Picture Camilla Nelson
Through to 6th April 2014 Burlington House, Piccadilly London W1J 0BD www.royalacademy.org.uk
I had been promised great things by others who had seen it. I failed to identify with their rapture.
The atrium serves as an introduction not just architecturally (the original walls have layers of fabric hung over to create false walls) but also textually. Short statements have been written on the walls beneath the hanging fabric whilst other statements (taken from the filmed interviews, displayed at the end of the exhibition) are projected onto and fade, on a timer, over the fabric itself. The effect gestures, I felt half-heartedly, towards an architectural and textual palimpsest composed out of the old and new organisation of this space. A convincing and engaging dialogue between the existing architecture of the Royal Academy and the architecture installed as part of this exhibition is, however, never quite achieved. This was the main source of my disappointment with this exhibition.
Moving from the atrium of the gallery into the first proper space of the exhibition, a warm smell of timber engulfs you as you marvel at the scale of the work: it is physically ambitious and visually impressive. Three columns, composed of curved wooden planking, reach almost up to the ceiling, supporting a wooden platform. Each column contains an inner stairwell and visitors are encouraged to climb these spiral staircases to reach the open platform on top. The effect, upon reaching this platform, is giddy-making. Whether this is because the structure is vibrating (or was it swaying?) with the movement of its ant-like occupants, climbing and descending its internal crevices, or not, it is sensibly disturbing. As I descended the ramp my eyes caught upon some writing printed on the timber frame. Inscribed directly beneath the relief of a gilt coronet that forms part of the frieze of this room, it reads: ‘please do not touch the historic architecture’. Is this a joke? The words are written into the temporary wooden installation but it is more likely that they refer to the frieze that is suddenly visible at close quarters as a result of this installation: we can look but not touch. How does this engage the senses differently from any other gallery display? The barrier between the two architectures on display is manifested in this single phrase. There is a double standard that remains disappointingly intact throughout this exhibition. There is one set of rules for the installed work (the visitor is invited to touch, smell, see, hear how this architecture works) and another for the existing building (a muted backdrop that should be regarded with appropriate reverence, untainted with too much bodily interaction). This feels like a missed opportunity to intimately engage with the nuances of our treatment and inhabitation of these spaces. By simply inserting another set of spatial rules within the existing ones without an effectively engaged dialogue between them the exhibition sets up thesis and antithesis to the mutual exclusion of any attempt at synthesis. The result is a co-habitation of contradictory value systems that do not recognise each other even though they are standing side by side. This missed opportunity for dialogue is a small, and expensive, tragedy.
We move on. Every installation is large scale. There is a cast relief of the arch, displayed at an angle to the original archway. You can move through both. You can touch both. Neither is very exciting. There is a large plastic honeycomb, in the next room, with many-coloured plastic straws inserted into this structure to redefine it in an interactive way. This feels too much like organised fun. It is also vaguely patronising. We are permitted to play with the temporary structures, the structures that aren’t to be taken seriously, whilst our attitude (reverence) to the actual building within which we stand, remains unchanged. What about the metal grating or the wooden flaps in the skirting boards? Why are these ‘original’ features not engaged with in this questioning of architectural arrangement? Our fundamental attitudes to the underlying organisation of space remain unchallenged at the risk of going unrecognised. The exhibition’s message is revealed as superficial. Onwards, through the stained cloth strips to a wooden labyrinth. This time the structure is horizontal rather than vertical. The flooring is uplit. This time the walls are wattled. There is a small, wooden slatted room with a window in it that conjoins two sides of the labyrinth, framing the tops of people’s heads as they pass, or occasionally peep their eyes over the sill. This is entertaining. The smell of wood and the invitation to take advantage of the wooden benching provided makes it feel like a sauna. The lack of light, amount of people and difficulty in accessing and exiting this space makes it claustrophobic. This is interesting. The open space focus of this labyrinth is a gravelled square that reminds me of a prisoner of war camp courtyard. People are walking very slowly through the contained space, or sitting despondently among the stones. This sense of oppression is reflected by the mirrored wall that halves the space you appear to occupy, doubling the sense of oppression. The next room is open interrupted only by vertically hung, white cement slabs, suspended in rows, overhead. The looming weight of these slabs counterpoints with the open space of the room, below, through which visitors walk unrestricted. This looming weight is challenged, or partially relieved, by the light that enters from the glass ceiling, above. There is a choice now, to go into the final room of filmed interviews with the architects or to enter a space that explores the reorganisation of light and space in an even heavier installation. There is more contrast in this work. The angular entrance and exits bring in a large amount of light. The lighting inside this room is very dim. The grey of the cement is almost audible. There is a sense of stagecraft here that, finally, amounts to a convincing synthesis of existing and installed architecture. The result is transporting. The shadow play and sense of maze, achieved through the subtle visual and physical reorganisation of the space, is compelling. If only the rest of the work had been as integrated, the result would have been an outstanding corporeal experience of counterpoint inhabitation.
The final spaces are interesting for their odour. The smell of tatami and hinoki takes you back to the wood smell of the first space of the exhibition. Here the room is filled with lights inserted at the joins of this fragile structure. In one room you walk around the light works; in the next you walk inside. The smell and visual display is impressive; the reorganisation of space is less so.
Leaving the exhibition I felt underwhelmed and a little deflated. A yellow column lies half demolished (artistically arranged) in the courtyard outside. “What a waste of space,” I thought. And hard on the heels of that, “What a waste of money”. So much spent on installing enormous structures that could have been spent to commission an array of site-specific, installation and performance artists to produce a more intimate and reflective dialogue with the existing structure. The Royal Academy, this space of institutionalised artistic and architectural reverence, would have much profited from such a creative questioning, as would the audience as they engaged in active questioning of its spatial politics. It seems depressingly short-sighted to have missed such an unusual opportunity to create a really thorough and insightful critique of how it is that we inhabit such spaces. Sensing Spaces evidences, for me, an unfortunate case of more money and space than sens
Words: Camilla Nelson
