Outset has supported an ambitious new installation by Korean artist Do Ho Suh on a footbridge above Wormwood Street – one of the busiest roads in the City of London, near Liverpool Street Station. Invited by Art Night and Sculpture in the City to respond to the migrant history of the East End and the City of London, Suh has created Bridging Home, London, a replica of a traditional Korean house, his childhood home, and surrounding bamboo garden, which appears to have ‘fallen’ onto the Wormwood Street footbridge.
This is Do Ho Suh’s first large-scale outdoor installation in the capital. Bridging Home, London reflects the artist’s own experience of moving across continents and between cultures and continues his career-long investigation of memory, migration, the multiplicity of the immigrant experience, and home as both a physical structure and a lived experience.
‘It is hugely rewarding to create a public work in London, my adopted home. For me, a building is more than just space. It is not only physical but also metaphorical and psychological. In my Inspired by his peripatetic life, Suh often focuses on transitory or connecting spaces – corridors,staircases, bridges, gateways – thinking of them as linking zones through which the body travels, physically and metaphorically, across continents and between how the built environment shapes our relationships to both the public and private sphere, what it means to belong, and how we carry an idea of home with us work I want to draw out these intangible qualities of energy, history, life and memory. While Bridging Home, London comes from personal experience, I hope it is something a lot of people can relate to.’ Do Ho Suh
Installed from September 2018 for a minimum of six months, the work is part of Art Night’s Legacy programme – a series of co-commissions, acquisitions for public collections and longer-term projects beyond the festival itself. It forms part of the eighth edition of Sculpture in the City. Bridging Home, London was co-commissioned by Art Night and Sculpture in the City, and curated by Fatos Üstek. The Garden design is supported by HOK with the participation of Blooming Artificial.
This commission was supported by Arts Council Korea and Arts Council England Joint Fund, the City of London Corporation, the Korean Culture Centre UK, Phillips, Saja Foundation x Outset, Savills, Simmons & Simmons. Further thanks to Lehmann Maupin, Victoria Miro, Velorose, Wedlake Blake, The White Wall Company.
Saja Foundation x Outset
This project is part of Outset’s partnership with the inspiring Saja Foundation. Outset provides crucial funding to support the artistic ecosystem, but we wish to take this further. The Saja Foundation pays homage to Saja Tourbah Dada with a mission to help people through the power of art, by supporting artists and providing art therapy in hospitals.
Do Ho Suh (b. 1962, South Korea) received a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA in sculpture from Yale University. He currently lives and works in London, New York and Seoul. Suh represented Korea at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, and has staged numerous recent international solo exhibitions and site-specific projects at institutional venues including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C (2018); Towada Art Center, Towada, Japan (2018); Contemporary Arts Centre, Cincinnati (2016); MOCA Cleveland (2015 - 2016); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (2013); 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2012 2013 2005); LEEUM, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea (2012); Seattle Art Museum, Washington (2011 and 2003) and Tate Modern, London (2011). The artist has participated in the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale (2018); 12th Venice Architecture Biennale (2010); 6th Liverpool Biennial (2010); 8th Gwangju Biennale (2012); represented Korea at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001).
