LONDON.- Wandsworth Council’s Pump House Gallery is presenting a new solo exhibition by Johann Arens. The gallery has been transformed with an installation originating from the interior of the P5, a local bus that traverses the neighbouring landscape of housing estates.

Sculptural renditions of the familiar interiors of buses – including elongated handrails and robust seating – convert the gallery into a similarly transitory public space to highlight the momentary synergies of a bus ride.

The exhibition borrows its title from ‘Hale's Tours and Scenes of the World’, an attraction designed in the early twentieth century that simulated a railway journey. These customised cinema spaces mimicked train carriages to the finest detail and were often even mechanised to rock the ‘passengers’, simulating the motion of a steam train. With ‘elaborate equipment of levers, pulleys, wheels and sound-making devices’ , visitors, often still unacquainted with the moving image, were smitten by these instantaneous travels taking them through the Swiss mountains, the Norwegian fjords and the Rocky Mountains.

By contrast, Arens’ installation redirects our attention to the mundane scenario played out inside the bus. ‘Scenes of the World’ is a survey of the interactions, exchanges and inherent social textures of this public interior. Studying the sculptural properties of the P5’s furnishings provokes a new assessment of this easily overlooked environment. Arens’ site-related interventions at Pump House Gallery become an enquiry into the multiple ways standardised interiors and public transport devise our communal life and shape civil behaviour.

The P5 bus route starts in Patmore, Savona and Carey Garden estates, not far from Battersea Park, and takes a long, winding route through primarily residential areas on its way to Elephant and Castle. As part of the exhibition, Arens invites community groups, all situated on the P5’s route, to the gallery in a series of one-day takeovers to ponder the social interactions that take place on public transport.

Over the course of the exhibition, multiple events will address the cultural and infrastructural divides bridged by the bus. These takeovers include a live drawing event with ActionSpace artist Claudia Williams and a sound installation by Juliet Sprake and Charis Poon that incorporates recordings and poetry made on the bus, and work created with families from ROSE community centre in Savona Estate. By revaluating the social space of the bus, where seemingly unconnected people, events and perspectives meet, the exhibition provides a platform to debate and shape how we want to live together.

Johann Arens was born in Aachen, Germany and received his MFA in Fine Arts at Goldsmith, University of London. Since then he has worked on public commissions assigned by Arnolfini / Art and the Public Realm Bristol, Letchworth Heritage Foundation, Jerwood Foundation London and Kettle’s Yard Cambridge. He has been resident at the BSR in Rome, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Space London and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

Recent exhibitions include Bold Tendencies, London; ‘Findings on Palpation’, P/////AKT in Amsterdam; ‘digital_self’, IMMA Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and IFFR Rotterdam Film Festival (2018); ‘These Rotten Words’, Chapter Arts, Cardiff (2017). In 2016 he was awarded the ‘Prize for Young Art’ at Neuer Aacherer Kunstverein, Germany.