Meeting Point - Axel Lapp Projects, Berlin

Apartment are currently in Berlin at Axel Lapp Projects. We are showing a selection of Apartment’s previous exhibitors at the space (Invalidenstraße 161, D-10115 Berlin); so if you happen to be in Berlin; do come to see us we will be there hosting the gallery until the show ends on June 23rd. Entitled ‘Meeting Point’ the exhibition features; Dave Gledhill, Paul Harfleet, Hilary Jack, Naomi Kashiwagi, Lisa Penny, Maeve Rendle, Cherry Tenneson, Martine Myrup, David Wilkinson and Beáta Veszely; more details below:

Twice a year Axel Lapp Projects invites and showcases the work of artist-run spaces based outside Berlin in a programme entitled INTERLUDE. For the first of this programme Axel Lapp has selected Apartment, a project and exhibition space, run from a sixth floor one bedroom council flat in central Manchester, UK, co-directed by Hilary Jack and Paul Harfleet. For INTERLUDE 1, Hilary Jack and Paul Harfleet have brought together the work of ten artists from Manchester, Budapest, London and Glasgow in a show entitled ‘Meeting Point’. The work offers an insight into the breadth of activity that Apartment has facilitated over the last three years and reflects Lapp’s own interest and commitment to this Manchester based exhibition space.

Above; visitors to the preview,

Apartment is based in a flat, and unlike many artist led spaces that operate in this way, the curators choose to present the work alongside the possessions that Paul Harfleet lives amongst. This curatorial decision enables the artwork to position itself in contrast to the objects or to hide within them, camouflaged by the everyday detritus. Each artist presented here, at Axel Lapp Projects, has exhibited at Apartment and has dealt with this reality in a variety of interesting ways.

When artwork is shown at Apartment the interior of the flat frames the work. At Axel Lapp Projects, Apartment itself is an absent participant, no longer available as a supporting framework for the presentation of the art work. Therefore the works are able to be re-seen without the context of Apartment, revealing to the curators, the complex relationships that have been formed between the artists and their practices over the three years that Apartment has existed. For the audience the various works are seen within the gallery context and with the knowledge that these relationships were forged in a domestic location; here the artists come together creating a meeting point where the work can be seen in a group show and in a totally new context.