Rebecca’s Bagged Place

source: designboom

rebecca levy lived in the apartment directly above the raven row gallery in london. when she passed away, the contents of her flat were donated to the gallery, leaving behind intimate possessions and furniture pieces, which narrate her adventures and experiences. canadian contemporary artist iain baxter& utilized the abandoned space for his work ‘rebecca’s bagged place’. permitted by the gallery to use the location, which typically remains inaccessible to the public, the artist wrapped each object and surface — from the patterned wallpaper, to faux flower arrangements and refrigerator magnets — in sheets of transparent plastic, preserving the items and their distinct arrangement before levy passed away. the haunting results chronicle the inhabitants life and eternalize her memory through the protective medium. the work is a variation on the theme — baxter& reconfigured his piece from 1966, ‘bagged place’, in which he carefully bagged every element in a four room apartment, including a toilet and a television, in cellophane sheets.
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source: distortedarts

After her death, the apartment was kept exactly as she had left it – knick-knacks, crockery and family mementos all carefully preserved, but kept away from the prying eyes of the public.

Until Iain Baxter& got his hands on it.

Baxter& has reworked his landmark 1966 installation Bagged Place into Rebecca’s Bagged Place.

Everything is covered in plastic – pots, pans, the shower, the toilet, the walls and floors – it’s delightfully suffocating.

The apartment, full of sentimental keepsakes, confuses our perceptions of space. Sterile and homely, unforgiving and poignant – the layer of polyethylene removes any potential for emotional connection. It’s like the air has been vacuumed packed out of the room; yet this stifling sensation is incredibly enjoyable. Poking around a kitsch kitchen and the pristine rooms doesn’t feel like naughty voyeurism – everything is here for our amusement.

Baxter& has an eclectic background in art and zoology and a genuine concern for how we live and relate to the environment – an obvious humour underlies his work.

He added an ampersand to this end of his name back in 2005 in order to solidify his brand, the collaborative nature of his practice and because he really likes the typographic mark.
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source: contemporaryartdaily

IAIN BAXTER& and Adam Chodzko will each make exhibitions around elaborate installations they are building in parts of Raven Row previously closed to the public.
BAXTER& will reconfigure his seminal work from 1966, Bagged Place, a totalising scheme of plastic, in ‘Rebecca’s flat’ on the top floor of 56 Artillery Lane. This remarkable period apartment was given intact to Raven Row by the family of Rebecca Levy who occupied the building between 1918 and 2009. Adam Chodzko’s installation develops out of an attempt to install a giant palm tree bursting out of Raven Row’s main gallery onto the green roof above. It weaves documentary and science fiction, connecting the palm tree to mulberry bushes, and the insects that feed off each to the agencies attempting to control their propagation.
IAIN BAXTER& (born 1936) was inscribed into art history when he founded the conceptual company N.E. Thing Co (1966–78), co-administered with his then wife Ingrid, making quasi-products and offering consultancy services. His pioneering inventions include using light boxes for his photographs in 1968, and his early use of plastic in art anticipated global plasticisation. In 2005 he put ‘&’ in his name to ‘brand his philosophy of life’. At Raven Row an exhibition contextualising Bagged Place will bring together BAXTER&’s methods of bagging and tagging including his plastic vacuum forms from the sixties. Although born in Britain (his family emigrated to Canada in his first year) BAXTER& has never had a solo exhibition in this country. He lives in Windsor, Ontario with his wife and collaborator Louise Chance Baxter&.
Adam Chodzko (born 1965) makes work across media, from large-scale installations to de-materialised interventions, often imagined through the collapse of the category of Art. Working with networks of people and places that surround him, Chodzko explores the possibilities of collective imagination and the relational politics of culture’s edges. Alongside his installation Chodzko will place a number of other works that echo his interests in displacement and transposition, and the exchange between the rational and surreal. Since 1991 Chodzko has exhibited extensively, with solo exhibitions in institutions such as Tate St Ives (2008) and Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bologna (2007).