The Enigmatic World of Joseph Boshier
The Joseph Boshier Collective
Lesley Hilling, Walter Graham Reed, Dr Derval Tubridy and Ivano Darra
Exhibition: 8 November - 6 December 2013
"Fiction enables us to grasp reality and at the same time that which is veiled by reality"
- Marcel Broodthaers
On September 29th 1948 the first two floors of Chesney Court buckled and the ten storey concrete structure collapsed leaving three dead and forty seven injured. Ten years earlier the building had been proclaimed as a breakthrough in design and construction, so its collapse shook the architectural world and the public.
Although the subsequent inquiry could find no obvious reason for the disaster, the press singled out the architect, Joseph Boshier for blame. Joseph Boshier was a successful London architect with several impressive projects behind him - now his career was in ruins. After a nervous breakdown and estrangement from his wife and child, Joseph became a virtual recluse. He disappeared from the architectural scene and was forgotten. On his death in 1982 his north London home revealed a staggering trove of intricate wooden sculptures and a mass of drawings and writings.
The exhibition will display all of Boshier's available work, adopting the role of the museum - archiving, classifying, arranging and conserving the life and work of Joseph Boshier. Alongside these treasures will be shown a newly commissioned documentary film 'The Uncovering of Joseph Boshier', which traces the architect's life from his birth in 1898 to the dramatic end of his architectural career and his self-imposed exile. It explores his middle-class childhood in Dulwich, his service in the Great War, an inspiring sojourn in Berlin and Paris, meeting Le Corbusier and Lubetkin, and his brief political involvement with Oswald Mosley. The film is illustrated with pictures from Boshier's life, archive material and footage from the time.
The Joseph Boshier Collective is Lesley Hilling, Walter Graham Reed, Dr Derval Tubridy and Ivano Darra. Their aim is to bring the work of architect and reclusive artist, Joseph Boshier (1898 - 1982) to the public's attention.
For more information and to view an excerpt of 'The Uncovering of Joseph Boshier' visit: www.josephboshier.co.uk.