Gallery Extracts #2
Concrete and metal sockets, 2023

Gallery DODO modification

We’d been thinking for some time about how we might make a work which brought to attention the modifications made to a specific room in order for it to operate as a gallery – Gallery DODO at Phoenix Art Space in Brighton. The levelling of missing floor, blocking up gaps in the wall, covering service pipes, and introducing power sockets was all largely carried out with invisibility in mind, for the modifications to blend in with the existing modernist architectural surroundings and, as convention has it, to not draw attention away from the art exhibits.

The invitation by the Phony Art Collective to submit work for an exhibition at the Regency Town House, provided the opportunity to present a series of reproductions of these Gallery DODO modifications and for them to stand (or lie) as objects in their own right within the contrast of a Regency setting.

The modernism of Phoenix Art Space (originally named Wellesley House) and the Regency architecture of Brighton have already had an encounter of a not so happy kind when, in order to make way for Wellesley House, a row of Regency houses was demolished. One house in this row had been the home of C.A. Busby, architect of the Regency Town House, and a plaque to him still remains mounted on a slab of concrete and half obscured by some added mosaics at the entrance to Phoenix Art Space.

Hopefully, this new encounter is more amicable.