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Excessive, obsessive, exotic and exuberant – nearly 200 years after the
final phase of its transformation from farmhouse to fantasy land the Royal Pavilion
still draws gasps. Its picturesque Indian outlines enclose an interior architecture
of full-blooded chinoiserie where dragons frolic, birds and fish chase across
red and gold wallpaper and bamboo groves line corridors.
George IV’s dazzled guests might have thought they had arrived in the
‘Far East’ but a Chinese visitor would not feel at home. This was a
carefully constructed – if all encompassing - fantasy; a fantasy without
any reference or connection to the reality of China or being Chinese.
For Architecture Week 2003 British/Chinese artists Anthony
Lam and Erika Tan were invited to create a personal
response to the interior architecture of the Royal Pavilion. Their response was
to suggest alternative readings of the Pavilion through contemporary experiences,
emphasising the subjective and the personal. A series of 'insertions' (including
sound, images and objects) and related inventory offered new routes through the
architecture and history of the Pavilion and sought to provoke questions about
the role and status of contemporary collections and museological enterprises.
Architecture Week provided a first phase of the artist's response to the Pavilion
and further work is being made.
See images of the installation at
the Royal Pavilion...
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