Suzy Jones

In order for Future Lab to begin considering the ways in which House by Urban Splash could mitigate and adapt to a rapidly changing environmental landscape we needed to understand the baseline.

I led a series of embodied and operational carbon studies and environmental impact assessments of the companies corporate operations and product portfolio, working with collaborators from Arup, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and timber build specialists Andrew Waugh Architects.

The resulting reports provided detailed knowledge and understanding of the company’s carbon footprint, overall environmental impact and the ways in which all could be improved over time.

Information and new knowledge gained during this exercise informed ESG, future land acquisition, bids, product development, sales, marketing, comms and corporate strategies.

Project Meadow was a UKRI funded research and innovation project to exploit the potential of end-to-end digitisation in house design and manufacturing, using existing systems and new digital technologies such as AR, digital twinning and real-time, high-fidelity rendering to provide choice and adaptability which allows customers to ‘co-design’ their own home for their own needs.

In partnership with the University of Northampton, the UK’s Number 1 University for social impact, Project Meadow proposed the potential of this innovation for individuals with early onset dementia – in order to determine whether choice and adaptability can help people in the early stages of this degenerative disease Live Well for Longer in their own home.

Project partners including EPIC games, CAST, Deploi and Animech

Future Lab emerged from a request to establish a research and innovation arm of modern house builder, House by Urban Splash. The company already had a successful R&D team whose remit was reactive to immediate term imperatives but lacked, and needed, a more future focused foresight and innovation space which was unimpeded by day-to-day operational requirements and limitations.

The result was an outwards looking, experimental department whose success depended on a web of collaborative relationship and partnerships.

The strategy I implemented included three priority work streams – People, Planet andProgress –which were often mutually beneficial. The business model included seed funding from House by Urban Splash supplemented by external funding to de-risk experimental practice and innovation.

The structure included an independent advisory board and a dispersed network of specialists in various fields who came together on a project- by-project basis and disbanded when necessary. This lean approach ensured the breadth of expertise that was required and a flexible team able to respond to the level of resource available for each activity.

Pop Goes the Biosphere is a scalable research demonstrator, testing the viability of hyper local and resilient future neighbourhoods. The thesis addresses fuel, water and food security in a post 1.5° climate, assessing closed systems to better understand how we viably generate and distribute energy, how we retain, clean and cycle water, and what role food, waste and nutrient retention plays in these cyclic, potentially interoperable, systems.

To date Pop Goes the Biosphere has been a paper exercise with individual system set ups. It was designed to be scalable, getting truly interesting at neighbourhood scale. This remains something I am keen to explore with the right partner.

The Liverpool Digital City Model was a £500k digital tool developed in partnership with Epic Games, Peel Holdings, The University of Liverpool, Liverpool City Council and Wirral Borough Council. The aim of the Model was to create a professional tool which could be used to engage technical and non-technical teams in planning and development decisions across the city region – informing decisions making use of immersive technology.

The initial investment involved the creation of the digital table and 3d printed model with various pre-loaded programmes which animated the model and helped users understand the city region, development opportunities and proposed new sites in context of the wider map.

The second phase of investment used augmented reality to add complexity to the user experience, enabling users to ‘see’ and almost feel the impact of proposed activities.

27.09.2019 - 29.02.2020

RIBA North, the Building Centre and dRMM Architects present 'Forest of Fabrication,' a research project and exhibition celebrating the possibilities and significance of modern timber architecture.

26.06.2019 - 06.08.2019

To celebrate the work of Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, RIBA in partnership with Grimshaw Architects hosted an exhibition of models, films and drawings at RIBA North on the Liverpool Waterfront.

The exhibition celebrated works ranging in scale and geography: from the renowned Eden Project in Cornwall with its vast clear-span biomes, to Australia’s first significant contemporary rail terminus Southern Cross Station, to New York’s EMPAC facility, a cutting-edge performance space. With exclusive drawings, models and film, we celebrated the evolution of Sir Nicholas Grimshaw’s career and practice over five decades and look at the future of the practice – including the development of Eden Project North on the shores of Morecambe bay.

22.03.2019 - 15.06.2019

"Four characters huddle in discussion, ambling around this peculiar silver shrine. All we hear are the nonsensical murmurings of our assembled cast. They stand with dignity, dressed in their distinctive finery which scrapes through the undergrowth.

