« previous artist
next artist » 
Bryan Benge
Painting installation at the London Guildhall Museum & Art Gallery
In the basement of The London Guildhall Art Gallery & Museum are the displayed remains of the old London Roman Amphitheatre. It is an intriguing space, ankle high stone, ancient sculptures and ancient dust lie, artefacts and relics full of history and memory, their sleep and presence interrupted by slick contemporary audio visual display screens.
To further confuse – on these very screens we see explanations of the artefacts and broken pieces of Roman history.
Fragment 1 A was inspired by the location and its conundrum; the site specific work was developed for this gallery responding to its intrinsic uniqueness.
The print was not hung conventionally but made to deliberately conflict with the interior architecture, in a sense echoing the same jump in time and technology that the old artefacts mixed with the new AV technology at present do.
In dialogue with the gallery, the plan was for one piece to be a bill board type installation to obscure part of an historical epic painting, John Singleton Copley, Defeat Of The Floating Batteries 1783 – 91.
Part of my display strategy is to create an exhibition where fragments of the image only reveal themselves gradually to the viewer as they enter and explore the space and to amplify this gulf between time past and time present.
Bryan Benge's website
Painting installation at the London Guildhall Museum & Art Gallery
In the basement of The London Guildhall Art Gallery & Museum are the displayed remains of the old London Roman Amphitheatre. It is an intriguing space, ankle high stone, ancient sculptures and ancient dust lie, artefacts and relics full of history and memory, their sleep and presence interrupted by slick contemporary audio visual display screens.
To further confuse – on these very screens we see explanations of the artefacts and broken pieces of Roman history.
Fragment 1 A was inspired by the location and its conundrum; the site specific work was developed for this gallery responding to its intrinsic uniqueness.
The print was not hung conventionally but made to deliberately conflict with the interior architecture, in a sense echoing the same jump in time and technology that the old artefacts mixed with the new AV technology at present do.
In dialogue with the gallery, the plan was for one piece to be a bill board type installation to obscure part of an historical epic painting, John Singleton Copley, Defeat Of The Floating Batteries 1783 – 91.
Part of my display strategy is to create an exhibition where fragments of the image only reveal themselves gradually to the viewer as they enter and explore the space and to amplify this gulf between time past and time present.
Bryan Benge's website
 Fragment 1A 2007 366cm x 244 cm |
|
|
© 2010 The London Group