Following its presentation at 99 Bishopsgate, Drapes was invited to Aldgate Tower in the City of London. Commissioned by Brookfield Properties and curated by Saff Williams at Acrylicize, the installation entered a dramatically different architectural setting.
Where 99 Bishopsgate offered a sense of intimacy through its sequence of spaces, windows and planted courtyard, Aldgate Tower presented an expansive glass-and-steel thoroughfare crowned by an exceptionally high atrium. The architecture transformed the work once again.
For this presentation, Drapes returned to a clustered arrangement that echoed the original installation at the Mirror Gallery. However, the proportions of the building fundamentally altered the experience. Designed initially for a gallery with a four-metre ceiling, the suspended textiles now occupied a space many times higher. Rather than surrounding the viewer, they hovered far above, recalling the sails of a vast ship suspended within the architecture.
Looking back, I came to understand that scale is never simply physical. It changes the emotional and psychological relationship between artwork, architecture and viewer. At the Mirror Gallery, Drapes created an immersive environment through which visitors moved. At Aldgate Tower, the installation became more distant and monumental. People gathered beneath it rather than within it, their attention drawn upwards into the extraordinary height of the atrium.
Saff Williams described the installation as:
“Drapes is an immersive forest of twenty fabric folds patterned with brightly bold and textured foliage, bringing the outside world in. Totems to the natural world, this installation subtly breathes in the space as the geometric artworks softly flutter in the breeze and move the viewer’s eye from the artworks’ surface to their abstracted depths.”
Her interpretation emphasised the work’s relationship with nature, movement and atmosphere, while my own understanding increasingly centred on the dialogue between painting, cloth and architecture. The installation revealed how profoundly the same materials could be transformed by different spatial conditions.
One unexpected aspect of the exhibition was its relationship with Aldgate Tower’s permanent interactive installation, commissioned by Acrylicize and created in collaboration with ShinyEye. Responding to activity on the streets outside, the projected digital work continually evolved throughout the day, filling the foyer with animated figures, movement and light.
Although conceived independently, the two installations entered into an unforeseen dialogue. While Drapes responded to gravity, architecture and the physical behaviour of cloth, the neighbouring projection animated the building through light, movement and digital interaction. Looking back, I have become increasingly interested in these chance encounters between artworks. They remind me that exhibitions are never experienced in isolation; each work acquires new meanings through its relationship with architecture, neighbouring artworks and the people who move through the space.
This presentation confirmed that Drapes was never a fixed installation but a work that continued to evolve through each architectural encounter. Every new venue required a negotiation between the original concept and the character of the space that received it. While the Mirror Gallery remains the presentation closest to my original vision, Aldgate Tower revealed something equally valuable: that architecture itself becomes an active collaborator in the work, reshaping not only its appearance but also the ways in which it is experienced and understood.
Exhibition
Drapes III
Aldgate Tower, London
Summer 2018
Commissioned by Brookfield Properties.
Curated by Saff Williams.
Installation photography: N. Haval and C. Schek.