Pat Foster and Jen Berean

Pat Foster and Jen Berean have been working collaboratively since 2001. Over the past eight years they have undertaken projects and interventions at numerous gallery and museum spaces, as well as realising projects outside of the traditional institutions. Employing a diverse and lateral array of media and processes, their work is primarily investigative, rigorously unpicking the hidden systems that make up the sites and infrastructure that surrounds us. Regardless of the contexts within which their projects have been presented there remain ongoing and consistent concerns within the development of their work and working methodologies. Some of these fundamental concerns involve the structures, both physical and ideological, of the built environment and of central importance within their practice is the inherent anxiety within the architecture that surrounds us. Within such thinking, contemporary architecture is deconstructed to such a degree that it is not solely concerned with the making of functional and utilisable space, but crucially, the determination of how, and by whom such space is used by, and for what purpose. It is within the juncture of physical environment and psychological effect that their practice is primarily concerned and manifests within an art context. Their intellectual concerns translate into aesthetic experiences that encourage and entice, audiences into a relationship with the work and the space itself.