Kavanagh, Laurence
'The Sayonara Room' forms part of a larger installation, The Lonely House, 2008, created on the top floor of an empty office building in Archway, North London. Following research undertaken while artist in residence at Byam Shaw School of Art, the work is based on motifs taken from the last films to be shown in the cinemas of the area before they closed down. The office building stands on the site of one of the closed cinemas, The Electric Palace, whose final film was The Lonely House, 1957, directed by Montgomery Tully.
Each of the six rooms that comprise The Lonely House use an element of the final films screened in the six closed cinemas; a spilt glass, an empty cigarette packet, a stairway, a cowboy and his horizon. As the artist describes 'these moments, scenes and objects are not literally recreated, but continually overlay one another, forming and re-forming new narratives as the viewer moves in and around the installation…. the work plays on a constant shift between the human desire for both past and future, whilst fixing these moments to a specific location'.
Rachel Arndt
- Artwork Details: 183 x 183 x 183cm
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- Material description: metal
- Credit line: © the artist
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- Accession number: ACC18/2008