An intern's perspective OMA/ Progress

I have been busy working, or should say interning, at the Barbican Art Gallery over the summer. I have been working on the OMA/ Progress show which will open on 6th October. The exhibition will focus on the work of Dutch architecture firm OMA (formerly known as the Office for Metropolitan Architecture) and is guest-curated by Rotor, a design collective from Belgium. OMA, perhaps one of the most famous practitioners of post-modern architecture, will be seen through the eyes of this group of young designers, whose interest is in the use and re-use of materials. Its a very busy time in the exhibition preparation; and an intern rarely gets asked what they think of the entire concept of an exhibition, but I wanted to put some thoughts down and share them with you.

In this collaboration, it seems that the traits of post-modern practice- samplings and sections from different styles amalgamated- find their temporality again in the combination of newly-made and degraded materials. Whereas classical objects and un-plastered walls could sit together in OMA's design for the Hermitage; questioning ideas of preservation and age, in Rotor's practice, objects and materials exist in the present. Different items sit together, occupying the same space and time to speak their own history: hence they have named the concept of the show 'a field of exhibits', in which every item shown is an object, no matter its dimensional quality. However, this should not simply be seen as a college of multiple parts but a texture to be explored. The architectural models, that feature in the exhibition, have (as conservation has allowed) been left as they were found in the archive, with flagging materials and missing parts. Consequently, this is not a history of the buildings but of the practice as a whole, with its founding partner Rem Koolhaas at the centre, acting as a kind of gravitational pull.

It will be an interesting exhibition, like many at the Barbican, for its mode of curation and display. It will challenge what a museum can do; and what should be presented in it. It will question the whole spatial and temporal mode of an exhibition and consequently how objects can and should be viewed. It is an exhibition and a test of perception.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=12472