INDOOR EXHIBITION

Indoor exhibition overview, Architectural Association, London. UK (2024)
Video by Arturo Bandinelli & Chen Zhan
Cover image by Anne Tetzlaff
Editing by Chen Zhan 
Gallery install by Install Archive


To walk through the 3D scan of the indoor exhibition at the Architectural Association, click HERE︎︎︎.

'Rippling' as an image of thought:  exhibition feature wall with sanded pattern, Purbeck stone and site-marking rope.
Image credit: Chen Zhan


Running fingers across the patch, the one-millimeter ‘topographic’ difference between the inner and outer rings feels a lot more present than it looks. This 1mm change of depth is 16 years of exhibition history of the Architectural Association. Each colourful ring is one exhibition that took place in the gallery: from the yellow in the middle by AADRL in 2008 to the black as in Ripple Ripple Rippling in 2024.

This is a somewhat accidental discovery. When we got the space for Ripple Ripple Rippling, we were told that the gallery walls had never been sanded since its last refurbishment in 2008. Three exhibitions a year at the AA, the walls just being painted over and over. We were curious to take a look via a sanding machine and loved what we discovered, so we actually abandoned the content originally planned for the wall and just showed these sanded patches instead.

Together with the stories of the two most ‘hidden’ groups of people — the aunties and grannies (affectively termed) in Shigushan village, the storytelling patches with sanded rings create a double revealing moment that connects the AA gallery with a Chinese village.

Sanded storytelling patches & ‘Archeology’ of the gallery wall colours
Image credit: Chen Zhan

Sanding work by Mariusz Stawiarski from the AA Facilities team
Video credit: Chen Zhan

Walking-around screeninig of the Ripple Ripple Rippling Film Trilogy
Image credit:  Anne Tetzlaff

An immersive spatial projection onto a floating mesh screen encourages the audience to break the spectator gaze and walk around and into the projected village streets, family yards and even interior rooms. 

This is a film screening to be walked into and around rather than just being watched.

For more details of the RRR film trilogy, please click here︎︎︎. 

Storytelling Patches
Image credit: Anne Tetzlaff

Scroll lightbox installation
Image credit:  Anne Tetzlaff

A scroll drawing juxtaposed with road footage, situating the floating travel route taken by villagers between their workplaces and their rural homes. Territory here is a machine, wherein political and economic forces push and pull the flows of materials and labour.

Stools placed around the scroll installation have been gifted to us by the grannies of Shigushan. The low level of the stools and the scroll invite visitors to get closer to the ground and to experience the bodily way in which space in the village is inhabited.

Viewing Frame A towards drystone houses in Shigushan, Wuhan, China
Image credit:  Anne Tetzlaff


These frames within the windows connect the AA Gallery with the house foundation on Bedford Square and with one in Shigushan village.

Viewing Frame B towards drystone installation on Bedford Square, London, UK
Image credit:  Anne Tetzlaff