Working predominantly in sculpture and installation, Paul Carter is interested in ideas around architecture and how people respond to the buildings around them.
Carter often conceives his practice under the unifying idea that everywhere is a kind of hotel–the studio, home, civic buildings, retail structures; they are all places of exchange, employment and shelter. His exhibition titled Hotel (Matt’s Gallery, London, 2009) was an investigation into the notion that all architectures are transitory constructs and questioned the functionality and limitations of these spaces.
Reminiscent of Kurl Schwitter’s Merzbau where sculptural and architectural interventions spill from one place to another, Hotel was a transportation of Carter’s workspace to the gallery, recreating the conditions of a studio in flux.
Carter had a touring show in 2015 Hotel Swallows The Workers that featured several pieces including Blueprint vs. Lived-In–a series of aluminium framed works, each containing concrete, timber, paint oil and other abject matter. Existing both as sculpture, drawing and possible blueprints for architecture, the frames suggest the potentially exponential expansion of Carter’s practice, an idea that often underpins his works through their examination of structural transience and overspill.