The Fountain gets its own biography!
We are delighted to announce the launch of Maddie Leach's book The Fountain: A Biography on Saturday 12 December, 3-5pm at Skissernas Museum in Lund, Sweden.
There will also be a screening of Lars-Henrik Ståhl's short film about the LTH fountain titled Strikeout.
‘Laxtrappan’…‘fontänen Fontänen’…‘Döda fallet’?
For more than half a century, a towering modernist fountain has stood on the campus of Lund University’s Faculty of Engineering in southern Sweden. Designed by architect Klas Anshelm and sculptor Arne Jones – and once gleaming with water and thick panes of glass – it has been left dry and dilapidated for most of its life. In The Fountain: A Biography, artist Maddie Leach explores the LTH fountain’s extraordinary history through archives, interviews and its long afterlife in student culture, weaving a tale of love, loathing, longing and collective imagination.
The book is written in English and published by Null & Void Books, Lund. It has been designed by Jonas Williamsson and edited by Melinda Johnston.
In the short film Strikeout, Lars-Henrik Ståhl poses the question of whether the LTH fountain could be considered a piece of ‘Hyperart Thomasson’ – an obscure Japanese conceptual art movement that records urban phenomena and architectural objects divorced from their original purpose. Intrepid in his research, Lars-Henrik travelled to Japan to ask the experts directly…
