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Hall of Mirrors, Versailles

Hall of Mirrors, Versailles

Jeppe Hein

Jeppe Hein

Mark Wallinger

Mark Wallinger

Mark Wallinger

Mark Wallinger

Shah Cheragh

Shah Cheragh

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Crypt Door Cut-Outs

Crypt Door Cut-Outs

Material Experiment

Material Experiment

In the Shadows... Installation View

In the Shadows... Installation View

In the Shadows... Mirror Reflection

In the Shadows... Mirror Reflection

The Eyes of the River II

The Eyes of the River II

The Eyes of the River V

The Eyes of the River V

Visual Influences

  • Mark Quinn at Somerset House Courtyard

  • Mark Wallinger at Freud Museum

  • Mark Wallinger, TFL Mazes

  • Yayoi Kusama - Infinities Room

  • Michelangelo Pistoletto - Mirror Smashing

  • Hall of Mirrors, Versailles

  • Jeppe Hein

  • Shah Cheragh

 

Ideas going forward

  • Consider the idea that responding to places is good for my work, it adds purpose.

  • Mirrors are my friend

  • Large scale mirrors and patterns

Site-Specific and the Eyes of the River

For the Crypt Gallery Exhibition, In the Shadows of a Subterranean River, we had to make work/a piece of work in relation to the Crypt Gallery. This space is dark, damp and eerie. I knew that I wanted to still have a relation between my current practice and the site-specific work for the show. This was helped by the doors to the Crypt having rather impressive cut-outs, in the shape of a circle. These drew me immediately as it was a circle and the cut-outs made a pattern. My work was now echoing the architecture.

 

Although I knew the design for the piece of work, I did not know what form the work would take, I knew it was to be different than my norm and so I set out doing a series of experiments playing around with different material combinations. This lead me to the use of the mirrors again. The cut-outs let you see through the door onto the Euston Road, and for me this was as if you were considering another world [where the mirrors come in], the busy modern world compared with the throwback Gothic style crypt.

 

Site-specific mirrors have been used before to create illusionistic worlds. Marc Wallinger at the Fred Museum hung a mirror on the ceiling of Freud's study, doubling the space and creating a sense of self-reflection. Yayoi Kusama's Infinities Room, a room covered in mirrors and LED lights, expressed an interest in infinite, endless vision. Jeppe Hein uses mirrors as another material, his Mirror Labyrinth NY creates a fragmented view of New York, making it unfamiliar and disorientating, like a labyrinth.

 

One visual clue I did decide early on was that as the title was In the Shadows of a Subterranean River, and the river Fleet was this river that we were talking of, was that my colour scheme would be made up mostly of blues and variating shades of, this was my connection to the river. Another connection was the personification of the river, the cut-outs were like eyes looking through a portal into a new world, and a collection of shapes in the design, became to look like a face, with two eyes. Another was that there would be six boards to echo the six cut-outs in one set of doors.

 

A personification of the River Fleet occurs in Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London. The river Fleet is personified as the daughter of Mama Thames and the goddess [genius loci] of the river fleet, she is a nosey character. She looks like she's in her 30's, and is said to be built like a sprinter with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. According to Beverley Brook [another river], Fleet is married to a fae and has got "like a gazillion foster kids".

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