House taken over

The travelling exhibition Metropolis Rise: New Art from London was curated by Anthony Gross and Jen Wu of London based artist-run space temporarycontemporary and sponsored by the British Council Shanghai. The aim of the exhibition was to provide both an index of the current independent art scene in London and an examination of its modes of production in relation to those of the commercial mainstream, with the purpose of starting a creative dialogue with the emerging contemporary art scenes in Beijing and Shanghai. The work was selected from shows at public institutions, independent project spaces, art groups and emerging galleries and presented in a display structure that resembled a customs inspection desk. An exhibition catalogue, which included an essay by Lamb, was published by Article Press with the support of Arts Council England, and launched at the ICA, London in July 2006. 58 artists took part in the exhibition, including Sam Basu, David Burrows, Lali Chetwynd, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Brian Griffiths, Heidi Kilpelainen (HK119), David Medalla, John Russell, Bob and Roberta Smith, Mark Tichner, Stella Vine and Martin Westwood. Lamb contributed the video ‘House Taken Over’: composed of images of film sets appropriated from European art-house cinema of the 1960s and ‘70s, it seeks to examine the role that the still image plays in time-based practice, in taking the clips out of the context of the narrative it effectively materialises them as uncanny fragments. Work was begun on ‘House Taken Over’ with the support of a London Artists Film and Video Award from Film London and an Individual Artists Award from Arts Council England in 2004, and it was completed at the British School at Rome, where Lamb was Wingate Scholar 2005-06.