'A space without a use' is an exhibition inspired by one room. Since 2009, IBID has occupied the recently vacated three-storey workshop of Kashket & Partners, former hatters to the royal court of Russia and, more recently, appointed manufacturers of coats and uniforms to Queen Elizabeth II.
Remnants of the building's former function abound, from the faux wood-panelled showroom and clocking-in machine to the clothes presses in the back room. Like a townhouse, each chamber has a different function and character. There is a particular room that could be said to produce 'a statute of the inhabitable'; a useless room: part manager's office, part washroom, a metal door adorning the chimney breast. It is long and narrow, and bathed in natural light. Inside this space, the works in the exhibition emphasise the 'a-functional', and stand for what might have populated what George Perec called an 'unattainable space'. They are themselves standins or representations for things that have gone, are not yet possible or never spoken of.
Located at the room's entrance, Anthea Hamilton's double-sided moveable screen alters the very nature of the exhibition space as it covers or uncovers the doorway, depending on the activities taking place on the film set in the adjacent room. Laure Prouvost longs literally to push the limits of habitable space, both in her obscured video Deeper and the self-reflexive handwritten sign Ideally this wall would be pushed 4 or 5 meter further. This presence of absence is felt both in Amalia Pica's postparty decorations (Final de Fiesta, or End of the Party) and in her homemade analogue aerial, an Unintentional Monument soon to be superseded by its digital counterparts. In another sense, seen through the prism of Jewish law, Liang & Liang's discreet objects speak of a state beyond use. Imbued with the history of Italian architecture and design, Flavio Favelli's hybrid objects possess a seductive elegance that belies their inherent impracticality. Lettiga II (the name for an Ancient Roman portable sofa) is reminiscent of a historical daybed, yet unusable as such, for it is inlaid with a black-and-white tile and marble checquerboard, like a Mediterranean floor. Made of pieces of black glass Archivio (Archive or Memory) is a mirror that obscures and distorts more than it reflects.