The Salon des Fables Director :
Artists of the Salon des Fables
The title highlights a mutual theme in the works of the three artists. McDermott, installed again in the Miniature Museum, is the champion of this idea! She described the awesome Baroque Dolls House, hung opposite the Miniature Museum, as ‘big but also small’. Within her small paintings are vast landscapes, epic scenes, and momentous events. Working from small models creates many possibilities and she plays with scale and perspective often changing the natural order. Fabulous creatures inhabit their own world, as tiny beings in vast herds or single giants. From left to right in the Miniature Museum, the paintings are titled, Projected Land, Model Village, Drive-in Landscape, Mountain, Robin General, Collapsed Horses, and Chicken Army.
Rowe works in a similar way to McDermott, but in reverse. He is interested in questions of scale, replication, and narrative, often uses paintings to inspire his models. The resin works on plinths, Laughing Lost in the Mountains, Fools’ Gold and Toward the Unknown Region show miniaturised landscapes, vast yet small. They are composites made up of many repeated, identical sections, inspired by a 19th century toy, the myriorama, different arrangements combinations can create different landscapes, yet all with the suggestion of infinity.
About his piece Isles of the Dead Rowe writes:
‘At least four islands in Europe are dedicated to St Michael – these are San Michele in Venice; Mont St Michel in Brittany; St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall and Skellig Michael in Ireland. The islands are connected in another way, as they are roughly aligned on the map. I was struck by how the strange mood of these four places is distilled in Arnold Böcklin’s famous painting The Isle of the Dead, and this led me to make a journey in 2005 which took in each of the islands. The island in the finished piece is based on Böcklin’s painting and the video projected onto it is a record of my trip.’
The Isles of the Dead piece is situated inside a door way in the gallery. A door was opened and a wall built on which to project Rowe’s journey. Again this makes the illusion of extension, a portal to a place beyond the gallery.
Goodger’s The Aquatic Theatre Presents Moby Dick, is another composite. Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, created the Aquatic Theatre in 1804, mainly for the re-enactment of Nelson’s naval victories. Holding 40,000 cubic feet of water it was an epic scheme, projecting a sense national pride and confidence.
In Goodger’s version, Herman Melville’s epic story is represented over twenty-one images. The theatre is replicated in each image, with the same audience. Yet the audience reacts differently in each scene; to the furious action contained in the tank, crossing back and forth over the boundary between the worlds of water and air.
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