South Bank to Southbank
Jo Stanness.
16th June – 29th July
South Bank to Southbank is a project examining and celebrating the aesthetics of post-war architecture between London’s Southbank and South Bank in Middlesbrough. For her first solo exhibition, Jo explores the geometry, design and space of brutalist and modernist structures. Building on previous collages and paintings, this work investigates drawing in two- and three-dimensions, as well as ‘drawing’ with light and shadow. These 3D drawings borrow from the language of architecture and architects’ models. They reimagine existing buildings in a purely aesthetic sense. Here, unlike the original architectural agenda, form need not follow function.
Jo’s choice of materials – paper, pencil, coloured gels and light – are thin and flimsy, seemingly at odds with the strength and solidity of concrete. Although historically, the architecture referenced in this exhibition was designed in the spirit of optimism and rebuilding, it is still being destroyed and swept away as easily as this artwork might be.
It seems fitting that Jo’s work should be presented at Platform A, which has links, both structurally and aesthetically with the well documented brutalist coke bunker built at South Bank by Dorman Long in the 1950’s; a building demolished whilst this work was being made.