The Gallery, week 44 - Shapes

Date: 02 February 2011 08:00:44

What with the photo-a-day Project365 I have been a bit preoccupied, and haven't posted on the Gallery project for several weeks. For information about the Gallery, and the blog from which it emerged, click on the picture to the left. Each week Tara posts a theme, and the challenge is to come up with a picture to reflect the theme. This week the theme is rather abstract, shapes, but as soon as I saw it I knew exactly the picture I wanted to use. [I think I may have blogged this before, probably at the time, but it is such a good photo and amazing experience I make no apology for posting it again. I apologise for being a bit pseudy, but in this case I really couldn't help it!]

I took this picture several years ago, when I still lived in London (in fact flickr tells me it was taken in August 2005, so just a month before I left to move to Scotland) and long-time readers of this blog may remember that in my final year or so in London I tried to get to do something cultural at least once a month and visit stuff that had been on my doorstep for years that I'd never got round to before. This though was just a transient piece of art, but it made a profound impression on me. It is called Dreamspace and was by the artist Maurice Agis - there is sadly a tragic end to this particular artwork, when in July 2006 it came loose from its moorings when it was being exhibited in Chester-le-Street, and 2 people were killed and 13 injured. As a result Agis was charged with involuntary manslaughter, although he was eventually found not guilty. He died in 2009. I loved this work so much. It was a series of plastic sheets in different colours stretched into columns, and the whole thing was supported on some sort of frame. I suppose it was a bit like an arty bouncy castle, but it had an incredible atmosphere - I remember sitting on the 'floor' leaning against one of the columns, and feeling the ground beneath me sway if someone walked past. As I leant against the column it made me feel like I was leaning against someone and feeling them breathe, and at the same time that I was somehow tuning into the breathing of the universe. It also, despite the bright colours and the people walking round and taking pictures, really reminded me of a cathedral. I found it a very visceral, raw and calming experience, and I remember sitting there for close to an hour just soaking it all in. I didn't want to leave. It was amazing. If you look just to the right of the purple column in the middle of the picture, you'll see towards the bottom a person looking up (I think they were sitting and leaning against the green column the same way I was sitting leaning against my column), which will give you a sense of the scale of it all.