‘It’s a meditative space, to me it feels something like a chapel,’ explains artist and designer Es Devlin of her newly unveiled commission at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery in London’s Ealing. ‘It’s conceived to console the viewer in a way: to remind us that humans have managed to shift our perspectives over the millennia and to encourage us that we can do so again.’ Memory Palace is the second exhibition at the Sir Joane Soane-designed country home, which reopened in spring following a major £12m restoration project.
The immersive, 18m-wide installation is a ‘subjective and personal’ mapping of 73 pivotal moments in mankind’s history, from the first known human drawing in South Africa’s Blombos Cave (73,000 BCE) through to the low-lying deltas of Bangladesh’s Bay of Bengal, where rising seas are being felt in 2019. Fragments of cities and building punctuate the stark space, Soane’s prolific passion for collecting and creating architectural models echoed in Devlin’s topographical modelling. (She has similarly transformed Soane’s library space at Pitzhanger into a reading room filled with books that informed her work.)
Working sketch of Memory Palace, 2019.
‘It started with a sketch: I had a sense of the broad sweep I wanted to cover, starting with the first intentional marks left by humans in caves, and ending with current ongoing shifts in our attitudes to the interlinking fields of ecology and economics,’ says Devlin. Conscious of the diverse and international make-up of her studio, Devlin and her team put their heads together to identify decisive historical events, also canvasing family and friends ‘to include a variety of generations’. We’re invited to remember the segregated bus in Alabama where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat (1955), or the languages that were outlawed in Machu Picchu during Spanish colonial rule (1781).
Eager to experiment with more sustainable materials, the artist worked with Diagon – the fabricator who also built her Mirror Maze – to research and source cross-laminated bamboo ply sheets. Some 650 individual 500mm square tiles of bamboo were CNC milled to form the main body of the work. This resulted in visible grain in the less contoured areas, with the detailing rendered in a lower resolution than that of the 3D-printed ‘special’ buildings. Fittingly, ‘like an image reproduced in memory, some areas are higher definition than others’, she says. The work is coated in a breathable, non-toxic Earthborn paint (the first UK interior paint to receive an EU Ecolabel).
In spite of the serene setting, there’s a certain anxiety embedded in the fringes of her atlas, where ‘the most profound and urgent shift in thinking is located’, she notes, referring to the present climate crisis. But Devlin doesn’t necessarily require us to subscribe to her narrative: she’s provided a blank version of the map, which visitors are invited to take from the exhibition ‘to create their own cartography’. Still, Memory Palace is a sanctum for reflection, quite literally, as the work is multiplied by mirrored planes. ‘Chapels don’t normally have mirrors though,’ says Devlin. ‘The viewer finds themselves within the work – for better and for worse.’
INFORMATION
Memory Palace, until 12 January 2020, Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery. pitzhanger.org.uk; esdevlin.com
ADDRESS
Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery
Mattock Lane
Ealing
London W5 5EQ
-
This 18th-century Puglian villa has been restored with contemporary touchesThe updated stonemason's workshop is a haven of centuries-old brick and sophisticated made-in-Italy design
-
A luxury house boat? These floating sanctuaries are redefining life on the waterForget everything you think you know about house boats – a new floating development in Dorset is architect-designed and impossibly sleek
-
The Infinite Machine Olto is an electrified two-wheeler designed for urban transportationNew York-based Infinite Machine have revealed their second electric urban vehicle, the Olto, a micro mobility solution designed to share bike lanes
-
London calling! Artists celebrate the city at Saatchi YatesLondon has long been an inspiration for both superstar artists and newer talent. Saatchi Yates gathers some of the best
-
Alexandra Metcalf creates an unsettling Victorian world in LondonAlexandra Metcalf turns The Perimeter into a alternate world in exhibition, 'Gaaaaaaasp'
-
Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska’s new show at Kettle’s Yard will uncover the missing narratives in everyday life storiesThe artists and partners in life are collaborating on an immersive takeover of Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, in an exhibition that delves into a lost literary legacy
-
Sexual health since 1987: archival LGBTQIA+ posters on show at Studio VoltaireA look back at how grassroots movements emphasised the need for effective sexual health for the LGBTQIA+ community with a host of playful and informative posters, now part of a London exhibition
-
Ten things to see at London Gallery WeekendAs 125 galleries across London take part from 6-8 June 2025, here are ten things not to miss, from David Hockney’s ‘Love’ series to Kayode Ojo’s look at the superficiality of taste
-
Out of office: what the Wallpaper* editors have been up to this weekThis week saw the Wallpaper* team jet-setting to Jordan and New York; those of us left in London had to make do with being transported via the power of music at rooftop bars, live sets and hologram performances
-
See the fruits of Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely's creative and romantic union at Hauser & Wirth SomersetAn intimate exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Somerset explores three decades of a creative partnership
-
Out of office: what the Wallpaper* editors have been up to this weekThe Wallpaper* team enjoyed good art, food and drink this week, attending various exhibition openings and unearthing some of the best pasta and cocktails that London has to offer
