TABATHA ANDREWS

Chassis 2017: Birch ply, beech, metal castors. Located in the main foyer of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. 

Our memory is never fixed – it evolves, like a word in a game of Chinese whispers. Chassis is an exploration of memory; a cabinet of lost and missing things. Located somewhere between theatre set and everyday life, this sculpture invites the public to engage with it – transforming the space around them through touch and movement; providing the viewer with an alternative kind of ‘waiting room’; a place to pause and reflect.

At first sight we encounter what looks like a cross between a domestic wardrobe, a tool rack and an unusual elevator; absurd and humorous in the space it occupies between two escalators. The object could be upside down and back to front; its tactics of reversal and mirroring giving it the feel of a puzzle. Each side has extraordinary, tactile wood-turned handles reminiscent of dumbbells. On grasping the handles and opening the structure, another inner architecture is revealed; empty holes into which objects might have fitted; shapes designed to provoke memory and inspire a sense of play. Inspired by the ‘method of loci’ memory systems of the Greek ancients, Chassis refers to the relationship between mental objects and place. You can never experience both sides of the piece at once, and need to draw on the act of memory to hold the work in your mind. Its materials are left raw; birch ply, beech, steel and cast iron.

The process of making Chassis incorporates digital memory with tactile memory; shapes routed through digital drawing methods at the Fab Lab in Plymouth sit beside objects hand-turned in Cornish beech. 

Chassis forms the second part of Andrews' commission for the First@108 Public Art Award 2015 run by the Royal British Society of Sculptors and CW+, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital's arts charity.  

Castors kindly sponsored by Ross Handling Ltd.