27 February - 16 March 2025
Taking place in Meta’s ex-office spaces at Shaftesbury Avenue, The Floor is Lava presents a modular stage, inviting 40 artists to showcase sculptural works that disrupt and subvert the utilitarian architecture of the office environment.
In the words of Timothy Morton, ‘everything emits time’; objects, infrastructures and spaces exist inherently at a human scale, inevitably cascading into redundancy. Positioning 200 discarded office lockers as a performative platform, The Floor is Lava confronts the strange banality of the workplace, challenging the greyness of transient corporate landscapes and creating instead a transformative playground for artworks. Repurposed and elevated, the platform extends the monotonous carpet tiles beneath, turning the floor into a stage that resists the language of function and efficiency.
Through these interventions, the exhibition creates a space for materiality, theatricality, and play.
The Floor is Lava is the third collaborative project of Rachel Mortlock, India Stanbra and Janek Nixon. Following Systems We Have (New Art Projects, 2022 - curated by Hsi-Nong Huang) and Testing Grounds (Filet, 2022), the series tests the boundaries of the exhibition space, exploring shifting encounters between the artwork and audience.
Artists:
Ekaterina Luzgina
Laura Porter
Katie Surridge
Kavitha Balasingham
JD Rooney
Olivia England
Mike McShane
Ali Glover
Lily Bunney
Leonie Cameron
Abigail Norris
Oona Wilkinson
Zoë Granger
Leo Bant
Charlotte Dawson
Jadene Imbusch
Henry Burns
Rachel Mortlock
Gabriela Pelczarska
Arlene Wandera
Sam Sangjani Wills
Janek Nixon
India Stanbra
Simon Prentice
Matthew Swift
Lydia Porter
Hsi-Nong Huang
Rory Beard
Elena Hoskyns-Abrahall
Celeste Mcevoy
Chloe Beddow
Isobel Atacus
Gavin Bell
Eleni Papazoglou
Gideon Pain
Charlie Pritchard
Camilla Bliss
Eleanor Bedlow
Danny Young
Tom Coates