Carmody Groarke & Phil Baines: Three contemporary memorials in London

The exhibition documents the collaboration between architect and lettering designer in the design of three permanent memorials for London. Each of the completed memorials are testaments to the close conversations between the disciplines of these two art-practices – a close synthesis of architecture and lettering design. The exhibition shows the process and inspirations behind both architectural and lettering designs and how both practices worked to forge these ideas into a cohesive, sculptural whole in each unique memorial.

The work describes the innate connection (and necessary tension) in a memorial between emotional and pragmatic, figurative and abstract, historic and contemporary, ephemeral and eternal, form and substance, lettering and materials that are required for such a unique public commission. This process illustrates not only the integration of the design of the memorials into their physical, historical, cultural and social context, but the consideration of the necessary integration of the experience of the visitor in the presence of this architecture.

The collaborative process reinforces the intention of bringing meaning to the memorial through its making and illustrates an approach where the place, material and message are of equal measure. This approach reminds us of the responsibility of a memorial, as a permanent reminder for society to ‘stop one forgetting’ the unique circumstances that shattered the order of so many people’s lives.

The opening was preceded by a public lecture on 25 January held in Staatliche Akademie der Bildendem Künste Stuttgart.
The lecture is also being given at CSM on 8 March 2017 as part of UAL Research Fortnight.

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