msdm: London-based House—Studio—Gallery for photographic art
and curatorial research, an expanded practice of the artist's book,
photobook publishing and peer-to-peer collaboration.


Our practice is abbreviated in [msdm]
and spells out

mobile ... strategies

...(of)...

display  { exhibitions 
                publications 
                curatorial  
...(&)...

mediation { workshops 
                    lectures 
                    writing 

We are interested in transformative partnerships
with creatives, educational organisations
and the andragogical  context of peer-to-peer development. 
Are you ready to collaborate with us?



Read more about msdm here: 
The Expanded Practice of the Artist’s Book 
Immersion in The Artist’s Museum

paula roush* creative approach is characterised by
mobile strategies of display and mediation. 
Founded in 1998 as an art collective,
msdm has in 2015 taken the form of
a House-Studio-gallery
with its own imprint, msdm publications. 
The  project, with its sequential use of vacant buildings 
combines mobile strategies of temporary urbanism
with those of contemporary artists' museums.
Exhibitions and curatorial projects are both
sites of display and sites of mediation
and integrate collective tactics for
peer to peer research-creation environments. 
This interweaving of artistic practice with its mediation 
is presented in installation and publishing. 

"The visual interpretation of space production, from everyday spatial practice to contested spatiality, has been a consistent pursuit of my practice.
Over the last five years, the focus has been the artist’s house–studio–gallery,
a creative model of place-making defined by its triple purpose of living,
making and curating.

Four live–work self-contained units were transformed into temporary
house–studio–galleries whilst becoming the locus for a photographic practice
focused on its intimate spaces and outdoors context, an expanded container
for domestic life, artistic production and exhibition-making.

These temporary spaces, being first and foremost archaeological sites of the contemporary past, provide opportunities to explore a variety of methodologies
for photographic practice, including psychogeography and autoethnography.
How to represent the psychic experience of architecture and urban space?
Trace the buildings’ past histories, personal and social narratives contained within their walls, memories of industrial labour, materials and services?
Document our presence and involvement in the transition into cultural economies?" [artist's statement]


Research
Current practice and research about art and photobook publishing has developed in parallel, each bookwork mirroring this probing into the psychic nature of architecture and the poetics of place,
both interiors and urbanscape.
The reading experience is, in each case, an interplay between the architecture of the building and the visual structure of the book.
For the REF Portofolio "Photobooks as sequential archives. Researching photobook publishing through the  integration of photographic and book art practices" see here

 
We are currently working on  three collective projects and publications: 

-Liquid Memories with Francisco Varela, a collaborative interdisciplinary curatorial project focused on  water as topic and medium in photographic arquives, developing liquid methodologies to publish archives 

-Studio/ Archaeology with Tonia Carless and UWE University of West of England,  an interior architecture project documenting msdm space through a cross-section
of representational approaches including photogrammetry, narrative/ documentary context and book art. 

- CREiA: Creative Attentive Studio with Ines Amado,  an experiential online course focused on deep listening and creative exercises, piloted in 2020 during lockdown, to address issues of  self-confinement, isolation and the need for tools that support reflective creative practice.

Other initiatives include:
- the orphan photography collection Found Photo Foundation
- the art publishing platform Page-Turner, 
- ə (uh)-books project space for material publishing

paula is a  Fulbrighter and  a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
She is a Senior Lecturer  in the School of Arts and Creative Industries
at the London South Bank University,
where she co-leads: 
- the photographic art project Photography and the Gallery
- and the photobook publishing enterprise  Photobook PopUp.

paula  has served as external critic and examiner to Masters and PhD dissertations in the areas of photography, photographic archives and art publishing, most recently Piet Zwart Institute – Postgraduate Studies in Art and Design Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam University, and Edinburgh College of Art (eca) The University of Edinburgh.



*NOTE: artistic name is intentionally written in all lowercase font.
Please do not use standard capitalisation.

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