This place is a thought now, as far as our eyes can see it’s just a word among other words. Versailles for the palace at a distance from our physical reality, symmetry and second paradise. Solid walls and superabundance; the romantic sublime in a wild solitude. To constantly surprise the walker with new perspectives, glimpses of eternity. For the origins of the word; to keep turning, over and over. It’s just a thought, running parallel to the Versailles of treaties, tenuous alliances; the catalyst. Words changing different landscapes, our history and time rooted up and planted out again.
What do we want now? With these old romantic views of pathetic fallacy through windblown vistas, now, when there’s already countless escapism in layers of borrowed shapes, subspecies of styles. Old words as persistent anomalies, mismatched to the now. Where to then? Trends to theatricality, when red curtains roll back on old familiar voices of romanticism. Back from our holidays, the sun shone and we trailed our fingers in blue pools. Now the wall is breached, stones spill out onto the streets and out there under the bright lights we trembled like a leaf.
We could have a system. Naming things. Languor, no magic, emotional disturbance, convulsive laughter, tears. Sensory experience paving new streets without nostalgic overtones. Amongst material plenitude, cosmic overloads and crowds. Editing every new word that could be used to explain, perfecting, elucidating, confounding. Constructing signifiers to protect from something worse, the changes in weather, other people’s facial expressions; paradigms of hopeful relevance.
To toast to a good reason day after day. To stop time come true. To new events and other situations, spurred on by luminous mutant ennui.
Isabella Martin, 2011
A selection of emerging artists showcasing the possibilities of Versailles.
9th - 13th February 2011
The Gallery in Redchurch Street
London
versaillesexhibition@gmail.com
