Over the coming 12 months, recessed.space expands from the confines of the digital world and will be presenting architecture and built environment exhibitions from a central London gallery space. As announced a few weeks ago when launching our open call for applications (see 00281), in collaboration with arts charity Hypha Studios we are opening an exhibition space in the iconic postmodern masterpiece, No. 1 Poultry, designed by James Stirling in the centre of the City of London.

Over the year, Hypha Studios will present 24 diverse and exciting exhibitions in three former ground-level commercial units, with recessed.space selecting eight exhibitions taking place in what was once a café. We can’t wait to reveal what the rest of the programme is, but it all kicks off this week with a huge launch of three exhibitions: The Turn, curated by Shakti Shrima; Material Actors, curated by Binder of Women; and, in the recessed.space gallery, Inside Out, curated by Nina Oltarzewska.




Inside Out considers ideas of the domestic interior, questioning notions of personal identity through the space we make and arrangements of objects within. The five artists showing pieces in the exhibition are all connected to Blackhorse Workshop, a community-focussed maker space in Walthamstow, North London. It’s hive of activity, with machines, benches, and workshops anybody can sign up to use, and is a welcome oasis of industry within a rapidly gentrifying part of the city.

With a café and courtyard out front, it’s always a bustling space at weekends, but even more so on the day recessed.space visited as it was the workshop’s 11th birthday party. Coinciding with this year’s Open House festival, bunting was hung, raffle tickets sold, and studios opened for visitors to explore the varied process and productions going on across the building – from woodworking to VFX model making, knife production to architectural ironmongery.

Oltarzewska has corralled four other makers she knew from the Workshop into her exhibition. George Exon, Jack Moolark, Pauline Macocco, and ThisisByron will be presenting objects and sculptures, some tightly hooked to a normative domestic realm, while others spin off into unexpected places. “There are a couple of pieces that are on the design and furniture side, quite formal and functional,” the curator says, adding “but also some works that are a bit more free form, artistic and… more symbolic than functional.”




Many artists enjoy the creative exploration of making a show for a non-gallery, former commercial space. There are quirks and characteristics of such spaces that veer away from the trad, perfect white cube gallery, and require inventive and resourceful approaches. The space in No. 1 Poultry Oltarzewska is playing with was once a café, and as well as the servery – which will be perfect for serving opening party drinks – there are a series of nooks along one wall, into which individual design objects will be placed, though perhaps in ways which take the reading away from a Habitat and more into a conceptual art space.

Oltarzewska started her career in design as a fine artist, studying at Chelsea. It was there that she was introduced to the college’s excellent workshop facilities, and despite no previous experience sculpting in metal, began to devour the material and its creative possibilities. Since then, her practice now largely involves the manipulation of and playing with mild steel, using the solid and durable material to explore softer notions of memory, childhood, belief, and perception. There is an inherent sharpness, roughness, and aggression to such steel sculptures, but so too can a person present a cold, hard façade but within hold a personality and emotion more tender and delicate.




Just as recessed.space is designed to sit in the space between art and architecture, so too Oltarzewska takes pleasure in the space between art and design. “I feel that the world of design, fabrication, furniture making, and that of the art world could come together more,” the maker says. “There's this whole thing about, ‘oh, but what is art? What makes it art?’ I mean, who gives a shit? Come look at stuff. Is it good? Does it speak to you? Okay, then let's maybe not care about what category it falls under!”

This ethos is also true at Blackhorse Workshop. The fit out and aesthetic of the open-access community space was designed by architecture collective Assemble, known for their fusion of forms, disciplines, and divergence from strict architectural approaches. Inside, true to the collaborative nature, makers help each other regardless of their chosen discipline – a metal worker who makes experimental sculpture may have the skillsets to help a fabricator make a balustrade, or a woodworker who makes furniture may help an visual artist create a pedestal or base for their work. This approach is not just about sharing and the exchange of knowledge, but very much about the space in-between silos of knowledge, and allowing space for something else, unexpected to emerge.




While Blackhorse Workshop is totally open to this intermingling approach, as Oltarzewska identifies, the artworld can be less open to welcoming in people or processes outside of its strict, gatekept confines. “There's a reason why I studied fine art in the first place,” the maker says, “There's a need for it, there's a reason for it, I love it, it's important. But I also want to change it.” She expands on this, using metaphors that perhaps speak to the industrial activities going on in the workshop, “I want to poke holes in it, I want to annoy it until things start to feel that they can be a bit more organic, involved, and intertwined.”

Thinking about this in relation to Inside Out, her exhibition at No. 1 Poultry, Oltarzewska continues: “Some people will think that they're coming to fine art show, and they're going to see a lamp and ask ‘What the hell is that doing here?’ To me, there's something interesting in that reaction. There's something important in confronting people to their preconceived ideas, I think it's important to challenge people and remind them what making is about.”

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This article is part of a series coinciding with the Hypha Studios x recessed.space gallery at No. 1 Poultry running for 12 months. For each of the eight exhibitions, a piece of new writing will be published in recessed.space to expand or reflect on the installation. More information about the recessed.space gallery can be found HERE.