New Blocks On The Block
'Newbuild' is on show to the public at New College until the end of June.
Recent renovations to New College’s Long Building have shocked the college’s student population. The building has been dramatically transformed into an artist’s installation consisting of MDF casing painted with large red bricks. “It looks like Lego” was one student’s stunned reaction.
The temporary change is all the more stark when contrasted with the history and grandeur of surrounding buildings, as well as the interior of the building, which retains its original fittings, complete with rough stone walls and cracked oak beams. The work was carried out by London-based artist Richard Woods, whose previous credits include filling a Venetian cloister with printed crazy painting and covering stone flagged floors with canary-yellow floorboards.
Woods is famed for changing surfaces to alter the architectural history of the building, using large bricks to minimise the size of the building and give it a ‘domestic’ air that looks totally out of context. The work is part of a trio of buildings, in which a warehouse in East London and a detached house in Wimbledon will be covered in similar casings.
Woods cites business parks on the outskirts of Oxford as his inspiration, aiming to put something of the ‘other Oxford’ into the centre of the university. Woods is also keen to point out that the building was not harmed in the process of creating the installation. Paul Bonaventura of the Ruskin Laboratory of Fine Arts, who put Woods in contact with New College, praised the college’s attitude, saying they had been “very open minded” in dealing with the artist.
Dean of New College Dr Michael Burden is unrepentant, admitting that although his first reaction to the idea was to laugh, he is now enjoying hosting the installation. Previously, the building’s only distinction was of housing the oldest public toilets in continuous use in Europe.
21st Apr 2005