LONDON, ENGLAND.- September 10 commemorates the 250th Birthday of Sir John Soane, one of England’s most revered Architects. To celebrate this anniversary, a group of artists, all linked to the development of Pitzhanger Manor House and Gallery (once owned and designed by Soane), have been invited to create works which respond to the house and the occasion.  Each artist has been given free rein to interpret the building and Soane according to the parameters of their own art practice and the restrictions of the house.  When referring to the House we have also reverted to Soane’s original name for his rural retreat, Pitzhanger Manor-House with a ’Z’.

As Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy for 31 years and a passionate collector, Soane purchased Pitzhanger in 1800 and redesigned it over the following 5 year period.  He intended to build his “dream house” a weekend retreat and place of entertainment where he could invite the contemporary artists of his day such as Turner, and display his collection of artworks and artefacts,  which included Hogarth’s Rakes Progress.

Amongst a group of over 20 artists, Antony Key’s intervention go back to where you belong replaces the exotic Chinese birds printed on the wallpaper of the Upstairs Drawing Room, with indigenous black crows, an ironic comment on migration/immigration, begging the question, if Chinoiserie was acceptable in an English Manor House when will the artist be accepted into English  culture.

Anne Ninivin’s basement installation in the Monk’s Dining Room, “On the Monk’s Tracks” addresses Soane’s fantasies of a Monk in residence and also recalls the now absent greenhouse, as the room is turfed and planted, connecting it to the garden immediately beyond the windows, but lit so as to recall a place of obsessive study.

In the Breakfast Room, Darren Armstrong creates a hologram of missing artefacts, including the Cawdor vase, originally intended for Pitzhanger but now housed at Lincoln’s Inn Field under the terms of the will.

Helen Hewitt uses speeded-up film to explore the light patterns that shift through the House throughout the day, surveying a central tenet of Soane’s designs and architectural legacy; whilst Máire Gartland’s written and illustrated Mrs Soane’s Diary, charting the weeks leading to her irascible husband’s 50th birthday, is casually discarded for all to read.