Re-new Wallace #6 by Emma Whitehead 2023
‘Re:New Wallace #6’ is the sixth in a series of collaborative cultural projects involving a Northern Irish artist and the Wallace Collection in London. This is an extraordinary collection encompassing paintings and decorative art objects collected from around the world by Sir Richard Wallace and his predecessors. I had the incredible opportunity to participate in a residency with the Wallace Collection to carry out research about the collection and create an innovative artistic response to it.
Scroll down to see the pieces I created, hear about my inspiration for each and my amazing experience at the Wallace Collection London.
The opportunity to research The Wallace Collection led me in so many directions; it was a delight to work in such a rich environment and delve into the knowledge of the archives, curators and staff. Wallace, named the most fortunate man of his day, provided a symbolic anchor for me to explore the sea of his connections – hereditary, familial, professional and charitable. Researching the artworks in the collection and their physical journey through the hands of people over time from conception, production, sale to resale and eventually settling in, exploring the collection allowed me to form a framework to explore the stories behind the façade.
Inspired by this, I explored the compulsion to measure time, distance, the seasons, the stars, and the need to make sense of the connections that intersect with our lives and makes us tie them down with evermore precise and minute sectionality. Time has changed from when it was primarily a religious matter, the hour's length was arbitrary and the almanack framed seasonality. Nevertheless, we continue to measure a person's worth, whether it derives from the serendipity of a fortunate birth or the tragedy of a lifespan cut short through the exploitation of their time spent in dangerous labour for the benefit of the lucky.
And throughout it all, gold pervades the collection as it flows over the surface and through the history of the lives behind the work. The Avignon clock's beautiful artifice and the Astronomical clock's spectacular movement sent me to nature to explore motifs such as the ant's industry, the beetle's determination and the spider's artistry to pull to the foreground the work of the artisan.
