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UNDERFLOW


A permanent public commission for UCL

Three works created for the new Dementia Research Institute on Gray's Inn Road

Freya Gabie | ION-DRI Programme - UCL – University College London
In Conversation With...Freya Gabie | ION-DRI Programme - UCL – University College London

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Uranographia Britannica, Chatsworth Estate, Devonshire Collections / Stained Glass sample of Laertes' Atlas, Freya Gabie

For this commission, neurological research is being approached by the artist as a form of exploration: treating the site as patient, exposing what’s hidden beneath the surface to reveal untold histories.
 
Her work, Underflow has responded to the subterranean river Fleet, flowing beneath the site, conceptually positioning it alongside the mythological River Lethe, to consider water through a lens of circularity, connection and transformation.
Working with neurologists, archaeologists and the site constructors, who all specialise in mapping concealed topographies, Underflow re-establishes the connection between the body and landscape: our inner bloodstreams and the rivers around us.
 
Laertes’ Atlas, a celebration of the history connecting water and health on this site, is a work formed of 12 lightboxes, housing individual stained-glass drawings depicting areas of ground found above the River Fleet. Different on each encounter, lit by the daylight of 12 locations around the world, from a day in each month of the year. A new form of map for the site that looks beyond the surface. It responds to the Uranographia Britannica, the celestial atlas created by Dr John Bevis, an astronomer and physician, who found the spring waters feeding the River Fleet to have health giving properties, turning this site into one of the most popular spas of the 1700’s, Bagnigge Wells.  

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Geological chalk core excavated from 35m below ground / John Mitchell's clod of earth from the lowest site excavation

Furtive Ground directly responds to the materiality of the place. Magnetite and calcium – both compounds found in the human brain and the site’s excavated ground – will be suspended through the building, the magnetite becoming a compass; always finding magnetic north. The compass will be created from two individual cast clods of earth, excavated by hand from the 
lowest depth of the building by the two site foreman, John O'Connor, and John Mitchell.

Neurological cell slide image - University College London Queens Square Institute of Neurology

Downstream, is an ephemeral and collaborative endeavour, created to be embedded in the lowest part of the building. A participatory, unfolding sound work for the MRI suite, it will reform field-recordings from the archives of the nearby British Library’s ‘Water Library’ inviting visitors to take a journey through other people’s memories of water, accumulating as a collective woven river of sound. 

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