Can Altay: The Church Street Partners´ Gazette

The Showroom is delighted to present the first solo show in London by Can Altay, one of Turkey’s best-known young artists.

Altay will transform The Showroom into the production site of a single edition newspaper: The Church Street Partners’ Gazette. The project will draw on research and dialogues with a wide range of people connected to the local area, who Altay terms ‘partners’. Areas of investigation include rights to space, promises and threats related to regeneration, and limits presented by physical, social, political and economic boundaries.

The Showroom’s director Emily Pethick comments: ‘Can Altay’s Gazette furthers The Showroom’s focus on experimental artistic practices, creating a playful open editorial situation that responds on the ground to pertinent unreported issues that transcend the local context.’

The installation will have two centres of activity: a meeting area where the content of the paper is generated through open discussions and research, and a changing display of the Gazette as it is produced, with large headline boards announcing the latest news and fragments of the editorial. The final version of the Gazette will go into print at the end of the show, offering its readers a study of the overlooked issues of local urban life.

Altay’s work is known for its focus on improvised architectures in the city, unauthorised systems of organisation and models of co-habitation. The Gazette continues his interest in ‘setting a setting’, a body of work where he proposes and constructs provisional spaces for gatherings.

Can Altay
THE CHURCH STREET PARTNERS´ GAZETTE