It's hard to say who they are. We can only make our own assumptions on the group: an enigmatic spirit dressed with pagan ornament, a theatrical individual balancing a ruler on his head, a daydreaming, exotic looking introvert and in the background a religious-looking man, silent and in distress.

A person's character is what makes them individual, it is who they are. Through In Character, Studio MUTT give life to four characters as architectural compositions of ornament, colour and form. The pieces exist somewhere between a very big model or a very small building in scale and aim to move beyond mere representation or speculation. Instead, the project is an investigation into character and architecture, exploring ornament as a tool through which architecture can communicate, whether this be factual or fictional narratives.

Initially the characters were a result of an investigation into the Sir John Soanne Museum, where they were first shown as Out of Character in 2018. In re-exhibiting these site-specific pieces, Studio MUTT asks how can a changing context affect a reading of architecture? What implications can this have across a building's life cycle, and inversely, ow can we change an existing construction's context to offer new meanings, re-readings and new insights into existing conditions?

Studio MUTT bring the elaborate writings of Sir John Soane to life with In Character, where ornament, colour and form explores the ways in which architecture can communicate with us.

14.03.2019 - 20.05.2019

This exhibition showcases the work of the British Council Venice Fellows who each spent a month in Venice undertaking their own research projects, alongside mediating the British Pavilion exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

14.07.18 - 28.10.18

RIBA North and Liverpool Biennial commissioned Mae-ling Lokko to develop a project using Grow-It-Yourself workshops to produce an architectural structure from agrowaste-fed mycelium (mushrooms). The structure which shifts along its length from 'Root to Rhizome' - from mass produced biomaterial to locally produced biobricks - will be grown, nurtured and installed by students, school children and community groups from Liverpool.

The mushroom grow chambers will be in our city gallery from the end of May 2018 where visitors will be able to see the modules growing, The fully-grown material will be dried forming solid modular biobricks which will form the façade structure of Hack the Root. Visitors can walk within and around this structure and explore an exhibition in Gallery One which documents the whole process, its significance in terms of sustainable construction and future manufacturing and monitors the invisible performance of the structure inside.

20.06.2018 - 12.09.2018

It Will Never Work is an unplanned trip from Madchester to Brexit via Easyjet and driverless cars, with a quick history of unorthodox thinking and a few buildings along the way.

In their first 25 years, Urban Splash have won over 40 RIBA Awards. These awards cross the spectrum from Small Projects to the Stirling Prize Shortlist and cover refurbishment and new-build on residential, leisure and commercial schemes. Special awards acknowledge the company’s commitment to Sustainability, Housing and Conservation. Urban Splash profess to have started without a plan, purposefully ignoring advice and routinely rejecting accepted development processes. At every step 'it will never work' has been a call to action rather than a discouragement.

The company’s maverick presence on the development landscape of the North has changed the way we live, work and play in our cities, and their continued success as 'established innovators' is helping to shape urban futures.

In this exhibition we explore the RIBA Award-winning projects, in the context they were created and against the specific challenges and opportunities of the day. We try to understand what, in the Urban Splash approach, connects all these projects and cuts across the immediate context to form a consistent body of work and essential ethos.

This exhibition is curated by Suzy Jones in partnership with Urban Splash.

It Will Never Work has toured to Birmingham, London, Manchester and Sheffield

Images courtesy of: Felix Mooneeram

A showcase of the Stirling prize shortlisted project in 2018.

Featuring practice-curated exhibits from Foster + Partners, Jamie Fobert Architects with Evans & Shalev, Henley Halebrown, MUMA, Miall McLaughlin Architects and Waugh Thistleton Architects.

The Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize Celebrates excellence in architecture. The prize is awarded annually and is recognized as the most prestigious architectural award in the United Kingdom.

The shortlisted buildings are judged against a range of criteria including design vision; innovation and originality; capacity to stimulate, engage and delight occupants and visitors; as well as accessibility and sustainability. It is also important that the building is fit for purpose and matches the expectations of its clients.

The six buildings that reach the Stirling shortlist will each have been visited three times by distinguished juries over the course of seven months. Choosing from the final six should never be easy, but it is important that the stories they tell, the challenges that their architects have overcome and the response of their users and clients is fully understood by the jury who must make the difficult decision of identifying the RIBA Stirling Prize winner. In their own words and through careful curation of exhibition material, the practices shortlisted for the 2018 Stirling Prize provide a very personal insight into what it takes to make innovative, industry leading architecture. In doing so, they provide us with an opportunity to better understand their buildings and the people behind them.

