Descriptions

Céline Condorelli’s work addresses the boundaries between public and private, art and function, work and leisure, in order to reimagine what culture and society can be as well as the role of artists within them. Using sculpture, architecture and installation – both within museums and galleries as well as in public space – Condorelli’s practice highlights the act of exhibiting itself, in its material and temporal nature.

As the National Gallery’s Artist in Residence, Condorelli worked with a constellation of specialists at the Gallery. Together with Catherine Higgitt, Principle Scientist, Condorelli examined the museum building using its macro X-ray fluorescence scanning apparatus to produce new images. Fragments of the wall fabric, floorboards, glass and green marble were scanned in the laboratory, along with images contained in the department’s archive, to create AI-generated ‘composite material images’.

The composite images were reproduced on a carpet material to bring a bodily awareness to how a visitor might behave in a gallery space. Titled Bulk: Everlasting Colour, this large carpet will, at different times, occupy the centre of RAMM’s gallery 20, a space dedicated to displaying its art collection. As with Condorelli’s previous interventions in other major European museums, this new work will encourage an alternative way of gathering in a gallery space, one that maybe closer to other spaces of leisure.

As part of the residency, Condorelli visited RAMM and recognised that its nineteenth century building shared similarities with that of the National Gallery’s through its materials, institutional history and central location in its city. It is therefore most appropriate that Bulk: Everlasting Colour should find its home in a museum also dedicated to collecting geology. As a significant cultural space in Exeter and Devon, this new place to lounge and contemplate will be welcomed by its visitors.

Condorelli’s interventions open up new ways to engage with culture, as she explains:
‘In my work as an artist there is an opportunity to continue developing this idea of deep perception, a sensual perception, making art part of everyday life again in a sort of complicated but also bodily way.’

Image: National Gallery, London, © Céline Condorelli, 2023

This object is not on display.