01/08/2004-14/08/2004.

Evening event Friday 13th August 2004, 6.30-9pm.

Territory, both a rural and urban concern, is the way in which space can be claimed and controlled. However Spaces left Over After Planning (SLOAPS) can neither be controlled nor claimed, and become pockets of disruption within the cityscape….

Perceived as a sly and cunning pest in rural communities, in an urban context, the fox is thought of as a benign presence. Indeed, the sighting of a fox is an almost mystical experience. Such an experience generally occurs at night, a time when one is more reliant on secondary senses – hearing, smell, touch. The presence of a fox is often signalled by a detection of movement, eyes caught in headlights and, as all South Londoners will be familiar, the blood curdling ‘call’ in the dead of night.

Spaces favoured by the fox – the alleyway, the patch of wasteground – often disregarded by the city’s inhabitants, allow it to move between interrelated but divided areas, transgressing imposed boundaries. These spaces are difficult to define – often being semi-public, linking one street to the next, one boundary line to another. The consideration of the ways in which different inhabitants – both animal and human – use their surroundings highlights the relationship between the rural and urban environment.

SLOAP – Space Left Over After Planning – despite being initially considered ‘surplus’, unintentionally create opportunities for a variety of different uses. Constantly shifting and therefore never ‘fixed’, such spaces allow for a multiplicity of experiences to take place within and around them. Territory, both a rural and urban concern, is the way in which space can be claimed and controlled. However, such spaces can neither be controlled nor claimed, and become pockets of disruption within the cityscape. Their influence ‘leaks’, weakening the clear divisions between functional and dysfunctional space in the urban environment.

By prompting us to re-consider such spaces, SLOAPsolutions attempts a bridging of worlds, that between the rural and urban, functional and dysfunctional.
Anna Maloney 2004

Katharina Heilein lives and works in London. Since graduating from Goldsmiths College in 2002, she has exhibited in Prague, Dresden, Berlin and London. For more information see www.sloapsolutions.com.

Kindly Sponsored by:
Paul Short
Director
Floor Heating Ltd
Jesset Drive
Church Crookham
Fleet
Hants GU52 OXU

Emma Chalk
dogmadshop
12 Palace Road
London SW2 3NG

Mr Stephen Lewis
LEWIS & WOOD Wallpaper
5 The Green
Uley
Gloucestershire
GL11 5SN

Special thanks to:
Bryan Smith &
Morten Jensen.
Pet & Garden Supplies
57 North Cross Road
London SE22 9ET

Hilti Ltd,
Unit 4,
Creek Road Industrial Estate,
Creek Road,
London SE8. Project History

SLOAPsolutions invents hypothetical new uses for urban and suburban places that in ‘real-estate’ terminology are referred to as SLOAP. The term is short for Space Left Over After Planning and describes isolated sub/urban tissue, which is nevertheless considered to be part of the public space.

SLOAPsolutions proposals are a portrayal of strategies in social engineering and sub/urban regeneration; they adopt the rhetoric and inherent idealizations and apply them to their own design solutions. As a result, the Left Over Spaces display a potential to be re-invented as pockets of discovery; they carry the promise of enhanced experience, yet remain dysfunctional at the same time.

WELCOME TO THE HOTSCENT EXPERIENCE
(working title) at Space Station Sixty-Five

This forthcoming SLOAPsolutions project stages preparations for an Urban Fox Hunt, which itself remains a fiction, yet generates a number of planning and design proposals in and around the East Dulwich gallery. Artist Katharina Heilein is surveying the area for foxes, investigating SLOAPs, talent scouting for dogs and showcasing the hunt as an urban lifestyle experience in forthcoming shows in August and November 2004.

The results of the Fox Survey, which will be real and manufactured, will arrive at the gallery in July/August in form of maps, text work and models. They are going to be displayed alongside a second line of inquiry, which considers the dogs living in the area as potential contenders for the hunt. Consultation sessions will be held with the dog owners and a portfolio will be produced for each aspiring pet complete with pictures and character descriptions, which goes on display during the course of the first show.

In the second show in November, the project touches on issues of privately owned public space as a questionable element of contemporary urban developments. Again, the rural Fox Hunt provides a reference as it is based on the landowners’ permission for the hunting community to pass through private land.

The Space Station Sixty-Five gallery with its characteristic combination of a shop front and a well-preserved interior living space will be converted into a show-flat loosely based on Donald Judd’s N.Y.C home at 101 Spring Street. A 1:1 model of a ‘hunt track’ will lead through the show flat, as if to let the public in pursuit of a (imaginary) fox pass through the place. The artist will set up a ‘marketing suite’ inside this show flat and approach visitors in the role of a sales executive.

Katharina Heilein lives and works in London. Since graduating from Goldsmiths College in 2002, she took part in group shows in Prague, Dresden, Berlin and London. For more information see www.sloapsolutions.com.