Into the mist: Ann Veronica Janssens fills the Wellcome Collection with a thick, multicoloured fog
Ann Veronica Janssens' latest perception-skewing installation sees an entire gallery filled with rainbow-coloured mist at the Wellcome Collection
![Enveloping rainbow-coloured mist for her new installation, yellowbluepink](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/voet2cuqjMgwChCPH4pnQd-415-80.jpg)
There isn't a single object displayed at the Wellcome Collection's latest exhibtion, yellowbluepink by Ann Veronica Janssens. Instead, visitors pass quietly and slightly unsteadily, feeling their way through an empty, white gallery filled only with a dense multicoloured mist that's lit from above by yellow pink and blue strip lights. Within the space, visibility is restricted to just a few inches creating a strange sense of disorientation as shadows appear and quickly disappear back into the rainbow haze - like walking through a sunset sky.
'Janssens' work disorientates the viewer through the dissolution of normal perceptual boundaries,' says curator Emily Sargent. 'The mist appears to disintegrate the materiality of the space whilst at the same time imparting a materiality and tactility to light and colour.'
'You don't need to explain this work because it's about you and your experience within the environment,' she continues. 'You don't have to worry about what you're supposed to do because it comes naturally. It puts you in a different space, a slightly uncomfortable but beautiful and uplifting space.'
Brussels-based Janssens, who was part of the Hayward Gallery's critically-acclaimed Light Show in 2013, is known for her 'mist sculptures', which she has installed across the globe; the first being a pavilion at Neuenationalgalerie in Berlin in 2001. Speaking to Brussels' Galerie Micheline Szwajcer about the mist sculpture experience she explains, 'One’s perception of time is transformed, there’s a slowing down if not a suspension. It’s as if one were in a slow-motion film with almost no images. All the markers have disappeared, the light illuminates nothing that could authorise our wandering.'
Janssens' Wellcome installation marks the museum's launch of 'State of Mind', a year-long exploration into the experience of human conciousness that will culminate with a major new exhibition in February next year, looking at phenomena such as synaesthesia, sleepwalking, memory loss and anaesthesia.
Visitors are invited to walk through the room where the thick mist restricts visibility to just a few inches
’Janssens’ work disorientates the viewer through the dissolution of normal perceptual boundaries,’ says curator Emily Sargent. ’The mist appears to disintegrate the materiality of the space whilst at the same time imparting a materiality and tactility to light and colour.’
Janssens’ installation marks the museum’s launch of ’State of Mind’, a year-long exploration into the experience of human conciousness
INFORMATION
Ann Veronica Janssens’ yellowbluepink runs from 15 October 2015 - 3 January 2016
ADDRESS
Wellcome Collection
183 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
-
Commune’s sustainable personal care products look ‘quite unlike anything else’
Commune’s Somerset-made products stand out in the sustainable skincare crowd. Madeleine Rothery speaks with the brand’s co-founders Kate Neal and Rémi Paringaux
By Madeleine Rothery Published
-
‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Rabanne’s Julian Dossena on the legacy of the chainmail 1969 bag
Paco Rabanne’s 1969 chainmail handbag encapsulates the late designer’s futuristic, space-age style. Current creative director Julien Dossena tells Wallpaper* about the bag’s particular pleasures
By Jack Moss Published
-
Postcard from Paris: Olympic fever takes over the streets
On the eve of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, our correspondent shares her views from the streets of the capital about how the event is impacting the urban landscape.
By Minako Norimatsu Published
-
‘Mental health, motherhood and class’: Hannah Perry’s dynamic installation at Baltic
Hannah Perry's exhibition ’Manual Labour’ is on show at Baltic in Gateshead, UK, a five-part installation drawing parallels between motherhood and factory work
By Emily Steer Published
-
Francis Alÿs plots child play around the world at the Barbican
In Francis Alÿs' exhibition ‘Ricochets’ at London’s Barbican, the artist explores the universality of play, even in challenging situations
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
At Glastonbury’s Shangri-La, activism and innovation meet
Glastonbury’s south-east corner is known for its after-dark entertainment but by day, there is a different story to tell
By Rhian Daly Published
-
‘I am almost an anti-sculptor’: Dominique White on her Whitechapel Max Mara Art Prize show
The artist mines the ocean to explore Afrofuturism in ‘Deadweight’, opening at London’s Whitechapel and detailed in a new film
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
Remembering Rusty Egan's Blitz Club: a place to 'avoid the mob and the homophobes', where the New Romantics were born
As he releases new vinyl boxset, 'Blitzed!', Wallpaper* meets DJ Rusty Egan to talk about London's scene-building Blitz club – the antidote to the late 70s punk scene and a hot-bed of experimental fashion
By Craig McLean Published
-
Suzannah Pettigrew's 'tender and ghostly' new show at Surrealist photographer Lee Miller's former home in East Sussex
London-based artist Suzannah Pettigrew's photographic stills create a snapshot of her Sussex coast childhood, conjuring up a hallucinatory world of memory
By Mary Cleary Published
-
The body, pleasure and play: Beryl Cook and Tom of Finland united in London
Tom of Finland’s homoeroticism meets Beryl Cook’s female-oriented camp as Studio Voltaire unites work by the two artists in a London exhibition
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Zanele Muholi celebrates South Africa’s Black LGBTI communities in LA and London
Zanele Muholi's portraits and sculptures are currently on show at Southern Guild Los Angeles and the Tate Modern, London
By Hannah Silver Published