The installation, 'A Free and Anonymous Monument,' was the artist's Jane and Louise Wilson's largest to date, encompassing thirteen separate projectoins and unfolding over 700sqm of floor space.
At the heart of the installation is the now largely forgotten relic of post war regeneration, Victor Pasmore's Apollo Pavilion. Built in 1958 in the nearby town of Peterlee, the pavilion was an architectural experiment whose radical utopian credentials were embodied in its stark and uncompromising lines and in its choice of the then state of the art material, reinforced concrete.
We were asked to recreate the spirit of the pavilion and to take its template of free floating planes as the physical framework for the installation.
The result is a fractured panorama of space and light that situates the artist's trademark explorations of place and space in an expanded architectural and sculptural setting. Anchored at either end are two large slabs of concrete which give the installation a monumentality. These 'bookends' are thresholds to a matrix of pathways and multiple perspectives.
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.
Completed, 2003.
In collaboration with Jane and Louise Wilson.
Photos by Jerry Hardman Jones.
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