May 2015
Der Spiegalsaal
Installation at Central Space Gallery, London
Der Spiegelsaal was created especially for the Pavillon am Milchhof. The installation was the result of research undertaken by the artist during a two month residency in the Gastatellier at Milchhof Studios in Berlin during the summer of 2012.
The artist went to Berlin in the summer of 2012 armed with vague notions of the sublime and how this vast, flat city could make the individual seem very small. During her stay at the guest studio in Milchhof she concentrated on making drawings based on her explorations of the city, these drawings reflected the stark diagonals created by its main arteries. This exploration of the drawn line represented a departure from the artist’s normal methodology, researching ideas in gesture rather than through objects. At the same time Bryan was exploring the 18th century palaces of Berlin and Potsdam, looking for evidence of the sublime and the exotic within their invented landscapes, in gardens and in interior Rococo detailing. These Rococo curlicues seemed to echo the artist’s own ramblings in and around the city. She also took inspiration from the rusted steel poles that mark the site of the Berlin Wall which passed very close to the studio, which would have been on the very edge of the old east.
This installation was an attempt to realise her drawings in three dimensional form and to bring together visual cyphers that would equate to the artist’s experience of the city. In the summer of 2012, walking past the Pavillon every day, Bryan became interested in how the building mirrored itself; also the way in which the glass is reflective, bringing the outside world inside; the work also explores this phenomenon, creating new spatial dynamics. The Spiegelshaal was an important room in many 18th century palaces, mirrors denoted opulence, but also played with our sense of perception and illusion, this work seeks to encapsulate this idea within the Pavillion.
The work was then shown, in 2015, as part of Assembly, a programme of site specific installations re- sited at Central Space Gallery, London. This Victorian school building was a very different environment to the Pavillon am Milchhof. The work was then shown at The Glass Tank at Oxford Brookes University in Re Assemble, where all three installations that had been shown at Central Space Gallery were exhibited in the gallery together. This space referenced the original site for the work, being surrounded by reflecting windows. Both projects were curated by Denise Bryan.
Pavillon am Milchhof – April 2014
Central Space Gallery – May 2015
Glass Tank Gallery – November 2015
Size variable (2m x 2m x 10m approx.)
Materials – Wood, Muslin, Clay, Pavapol (fabric stiffener)
