Forerunner is the collaborative practice of Tom Watt, Tanad Aaron and Andreas Kindler von Knobloch, who have been working with architectural form, building materials and the gallery as a staging ground since 2016. Drawing on their backgrounds as gallery and theatre technicians, they treat the viewer as material, too, developing a concept of ‘material navigation’ through familiar forms.

We tend to think of buildings as stationary beings, mute and fixed. Yet they contain closed systems and technologies within that make it possible to use that space. In this respect, the interior differs fundamentally from the exterior. Unlike the exposed garden, which is constantly subjected to the effects of the climate, a building has to become acclimatized, internalize air circulation and create a balanced state.

The collective has long been interested in the hidden structures that facilitate the spaces we inhabit.

Forerunner is the collaborative practice of Tom Watt, Tanad Aaron and Andreas Kindler von Knobloch. Since their first formal exhibition together in 2016, Forerunner has worked with architectural form, building materials and the gallery as a staging ground. Using their background as gallery and theatre technicians, their work has an added feeling of temporality, tests, hanging between a site of production (studio/workshop) and display (gallery/public), whilst at the same time allowing ‘use-value’ to creep into the space. Within this fixed circuit they use the premise that the viewer is a material too. The viewer needs to be able to engage with the work and so ‘use value’ here refers to a point of translation between material and a person, which inevitably becomes the work as a space. The space for the viewer is constructed through familiar materials, forms and established architectural and construction practices so as to allow an audience into it. The idea that the familiarity of materials and processes used allows people to be comfortable, knowledgeable and navigate and engage with the work is called ‘material navigation’. In their displayed form the objects, the processes that created them and their composition as a space is what communicates with the audience.

Forerunner has exhibited and produced permanent and public works, nationally in Ireland and internationally in the UK, Croatia and Japan. Recent projects include ‘Let’s Get the Hell Outta’ Here’, The Lab Gallery, commissioned by Superprojects, Dublin, ‘YOUNG FOSSIL building’ (permanent installation), Place, Wexford, ‘Boom Nouveau’ (public sculpture), Cook St, Cork City, Cork, ‘Tigh Drop’, Do Anything, Inis Oirr, Galway, ‘Y O U N G F O S S I L 2’, curated by Rachael Gilbourne and Janice Hough, IMMA, Dublin, ‘Granite Leap’ (permanent installation), curated by Kate Strain, Kunstverein Aughrim, Wicklow, ‘Slovenian Apiary’, permanent installation, with Motoko Fujita and Takeshi Hyatsu, Kiwanosato, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, ‘Misplaced Concreteness’ (permanent installation), Grizedale Arts, UK.