194 The Broadway is a site that talks about potential. It has been closed for something like 5 years, 7 years. It has been a tailor’s, a corner shop and now a gallery and artist residency space - plans to develop it into an office block sit on the horizon. Being asleep for all these years, a lot has been said about its future transformation. Like a suspended construction site, it awaits becoming something else.

“As artists in residence at this site, we are interested in how this language of waiting could become visible. How does a place speak of itself? And how do we, as artists, as neighbors, listen?”

Questioning the role of artists in urban regeneration, Natasha Brown and I (Wiggle Room) used our residency at PAUSE/FRAME to challenge our own presence in the space, positioning ourselves as a form of disturbance. We have reimagined the venue into a behind-the-scenes preparation room for an upcoming show. Through selected low-quality and theatrical props, the site is unveiled, revealing its history of ownership and potential futures.

Art is good – that is what they say if you ask up the street at the Antoinette Hotel, at the Wimbledon leisure center, next door at the YMCA. Art is good for the community. So, who is this community? Is it defined by the council? By the Koppel project? Is it the attendees of a private view? Is it Natasha and Francesco, the artists themselves, who do not live in Wimbledon?

To read more about our residency: https://thekoppelproject.com/events/wiggle-room-at-pause-frame