Book launch – The Fountain: A Biography by Maddie Leach
Free admission
One of Lund’s most talked-about public artworks is now getting its own biography!
Please join us for the first launch of Maddie Leach’s book about the LTH fountain, with a screening of Lars-Henrik Ståhl’s short film Strikeout.
Copies will be available for purchase and signing.
Beer, wine and snacks will be served
Event language: English & Swedish
‘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.
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…
Both works are the result of a long-term research project in which Skissernas Museum was a partner, alongside HDK-Valand at the University of Gothenburg and LTH at Lund University.