HJELDE ENG
what we come to expect; the ‘next new thing’, a singular artist rising above the rest, or a strong exhibition with a clear brand-like identity and thus memorable for those who see up to a dozen of these art school exhibitions a year. At Chelsea, the moment when the doors are opened – the sudden revelation of the ha-ha – is singularly exclusive and excluding, like the stately home garden that is definitely not meant for its neighbours. The local farmers working for the landowner on the home’s estate were not the audience for the ha-ha or English garden. Likewise, our local community at Millbank is not our audience. It is difficult to fully understand who our community is in terms of our physical location. But it is much easier to understand the community in ideal, international art-world terms. Beyond friends and family, the community invited and addressed is, in fact, the Korean curator, the New York dealer, the Berlin-based critic. This is noteworthy because UAL won the tender to transform the former military hospital we occupy into an art school because an attractive part of the proposal was how it might engage with those who live nearby, the local schools and even with Tate Britain next door. Maybe we need to move sideways, so we can see both the unbroken vista into the institution at the degree show, but also the structure of the ha-ha illusion and how it operates as an organising structural ‘method’ for the arts school’s emplacing in society. The tension here is between what we see and what can be thought of as a force, as a potential and as a parallax. The art school can be a place for gardening, as a verb, rather than a garden that merely provides a particular view.
PARALLAX
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