installation – The Cultural Exposé

My weekend in pictures: December 5

Matilda — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 09:00:27 +0000

I checked out the new Good & Proper Tea tea shop near Old Street station (it’s so cute – and they do crumpets!) and that Ann Veronica Janssens yellowbluepink installation at the Wellcome Collection. Real talk: I nearly had a panic attack in that misty room. My advice? Go with a trustworthy friend who you don’t mind clinging on to…

All pics shot on a Canon 5D Mark 1 with a 24-105mm.

My first time visiting the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road. What a quirky venue!

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Something you should see… Serpentine Pavilion 2015

The Cultural Exposé — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 10:00:48 +0000

The highly-anticipated outdoor pavilion at London’s Serpentine Gallery is now welcoming visitors from around the world. The annual attraction, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary, has been designed by award-winning Spanish architects selgascano, headed by husband and wife duo José Selgas and Lucía Cano.

An aerial view of the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion filmed using a drone. #SerpentinePavilion #selgascano #aerial #drone

A video posted by Serpentine Galleries (@serpentineuk) on Jun 26, 2015 at 2:07am PDT

See more photos here.

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Something You Should See… New Dream Machine Project at Parasol Unit

Florence Ritter — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:00:20 +0000

A group of people standing outside in a ring, stock-still, eyes closed, in a trance-like state? I’d usually run a mile. But wait a second – these are not the followers of a dubious new cult but regular members of the public. They are stood around the only object in history designed to be seen with closed eyes: Shezad Dawood’s New Dream Machine Project, a sculptural installation on show at Parasol Unit.

Dawood has behind him an extensive body of written and visual work in which he examines the construction of identity through processes of translation and re-staging. For this piece, he revisits the ‘Dreamachine’, a kinetic light sculpture invented in 1959 by British-Canadian painter Brion Gysin and electronics technician Ian Sommerville. Gysin, at the time influenced by Sufism, developed the Dreamachine as an aid to meditation. An electric bulb is suspended inside a revolving cylinder, which is punctuated at regular intervals with cut-outs and slits. As the cylinder rotates, the light flashes and jitters outwards, creating flickering, abstract light patterns. The idea is that to watch these patterns through closed eyes is to enter a hypnogogic state of consciousness, similar to that of meditation or the limbo-like feeling of floating or falling between wake and sleep. Dawood has responded to Gysin’s original portable cardboard creation by creating a three metre high version in brushed steel. This complex piece investigates the relationships between history and the present, new and obsolete technologies, and science and spirituality.

The New Dream Machine Project is the 2012 instalment of Parasol Unit’s Parasolstice series, for which the gallery annually invites an artist to respond to the phenomenon of light. Dawood’s submission investigates not only our relationship with the light of the spectrum but ideas of an inner, mystical light in his invocation of Gysin’s psychedelic aid. This year’s southern solstice will be at exactly 11:12am on 21.12.12, and mysteriously falls on the last day of the abruptly-ending Mayan Long Count Calendar. So ever seen an artwork through closed eyes? See it (!) to believe it. (Words: Florence Ritter)

Shezad Dawood’s interactive sculpture will be installed at Parasol Unit until 17th February 2013. For more info, visit www.parasol-unit.org/shezad-dawood-the-new-dream-machine-project

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Something You Should See…Heiner Goebbels’ Stifter’s Dinge, Ambika P3

Florence Ritter — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 12:41:48 +0000

If ever there was an organisation that had its proverbial finger firmly on the pulse of cutting edge contemporary art forms, it is commissioning body Artangel. This month, the team that brought us Roger Hiorns’ sparkling azure ex-council flat grotto and Rachel Whiteread’s full-size casting of her own House have orchestrated the delivery of another extraordinary project to the heart of subterranean London: Heiner Goebbels’ Stifter’s Dinge.

Having travelled across the world, this remarkable ‘performative installation’ returns to its original home at Ambika P3, Marylebone Road. The massive monolithic interior of the former concrete testing facility has once again been transformed to become Goebbels’ cavernous laboratory of sound and light. Stifter’s Dinge defies definition: it is at once a theatrical performance, a visual spectacle, a musical sculpture – and yet it is none of these things exclusively.

