Mobile Studio: Display for a Display

Dreamspace is proud to announce the first ever solo-exhibition of the London based architecture & design studio, Mobile Studio. Founded by architects Max Dewdney and Chee-Kit Lai, Mobile Studio has developed an internationally recognized and award winning practice. For the exhibition Display for a Display Mobile Studio will re-visit their archive of works and present four major projects alongside new works developed for the exhibition in a context of public accessibility and critique. The works represent their ongoing research into the fields of public engagement and institutional display typologies and the exhibition aims to place the designs and the city inside one other in the contested public/private space of the gallery. Display for a Display will bring together Mobile Studio's commissioned work for museums and galleries, not as static items but as active display strategies, each housing historical and new objects relating to an exploration of the idea that the space (and design) of the archival museum is an extension of the living city rather than a removed space of abstract analysis. The exhibition will focus on the idea of the user’s perception as a site-specific entity which alters in relation to its surroundings. Each display system in the exhibition is designed as a temporary and flexible exhibition structure to allow for museum collections to be accessed by diverse publics in varying on-site and off-site locations. By making the Museum portable, and taking it out into the city the possibility for wider engagement is proposed in which objects, viewers and sites are placed in a new relationship to each other. A programme of public and private events will further investigate notions of engagement design and will act as research sessions, informing Mobile Studio's future practice. The fist event is a public engagement session organized by Celine West with UCL Museum Studies students which will invite local residents groups to interact with the works and analyze their perceived value and relevance. The second event, taking place on April 12th, is a talk by Victoria Thornton (Director of Open City), followed by a discussion and a presentation by Esther Sayers (Founder of Tate Modern’s ‘Raw Canvas' Participation Programme). The exhibition has received some financial support from the Architectural Research Fund (ARF) at UCL as part of a design research project. www.dreamspacegallery.org