Reflecting Spaces

CRYSTAL PALACE MADRID

The Crystal Palace Madrid is adorned with expansive glass panels on an iron structure that is clover shaped and crowned by a dome. It is 22.6 meters high and stands majestic at the centre of Buen Retiro Park, Madrid, Spain. The ingenious use of cast iron columns and generous glass surfaces allows for a spacious and grand interior, which compliments the description, as a glass cathedral. During the time I was in Madrid, the Crystal Palace was undergoing renovations which allowed me to study the way light illuminated both the interior and the exterior. It mirrors a sense of duplicate spaces, transparent inside out.

Palacio de Cristal was constructed in 1887 from a design created by Ricardo Velazquez Bosco, inspired by the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park (London), which was designed by Joseph Paxton in 1851 and intended to be the home for exotic plants from the Philippines during an exhibition. It was intentionally built as a temporary exhibition space that could be relocated, however, that never happened, and it remains in its original location.

The Crystal Palace, with its reflective surfaces and the refractions of light from the sun inspired this body of work. Each day that I spent on location resulted in differed shards of light and shapes that sparked an imagined new space for me; the inside was outside and vice versa. The structure became abstracted due to the luminosity struck by different angles. As I walked around it, transparent layers and multiple reflections created an optical illusion that I then tried to transpire into the artworks for this exhibition. Surrounded by glass and encased in glass, the surrounding areas of space began to form its own selection of fabricated façades for me; ones that existed momentarily and transcribed into these prints and paintings.

I can never get enough of this Crystal palace. Each time I walk to it or pass it I am enthralled by it and drawn to it like a magnetic force. I take more photos, this time with more detail in the layers that form this incredible structure. The light bounces like a dance on the surface of each of the panels which turns me inside out.

The light that shines onto the palace is luminous; the photos today will be different to yesterday and the day before, and it is difficult to capture the layers through a lens, although my eye becomes the lens in this situation. Each blink of the eye recreates a new type of composition. I have so many ideas racing around in my head and am itching to get onto them. Tomorrow I shall declare a studio day and start my planning; of course, I will have to go out for walks and food.