The Crystal Palace (Destroyed)

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3 July ' 7 August 2010

A crystal palace. A fortress of solitude. A mythical place of majesty and retreat. Destroyed.

A (science) fiction of sorts, of sculpture and images, of a broken utopia refracted through fragments ' autonomous artifacts that together weave a suggested archeology. Of the shards of thought made into solid form. Into a form that is lost.

Works by the featured artists appear to transpose the architectural remains of this mythic place into a physical relationship with the gallery ' a complex angular platform that is parasitically grafted to the gallery walls (Berriman), a jewel-like architectural addition that change the light from the skylights (Counsell) ' or suggest an arcane practice of planning the building of cities through the use of crystals (Ricketts).

Photographs by Heather & Ivan Morison and Roy Voss provide clues to the setting of The Crystal Palace or to its wanderings. Their photographs suggest that the palace resides in many places, or exerts its influence there at least. Crystalline forms overlay themselves on lonely landscapes and natural forms. Deserted icebound vistas are tattooed with white signs that declare a calamity no longer visible. Fell they say. Fell. Fell.

The collapsing of the palace into shards. The broken remnants gathered for inspection. A road sign declaring the word Amethyst lies prone, ripped from the ground. A tangled line sprayed onto the wall a final act of desecration. Or perhaps a salutation we do not understand.