Defenestration Lindsay Hiscox

Defenestration features three core pieces, all of which have been inspired by Lindsay’s own photographic work exploring the disintegration of an unfinished and abandoned housing development in France. In the main display, the photographs of the site have been manipulated in a computer, laminated with a UV protective film onto board and then cased within several archival cardboard boxes, stacked upon each other in a modernist high-rise format. The blocks form the object of scrutiny for the second element of the display – an image of a child behind a window of glass bricks set within a temporary support. The exhibition is then completed by a striking still of the neglected housing area itself which greets the visitor as they enter the exhibition.

Defenestration is a continuation of Lindsay’s Mnemonmnesia series (literally translated as ‘remembering to remember’) in which the works pivot around memory. Defenestration takes this theme a step further, suggesting the importance of memory in relation to our modern ‘throwaway’ society. The derelict housing development is an example where a decision has been made to discard a village. The result is both disturbing and attractive and the ‘child behind the wall’ acts as both the witness and inheritor of this modern, chuck-it mentality.

The exhibition was held at Hiscox and was open to the public from 17 October to 5 December 2003.