BUILDING: An exhibition under construction
3 April – 18 August 2024
The Farrell Centre presents BUILDING: An exhibition under construction which will transform the exhibition galleries into live making spaces in an exploration of the process of building. Rather than open fully-formed, the public will witness the exhibition taking shape over four months via twoexhibition under construction live build projects, installations created by students and apprentices, audience participation, and a programme of workshops and events for all audienceexhibition under constructions.
Building sites are ever-present in our cities. Yet we are always separated from them, experiencing them at a distance and from behind hoardings. There are important practical and health and safety reasons for this—building sites can often be dangerous. But this separation has the effect of disconnecting us from the construction process that exists almost in a separate world, where questions about how buildings are made and who they are ultimately for can struggle to get heard.
This exhibition aims to help change this. It recasts “building” not as object, but as an action. When you do this, everything the hoardings obscure comes into view: who builds our buildings, the conditions they work in, the tools they use and the skills they employ; the materials buildings are made from and their environmental impacts both locally and further afield; the money that funds buildings, where it comes from and what it wants in return.