CANTERBURY, ENGLAND.- The Herbert Reed Gallery at the Kent Institute of Art and Design in Canterbury presents the exhibition "Strangers to Ourselves – Adam Chodzko," on view through December 13, 2003. As part of strangers to ourselves Adam Chodzko will be exhibiting a number of works produced over the last three years and gathered together here for the very first time, as well as presenting a major new commission: Design for a Carnival, and a new publication: Whitstable Interiors.
All of the works focus around interventions into - and explorations of - the territory (or boundaries) of social space, particularly in relation to various displaced or dislocated communities. The Gorgies Center, 2002, relocates the archive of a Manchester based architects’ office, currently involved in remodelling and rebuilding the urban infrastructure of the city, to a small community of gypsies, based in a field just outside Canterbury. Cell-a 2006, 2002, performs a similar inversion, this time removing the archive of Cubitt Gallery from their premises in the East end of London and burying it on Margate beach, under the care of a group of Kurdish asylum seekers.
The single screen DVD projection Limbo Land, 2001, offers a more oblique take on boundaries, or borders. Structured around a densely collaged soundtrack it explores a more personal, internalised displacement.
The new commission Design for a Carnival, 2003, will attempt to offer new models for an entirely new kind of festival - one that reflects the emerging and evolving communities that make up our diverse and shifting society. From collaged soundtracks, based around the eclectic inclusiveness of early ’80s New York House mixes, to fusions of lace-making with a baseball-cap bonfire, Design for a Carnival exists as tentative sketch for a new celebration of new communities - a festival of and for emerging folk.
Whitstable Interiors, 2003 is a lo-fi publication, packed with interviews conducted by Chodzko with homeowners and DIY enthusiasts in and around Whitstable. Using the crude aesthetics of a punk fanzine, it explores a generation’s new found fascination with interior space, home decoration and basic joinery.