Photo: Nigel Green
Dylan Shipton & Ben Fitton. Monument to the Excluded Middle (2013) Timber, scaffold sheeting, fencing.
This large outdoor structure takes the form of a stricken airship whose central section has collapsed, bringing the vessel to ground. The invention of the powered airship at the turn of the last century marked a fundamental shift in our relation to the landscape and its elements, promising exploration and access to new vistas on an unprecedented scale. As with all encounters with the sublime, however, adventure went hand in hand with catastrophe, and the risks were deemed unsustainable. Fitton and Shipton propose this temporary structure as a monument to this dichotomy, sited in the public realm of the city.
Dylan Shipton & Ben Fitton
Dylan Shipton and Ben Fitton met on the MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art & Design in 2000 and continue to live and work in London, pursuing both individual and collaborative practices. Their collaborations combine an interest in surfaces and their supporting structures with an investigation of absence and negation. The work seeks to question what is at stake in maintaining or arresting processes of collapse or abandonment, drawing on traditions of site-specific sculptural intervention, political commitment and public address.