Grant Donaldson

three towels hanging on the handrail of the Battersea Power Station steps

Grant is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer whose work focusses on the extraordinary and banal moments of everyday life, celebrating, questioning and responding to them through a playful visual language. His work sees the built environment as a stage set for eccentric interactions, highlighting the deeply human moments in order to celebrate and emphasise the importance of space as a social need rather than an economic asset.

Prior to the RCA, Grant studied at Newcastle University and has been working at Flower Michelin Architects in London for the last 4 years.

This project, entitled 'Changing Rooms' investigates behavioural control within privately owned, publicly accessible space, focussing on Battersea Power Station as the site of investigation. The recently opened site is a very extreme example of privately owned property which is made accessible to the public with the sole purpose of extracting money from its visitors.

However, the rational economic strategies which these spaces employ are threatened by the unpredictability of human behaviour and so the physical space is carefully designed and monitored in order to control the behaviour within it, transforming every visitor into the perfectly predictable spender.

This project explores how these spaces are controlled, questioning what makes certain acts acceptable or unacceptable within them.

It does this through the lens of the swimming pool - a public infrastructure which is historically linked to the site through the Nine Elms Baths (1901-1970) and the newly built 'Skypool'. Swimming pools provide an extreme example of how behaviour and context are deeply linked, the presence of water allows people to undress, sunbathe and walk around half naked in public and so this project exploits the relationship between behaviour and context in order to reveal the underlying control measures present at the Power Station.

The proposed intervention into this environment seeks to use the agency of the individual’s behaviour as a resistance to this control, changing the perception of the space and prompting questions about how it is governed.

Changing Rooms final film – Final film of large performance intervention involving 35 performers, along with signs, objects and props

Many thanks to:

Cameras: Ellie Cullen, Matthew Hearn

Lead: David Bourne

Performers: Reuben Gower, Rosie Park, Sam Llewelyn-Smith, Rose Miller, Freya Hodgkinson, Edward Turner, Sean Mansfield, Joe Ellwood, Sam Fraquelli, Molly Hughes, Frank Brandon, Tom Grantham, Grace Frazer, James Bannister, Archie Duncan, Max Ge, Qirong Xu, Cassandra Adjei, Marnie Slotover, Ming Harper, Josh Parker, Megan Ellis, George Watson, Ben Ellis, Matt Donaldson, Charlotte Minter, Matt Congreve, Harry Tindale, Katie van Dawson, John Langran

Changing Rooms Research Portfolio – Research portfolio detailing the research and portfolio pieces leading to the final performative intervention

extracts from 'A walk through Nine Elms' photographic essay

Swimming pool research photographs

A Tale of Two Pools essay

Bodies of Water swimming pool research book

'A Tale of Two Pools' research drawing

3D anaglyph collage mapping the elements to the poolside

3D diorama of mapped poolside elements

Granary Square Changing

Coal Drops Yard Photobooth changing

Battersea Power Station Sunbathing

Control Rooms

Existing site plan

Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms Walking Tour

Proposed site plan

Programme of elements site plan

Behavioural interventions and tests of degrees of acceptability

1:1 Props subverting the control measures

Security lifeguard chair

No Entry woggle

Storyboard of choreographed large group performance

Cyanotype print of storyboard

Bodies of Water swimming pool research book

Stills from performance film

Performance Transcript

Ten commandments pool floats

Conclusion

This project was able to open up a conversation between the performers, security and the public, provoking questions from all sides about how the space is controlled and exposing the murky guidelines which govern it. The only way to summarise what is acceptable would be what a select few people define as ‘normal’.

This has stripped people of the right to protest, to sit, to dress how they please and has subtly become embedded within the public realm, creating a highly oppressed environment which prioritises profit over people. Along with the loss of basic rights, comes the loss of a culturally and demographically diverse public realm in which different people, activities and identities are integrated and it is the marginalised and vulnerable who are most affected.

It is imperative that public spaces are protected as areas of freedom for all through a democratic and transparent system which transcends ownership, elevating the social value of public space and prioritising usership.

Many thanks to everyone who helped me to complete this project. I hope that it can serve as a piece of evidence and inspire a change in policy around how publicly accessible spaces are viewed and governed.

Grant Donaldson

Conclusion

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Royal College of Art