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Ellen Harvey

Nostalgia

October 27 – December 23, 2017

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

installation view

 , Arcade/Arcadia, 2012 (exterior)
 

Arcade/Arcadia, 2012 (exterior)


From the outside, the viewer sees an old-fashioned aluminum fairground sign spelling out the word “ARCADIA” in six foot high lights leaning against a 15 ft. x 33 ft. skeletal shack.  Entering the shack, the viewer finds himself inside a mirrored panorama of a down-at-heels seaside resort.  The 34 mirrors are mounted onto thin light boxes so that the engravings appear as lines of light floating on the mirrored surfaces and viewers see themselves inside an endlessly mirrored 360 degree drawing of contemporary Margate seen from the beach.

The shack is a ¾ scale replica of the gallery that J.M.W.Turner built to display his works in London and the dimensions and arrangement of the mirrors replicate those of the paintings that were in the gallery upon Turner’s death -- some hanging on the walls, some leaning casually on the floor.  The font of the ARCADIA sign is based on the sign for Margate’s currently shuttered Dreamland amusement park.

The sign on the outside of the piece references not only Turner’s experience of Margate as an Arcadian site of escapist pleasure (where he lived happily in sin with his landlady and raved about the town’s light and natural beauties) but also the amusement arcade aesthetic that came to dominate the seaside experience – paradoxically destroying the very natural beauty that initially attracted visitors.  Similarly the endlessly mirroring mirrors inside reference the fun-house mirror experience – viewers finds their reflections inserted in to a drawing in light of a present distorted by the use of past aesthetics.  The mirrored panorama reinserts present-day Margate into the aesthetics of its more picturesque past at the same time that it stakes a claim for the melancholy beauty of its somewhat degraded present.

[Originally commissioned for the opening of the Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate, UK]

Arcade/Arcadia, 2012 (interior)

Arcade/Arcadia, 2012 (interior)

Ellen Harvey

Arcade/Arcadia, 2011-12, panel 19

Ellen Harvey

New Forest, 2013-14

acrylic, oil and varnish on 20 wooden panels

overall: 92 x 160 inches

 

Ellen Harvey

On the Impossibility of Capturing a Sunset, 2017

16 hand-engraved Plexiglas mirrors, 16 Lumisheets, plywood

37 x 58 x 1 inches

Ellen Harvey

Nostalgia, 2017

two identical gold frames, mildewed paper, gold leaf

8.25 x 21 inches

Ellen Harvey

TV Rock, 2017

oil on wood panel, Plexiglas, ulexite

14 x 18 x 1.5 inches

Ellen Harvey

Ghost of Penn Station, 2017

oil on wood panel

24 x 36 x 1 inches

Ellen Harvey

My Arcadia, 2017

archival board, photograph printed on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Bright, glitter, acrylic paint

25 x 38 inches

Ellen Harvey

Crack Craquelure (D), 2017

oil on wood panel

60 x 36 x 1.5 inches