sarah goffman, lisa kelly, carla cescon
The recent group exhibition Plant Room, by Sarah Goffman, Lisa Kelly and Carla Cescon, explored connections between hidden and transparent spaces through interpretations of city sites such as plant rooms, apartment buildings, and alleyways. In recreating and referencing these spaces through ways in which architecture can function as both a psychological and social space, the plant room became a microcosm of the greater inner city environment replete with material traces, evidencing the stuff of consumer based societies. Carla Cescon created plump, silvery pigeons, oddly shaped and awkward looking, like those who have spent too much time in city parks and under the eaves of city buildings. A city pigeon's lot, it would seem, results in particular idiosyncrasies-missing legs, string or plastic bound around the feet, greasy looking feathers, malformed beaks and injured wings. Yet despite appearances these pigeons were convincingly determined in their pursuit of the safe haven of a plant room. Cescon used the impossibility of the flocking pigeons entering the two-dimensional space of the roost as a broader metaphor for an experience of social dislocation. We knew the innate behaviour of these pigeons seeking a place to occupy to be fiawed-wherever they reside will be temporary, they will eventually have to move on. There was a pathetic yet bolstering sentiment in knowing that this drive to roost was nevertheless not be undermined by the changing environment in which pigeons must consistently adapt in order to survive.
Sarah Goffman worked more directly with the potential of utilitarian objects to exceed functionality, referencing generic products such as water and living plants through consumer brand names and artifice. With the text 'Add Life' in large, plastic lettering above the work, Goffman