28.10.17 - 10.02.18

It is widely recognized that the decoration of objects and spaces, and the development of complex technologies defines our species. Our combined dexterity, creativity and ability to cooperate has enabled us to manipulate our environment and connect with each other on a global scale.

Pre-industrial making techniques and the proliferation of technology are often seen as opposing forces, one favouring the local - the development of vernacular language and context; the other favouring global processes - optimisation and standardisation. In this exhibition we see how traditional ceramic technigues and digital engineering processes can be used together to produce more meaningful and sustainable architectural elements.

A selection of national and international ceramicists were asked to further develop optimized building screens, created using digital environmental and fabrication technology. through their input, the resulting ceramic ceilings and walls host individual vernacular languages, support heritage and local identity, and transform the preliminary engineered product into a more socially, ethically and environmentally sustainable building component.

Cerámica features full-scale prototypes of light-diffusing facades and ceilings, accompanied by a film explaining the experimental design methodologies explored through ECALab. The exhibition was supported by the Moulding Futures Symposium, discussing prospective scenarios for ceramics within architecture.

Generously supported by: ASCER, ICEX, The Spanish Office for Foreign Trade, Liverpool Hope University, Glyndwr University, Arts Council Wales, Quinta de Mosteiro, Tile of Spain, Leeds Beckett University and University of Liverpool

Curated by Suzy Jones and ECALab

RIBA North commissioned the photographer Virgile Simon Bertrand to join curator Davina Lee to consider the urban geography of Hong Kong housing through images and text.

The project, About the Size of Dartford, takes its title from the origins of the public housing estate Choi Hung, built in 1959 to house, according to the British colonial government's yardstick, a population of 43,720 "about the size of Dartford" in just 11 ultra-high density apartment blocks.

The work considers the distance between dreams and reality, experience and memory as present day Hong Kong continues to struggle to resolve its housing crisis. "About the size of Dartford" takes the form of visual and textual fragments, signposts for the viewer as they accompany the duo on their journey. Here the images are shown within a 1:1 scale replica of a Choi Hung apartment.

About the Size of Dartford is generously supported by Arts Council England

17 June - 17 Sept 2017

To mark the launch of RIBA North, architects KHBT, members of The Office for Subversive Architecture, were invited to visually and spatially interpret the aims and purpose of the new architecture centre. The resulting pavilion in the covered public area at the entrance to RIBA North, uses curtains of mesh fabric, typically used on building site scaffolding, to create sections through some of the most iconic architectural structures across the North of England. Scale negatives of these buildings waft in and out of focus as visitors walk through, beyond and within (amongst others) Preston Bus Station, Imperial War Museum North and the Sage.

Generously supported by shedKM and Falconer Chester Hall Architects.

20.08.2017 - 23.12.2017

Curated by Suzy Jones and Joseph Sharples

"Liverpoole is one of the wonders of Britian. What it may grow to in time I know not." - Daniel Defoe, 1715

Liverpool's future has always invited speculation, and architects are always ready with ideas to transform the city. Historically the city's international vision, architectural ambition and fearless approach to city planning have attracted groundbreaking and extraordinary proposals. Some of these never progressed past the the drawing board; others helped create a cityscape that is uniquely memorable. With drawings, models and watercolours from the RIBA Collection, this exhibition looked back on Liverpool's architectural audacity, its willingness to consider unconventional schemes and how this maverick enthusiasm has resulted in the dramatic and celebrated skyline we see today. We may think of Liverpool as a permanent entity, of its buildings as an inevitable feature of a stable and enduring system. In reality it is constantly changing, reinventing itself and developing in a way that reflects perceptions of prosperity, cultural identity, shifting economic priorities and emerging international relationships. Liverpool has an abiding ability to attract bold, and at times contentious, architectural proposals; this exhibition not only looked back ath the city's architectural heritage but also to the future of how Liverpool continues to evolve.

Supported by The Heritage Lottery Fund

31 March - 13 April 2015

Anita Chan Lai-ling Gallery. 2 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong.

Organised for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and delivered as part of the GREAT Britain Campaign, the exhibition Great by Design: British Architecture – Asian Vision celebrates the international and collaborative nature of British architecture in Asia.  Recognised for its audacity, innovation and creativity, British architecture has formed a natural and intuitive relationship with Asian vision, foresight and entrepreneurial flair to produce some of the world’s most creative and innovative projects.

