So here are some initial installation shots from my interim exhibition. I hadn’t though in terms of a title for it before now, but retrospectively it makes sense to call it Shift. It’s pretty difficult to document due to the shape and size of the space, but also due to the subtly of colour and the manner in which is changes depending on the time of day and the amount of sun shining through the glass panels in the ceiling.
The colour for the floor became a bit of a mission in the end. I went with grey-shift idea, but the colour I chose turned out to have a lot more pink in than I was expecting. That, combined with the different shades of white on the walls gave quite a head-f**k in early morning light. Okay, so this was interesting, but it was taking the installation somewhere else, which I wasn’t sure about. It also seemed to make the floor-based work less substantial, less there somehow. It was only after a day of debating this, and also trying out a much more grey-grey, that I saw how it worked in evening light. The pinkness became a more subtle grey-brownness which shifted the space in a softer way, and worked with the floor pieces.
I think the photograph piece needs some more work. It feels a little unrefined now, in comparison with the other pieces. The wallpaper covering rips away a bit too easily, so it reveals the image too easily and too much of it. I’m also wondering if a letter is the best support – it’s beginning to feel a bit too literal; not just in the sense that there’s writing involved (it’s a personal letter written in the 1930’s I picked up at a market) but perhaps there might be softer ways to make the references? I went on a tour of Tyne and Wear Museum’s archives a few months back, and got rather fascinated with how the conservators repair velum manuscripts with sausage skin and a starch glue, so I’ve been thinking about how this might work with a photograph printed on it. I’m also beginning to do some research about making my own photographic emulation, or at least using a silver based powder or solution to take some more control over this process. Or perhaps I could print onto silver leaf, or imbed the support with it somehow, so the image doesn’t appear too fixed, so static?
