/ruin/
Exhibition adopting the form of an immersive installation, which presented a collection of broken fragments and abandoned relics from a ruined and mythical nightclub to highlight the decline of the public realm and the social fabric of community spaces.
- Submitting institution
-
Kingston University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32-53-1840
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- 180 The Strand, London, U.K
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- January
- Year of first exhibition
- 2017
- URL
-
http://benkellydesign.com/ruin/
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Ruin was an immersive installation created by Ben Kelly, in collaboration with fashion designer Virgil Abloh. It was commissioned
by The Vinyl Factory and located at The Store X, 180 The Strand, London (5 October–10 December 2017). Ruin presented a collection
of broken fragments and abandoned relics from a ruined and mythical nightclub. It used a material language of physical decay to highlight the
decline of the public realm and the social fabric of community spaces, which result from contemporary approaches to urban development
in contexts such as central London. Kelly led on the research and designed the installation, consulting with Abloh in order to draw on his
work and ethos throughout the design process.
Ruin adds to the canon of the architecture of dereliction. It deliberately echoed the new retail stores designed in the 1970s by architectural
practice SITE for the BEST Products Company. Ruin was also inspired by the rewilding narrative of the song “[Nothing But] Flowers” by Talking
Heads (1988), in which the human-made fabric of shopping malls and highways is made redundant by the living forces of nature. Ruin
functioned as a visual and experiential commentary on the destructive forces of urban change. The creation of a physically ruined nightclub
also echoes the actual demolition of iconic Manchester nightclub, The Haçienda, which remains an early touchstone of Kelly’s established
design language. As sites of communal gathering rapidly disappear, the creation of a ruined nightclub forces us to speculate on possible
causes of urban social ruination – neglect, violence, commercialisation – and the consequences.
In 2019 Kelly was invited to re-design the installation as a working club, Joséphine, at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris – a new nightclub
advocating civic engagement, gender equality, and LGBTQI+ identities
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