A towering structure blinking with LEDs supports five pianos which appear to play themselves, singing out short melodies which combine and blend with the clanking and clunking of other components in the installation. Bodies of water bubble and ripple with the reverberations of sound; a thin mist hovers across the scene. Lights flash and dance across the space, casting abstract patterns on vast gauze screens that lower themselves from the ceiling at various intervals. Phantom-like voices hauntingly play out over projected images of idealised landscape paintings. At times meditative, at times unsettling, the experience is totally mesmerizing.

The title of the work translates as ‘Stifter’s Things’, after nineteenth-century writer Adalbert Stifter who was (in)famous for his fastidious, vividly detailed descriptions of nature: part of his attempt to close the gap between the ambiguity of language and the reality of experience. Goebbels uses similar tactics of immersion in his ‘no-man show’. The contemporary composer created this piece for instruments, not their players; and as the only human presence in the room, the audience is made to focus on the objects themselves which appear to perform autonomously.

This is a project to experience, not one to read about. Stifter was right – sometimes language just doesn’t have the capacity to adequately describe nature (or a multi-faceted, sensory-immersive installation). Artangel never fail to deliver the cutting-edge of cool – the newest addition to their list of weird and wonderful projects is no exception and should not be missed. (Words: Florence Ritter)

Heiner Goebbels: Stifter’s Dinge, in its new drop-in 4 hour long format The Unguided Tour, runs until 18th November. For more info, click HERE. A series of the original performances run between 13th-18th November.

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Somewhere You Should Go… Dennis Severs’ House

The Cultural Exposé — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:00:20 +0000

Just around the corner from one of London’s busiest modern day transport hubs sits a quiet house in a stately street. The old lantern outside the door hints at what lies inside: an historical time capsule that is worlds away from Liverpool Street’s hustle and bustle. Behind its doors, 18 Folgate Street holds an imaginative still-life drama without any visible actors – except for the resident black cat.
Dennis Severs, a Californian obsessed with English history, moved into the property in 1979 and set about restoring each of the ten rooms to represent a different historical period, from the 1700s to the early 20th century. Three generations of the fictitious Jervis family are woven through the portraits and armchairs, bedspreads and knick-knacks that litter the place. But this is not a museum, and its contents aren’t preserved with glass cases or placards. This is a lived in house, whose inhabitants have supposedly just left the room, and their presence can be felt throughout a visit there.

Payment is taken on the doorstep, along with a finger to the lips and a heartfelt request to be as quiet as possible. Once inside, the candlelight reveals steaming teapots, freshly sliced boiled eggs, half eaten bread on the kitchen table. Tiptoeing past rumpled sheets in the bedrooms and ducking under wet washing hung across the stairwell gives the strong impression you’re trespassing in someone else’s home, but frankly its too fascinating to feel guilty. As the family’s wealth rises and falls throughout the centuries, the quality of their lifestyle changes too; moving further into the house introduces peeling wallpaper, thinner carpets and an accumulation of dust and cobwebs.

The scent of cloves and oranges, the flickering candlelight and an array of background sounds guide your senses in building an image of the unseen inhabitants’ lives, from the clothes they wear to the letters they’ve written. If you’ve ever imagined yourself stepping into a painting, this is the place to experience it for real. (Words: Flora Baker, Pics: Roelof Bakker)

The museum opens every Sunday afternoon & Monday lunchtime and costs £10. For more info, visit www.dennissevershouse.co.uk

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Something you should see…Ron Arad’s Curtain Call, Roundhouse

Aoife Moriarty — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 09:00:44 +0000

From chairs made out of Rover car seats, curving ‘Bookworm’ shelves to chandeliers displaying text messages, industrial designer Ron Arad has always enjoyed taking a physical concept and turning it entirely on its head.

His latest project at the Roundhouse, Camden is no exception. It completely reimagines the idea of a cinema screen as a 360-degree curtain made up of 5,600 transparent silicon rods hanging from an 18 metre diameter ring. Viewers can move directly through the 8 metre high curtain so that they are standing right in the centre of the moving cylindrical images: A rather novel experience, to say the least.

The innovative installation is on display until August 29th, featuring projected works from firmly established artists including Mat Collishaw, Hussein Chalayan, Greenaway & Greenaway and selected RCA alumni. Special events are also taking place within the large-scale construction, including a performance from renowned cellist Steven Isserlis with accompanying visuals from SDNA and Berlin-based electro label Innervisions performing a DJ set as well as a live score to the 1920s classic The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

So make sure you check out Arad’s latest kooky invention out; truly head-spinning stuff! (Words: Aoife Moriarty)

On until August 29th. For more info, visit: www.roundhouse.org.uk

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