Display of abstract artwork on two fabric-covered panels with sketches attached by clothespins, set against a white brick wall and dark flooring.

REFUGE at the Crypt: installation as critique

Staged directly within the crypt of St. Mary's Battersea Church in August 2025, the two person exhibition REFUGE served as a live environment to test my spatial and material critique. The installation placed the saturated, cheerful aesthetics of the YOLKO monotypes in direct tension with harsh physical materials. This physicalised the dissonance between sanitised consumer branding and the realities of confinement.

the coop and the crypt

A life-sized wire and wood chicken coop was constructed directly over an existing tomb, famously the burial site of Benedict Arnold. Anchoring the structure over a historical grave literalised the entanglement of life, death, and containment.

The unframed YOLKO monotypes were suspended directly onto this raw wire mesh using wooden clothes pegs. This specific method of display framed the prints within a visual language of restriction, providing an uncomfortable context that counteracted the cheerful imagery while referencing traditional roles in domestic labour. Shifting the critique from the two-dimensional surface into the physical environment forced a direct confrontation between the viewer and the architecture of confinement.

A rectangular wooden frame with chicken wire, placed on a beige cloth-covered surface against a white brick wall. Inside the frame, there is a small piece of paper with a watercolor painting of a bird and a red dot, hanging from a clothespin. To the right of the paper, a gray stone plaque with engraved text is mounted on the wall.
Collection of small abstract paintings with yellow, red, black, and blue brushstrokes hanging on a wire grid. Each artwork is fixed with small clothespins and arranged in a grid pattern.

decoding the referent: the AstroTurf

A central component of the installation was a precise one-square-metre cut of AstroTurf. This artificial surface physically represents the legal minimum outdoor space allocated for a 'free-range' chicken. By materialising this specific spatial unit, the intervention actively decodes the comforting language of consumer advertising. It reveals the stark, bureaucratised reality of systemic neglect that consumer labels often conceal.

A wooden display case lying on a draped fabric surface, with a small illustrated card hanging inside. There is a black and green surface underneath the fabric.

expanding the emblems

Surrounding the central coop structure, concurrent canvas and linen works were displayed against heavily draped fabric. This curatorial choice further disrupted the conventions of a pristine gallery wall, anchoring the emblematic paintings deeply within the atmospheric and historical architecture of the crypt. Operating as an 'open work', the installation invited active viewer interpretation. The physical space allowed audiences to project broader socio-political concerns onto the work, from reading the draped fabric as shrouds to viewing the coop as a metaphor for wider systemic confinement, confirming the capacity of these open emblems to hold multiple realities at once.

Abstract artwork featuring yellow, orange, and red shapes on white canvases, arranged on a dark red fabric background.
An art display with a cream-colored fabric backdrop, featuring two drawings on cardboard and three small painted canvases with abstract designs in yellow, red, and orange.
A small abstract painting on a canvas featuring a moon, sun, and zigzag pattern, placed on a draped beige cloth background.
Two abstract paintings with yellow, brown, and beige shapes on white backgrounds, hanging on a red fabric backdrop.
Indoor art installation resembling a cave interior with fabric drapes, a small tent, and abstract paintings.
REFUGE at the Crypt exhibition wide view

Wide installation view of the crypt, two person exhibition alongside artist Akiko Wanaka.