrial role,
none proving too successful. The architects Borgos Dance
(whose offices are nearby) have radically remodelled
the interiors, suspending the upper floors from the roof
to leave a large, clear, column-free gallery on the ground
floor.
The now well-established trend of transforming industrial
space into galleries tends to involve a retention of
the "as found" aesthetic, an acknowledgement
of the layers of history and recent archaeology and the
physical evidence of the damage and abuse inflicted on
the building by its past inhabitants. Although externally
the building's integrity has been retained, inside it
has been stripped naked and rebuilt, to allow the creation
of that expansive new gallery space and the soaring triple-height
lobby that sucks visitors into the structure.
The entrance is a complete surprise.
You would expect an immediate entry into the main space,
the cathedral-like spread of the gallery. Instead there
is that odd fractured triangle, an expressionist anomaly
in thespatial purity of the overall scheme.
The downside of this approach is the
creation of that clinical brilliance so familiar from
art institutions attempting to achieve the spurious "neutrality" beloved
of curators and gallerists. The white space has in fact
become far more loaded, politically, artistically and
economically, than any other form of architectural expression.
But the upside is the creation of an extremely flexible
area capable of accommodating such demanding shows as
the James Turrell exhibition that opens the gallery next
week, and the subsequent show of big sculptures and installations
by Mark Quinn.
At the rear of the main gallery space an upwardly attenuated
café sits in a sliver of space visible through
the capacious industrial, almost Romanesque windows
and defined by a subtly curving rear wall.
The middle floor is intended for events
and receptions but the upper floor provides more gallery
space and superb views across the fast-transforming,
low-lying steppe of the west London wasteland. Illuminated
by a full-length skylight set deep into the ceiling
(beyond the invisible roof trusses) it achieves the
feel of a basilica, possibly the most effective space,
even if it is encumbered by columns.
Orientation on each floor is facilitated
by glimpses into the extruded triangle of the lobby
and by the odd, forlorn modernist landmarks poking
above the skyline, Ernö Goldfinger's still astonishingly brutal Trellick
Tower, Lord Foster's Wembley arch and the insect-like
tower cranes punctuating the horizon at increasingly
frequent intervals.
The building clearly positions itself from inside out.
Its solid brick bulk appears as a powerful presence
on the cityscape, an effect that will be amplified
by a lighting scheme, also designed by James Turrell
with the architects, which will transform its openings
into glowing embers, slowly shifting colour from yellow
throughred.
Even the roof will light up, in another
of Turrell's colour installations, spicing up the plant
rooms on the roof. Still populated by builders rather
than artworks when I visited, it was hard to judge
quite how effective this gallery will be. But even
on the rainy day I was there, the muddy-puddle grey
sky somehow perfectly segueing into the concrete surroundings,
the light was superb, even and brilliant, soaking the
galleries.
This is a building that has the power
and presence to transform a neighbourhood, even though
it has significant help. Mario Testino and Cath Kidston
both have studios on adjacent blocks, John Brown Publishing
and Chrysalis are nearby and Monsoon are currently
building a hugely ambitious complex opposite with architects
Allford Hall Monaghan and Morris. It is one of the
most ambitious arts projects in a city not short of
galleries. It will be intriguing to see if the Foundation
is truly able to encourage that better understanding
of culture but, with this building, it has every chance
of success.
The exhibition of work by James
Turrell opens at the Louise T. Blouin Institute, 3
Olaf Street, London W11, on 12 October. Tel 020
7559 3432
© The Financial Times Limited 2006 |
