L.Ife has been reduced in scale for most people over the past 12 months, but now there is a remarkable lineup of British artists, including Damien Hirst, Tacita Dean, Edmund de Waal, Grayson Perry, John Akomfrah and Rachel Whiteread, have taken it a step further by analyzing their art.
Accepting an invitation from the Pallant House Gallery in West Sussex, more than 30 British artists have created tiny works for a dollhouse-sized exhibition, Masterpieces in Miniature, which will provide a miniature of the contemporary visual art. Thumbnails, oil paintings, pottery and paintings from veteran artists such as Michael Craig-Martin and Maggi Hambling to Lubaina Himid, winner of the 2017 Turner Prize – the first black woman to win the award – are to be featured. an exhibition in a specially designed model gallery from 26 June, along with leading names set in the time of the Young British Artist, such as Gary Hume, Michael Landy, Gillian Wearing and Julian Opie. The artworks range in size from a pound coin up to 20cm, but not more.
“The model gallery acts as a kind of time capsule,” said gallery director Simon Martin, who came up with the idea while concerned about artists in limited locking conditions. “Somehow with these little pieces you get the essence of an artist’s practice,” he said. “Damien has given us a 13cm spinning drawing. Grayson has made a vase, about 6cm high, covered with images of himself and so-called National Finance, while Edmund has made a 2cm white porcelain bowl with a gold edge. ”
Hambling, which recently made headlines with its controversial sculpture of Mary Wollstonecraft, has added a 9cm nude, while Dean has made a 15cm replica of her ghostly blackboard image of a vessel. A small installation by Akomfrah fills a room of the gallery. It’s a picture triptych, serving as a taste of its full-screen movie previews.
“At a time when things in our lives were getting out of hand, I was able to move forward with this project just using a ruler in my living room,” said Martin. “It provided a place for artists who were closed, or struggling with home education. At times, however, the difficulties of working at a small scale have made it so difficult to get around those who work with a large amount of work. ”
For Pallant House, the show is more than a reduced, challenging exercise though that has been. The small gallery also highlights the way in which artists and architects often have to work with scale-down models.
“Sculptors are used to making maquettes of their work first, and I often had to print small images of pictures to hang in different ways when curating an exhibition, so it’s weird but also something we know, ”he said.
Martin was inspired by two other model galleries already held at Pallant House. One was created in 1934 and features work by Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Henry Moore and Paul Nash. The second, from 2000, has been commissioned for the millennium and features small works by Frank Auerbach, Antony Gormley, Howard Hodgkin, Peter Blake, RB Kitaj and Richard Hamilton. Together with the new gallery they cover 80 years of British art.
“Our aim was to create an exhibition that would give young people an easy way to get a picture of contemporary art, even though none of the artists have fallen down. They were enthralled by the project and took it seriously, ”said Martin. After being shown at Chichester, the model gallery will tour Britain.
Martin said it was important for him to have “social and political” elements in the new gallery. It includes photographic work from the late Khadija Saye’s Crown series. This is the only work from the series that was not destroyed in the Grenfell Tower fire, which brought the young artist to life.
“We are fortunate to receive a special print from Khadija,” Martin said. “She was sent to a trustee who helped her get to Venice so he escaped with destruction.”
Small artwork has fascinated artists and audiences over the centuries, with doll houses, like the one at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, attracting large crowds. She inspired writer Jesse Burton to write her bestselling novel Am Miniaturist, and the author has stated that she will be visiting the new exhibition in the summer.
The first gallery since 1934 was partly inspired by a doll’s house made for Queen Mary in 1924 and on public display at Windsor Castle. The gallery was put together for charity by art retailer Sydney Burney but its contents have been missing for decades. When some of the works were discovered by Burney’s grandson inside a suitcase, the model was recreated by Pallant House, using the architect’s original drawings.
The original gallery, designed by the architect Marshall Sisson, replaced an early “white cube”, and in 2000 the model was a smaller version of the gallery’s own new extension.
The new gallery is approximately 150cm long, with one traditional Queen Anne front and the other with a contemporary glass façade. “What we didn’t want was a glass vineyard with all the art inside,” said Martin. “So the detail has become very important, to the point that we even have small laser-cut floorboards on the gallery floor. ”