Time has passed by since my last posting. The weeks have been filled with activities of a different kind – with a different focus. A move from private to public domain. In the months that I spent developing the drawings, time often seemed to be suspended as I attempted to resolve a range of issues in the work. Now things are moving at a different pace as I attempt to understand connections between lines of thought and, in turn, disseminate them.
Working with V&A photographer Peter Kelleher has been one such activity – working on a video which explores the notion of how the journey one made through the museum to my works in Gallery 102 impacted on the ways in which they were then read… Climbing the overtly ornate ceramic staircase, passing through the silver galleries with light reflected off the surface of every object, moving through into the darkened miniature gallery and then into the almost equally dark gallery of the exhibition. How would have these works seemed in a bright, white cube space entered via a busy street?
I spoke with writer Tony Godfrey some time ago about this idea – of how the immediate journey that one takes before entering a gallery impacts on/ colours our understanding of the works installed within. We spoke about the journeys that museums take us on – the Louvre, the National Gallery, the British Museum – journeys which often involve climbing staircases leading to main galleries. A kind of staged entrance and setting of the scene. The journey that one made through the V&A seemed extraordinarily tactile, starting with the cool Victorian tiles underfoot, an oblique link to the tactile nature of the objects that I selected for display and the physicality of the drawings themselves
Click on thumbnails for larger versions.