Pervilion at Silver Building

Katharina Dubbick, Jack O’Brien, Stella Scott

London, 30 May – 2 June 2019

Pervilion at Silver Building explores states of dissolution, activating the defunct boiler rooms of a former brewery headquarters. Working in scent, sculpture and film respectively, Katharina Dubbick, Jack O’Brien and Stella Scott propose ways in which the body registers, absorbs and releases tensions within the built environment. In concrete chambers, stripped of pipes and pistons, new works identify multiple tipping points at which experience condenses and evaporates.

Press release / List of works / Edition

Katharina Dubbick

Katharina Dubbick fills the upper boiler room with the installation TIMECAPSULE 7:32am (2019). ‘The odours our bodies produce are directly related to the emotions we feel,’ she says. ‘I want to capture the moment of exhaustion after a climax – the sense of space that’s left when feelings settle.’ One of the artist’s memories has been distilled to a scent, in collaboration with perfumer Meabh McCurtin. The chemical compound is distributed via steam, to infiltrate the space and stimulate associations with notes of sweat, saliva, sex, gin and tonic, cigarette smoke, latex, smoke machine, sticky skin and cleaning products. Floating in this olfactory cloud, leather casts of the body capture the enigmatic hollows around the collarbone, pelvis and ribs. These are steeped in smells of latex and body odour.

Jack O’Brien

In ‘Buildings that Weep’, a series of freehanging sculptures, Jack O’Brien approaches the body’s complex interactions with surrounding physical structures. Introspective, husk-like forms, made from pigmented silicon, droop from the ceiling. In Come down, and around (2018), silicon chains gather in slack and taut lines that trace the folds of drapery, but also veins and muscular definition, so that the sculpture seems to pose. Elsewhere, the artist draws on personal and editorial fashion photography, allowing imagery to peel from the walls. The works draw attention to our networked condition using materials associated with construction and body modification.

Stella Scott

Stella Scott tracks liquid cycles in a film that confronts the sanitised future and fetishisation of space in central London. To Spoor a Stockroom (2019) documents a condemned consumer environment, in which the spectre of desire flickers on. Shot during the last days of Welbeck Street Car Park, before its controversial demolition, the film reveals a hidden side of the brutalist landmark.

The basement level was originally used by Debenhams as cold storage for fur. Gutted of goods and rails, the exposed walls carry graffiti expressing lust and frustration, left by workers over decades. One last deep clean sees the architectural skin sloughed and rubbed, releasing memories that bubble and sublimate. A fragment from Katharina Dubbick’s installation floats in the mist.

Wet Floor

Graphic trails mark the aftermath of collaboration, the last traces of bodily contact in a building about to be demolished. Print edition of 100 created on the occasion of To Spoor a Stockroom.

Pervilion at Silver Building
Katharina Dubbick, Jack O’Brien, Stella Scott

Curated by Dorothy Feaver

60 Dock Rd
London E16 1YZ

30 May – 2 June 2019

Opening hours:
Thu 30 May: 6pm–11pm
Fri 31 May: 10am–5pm
Sat 1 June: 10am–5pm
Sun 2 June: 10am–5pm

Closest stations:
West Silvertown DLR (5 min walk)
Royal Victoria DLR (5 min walk)

Supported in kind by The Silver Building and IFF International Flavors & Fragrances Media partner 4:3

Photos by Olivia Thompson; additional photos by Ottilie Landmark