Charlotte Cullinan + Jeanine Richards (ARTLAB) is a constructed situation and is not intended as a logo. This situation works as a supporting structure built by us to provide an open opportunity. We are interested in providing a context where the importance of authorship is questioned. In our work we try to support and establish connections rather than divisions between people, artworks and history. Using the support structure as a strategy enables us to work as artists in a flexible, non-autonomous way. On the one hand, our sculptures provide a physical support that could be used to show a film or hang a painting. They are constructed using wood, plastic, canvas, mirrors, and paintings, to provide an arena for something to happen, that may or may not occur. There is a formality in the organisation of these structures that relates to the division and use of space on a human scale. Our sculptures function as outposts, positioning themselves metaphorically on the edge of town, between one thing and another. Like an outpost these structures are pragmatic, flexible and specific to the people that use them. Within these constructed situations normal hierarchies of object and display are flattened out. We want everything in the work to be on an equal level, where the supporting structure is as relevant as the art object. This mirrors the way we try to operate as artists, supporting and involving other people, who also support us. There is a necessary complexity to the way we work that is the antithesis of the autonomous artist, who produces work in splendid isolation. This inclusive approach considers the roles of the organiser/curator/dealer/artist/ director/ visitor and institution equally important and relevant without a kind of condescension setting in. We are not interested in seeing artists as separate anthropological observers. What we are interested in is a genuine way of working founded on personal and valuable relationships. These relationships begin with ourselves and extend out to the people and situations we are involved with. This invariably involves a reciprocal generosity, which leads to the flattening out of hierarchies. Of course all this generosity is sometimes a hard thing to achieve and can lead to difficult situations. In many ways we consider the sculptures we make in terms of cinemas. The kind of conceptual model we are interested in exploring and creating is more a cinema than a museum for example. In a cinema the experiences are not related to display (as in a museum) and are intimately open to interpretation. Cinema exists in a kind of in between space that we are interested in using in a three dimensional way. So the outpost aesthetic in our work comes from the scenes in films and the novels and writing we like and also reflects the position we take as artists. The ART LAB programme we organise at Imperial College, with their generous support, is also run from the vantage point of a metaphorical outpost, something existing on the periphery with the freedoms that come from this position. The ART LAB outpost at Imperial College therefore has certain ideals about the usefulness of artists. We built this situation to provide a support structure for both ourselves and others, as a way to survive. The name ART LAB serves its purpose as a name that is used together with our own names as a way of connecting all aspects of our work and providing a situation to use.