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I live on the ocean, write women's fiction, love to read so much that it's an addiction rather than a hobby (I read an average of a book a day). I live on the wet west coast so it's a good thing that I like to walk in the rain.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Reece Terris - OUGHT APARTMENT


I was at the art gallery to see the Rembrandt and Vermeer show the other day - which of course was fabulous - but because I'd seen all of the paintings before at the Rikjsmuseum in Amsterdam - I was struck by something completely different.
In the rotunda was an exhibit by Reece Terris called OUGHT APARTMENT (though what that means I don't know!). And it was amazing, creepy, weird, wonderful, nostalgic, scary and fascinating.
It it a four story high exhibit set in the middle of two wings of stairs. You can walk in at the bottom and at the top but can only see the two middle floors from the stairs.
And what is it?
Each floor represents a different decade - the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. And you can walk right into the past, at least the 50s and 80s part of it. Each floor is a replica or re-creation of a typical home of that decade.
Remember the pink bathrooms? Remember the blue mountain pottery? Remember the fake paintings? Remember the fake wood panelling?
The 50s and 60s felt creepy to me, too much like my childhood - I walked into that pink bathroom and felt like I was 12 again. I looked at that pottery and remember my mother buying it and thinking how beautiful it was. My brother still has my mother's pottery - and that, too, is creepy.
The 80s felt like a movie set - all that glass and white and black and steel. It felt, actually, like that terrible terrible movie Xanadu.
But I'm going back to see it again. And probably again. Because it some odd and creepy and fascinating way, that installation grabbed me. It's got me by the throat.
Kate

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