PLAN8T AIR SUMMER 2019

Gareth Proskourine-Barnett is an artist and educator currently based between Birmingham and London (UK). His inter-disciplinary practice investigates our relationship to place and the way materials embody histories. 

Since graduating with an MA in Communication Design from Central Saint Martins in 2011 he has worked on a range of self-initiated and commissioned projects, taken part in artist residencies and delivered workshops internationally. Alongside his personal practice Gareth collaborates with other designers and writers on publishing projects under the name Tombstone Press. His work has been exhibited at museums and galleries in the UK, China, Denmark, Russia, India and Thailand. 

Gareth is currently working towards a PhD at the Royal College of Art, where his research adopts an essayistic approach (combining film, text and performance) alongside archaeological and archival methods to challenge the historic and social narratives around Brutalist Architecture. Recent exhibitions and residencies include 'On The Subject of Precarity' at Grand Union (UK) and 'Common Ground' at The New Art Gallery Walsall (UK). 

Concrete.rip ｜水泥.rip
Mixed Medium

For the Plan8t artist residency, Gareth has developed a body of work that incorporates sculpture, text, performance and film. The project takes an archive of digitised concrete fragments from the now demolished Birmingham Central Library as a starting point to tell new stories about the future. Gareth has been particularly interested in how he could reimagine the concrete fragments around issues of sustainability and with the material BSBcore, combining his interest in science-fiction storytelling with digital tools and set design. Gareth’s aim is to liberate the concrete from its own entangled history, creating the opportunity to rethink our relationship to the materials of our constructed world(s) and the utopian narratives embedded within them. 

The Birmingham Central Library was an iconic Brutalist design from 1974, embodying a bold new vision for the British city based around the automobile. At the time this chimed with the cities legacy of progress and innovation but we now understand the environmental consequences of such a vision as we enter the era of the anthropocene. The library was demolished in 2016 to make way for a new pedestrian focussed public realm and retail development. Whilst the library had many flaws, exasperated by a chronic lack of funding, the utopian ambition of an equal society built on free and open access to knowledge is something that we need to hold on to - especially in an era defined by growing inequality. 

Spatial Divides for Spaceship Earth｜
地球号太空船的空间划分
Book

Informed by Buckminster Fuller’s concept of ‘Spaceship Earth’ and the idea that we all share one planetary habitat with finite resources, these spatial divides celebrate the potential of BSBcore as a material to revolutionise the future of building in the age of the anthropocene. If we can begin to think of and care for our planet as if it were a giant interior space(ship) - as our collective home - then we may be able to change the catastrophic damage being done to our environment as a result of climate change. The spatial divides are intended to be used as a way to adapt exterior spaces as if they were domestic interiors, blurring the lines between what we conceive as being inside and outside. The spatial divides are designed to be flexible and interactive, allowing the audience to arrange and rearrange the structures into any number of different configurations. The spatial divides will create pathways, spaces between and spaces beyond, using Buckminster Fullers idea of ‘partially overlapping events’ to suggest that there are multiple futures ahead of us and that the possibility to make changes for the greater good are not beyond us.