Installation view, ‘Avery Singer. Free Fall,’ Hauser & Wirth London, 2023 © Avery Singer. Photo: Alex Delfanne

Climate Impact Report: Avery Singer in London

Climate Impact Report for a gallery exhibition published with Artists Commit

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Avery Singer

Based entirely upon Avery Singer’s childhood memories of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, ‘Free Fall’ at Hauser & Wirth London in Fall 2023, explored the wider societal impact of collective trauma and proliferating image culture and media dissemination. In this exhibition, Singer transformed the London gallery, constructing a world based upon her memories of growing up in New York City and introduced layered evocations of some of the people who were present on one of the most fateful days in modern history.

In planning the exhibition, our gallery team discussed ways to incorporate sustainable approaches to exhibition making. This was the first climate impact study our London gallery team embarked on—led by the artist and her team on the development of the show.

The narrative of the show was the framework through which the architecture was constructed. The content of the show was very personal, but the architectural surroundings were impersonal. Singer wanted to create an immersive environment that acted beyond a blank canvas for her work. Specifically, she was interested in recreating the atmospheric banalities of the corporate world—environments that routinely serve as backdrops to our contemporary living. Singer also grew up in the Financial District, where these types of rather sterile spaces were commonplace and ubiquitous. In this exhibition, Singer explored the idea that we live and die in these corporate environments.

Singer chose a number of specific design and architectural features including elevator banks at the entrance of the North Gallery; walls painted in general ‘beige’ and ‘grey’ tones that are associated with corporate spaces; a long, seemingly never-ending corridor, vast curtains wrapped around the exhibition space; shredded paper collected scattered across the corporate-looking carpets floor.

As part of our sustainability activities, we tracked travel, materials, waste, shipping, energy consumption and event planning.

Key learnings from the report include:

For the wall installation we successfully trialled the use of ECOBoard, which is a ‘closed-loop recycling’ construction board, made from 100% post-consumer waste.
Carpet tiles were reclaimed by Envirocycle, who specializes in diverting carpet waste to reuse through their carpet tile reuse program.
This was the first exhibition where the gallery team was able to track food and beverage consumption for the artist dinner, providing us with a benchmark to work from in shaping future approaches to gallery dinners.

Read the full report here