The Art House presents HEW Live

The evening was held in Acrylicize’s new home, ‘The Art House’, which embodies our vision of what a Hyper Evolved Workplace can be. The event celebrated local artists, musicians and locally crafted food, demonstrating the potential for the arts to build community and connect a diverse range of industries. 

Over the past few years, a lot has changed, including the workplace. Throughout the evening, we exhibited this evolution through an ice sculpture: ‘Flow’ 2022. The performance piece saw an outdated version of the workplace melt away and with it the traditional workplace ideals, making way for the Hyper Evolved Workplace of today. One of the many highlights of the night was when Acrylicize’s founder James Burke spontaneously smashed the sculpture to pieces, symbolically destroying the old ideals and moving towards a future environment that is fluid, flexible and dynamic.

The event also provided insight into Acrylicize’s creative process by exhibiting a sketchbook installation of our start-to-finish designs. The live sketchbook displayed years of collected sketches, technical drawings, and inspirational images; inviting guests to look closely and peer between the layers of work to reveal more and more ideas and creativity. The design process is rarely simple, it’s chaotic and experimental, which is how we chose to represent it. The behind-the-scenes shots demonstrate this chaos in action, revealing another layer to the process where our designers and curators are in their creative flow.

The evening also embraced some unplanned highlights, including wild foxes joining guests on the rooftop for the celebration, and a certain furry friend, contributing to our wall mural with some paw painting. We were able to capture the magic through our film cameras which were dotted around The Art House during the event. Our merch station was also a hit, and guests were able to leave the event with a tote bag filled with stickers, leaflets, a unique t-shirt and of course their very own copy of the playbook. 

The success of the evening was thanks to the enthusiastic participation of our guests. The event produced a collaborative art piece where we encouraged contributors to realise themselves in Lego form and add their mark to our collective art activation. The artwork is now part of founder James Burke’s acclaimed Minifigure Series. We also commissioned local artist Will Vibez, who is recognised as one of the most versatile muralists working in the capital today, to lead the creation of a live, retro, futuristic wall mural. Guests were invited to contribute to the piece and uncover how the people of the past envisioned the workspace of today. Our hope is to continue the mural as we welcome more people to The Art House.