Great by Design will offer the public rare insight into the creative background of some of the world’s most recognized buildings and outstanding recent projects, showing how these relationships have enriched the contemporary architectural landscape.  Drawing on examples of works built in Asia by architects including Foster + Partners, TFP Farrells, Zaha Hadid Associates, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, David Chipperfield Architects, Heatherwick  Studio, Benoy and Aedas, Great by Design comprises specially commissioned films, architectural models, animations and conceptual drawings presented in the form of a dynamic and informative installation. 

From office towers to airports, train stations to opera houses, shopping malls to residential projects, master plans and interiors, using materials from the RIBA collection and from architects and their patrons, Great by Design will highlight key moments in the development of these architectural landmarks and the impact they have not just for the people who use them, but also for the evolution of architecture itself.  For example Foster’s HSBC Building, commissioned by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, established “High Tech” or “structural expressionism” globally as a new architectural style.  Farrell’s “Post Modernist” Peak Tower, commissioned by The Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd. as the result of an international design competition, forms a metaphor for postmodern Hong Kong itself, with its distinctive eaves reminiscent of Chinese architecture.  Zaha Hadid Architect’s Innovation Tower for the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong, with its seamless fluid lines, establishes a new paradigm for the tower and podium structure that is ubiquitous to the Hong Kong architectural landscape.

 A forum chaired by RIBA President Stephen Hodder took place on 30 March in partnership with the RIBA Hong Kong Chapter and educational partners Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong University.  Premiere screenings of the three-part BBC Television documentary "The Brits who Built the Modern World", which inspired the RIBA exhibition of the same name held in London last year, will also be open to the public and free of charge.

GREAT by Design is part of the UKTI's GREAT Britian campaign. More information, and images of the VIP Reception, can be found via links here on the RIBA website.

Organised and delivered for the RIBA by Suzy Jones

Curator - Davina Lee

Exhibition Designers - Sky Yutaka

Exhibition ID Design - Alex Brazier

Photography - Virgile S Bertrand

Videography - Alan Yiu

Further information about the RIBA, and its presence in Hong Kong

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), one of the most influential architectural institutions in the world, has been promoting architecture and supporting the profession in the United Kingdom since being awarded its Royal Charter in 1837 and today, the institute champions the creation of better buildings, communities and the environment through architecture. 

The RIBA Hong Kong Chapter was launched in September 2012 to promote the work of Hong Kong members, raise recognition of their professional and technical excellence and stimulate wider demand for architecture from the public and stakeholders across the Asia Pacific region.

Suzy Jones Projects was commissioned by the Royal Institute of British Architects to research and develop a two year notional programme of activity for RIBA North - a new international architecture centre which will open on the Liverpool Waterfront in 2016.

The resulting notional programme included an ambitious and multi disciplinary approach to presenting architectural practice, engaging broad audiences and inspiring young people to learn more about place and the skills needed in the industry. It included performance, architectural residencies, collection exhibitions, commissions and an integrated learning strand.

Part of this commission included initial conversation with potential partners including Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Liverpool. Suzy Jones Projects also hosted an audience workshop with existing partners.

Working with the RIBA on the £1m capital refurbishment for RIBA North, the Royal Institute of British Architects faculty at Mann Island on the Liverpool waterfront.

RIBA North launched in 2017, the space included a museum standard gallery space, enabling the RIBA to showcase its world class collections in its own venue, two other gallery space, office spaces, a shop and a cafe.

RIBA North was designed by architect Matt Brook

Images: Hufton Crow

Suzy Jones is working with propositional designer Stuart Walker to develop and deliver a presentation of his work at Brantwood, the home of John Ruskin, in Cumbria. Stuarts design work constitutes a long running investigation into the design of a material culture that accords with sustainable principles. It combines theory development with the creation of demonstrative artefacts and reflects Stuart's journey, via design practice, from Petroleum Engineer with Shell Internationale to a world leader in Design for Sustainability. 

Ruskin himself was an early environmental pioneer. If funding is secured the project will include the development and delivery of a new piece of performance work based on an artefact and text inspired by Mexican votive pairings; an exhibition of this new work and existing works at Brantwood and throughout the house; a meal in Ruskin's dining room recreating meals Ruskin held with significant thinkers such as Charles Darwin an Wiliam Linton in the early 1900's; and a talk by Stuart at Brantwood.

It is expected that the exhibition and relating events will take place in Spring and Summer 2016.

“buy less, choose well...”

