The weight of Sitting
Exhibition
Exhibition
We spend much of our lives sitting, yet rarely think about the act itself.
A chair supports the body, allowing us to pause. Around that simple exchange, much of life unfolds. We sit while sharing meals, waiting for news, working, grieving, celebrating, listening, recovering, and watching the world pass. The chair remains constant while the experiences we bring to it are endlessly different.
The Weight of Sitting begins with this quiet observation. Rather than approaching the chair simply as an object of function, Douglas Powell considers it as a vessel for human experience. A witness to moments both ordinary and profound. A place where memory accumulates, responsibility settles, care is offered, absence is felt, and time quietly passes.
Each work begins with one of these conditions. The chairs remain functional, yet they are not resolved through comfort alone. Instead, they invite a moment of pause, encouraging us to become aware not only of the object beneath us, but of what we ourselves might be carrying.
Working across steel, aluminium, timber, stone and composite materials, Powell approaches making as a process of continual negotiation. Material is never treated as passive. Weight, texture, resistance and structure each shape the outcome, allowing every object to arrive at its own resolution through the act of making. Craftsmanship is not expressed through perfection, but through an attentiveness to process and an openness to discovery.
There is a quiet generosity to these works. They ask little of us beyond our presence. To sit. To pause. To notice.
Ultimately, The Weight of Sitting is not an exhibition about chairs.
It is about the lives that unfold around them.
Perhaps we have always brought more to a chair than our physical weight.
A chair supports the body, allowing us to pause. Around that simple exchange, much of life unfolds. We sit while sharing meals, waiting for news, working, grieving, celebrating, listening, recovering, and watching the world pass. The chair remains constant while the experiences we bring to it are endlessly different.
The Weight of Sitting begins with this quiet observation. Rather than approaching the chair simply as an object of function, Douglas Powell considers it as a vessel for human experience. A witness to moments both ordinary and profound. A place where memory accumulates, responsibility settles, care is offered, absence is felt, and time quietly passes.
Each work begins with one of these conditions. The chairs remain functional, yet they are not resolved through comfort alone. Instead, they invite a moment of pause, encouraging us to become aware not only of the object beneath us, but of what we ourselves might be carrying.
Working across steel, aluminium, timber, stone and composite materials, Powell approaches making as a process of continual negotiation. Material is never treated as passive. Weight, texture, resistance and structure each shape the outcome, allowing every object to arrive at its own resolution through the act of making. Craftsmanship is not expressed through perfection, but through an attentiveness to process and an openness to discovery.
There is a quiet generosity to these works. They ask little of us beyond our presence. To sit. To pause. To notice.
Ultimately, The Weight of Sitting is not an exhibition about chairs.
It is about the lives that unfold around them.
Perhaps we have always brought more to a chair than our physical weight.