The largest work in the exhibition, it uses the full height of the space, comprising of 5 parts that include an inflatable, two paintings, a model of a glass house in the botanical gardens in Oxford and a piece of scaffolding foam core. Seam is a word that appears in the Beckett text but also points to the construction of the inflatable, which is only ever partially inflated. It oscillates as a kind of lung, referring both to utopian architectural solutions and the oxygen needed for breath.

the title SEAM comes from Beckett's Ping and is written on the paper.
The small canvas feature a prototype of the English architect Michael Webb. He was a founding member of the 1960s Archigram Group

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 

This set of works has 3 main avenues of enquires : Michael Marder ‘environmental thought’, Samuel Beckett’s, short story Ping, experimental West Coast architecture from the early 70’s.

The work of the philosopher Michael Marder, a proponent of ‘environmental thought’, which considers plants as living beings that possess their own forms of subjectivity. Marder’s work develops a critique of anthropocentric empathy towards plants.

In preparation for the work, Ian has been visiting and making drawings in the prefabricated greenhouses at Oxford Botanic Gardens.

Samuel Beckett short story, Ping, (1966) an embodied space where repeated words defy a linear reading in favour of something more spatial, material and rhythmic.

"Ping" is a short story written by Samuel Beckett written in French (originally "Bing") in 1966, and later translated into English by the author and published in 1967. In ‘Ping’, Beckett restricts his vocabulary to around 100 words, although the story is approximately 1,000 words long. David Lodge has described it as: "the rendering of the consciousness of a person confined in a small, bare, white room, a person who is evidently under extreme duress, and probably at the last gasp of life." a hypnotic flow of words the meaning of which is initially utterly obscure. But persevere and patterns emerge: “moderate or good, occasionally poor later”/“white walls”, “one square yard”, “white scars”. In both cases, we soon realise we are within a system of words performing very defined tasks, albeit ones only understood by initiates.

Quick City : West Coast experimental architecture. initiative Quick City, organised by architects Peter de Bretteville and Craig Hodgetts in Los Angeles. Focusing on temporary structure and inflatables.

These works are development from an on-going project - Endnote, tooth; that Ian has been working on since the show at the Henry Moore Institute in 2014 and most recently for my show at MAM Paris, that presented propositions in the form of paintings, models, and fragments with a concern for certain ideas apparent in the work of Frededrick Kiesler. The architect developed a critique of formalist approaches to design and display in favour of increasingly biomorphic solutions and structures found in nature. The title refers to Kiesler’s “Tooth House,” a marginal project that relates to his more extended ‘Endlessness House’, where he drew upon a convergence of ethnography, science and magic to develop notions of dwelling. These particular works use the scratched, marked and stained surfaces of bus stop screens to prompt the emergence of the painted image.  

Ludwig Wittgenstein visited the Dublin Palm House regularly.