Leo Fitzmaurice, who featured in the CHELSEA space exhibition Fohn, is currently Artist in Residence at Standpoint Gallery, London, as part of their Futures Residency Programme 2011. CHELSEA space’s Donald Smith was honoured to be invited as one of the Residency’s guest studio visitors to Leo at Standpoint’s Hoxton address.

Leo’s work often involves the use of marketing and packaging materials reconfigured to make new architectonic sculptures or site related and site specific works but for this brief five week residency he wanted to reconsider his ongoing series of random ‘sculptural happenings’ - a visual diary of everyday sights captured on his mobile phone.

Leo Fitzmaurice’s work may incorporate the ‘everyday’ in his use of marketing and packaging materials and his work is full of wit and humour, but it is also rigourous and often painstaking in its concept and construction. Donald Smith was delighted, then, to get the opportunity to have access to working drawings and notes and to see some of the 400 or more photographs to date in Leo’s ongoing series of chance phone images. As the work and its installation is often highly controlled, the studio seemed surprisingly rough and ready and Leo and Donald had a very lively, productive and enjoyable meeting. Standpoint has become an important centre with its gallery and residency programmes and in 2012 they will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of their Mark Tanner Sculpture Award, one of the largest awards of its kind in the UK. The current curator is the talented Fiona Macdonald.

As part of Leo Fitzmaurice’s Standoint Futures Residency there will be a two day exhibition from 12am -8pm on 24th March, and 12am-6pm on 25th March. There will also be an artist’s talk and drinks from 6.30pm on Thursday 24th March and CHELSEA space hopes to see you there: Standpoint, 45 Coronet Street, Hoxton London, N1 6HD (tel:00442077394921)

For the exhibition Fohn at CHELSEA space, curator Rob Wilson sent copies of the Thomas Bernhard novel, ‘Correction’ to a selected group of artists and architects and asked them to make work or show existing work in response to the theme of the book. ‘Correction’ concerns an Austrian Academic teaching at Cambridge who designs a conical house for his sister in the middle of a forest in Austria. The story is a thinly veiled portrait of the philosopher/architect Wittgenstein and the brilliant but obsessive house that he built for his sister in Vienna. The story should be about Modernist perfection and beauty but the ‘Fohn’ of the title is an ill wind that blows red Saharan sand onto the mountains of Europe and purportedly drives people mad. Striving for perfection leads to obsession, the return to Austria leads to unhappy memories, and the ultimate outcome is madness and suicide! The show included a host of brilliant artists and architects including Allies & Morrison Architects, FAT., Leo Fitzmaurice, 5th Studio, Joseph Gandy, Walther.Gilles, Lothar Goetz, Clare Goodwin, Daniel Hunziker, Charles Mason, de Matos Storey Ryan Ltd., Nissen Adams Architects, Quinlan & Francis Terry Architects, Sergison Bates Architects, Yuko Shiraishi, Sigrid Stabel, Ullmayer Silvester Architects, Ed Wilson, and Elizabeth Wright. At the time of Fohn the extremely talented Rob Wilson was curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects, he is currently working as a freelance curator and as the editor and founder of BLOCK magazine (www.blockmagazine.co.uk )