msdm House-Studio-Gallery, 2015-2024
London UK
paula roush's creative practice is distinguished by its mobile strategies of display and mediation, encapsulated by the acronym 'msdm'—a moniker that has become emblematic of their work. Established in 1998 as a collective platform, msdm evolved into the House-Studio-Gallery form in 2015, complete with its own publishing imprint, msdm publications.
This initiative, marked by the adaptive reuse of vacant buildings, fuses temporary urbanistic strategies with the ethos of contemporary artists' museums. Through this process, msdm orchestrates exhibitions and curatorial projects that serve dual purposes: they act as both spaces for showcasing artistic research and as environments for active mediation. This dual function facilitates collaborative tactics for peer-to-peer research and creative engagement. The blend of artistic production and its subsequent mediation is manifested through both installations and publishing, each reinforcing the other.
Read the MANIFESTO: mobile strategies of display & mediation
]msdm[ as artistic practice here >
msdm House-Studio-Gallery and Publications logo is a character
in the collage-novel The Memory of Stones, inpired by our animal ally iri-garay, created during a residency at the Frans Masereel Centrum. It is an emblem for our more-than-human practice. See other animal inspired practices here >
Francisco Varela is in residence at the msdm House-Studio-Gallery in 2019. The resulting video-essay, The Expanded Practice of the Artist’s Book: Immersion in The Artist’s Museum, premieres in Connections – Exploring Heritage, Architecture, Cities, Art, Media at the University of Kent, Canterbury, in 2020. The accompanying book, published by msdm publications for Virtual Museums: An Inquiry into Virtual Art/Institutions & Communities, showcases at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada,
in 2022.
"The visual interpretation of space production, from everyday spatial practice to contested spatiality, has been a consistent pursuit of my practice. Over the last 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."
Conversation:
Related works:
contact
paula roush ::: paularoush@gmail.com
msdm studio ::: msdm@msdm.org.uk