Expanded Interiors Re-Staged Commission, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, 2021
This installation was set in the context of Catrin Huber's re-staging of her three installations, Expanded Interiors, initially conceived and exhibited in two Roman houses in Pompeii and Herculaneum, 2018. I was Research Assistant on Catrin Huber's 2017-19 AHRC funded interdisciplinary research project, working alongside Huber and a team of Archeologists. Expanded Interiors Re-Staged was an AHRC Follow-On project where I was invited to create a new commission, reinterpreting this interdisciplinary research, alongside Huber’s installations and new work. The exhibition re-situated Huber’s installations in a new context: Newcastle, which has historical Roman links, and a contemporary art gallery with distinctive neo-classical architecture.
The work In / out / of this world was a pivotal one in my practice: for the first time inserting new art historical and personal domestic contexts in to a gallery, as opposed to creating a site specific installation informed purely by the immediate site itself.
The installation investigated the theatricality of Roman architectural design and decoration as highlighted by the Expanded Interiors research team, dramatising and choreographing contrasting experiences across spatial thresholds. In contrast to the neighbouring rooms, I playfully reimagined a small, warm and dimly lit space, with domestic-scale illusions of incisions and openings through painting, sculptural diorama, manipulated photography, enlarged pastel drawing and painting, and filmic projection. Borrowing from the principles of Roman Wall painting, in particular third style, these tactics reference trompe l’oeil incisions, layered decorations, vistas and architectures, negotiating an exchange between the viewer, artist, and real and imagined space. They also expanded through contemporary practice the multiple visual languages showcased within Roman artefacts, informed by the vibrancy of cultural exchange.
Additionally, against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic and being a new parent, the commission also inserted more personal and domestic themes and perceptions of space, relating to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novella, The Yellow Wall Paper, such as speeds of perception, entrapment and childhood memory.
Individual works: Sunlit walls, enlarged pastel prints on hung paper, various sizes, total size 19m 48cm x 395cm; Curtains, oil on canvas, 122 x 190cm; This chamber of mine, plywood box, mirrored acrylic, mount board, obeche, primer, wire, rocking horse, LED light and clear acrylic plinth; From where I sit, photographic print on Hahnemuhle Bamboo, 14 x 21cm; Threshold, mapped projection and printed vinyl, various sizes, total size 818cm x 400cm x 285cm, 2021