Humans have been making objects since the beginning of time, it’s part of our nature to create tools, and homes, and beautiful things to ‘enhance’ our lives. The difference is these days the stuff we make tends to have its own half life, it also tends to be made on the other side of the planet, in massive numbers, using a vast amount of finite resources. Our world has become very, very full. It’s packed with stuff which has been made, and then discarded in favour of the shinier version. 

As an alternative to disposable objects we have little if any emotional involvement with, this year’s Great Northern Graduates includes furniture, lighting, ceramics, jewellery and metalwork which are emotionally engaging, playful, beautiful and implicitly environmentally aware. Many of the graduates involved have made use of existing materials from twigs, to bobble hats, to the bristles of a motorised road sweeper. Others have used classic techniques, new technology or ground breaking processes to create simple, elegant, functional objects with quirky details. 

I chose these ten graduates because their work was different, it stood out and made me laugh, or whoop, or swoon. It’s rare I come across objects like these, I am not saying everyone will fall in love with them as I did, or that everyone would want them in their home, but I am hoping this collection makes us think. Do you choose your objects because they are cheap and beige and filled a space on a shelf - or because they make you laugh, or amaze you, or simply because you LOVE them? What do your objects say about you?

“Buy less, choose well ….” - Vivienne Westwood

Curated and produced by Suzy Jones for Great Northern Events

Exhibition design inspired by Graham Hudson's 'Planning your exit for best value' commissioned by Storey Gallery for the exhibition Strange Days and Some Flowers. The shelving for the Great Northern Graduates was designed and built by the same installation team.

An exhibition of twentieth century chairs from the collection of the Design Museum in London. Produced by Suzy Jones for Storey Gallery.

2012

The chair has a simple function - to elevate and support the sitter whilst they eat or read, work or lounge. A chair usually has a seat, four legs, and a back. A chair without a back is a stool, when raised up this is a bar stool. A chair with arms is an armchair.

The different ways we use a chair, along with technological developments and cultural shifts, have influenced the vastly different designs found in this exhibition. As long as a chair fulfils its intended function, the designer is able to create it in any form, using any material and process available.

This scope for creative interpretation has made the chair a very desirable project for designers to undertake. They have transformed the simple chair from a humble resting place into a glamorous, and much sought after, sculptural commodity, and a design icon. Chairs fill the archives of design museums across the world, demanding more cultural space and higher prices than any other piece of furniture.

In the early 1900s, expectations of what a chair looked like were based on traditional cabinet-making techniques. Impressionism had made Parisian café culture ‘de rigueur’, creating a demand for café style seating similar to that seen in paintings by Monet, Renoir, and Degas. In the 1920s, designers such as Le Corbusier, Charles & Ray Eames, and Marcel Breuer, used tubular steel, perfectly capturing the Modern Movement’s machine-age aesthetic. The Panton chair expresses the technocratic optimism of the 1960s, whilst Jane Atfield’s RCP2 Child’s Chair reflects our current desire to develop sustainable and ‘low impact’ design.

This exhibition encourages us to consider the significance of the chair. It illustrates how designers have responded to shifts in the way we choose to rest our legs, and how they have made use of new materials and technologies to create beautiful, sculptural forms.

An exhibition in which the artists Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson explore our complex feelings towards our ‘animal others’. Produced by Suzy Jones for Storey Gallery.

2010

In 2007 Storey Gallery commissioned the artist team Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson to develop a project investigating the various and complex relationships between human and non-human animals in shared and contested spaces.

Working primarily in the city of Lancaster and the surrounding area, with a variety of individuals, businesses and organisations, the artists burrowed around the ever-shifting margins of tolerance, gathering anecdotes and stories of human/animal cohabitation, encroachment and symbiotic partnerships. In addition, they toured around the UK with a mobile radio unit, visiting people’s homes, country fairs, and town centres, documenting the multiplicity of people’s feelings towards animals-in-proximity. The conversations were recorded and aired live on Radio Animal, an online radio station created by Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson, dedicated to their discourse around human/animal relations. 

For millennia, humans have been making divisions between themselves and other animals. By building settlements, towns and cities, they created shelter and insulation from wild animals. However, animals have always been attracted to concentrations of human population because of the opportunities these provide for habitat and food. For some humans, the presence of these creatures – pigeons, starlings, rats, mice, foxes, and all manner of insects - constitutes a threat, a kind of leakage. It highlights the fragility of our insulation from the ‘wild’, its unpredictability, and the seeming chaos of ‘nature’.

