LIDO, an exhibition by interdisciplinary design collective RESOLVE, opens at De La Warr Pavillion in May. 

The exhibition is part of What The Wild Things Are, an artist research collaboration between RESOLVE, Wellcome Collection, De La Warr Pavilion and West Dean College of Arts and Conservation. The overarching project surveys the geographical and political-ecological contexts of each institution - the urban, the coastal, and the rural - working with local young people, material experiments, and archival research to probe predeterminations of what and who is 'wild' in these contexts. 

LIDO is the result of a programme of collaborative design 'forages' with young people from Bexhill College and the De La Warr Pavilion's young people's group, The Blueprint Collective. These forages incorporated a broad range of methods, from flint knapping to audio-walking, as ways of gathering local materials, memories, and architectural forms from Bexhill, led by the knowledge and emotional connections of the young people. 

The result is an augmented LIDO for Bexhill, invoking a type of public space that was popularised in many UK coastal towns in the 1930s and are themselves often foraged from the sea: littoral in name and in nature. LIDO encourages visitors to browse these foraged materials whilst recounting and creating their own local connections, remixing them within a landscaped space for leisure, interaction, and knowledge-sharing over the summer months. It is a spatialised investigation of what and who has defined 'the wild' in Bexhill through a post-naturalist lens, where you can sit, eat, convene, and converse, in the research and the local knowledges of the project's young collaborators. 

A series of interactive 'fragments' reinterpreted from the local area, curved seating made from reclaimed materials and inspired by archival images of Egerton Park's old lido, and the conchoidal fractures found in local flint rock will be situated throughout the exhibition. The space will invite both visitors and local community organisations to explore and utilise these objects throughout the summer months. Recorded audio will drift through the exhibition space, in which the voices of young people will give an insight to their experiences. Visitors will be guided by large wall texts designed by the collective, together with a library of texts and research materials that have informed the commission. 

Merging the De La Warr Pavilion's exhibition and learning spaces, RESOLVE will create a community destination for meeting, discussion, reflection, and interaction over the summer. Local groups will be invited to use the space for their own programmes as well as participating in a dynamic public programme curated by the De La Warr Pavilion, details of which will be announced soon. 

The exhibition follows the opening of ROOTED BEINGS at Wellcome Collection in March, which includes works by RESOLVE as part of this commission. 

LIDO opens on 28 May, and runs until 4 September 2022.  Open Wednesdays – Sundays 10am-5pm. Free entry. 

What The Wild Things Are was commissioned by West Dean College, Wellcome Collection, and the De La Warr Pavilion under the original title of 'Re-wilding: Coast, Countryside, City'.