Sometimes, an artistic idea is born out of a gesture that can be as simple as a child’s manipulation of objects or digging in the earth. However, there is something that artists don’t have in common with children: artlessness. Like any adult, artists are not innocent – the games they play follow certain intentions and interests; they apply techniques and strategies to attain their goals. An artistic gesture, if carefully and subversively applied to the right context, can alter common opinion and reshape our perspectives on history. Thus, an aesthetic practice can have political meanings, albeit they are very different from political actions. Here, we touch upon the great opposition of the adult game. Art seems to be a beautiful lie since it employs fiction to tell the truth, whereas politics – if motivated by sound morality – applies the truth to tell stories that justify political actions. Where these two extremes get too close together we find either propaganda (if we look at the political outcomes), or pedagogy (if we look at the artistic intentions). In this lab report on the preparations for an exhibition at the Mosaic Rooms in London, we want to focus on a gesture that underlies three artistic inventions – a gesture as simple as a child digging in the dirt and exploring the earth.
The Future Rewound and The Cabinet of Souls, 2014
The exhibit consists of two parts, which are reflected in the title “The Future Rewound and the Cabinet of Souls.” Both themes are site-specifically related to the history of the building Tower House, which, during the late Victorian period, was the home of the Hungarian musician, dancer, and impresario lmre Kiralfy (1845-1919). He became the general director for London Exhibitions Limited at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre, and under his guidance, the Centre changed its program from national spectacles to colonial exhibits. The works presented in the exhibition encourage a new look at the history of this building while applying the premise of its contemporaneity. What once had been and left traces are now reactivated: elements that might influence the present moment. The works of The Future Rewound section (No, 2012,Modulor II, 2014,A Colour of Time [Tower House, London], 2014, Perspectives [Bank Junction, London], 2014 and All Along the Watchtower, 2012) deal mainly with themes that determine the relationship between an individual, the small world that every subject is able to perceive and understand, and the abstract systems of order and control that give shape to modern societies and manage the coexistence of about seven billion human beings through coordinated conflicts and crises. The Cabinet of Souls instead emphasizes elements that modern societies appear unable to see or control. The works within this section (Faces, 2014, Tunisian Americans, 2012, and Impunities-London Originals, 2012) are like trace evidence of a force from the past (Orson Welles) that could permanently alter the structures of power.
The Tower House
The Mosaic Rooms is located in Tower House in West Kensington, a building that lies at the busy junction of Cromwell Road and Earls Court Road and quite close to the Earls Court Exhibition Centre that originally opened in 1887. Before we started to think about the exhibition, we studied the floor plans and browsed images of the venues. We came to realize that compared to other exhibition spaces, the so-called Grand Room on the ground-floor level looked rather like a former living room that was refurbished into a gallery space. It has a huge French door on the west side and a niche indicating a former fireplace on the east side. The walls and ceilings are still decorated with opulent stucco, and the large northern wall is intersected by three French windows. It was evident that this space, now used primarily as a temporal dwelling for artworks, had once been a residential property. For whom? Rachael Jarvis, head curator of the Mosaic Rooms, collected as many archival materials as possible to gather more information about the history of the building. In the archives at the Museum of London, we found very old photographs of the building’s Victorian interiors dating back to the late 19th century.
Ornate schemes, including figures and foliate patterns, and a wide collection of colonial objects suggest wealth. This “Grand Room” was the retreat where Imre Kiralfy discovered his inspiration (img. 1). Six years before he moved into Tower House, where he lived from 1896 until his death in 1919, Kiralfy had been invited to London to raise the spectacle Venice in London at Olympia.
At this time, the Earls Court Exhibition Centre was running an annual sequence of nationally themed shows – each year representing a different country – until a significant event took place at Earls Court. “Imre Kiralfy, Harold Hartley and Paul Cremieu-Javal came together to form the nucleus of London Exhibitions Limited, with Kiralfy becoming the General Director.”
From this moment onward, this annual series of exhibitions was dropped, and the Earls Court brought the attractions of the colonial empire to the London public. The success of the first colonial exhibitions allowed Kiralfy to move into the luxurious mansion near the Exhibition Centre and design it to his liking.