The exhibition Uncertainty in the City: Pests, Pets, and Prey explores this animal infringement through the use of sound, sculpture, text, video, and photography. It builds a picture of human ambivalence towards animals – of tolerance and intolerance, of fear and loathing, of affection, conflict, and admiration - and at the same time it explores more broadly our own duplicity in relation to ideas of the ‘other’.

Uncertainty in the City: Pests, Pets, and Prey was accompanied by a conference and a publication.

This exhibition was a result of the project Radio Animal which also included this publication.

Artists: Pablo Bronstein, Melanie Gilligan, Anja Kirschner & David Panos, Ciprian Muresan, Goldin + Senneby, Unnar Örn, Olivia Plender

In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher made the notorious statement ‘There is no alternative’. This slogan, shortened by the hard right to TINA, suggests that free markets and capitalist globalisation are the only viable economic and political model for a successful modern society.

Working in a wide range of media, from films to text and drawing, the artists explore how the political and economic developments of the 1980s have subsequently permeated all corners of experience and social relations, from the global banking system to cultural production. These artists, based in the UK, Sweden and Romania, reflect upon these effects from different geographical vantage points and multiple historical perspectives.

The gallery is filled with office paraphernalia - desks and chairs, plants, computers, and room dividers. Dotted amongst the Ikea furniture, rubbish bins, and pencil pots, are posters, video screens, projections, and drawings.

The exhibition is presented with a sense of humour, but deals with complex issues. It contains several lengthy video pieces and so requires some time to absorb fully. Visitors may like to put aside an hour or two to enjoy all the work, or plan to visit several times.

There is no alternative (TINA) is an exhibition initiated by the artist Olivia Plender, which began at The Drawing Room in the east end of London, less than a mile from London’s financial district, known as ‘the City’. It has since been shown at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle, Konsthall C in Stockholm, and now at the Storey Gallery in Lancaster.

Exhibition conceived by Olivia Plender in association with The Drawing Room gallery, London.

Produced at Storey Gallery by Suzy Jones in partnership with Drawing Room gallery, London and Konstall C, Stockholm. 2010

A exhibition of experimental objects and actions by artists and designers from the UK, Switzerland, Hungary, Israel, and the USA. Simon Blackmore, Attila Csörgő, Jerome Harrington, Michael Kontopoulos, Material Beliefs, Ariel Schlesinger, Roman Signer, Thomas Thwaites, Bill Woodrow and Stuart Walker.

This exhibition is about experimentation and play. It brings together artists with long-established international reputations, alongside recent graduates. What they have in common is a mischievous curiousity about the world around us, and a do-it-yourself approach. They conduct witty low-tech experiments to uncover the enchantment hidden within everyday utilitarian objects. They play around with cause and effect, finding out what will happen if they subject familiar objects to unexpected treatments. They are speculators, investigators, sorcerers, and jokers. These cloth-capped alchemists use glowing wit to transform consumer detritus into golden rabbits.

These artists and designers create clownish situations and quirky objects in which physics and poetry collaborate to produce humourous and profound results. There are videos of carefree explosions, a chandelier made from a car door, a domestic toaster constructed from raw materials, a bicycle tyre which burns gas, and a cooperative inflatable.

Experiments involve direct experience through action, rather than passive acceptance and belief. This exhibition encourages us to question our surroundings, to test our assumptions about consumerism and recycling, and to ask what happens if ...?

These artists are all trying out something new. We invite you to join them.

A series of Talks on Art and writing workshops accompanied this exhibition. 

What happens if ...? was presented in collaboration with the Experimentality programme of Lancaster University's Institute for Advanced Studies - a year-long exploration of ideas and practices of experimentation in science and technology, the arts, politics, popular culture and everyday life.

Produced by Suzy Jones for Storey Gallery

2009

Strange Days and Some Flowers – A group show of strange and uneasy work by Dan Baldwin, Don Brown, Laura Ford, Matthew Houlding, Robin Mason, Jock Mooney, Mika Rottenberg, John Stark and a new commission by Graham Hudson.

When we were children many of us will have imagined walking around on the ceiling, exploring a world which was familiar, but strange. Where beasties lurked in place of our jumpers, where up was down and grass looked a little bit like our shoe-laces. We had an innate ability to disassociate ourselves from reality, we saw the world from impossible angles, disorientated and surreal, but also playful, exciting and constantly shifting.

