During the opening week of Boundary Encounters, a group of young artists, aged 16-18, joined commissioned artist Harold Offeh for a week of collaborative design and creative experimentation in the gallery. The young artists were tasked with creating pieces of furniture for Harold Offeh’s Pavilion. Here, we speak to Jianne Sarmiento about The New Therapy Chair.
Can you explain the meaning behind the title, The New Therapy Chair?
In the first term of art class, my friends and I took a chair — it was the same chair as any of the chairs in the room — we stuck some masking tape on top that we wrote on and we’ve established it as ‘The Therapy Chair’ (exclusively for anxiety-ridden art students and a few exempted ones). I remember that the chair helped us to stay calm, and take a break for a few minutes before, during and after a stressful episode. I also remember, quite strangely, that we would wrestle for it and whoever wins will get it first as it was highly in demand that we eventually created a system to book a time for a session with The Therapy Chair. Unfortunately, due to staff cleaning, the label was taken off and we no longer know which of the chairs in the room was the original. I thought that although The New Therapy Chair doesn’t physically resemble the original, I made this chair to pay tribute to the one that gave us comfort, nap-time, and relieved our stress every school term.
The New Therapy Chair is dedicated to the struggling and hardworking people in society who persevered or are still preserving what challenges life throws ahead of them. Within our lives we’ve encountered boundaries that tire us mentally, physically and perhaps spiritually. I hope that this chair can be a bridge for you to be able to rest for at least a bit, because diligent people like you deserve a seat at the table.
Why did you choose these materials, colours, and shapes to work with?
The main element that I highly focused on throughout my journey on creating the chair was the idea of ‘comfort’. On our first day, Harold Offeh, the artist who sparked this project to collaborate with young artists, asked us individually the same question: “What is a chair?” It was one of those philosophical queries that stimulated an existential crisis within but it was less for a debate and more of a discussion. After doing multiple exercises and poses on what seems to be ‘chairs’ but in different forms and artistic styles, we formulated our ideas on paper and tested out different materials. However, challenges arise and questions formulate such as: ‘Will I ever finish this in less than 3 days? I’ve never done woodwork before, will I get what I’m trying to achieve?’, and so on. These thoughts consequently made it difficult to put ideas onto paper as I remained realistic to my goals most of the time and still focused on that aspect of comfort.
My initial idea evolved, adapting to what is now the end result, The New Therapy Chair. I wanted to recycle some of the leftover materials used in Harold Offeh’s Pavilion, or at least replicate the same playful and colourful theme into it. So with the help of Hattie Speed’s expertise with woodwork and furniture, we were able to build the skeleton of the chair. They helped me understand how to structure chairs by explaining the process with me. We’ve spotted vulnerable parts, adding lots of screws, drilling at the steepest angles, lots of glueing and extra support to make it sturdier and safer to sit on. I’ve learned a lot from them. They also showed me a movement I wasn’t aware of called, ‘memphis movement’ which the clashing yet complementary and vibrant colours were inspired by. Since the movement was also involved with geometric shapes and abstract designs, we thought it would be a fitting visual concept for this piece too.
How was your experience working on this project at Modern Art Oxford?
One word to describe my whole experience: awesome.
I’ve enjoyed every second and every minute of my time at Modern Art Oxford, working with extremely talented artists and a team behind the scenes that aided us when we were struggling along the way. In all honesty, I didn’t know what I put myself into when we first started the project. I was very unsure on what the chair might end up looking like but it all went well in the end. Other than that, I’ve met one of the most lovely and talented individuals. Inspiring and giving feedback to each other — making our own customised stools at Lula James was a blast!! I’ve created so many fun memories in such little time with the team.