Press
The Guardian
The New Gallery Walsall: Garman Ryan collection
Walsall, United Kingdom
31 March 2021
The Guardian is currently exploring the collections of British institutions, highlighting important artworks. From the New Art Gallery in Walsall, Julie Brown the collection's curator, analyses and celebrates Sally Ryan's sculpture 'The Martinique'.
'The Martinique' was gifted along with 15 other works to the Walsall gallery by Kathleen Garman in 1973. It is now the only public museum in Britain to feature Ryan's work.
The bust is one of the 365 objects held at the heart of the gallery, in an intimate wooden clad room by Caruso St John. The space reflects the personal tastes of its two female collectors and acts as a biographical legacy. "The stories of the people associated with the objects are at its core, and the themes of love, life, loss and dysfunctional families are universal."
Photo © The New Art Gallery Walsall. Sally Ryan (1916-1968), The Martinique, 1934, bronze, Garman Ryan Collection
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Volume 3 of Caruso St John’s Collected Works is out now. Between 2010 and 2020, Caruso St John expanded its reputation for sensitive and characterful architecture through a remarkable range of projects. Major buildings in the heart of Swiss, German, and Belgian cities explored the role urban landmarks can play in the present day, while smaller domestic projects provided the opportunity for experiments in restoration, materials, and colour. Transforming buildings for reuse – from beloved public institutions to long-abandoned industrial sites – became a focal point for the practice as it sought to emphasise its work with the existing rather than contribute to the escalating production of new construction. Their designs for memorials, exhibitions, and museums further developed this engagement with memory and an aliveness to the past.
Laboratorium, the calisthenics gym that is inside the Swiss Caruso St John headquarters, is published in About: Sportscapes, a magazine by About: platform.
When a big part of the office remained empty after the pandemic, an opportunity to turn the empty space into a gym arrived. Frida Grahn argues that this unexpected combination of uses - an architectural office and a work-out space - doesn't feel out of place, and demonstrates how design can enable diverse activities to co-exist.
Following his January 5th lecture All Buildings are Beautiful at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Adam Caruso was in conversation with architect Aleksandra Czupkiewicz. A transcript of their discussion is published in the March edition of Architektura Murator.
St Pancras Campus is reviewed in the March edition of the RIBA Journal. Chris Foges speaks to Peter St John about the state of commercial development in London, discusses the building's contribution to its urban setting at the border of Kings Cross and Camden Town, and commends its rich detailing and high quality approach social housing.
Hospitalfield features in the third issue of Alder, a publication documenting Scotland's modern architecture, produced by the office of Mary Arnold-Forster.
Rowan Moore includes the new studio building at Hospitalfield features in his top five projects of 2024, calling it "a playful, expressive structure in which fun is had, in the tradition of Arts and Crafts architecture, with eaves, gutters, cladding and other basics of building".
Caruso St John are guest editors of Baumeister's annual curated issue. The issue is conceived as a reader, presenting a series of texts that have influenced the practice's recent thinking, including writing by Material Cultures, Grace Ndiritu, Barbara Buser, and David Holmgren.
St Pancras Campus is reviewed in the December issue of the Architects Journal. Rob Wilson visits the building with Peter St John and Rod Heyes and discusses its position in the emerging cityscape between the railway land of King Cross and the Victorian terraces of Camden Town.
This second volume in Caruso St John’s Collected Works is published this month by MACK. The publication traces an interlacing set of themes through the practice’s work over the first twelve years of the twenty-first century. Its unique approach to history is revealed as a rejection of the myth of relentless novelty in favour of an understanding of the past as present and an interest in working with the existing. The influences of Milan, Chicago, and Rome on understandings of the city are explored, as well as the use of ornament and the place of Switzerland in shaping the practice’s evolving trajectory. Throughout these contexts, collaborations with contemporary artists including Thomas Demand and Damien Hirst continue to shape the practice's relations to the materiality and drama of space.