words Penelope Shaw

Artist Sumer Erek is building a house out of 60,000 newspapers as part of an art installation presented by Creative City in Gillett Square, east London.

By building a house out of free newspapers, Erek wants to associate the waste and ecological cost associated with the throw-away media. Members of the public are being invited to join in by writing messages on their own papers before adding them to the structure. This participation is encouraged to highlight the dependence of the public on the environment.



Erek creates solid paper “sticks” by layering individual newspaper pages, hand-rolling them, applying a small amount of glue to the edges, then tightening them by using a special machine consisting of three rollers rotated by a turning handle. Whole papers are also folded in on themselves and rolled lengthways to form “paper bricks”.

A black wooden frame acts as a shell for the installation as well as a curtain behind which the Newspaper House is assembled. The shell will both support and conceal the structure until it is completed, when it will be removed, revealing the finished house. But it won’t be in Gillett Square for long; in the same way thousands of free newspapers are discarded after a day, the Newspaper House will only be displayed without its shell on Saturday 8 March.


March 3 - 9, Gillett Square, London
Official unveiling Saturday 8 March from 2pm onwards

www.creative-city.co.uk

www.newspaperhouse.blogspot.com

www.sumererek.com

www.hced.co.uk