Strange Days and Some Flowers provides a rare opportunity to revisit this world. There is no ‘theme’, no curatorial thread, and no sheet of A4 ‘interpretation’ to help you navigate through the space in a linear, formal manner.

Instead you are invited into Graham Hudson’s partially occluding maze, catching a frustrating glimpse of John Stark’s spooky bee-keepers, metres away but not quite reachable. Several slightly disorientating minutes later, you’re sharing an intimate booth of steel with a couple of Don Brown’s alluring Yoko’s. One shrouded, one stood elegant and proud in her pants, vest and platform shoes. In the considerably sparser second gallery, Mika Rottenberg’s Tropical Breeze plunges you into a unique world of sweat, transportation and the odd naked man in running shoes.

Strange Days and Some Flowers is a purposeful jumble of utopian propaganda, religious multiplicity and enigmatic beautiful characters. The funny, the disturbing and the outright bizarre. Reflecting the complexity of our world, simultaneously unsettling and humourous, terrifying, strange and amusing.

This exhibition re-launched the newly refurbished Storey Gallery. It was a celebration of the diversity of contemporary art practice, an exemplar of ambition and beacon of things to come.

Produced by Suzy Jones for Storey Gallery

2009

Paul Rooney’s solo show at Storey Gallery consisted of one solitary piece. This purposely sparse presentation of the artist’s film La Décision Doypack creates a sense of theatrical occasion, enhanced by the evening opening and scheduled screening times.

On entering the gallery, a gently lit island of carpet subtly indicates the appropriate place to congregate. The leggy audiovisual equipment, which is installed on stands, is dotted at the four corners of the island. The audience sit, it goes dark, and the film begins.

The 27-minute film, shot on 16mm, is inspired by the memories of an Australian food-packaging company manager who visited Paris during the events of 1968. The multi-layered narrative is visualized with self-conscious acting and film making techniques, and uses real life events and fictional construction to investigate the way in which history only exists when actively recalled in the present. The film demonstrates however, how flawed that recollection can be, revealing the comedy and melancholy involved in any attempt to represent the past.

La Décision Doypack (16mm film still), Paul Rooney © 2008, commissioned by Radar and Matt's Gallery.

Produced for Storey Gallery by Suzy Jones

In August 2007 Storey Gallery commissioned the artists Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson to undertake a period of research. The artists worked closely with various individuals observing the variety of relationships humans develop with their animal counterparts that become increasingly complex when animals encroach upon personal boundaries.

As a result of their research Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson proposed a two-phase project.

Phase one: Radio Animal - June - November 2009

Radio Animal is a touring radio programme, dedicated to the debate and documentation of human/animal relationships across Lancashire. Snæbjörnsdóttir and Wilson will go on the road inviting listeners to discuss their experiences of uninvited animals, whether these be problems, fears, fascinations, infestations etc. Guest speakers will be invited to spark debate as well as offer guidance, and animals themselves will also have their own 15 minutes of fame. Radio Animal will visit people's homes, summer fairs, pigeon-fancying competitions, agricultural shows, and town centres. It will map the feelings of people in the region towards the presence of rabbits, pigeons, deer, starlings, rats, mice, foxes etc., in what we perceive as ‘our’ environment.

This project brings together the opinions and perspectives of, amongst others, wild life enthusiasts, hunters, vegetarians, trappers, fishers, pet owners, dog breeders, farmers, and pest control departments. Radio Animal is a depository, a battery, a tool for knowledge and knowledge dissemination. It is a means of sparking debate and an attempt to make sense of our increasingly complex relationship with the animal world of which we are a part.

Phase two will be an exhibition in the Gallery in 2010. Uncertainty in the City:Pests, Pets and Prey

This project also resulted in a publication.

Radio Animal was managed by Suzy Jones for Storey Gallery.

This publication is the result and documentation of the three-year project which Storey Gallery commissioned from artists Snaebjornsdottir/Wilson. It was produced in collaboration with Green Box, Berlin. For more information about this project see Radio Animal and Uncertainty in the City exhibition.

ISBN 978-3-941644-18-2

Here is the foreword written by Suzy Jones

Toward late summer 2007 Sam and I were preparing for a much-needed short break in a very large and beautiful house on the south coast. Our newly purchased, very small, first home was something of a ‘project’. We needed time away from the plaster dust, rotting doors and strange smelling kitchen, to live in comfortable surroundings without the worry of a leaky roof. Simultaneously, the artists I was working with at the time, Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson, were searching for suitable headquarters from which to begin their research for a project Storey Gallery had commissioned in August that year. I kindly offered our dilapidated, strangely smelling, and damp house... "Ideal!" replied Mark "Is it ok to bring our two dogs?"

