Them’s the Breaks, is an energetic and experimental takeover of the Curve, the 90-metre-long exhibition space at the Barbican in London. Free and open to all, its creators Resolve have created a space of community and contemplation from an assemblage of repurposed materials and objects. The exhibition invites you to read (bring your own book or choose from Resolve’s carefully curated library), take instruction from the explanatory notes on the wall or simply find a comfortable place to lounge on seating imaginatively constructed from reclaimed materials.
Resolve is a London-based interdisciplinary design collective whose work addresses social challenges. Led by Akil Scafe-Smith, Seth Scafe-Smith and Melissa Haniff, Resolve have created a practice at the boundaries of architecture, engineering, technology, and art. For them, design is about more than aesthetic value; it can also become a vehicle for political, institutional, and socio-economic change.
The exhibition is conceived as three spaces: the library, the workshop and the stage, each a site for a different kind of knowledge exchange. The library, a bricolage assembly of colourful bookcases and displays fashioned from old shelving and ratchet straps, holds politically activist publications such as Migrant Journal, Sound Advice’s Now You Know, the Funambulist and Skin Deep magazine, inspiring the conversations Resolve hope this exhibition will provoke. Nestled within the library and differentiated by an elevated platform is a space for performance and teaching.
The workshop, situated halfway along the Curve, is a simple MDF tabletop resting on legs made from stacked and strapped concrete blocks. It is ambiguous in character; you can’t tell whether it’s left over from the exhibition’s production or a purpose-built space intended for public use.
Finally, there is the stage. A ramped platform constructed from painted timber offcuts, concrete blocks and repurposed seating opens out to a larger gathering space for audio-visual performances. On the opposite wall are all kinds of seats fashioned from breeze blocks, cork, fencing and fabric.
At the end of the stage stands Goliath, a monument constructed from the exhibition’s waste: timber offcuts, scrap metal and plastic waste stacked and joined to form a human figure. Emerging from a conversation with a collaborator, André Anderson, it critiques the systems upheld by institutions and explores how creatives from marginalised communities can engage, strategise and thrive without perpetuating the ills of the systems they are confronting.
As Akil Scafe-Smith explains “we are exploring what happens when you start at the end – when you imagine the aftermath of the death of institutions, or when you go from being a Black practitioner failed by local institutions to becoming the vanguard of power. As a sculptural element, it is a gathering together of offcuts” – it is about the formation of a new type of institution, one which prioritises community and radical imagination.
A series of public events assemble practitioners from Resolve’s network, making room for dialogue, imagination and world-building within the breaks and fragmentations of the institution.
For Resolve, the decision to work with the Barbican, which two years ago came under scrutiny about its treatment of employees of colour, was one determined by its willingness to explore institutional decline. Them’s the Breaks is a “metaphor for working within the cracks,” explains Scafe-Smith. It feels like a natural space for a collective whose work exists at the edge physically, working in abandoned or peripheral spaces, and intellectually – at the margins of the architecture.
In the scribbled notes and drawings, you as a visitor become a participant in the making process. It is a collaborative show, alive with the multiplicity of voices, hands and ideas that have shared in its making. This diversity in actors is a key aspect of the collective’s work. For Resolve, it is in the practice – the action, the formation of networks, communities and collaborations, that new institutions are created.
Them’s the Breaks has been constructed predominately with materials salvaged from institutions across London and the south coast,an eight-month process. The descriptive wall labels have been made to look like postage labels , reminding you of how far things travel, the physical labour of their makers, and the embodied energy of transportation and construction. For Resolve, this needn’t be the final home of these materials. Visitors are invited to claim what they want from the show by following the instructions on the notes.
Resolve Collective: Them’s the Breaks is at the Barbican, London, until 16 July
