CAN + Harry Lawson: All That Could Have Been

Sir John Soane’s Museum has commissioned architecture studio CAN and artist Harry Lawson to create an installation exploring the relationship between architecture, objects and time.

Drawing from Soane’s approach to collecting, the installation takes the form of three cabinets, entitled All That Was, All That Is and All That Could Have Been. Inside each cabinet, CAN and Lawson have placed a number of objects—including both the natural and manmade, the fragmentary and complete, the rarefied and everyday.

Together these micro-collections reflect on the ways we understand and appreciate physical objects in the digital age, and how, in turn, they shape our understanding of the wider world.

This installation is the latest in a series of projects by emerging architects and designers at Sir John Soane’s Museum. Previous exhibitors have included Studio MUTT, Mamou-Mani and Adam Nathaniel Furman.

All That Was
Constructed in the form of a façade, this cabinet reflects on the conflicts between developing new architectural ideas and retaining historic architectural elements. It takes the physical object as its starting point, presenting historical artefacts, ranging from old rocks to redundant technology, to examine how objects are read and understood in the present and how their meaning can shift over time.

All That Is
Taking the form of a scaffold, this cabinet reflects on the idea of a construction forever in a state of flux. The objects within this cabinet—replicas or objects created in series—aim to unpick the notion of the hallowed or sacred object. Following the way images exist on the internet in infinitely reproduced form, here objects appear accelerated into caricatures of their original intentions.

All That Could Have Been
This cabinet adopts a tomb-like form to examine the space of contemporary cultural production. Trapped in the limelight are a range of fragments, building materials and exhibition labels. Taken together, this incoherent collection of the unrealised, underdeveloped and implied posits a kind of completion for what was never completed or reached its final form.

CAN: can-site.co.uk

Harry Lawson: harrylawson.co.uk

About Sir John Soane’s Museum
Sir John Soane’s house, museum and library at No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields has been a National Museum since the early 19th century. On his appointment as Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy in 1806, Soane (1753–1837) began to arrange his books, classical antiquities, casts and models so that students of architecture might benefit from access to them. In 1833 he negotiated an Act of Parliament to preserve the collection after his death for the benefit of “amateurs and students” in architecture, painting and sculpture. Today, the Museum is one of the country’s most unusual and significant museums with a continuing and developing commitment to education and creative inspiration.

Visitor information
The Museum is free and open on Wednesday to Sunday inclusive, 10am–5pm.