You might think that wouldn’t be an issue. For the past four months we had been living with fungus, so why would dogs in our house - especially during our absence - cause us any concern? But it was a big deal, aside from the fact Sam is allergic to dogs, we felt oddly paranoid about a lingering doggyness, which would somehow permeate the fabric of the house. The dogs seemed so big and animal like, they were an unfamiliar and an unusual addition to our home. In the end we decided it would be fine, and of course it had absolutely no impact on us whatsoever, but our initial reaction had unsettled us. Why had the presence of animals in our house made us feel so uncomfortable? I thought we liked animals. But what we actually liked were animals where we thought they should be, outside, in the wild .... in their place.

Our animal related dilemma marked the beginning of a three-year project by Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson, observing the variety of relationships humans develop with their non-human animal counterparts – particularly when those animals encroach on personal boundaries. The project, Uncertainty in the City, was commissioned by Storey Gallery, whilst the organisation was working offsite, during the refurbishment of their building. Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson’s cross-disciplinary approach and their sensitive involvement of various individuals mirrored the aims of the Gallery as it navigated a new era.

This publication is the result and documentation of the three-year project, from the initial conversations, to the Radio Animal road trip, and a gallery-based exhibition of new work in the newly refurbished Storey Gallery. With contributions from specialists in the field of animal studies, alongside an essay by the artists themselves, this book is a contribution to an ongoing conversation about a subject which affects us all.

Storey Gallery commissioned Layla Curtis to develop a project which explored an aspect of Lancaster and the surrounding area. Layla became interested in the boundary created by Lancaster Castle walls, a defensive structure that exists simultaneously to protect and restrain.

Layla Curtis is a British artist with a significant international profile. Extensive travel has informed much of her work, which explores the notion of borders and boundaries, both physical and metaphorical. The artist’s early cartographic work, developed during a residency at the Akiyoshidai International Arts Village in Japan, has become iconic. Layla’s ongoing investigation into our sense of place utilises a combination of new technologies and extreme sports.

Polar Wandering, a psychogeographical exploration of the artist’s movements from London to Antarctica, andMessage a in Bottle: From Ramsgate to the Chatham Islands both use GPS technology as a tool to create drawings. In the case of Polar Wandering the GPS tracks the artist’s own movements across the globe resulting in a 27,856 mile long drawing - while the journey of an inanimate object, guided by the wind and the tides, creates the drawings in Message in a Bottle. 
Traceurs: to trace, to draw, to go fast, investigates a similar notion of border crossing and journeys through a smaller geographical area. Using a heat sensitive camera Layla filmed the movements of Parkour practitioners (traceurs) as they disregard established boundaries creating their own alternative routes through the city.
For Walking with the Penan, Layla spent 4 weeks in 2010 trekking in the rainforests of Borneo with the semi-nomadic Penan people – one of the last surviving hunter-gatherer tribes in South-East Asia.

Layla gave a Talk on Art for Storey Gallery about her work. Films of this talk can be seen here (Polar Wandering) and here (Walking with the Penan)

Project managed by Suzy Jones for Storey Gallery

Storey Gallery commissioned the artist Ilana Halperin to undertake a research commission which takes as its focus some aspect of Lancaster and its surrounding area.

This focus was not prescriptive but aimed only to be a starting point for the artist's project. Ilana's work is often related to Geology and after discussions into previous projects such as her Alchemy fellowship at Manchester Museum, Storey Gallery set up a meeting between the artist and staff at Lancaster University's department of Volcanology. Conversations with Professor Harry Pinkerton, his colleagues and his students formed the basis of Ilana's research resulting in a series of volcanology dream diaries and unusual field work tasks.

Project managed by Suzy Jones for Storey Gallery

Jane Chavez Dawson was one of four artists commissioned to produce new works about the changing circumstances of the Storey Gallery between 2007 and 2009, caused by the planned refurbishment of the building. She produced several short films about the Storey Institute.

You can view the video here

Project managed by Suzy Jones for Storey Gallery

As part of Architecture week 2005 Suzy Jones and San Bueler curated and produced this exhibition for Imitate Gallery in Manchester. The exhibition included works by Matthew Houlding, David Gledhill, David Shanks, Space Cadets.