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Past Exhibitions William Cobbing
William Cobbing’s exhibition was part of the Royal Pump Rooms programme of exhibitions and commissions by emerging and established artists. These reflect the diverse history and culture of
Cobbing responded to the architecture and history of the Royal Pump Rooms in his new commissions and connected them to concepts in architecture, literature, engineering, philosophy, art, information science and medicine.
The interdependence of man and machine or architecture can be seen in the history of the spa. Water and electricity were used to treat patients: their limbs were immersed in steam cabinets and water piped into their body through colonic irrigation units; electric currents flowed from machine through their bodies, intimating linking the two. The building too had to change to meet the leisure and medical needs of its users in the 19th and 20th centuries. Between its opening in 1814 and the present day it was redeveloped 14 times, gaining and losing towers, annexes, boiler rooms. Cobbing’s exhibition was housed in the “white cube” temporary exhibition gallery whose neutral spaces can be redesigned to suit each exhibition. Cobbing’s sculptures merged into the floor, walls and ceiling, appearing to be linked beneath the interior skin of the Gallery. His work revealed the unseen to the visitor: plans for the electrical engineers, storage system for museum collections – the skeleton of building services and collections management.
On a macro level the connections he made between museums, libraries and archives could be seen in the recent unification of these three professions under single organisations at national, regional and local level. The close working relationship between the Art Gallery & Museum and Library at the Royal Pump Rooms being one such example.
Cobbing studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and at De Ateliers in |
