James Makin Gallery | Tristan Wong Architecture & Design

James Makin Gallery is designed as a contemporary gallery space, but with the addition of small but impactful ancillary spaces. It seeks to deformalize the often ‘institutional’ gallery typified by white only, square–set walls and in Makin’s words “reframe the viewing of art”. At the heart of this design counterpoint is a series of blackened, and curving, timber objects, walls and cutaways.
Visitors are drawn in and through a belly–like space: dramatic, textural and tactile. Only glimpses of the art beyond are given as one journeys through the social and ceremonial spaces of reception, bar, viewing room and library, before arriving at the main space.
The gallery celebrates its old factory roots and talks to notions of regeneration, whilst at the same time providing a specialised and functionally fit space for the viewing of art.