Nathaniel Rackowe | Shuster & Museley
PORTALS OF FANTASY DESTINATIONS
curated by Vassiliki Tzanakou
House of St. Barnabas (courtyard)
1 Greek Street
London, W1D 4AQ
Exhibition runs for indefinite time
Daily and Saturdays, 10am – 6pm
Reception: 5 Feb 2016, 6pm – 8pm
Portals are technological or magical doorways that connect two distant locations that are separated by spacetime. Places linked by a portal include different spots in the same universe; a parallel world, the past, the future or other planes of existence.
Fundamental missions of ARTinTRA are: to reinvent spaces and bring people closer to magical worlds empowering their imagination, creativity and vision.
The small paradise in the heart of London, the courtyard of the House of St Barnabas, inspired us; and not only us. The Georgian rooms with their Rococo decorations, the sacred chapel and garden of the House of St Barnabas were the blueprint for the imagined lodgings of Dr. Manette and Lucy in the novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, published in 1859.
In a building at the back, attainable by a courtyard where a plane tree rustled its green leaves, church organs claimed to be made, and likewise gold to be beaten by some mysterious giant who had a golden arm starting out of the wall… as if he had beaten himself precious.
– A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Dickens immortalised the plane tree, which still stands proud in the heart of the courtyard. Shuster and Moseley’s work Quietude found shelter under the plane tree. Quietude is a perceptual instrument exploring cyclical inter-relations between different forms of projection, tracing and reflection. With cosmological light enveloping space, psychic life tunes to the changing environmental conditions and moves toward quietude; a centring. Sequentially, Nathaniel Rackowe’s Portal utilises the optical potential of dichroic glass; similar to an effect created by a hologram, where its soft coloured glow bounces off its surroundings like streetlights creating unexpected moments of beauty. His work requests movement on the part of the viewer to realise its potential and achieve journeys to multiple magical destinations.
Portals to Fantasy Destinations will run indefinitely as dreams are.
To view the full press release, please click here.
