Space / Object

Location

Country: Other
City: other locations abroad

The two buildings depicted in this work are the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and the British Museum in London. The architectural models of the museums appear to be floating in space, and their unconventional positions make us question our relationship to the buildings. The Pushkin in particular seems no longer to be a place we can walk around and view objects, but seems an object in its own right. Langlands and Bell regard these two institutions as having a more or less equivalent status within their respective cities and cultures. "Space / Object" can be understood as a representation of the cultural and political relationships between Russia and Great Britain, and was commissioned for the British Embassy in Moscow in 2001.

Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell met as students at Middlesex Polytechnic in 1978 and have worked in collaboration ever since. Their practice is primarily concerned with the relationships between people and the architecture in which we live our lives. They have said ‘we shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us.’ Langlands and Bell have exhibited widely around the world, including exhibitions in Tokyo at TN Probe (1998) and CCA Kitakyushu (1997 and 2020-21). In the late 1990s, they were part of the group of artists known at the time as the ‘Young British Artists’, and their works featured in the 'Sensation' touring exhibition that opened at the Royal Academy in 1997. In the same year, a major touring exhibition of their work from 1986–1996 featured at the Serpentine Gallery, London, the Grey Art Gallery in New York and the Kunsthalle, Bielefeld. In 2004, the artists’ exhibition, 'The House of Osama Bin Laden' won a BAFTA Award in the category of Interactive Arts Installation. The exhibition was shown at the Imperial War Museum, London and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Since 2008, solo exhibitions of Langlands and Bell’s work include shows in London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Kitakyushu and Accra.

Places

England, London, British Museum, Russia, Moscow, Pushkin Museum

Subjects

topography, architectural plan/technical drawing, gallery, museum

Materials & Techniques

lacquer, paint, glass (glass as material), wood, diptych, sculpture (as object name), wall-mounted sculpture

Artist

Langlands and Bell (1955;1959 - )

Title

Space / Object

Date

1999

Medium

Diptych of wall-mounted, framed and glazed sculptural panels: wood, paint, lacquer, glass

Dimensions

each 140 cm x 140 cm

Acquisition

Commissioned from the artists, November 1999

Inscription

"SPACE/OBJECT" (DIPTYCH) / PUSHKIN MUSEUM, MOSCOW / BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON / Langlands & Bell 1999

Provenance

Commissioned from the artists for the new British Embassy, Moscow 1999.

GAC number

17441