Artwise Curators is pleased to announce from 30 May 2008 a specially commissioned permanent public artwork, Fragile by Idris Khan, will be on view at 7 Howick Place.

Fragile is artist Idris Khan’s first permanent public artwork and is sited in the entrance to 7 Howick Place, a former Royal Mail Sorting office that has been newly converted into a space dedicated to art, fashion and design in London’s Victoria. Those familiar with Khan’s work will know his signature practice of layering images of photographs, paintings and film. This inherent process of repetition to reinforce a statement, sentiment or written word is here transformed into a collection of films inspired by the history of the building.

Comprising four individual films, Fragile will be played across a set of Sunlight Readable LCD Screens embedded into the pavement outside the entrance to 7 Howick Place. This is the first ever outdoor installation of floor-mounted LCD screens in the UK, developed especially for the project by Flasma. By installing the screens in the ground, Khan encourages the viewer to look down and even walk over them; this action adding a unique sculptural feeling and a strange potency to what is seen.

Fragile celebrates the tradition of postal communication and considers the nature of letter writing and the permanence of the written word. What it means to send or receive personally written words, lost letters, the notion that once a letter leaves the author those words can never be retrieved are examined in these films through the depiction of letters and packages being treated and handled in different ways – at times abstractly, at others literally. The work also alludes to the creative activities that historically occurred on this site, and those that are yet to take place within Howick Place:

For this commission, the artist collaborated with a set designer, architect, lighting designer and photographer to convert his studio into a 1950s post sorting office entirely constructed in cardboard, paper and tape to create a surreal environment in which the films were produced. Fragile is the first permanent moving-image public artwork approved by Westminster City Council and will be on view daily between 7am and 1am.

For further information and high resolution images please contact Project Curator: Deana Vanagan at deana@artwisecurators.com or call +44 (0)20 8563 9495