There's a particular artwork that has haunted me for a long time. It's one that exists in my memory, a story I tell myself sometimes, but it's a story of absence and forgetting. Before I sat down to write this letter I couldn't remember what it was called and almost what it even looked like. I knew it was an installation: a series of rooms that you entered through a bland white door in a gallery with a security guard outside in bright yellow fluoro counting the number of people allowed in. I knew I had gone in. I knew I had come out again shortly afterwards. I knew there was a couple in the installation with me, moving about in the next room and that I could hear their low mutterings to each other. I knew I felt a sense of unease and dislocation entering the space, somewhere completely different from the more familiar surroundings I had been in moments before. I knew I felt a prickling up my spine and a sense of dread settling over me. I knew this felt irrational. I knew I had seen this artwork at Tate Britain on a visit before or not long after I had moved to London. But that was all I knew. Not really what the rest of it looked like since I made it through only the corridor and into the first room before bolting back out — too afraid to explore more. The rest was unknown to me.
the coral reef
the coral reef
the coral reef
There's a particular artwork that has haunted me for a long time. It's one that exists in my memory, a story I tell myself sometimes, but it's a story of absence and forgetting. Before I sat down to write this letter I couldn't remember what it was called and almost what it even looked like. I knew it was an installation: a series of rooms that you entered through a bland white door in a gallery with a security guard outside in bright yellow fluoro counting the number of people allowed in. I knew I had gone in. I knew I had come out again shortly afterwards. I knew there was a couple in the installation with me, moving about in the next room and that I could hear their low mutterings to each other. I knew I felt a sense of unease and dislocation entering the space, somewhere completely different from the more familiar surroundings I had been in moments before. I knew I felt a prickling up my spine and a sense of dread settling over me. I knew this felt irrational. I knew I had seen this artwork at Tate Britain on a visit before or not long after I had moved to London. But that was all I knew. Not really what the rest of it looked like since I made it through only the corridor and into the first room before bolting back out — too afraid to explore more. The rest was unknown to me.