Bloc Billboard: Alexander Glass
06 July – 01 September
Free & open to all
For Bloc Projects Billboard Commission Glass’s work establishes a relationship with the billboard and the Prime Mover gym that it is attached to. The image focuses on the separation between the architectural and the bodily whilst exploring the aesthetics of desire. A Body is A Building, looks to be both seductive and descriptive of the gym as a cultural space, foregrounding its democratic currency, sweat.
A Body is a Building, references a 1996 essay, When is a body not a body? When it’s a building, by Marcia Ian, that describes the experience of being a female body within a male-dominated gym. The essay discusses both the emotional and architectural hostility to the female body, which appears to exist as a foreign entity. Though contemporary culture’s relationship to the gym has changed dramatically since its origin in ancient Greece as a social space for the male population, the space holds onto a feeling of exclusivity somehow. Gyms advertise on the principles of ambition, strength, health and self-image, ideas which can appeal to everyone, but these exist under the flawed notion that being better means appearing as one particular thing. The gym like any other space within society, it should seek to welcome every type of body.
We would like to thank Primemover for their support
This commission has been generously supported by Arts Council England.