Studio Monte Palace

2017

A body of work made during a residency at Pico do Refugio on the island of São Miguel, Azores, Portugal, Spring 2017.
The works are brought together by a particular location on the island, the deserted hotel building ‘Monte Palace’ from which the series of works takes its name.
All the works are bound together in this one location, all made in the Hotel Monte Palace and in response to that space. While on the residency the hotel became a studio, an active space that allowed a variation of approach and production to take place and unfold.

The works consist of:
Two video works, Hotel Lullaby and Hotel Reverb, a series of embroideries titled Transfers, a series of photographs documenting sculptural interventions titled Sojourns, and a series of photo-drawings titled Drowned World (Hotel)

The works were exhibited at Gallery Fonseca Macedo, Sao Palma and for ‘The Divergent Gaze’ at Arquipelago, Azores.

PDF - Text by Penelope Curtis

Hotel Lullaby

8 min video loop, sound.
A firework display within the central hall of the hotel building. Conceived with the location of the hotel on a volcano rim in mind, while also thinking about spectacle and fanfare, the piece is a way of filling the building with noise and colour, contrasting this with its condition as a kind of vacuum.

Hotel Reverb

(4 min loop)
Moving through the spaces of the hotel the viewer sees and hears a ball being bounced from the walls of the building.

Hotel Reverb

Sojourns

(1-7)
A series of photographs which document temporary sculptures made within the hotel and its grounds. These objects or interventions were made rapidly during a few days, using only material found in and around the building.

Transfers

(1-8)
The interior of the Hotel has many graffitied messages, signs and symbols. Some of these were taken and reproduced in the form of embroidered panels, using local traditional craft and linen made on the island.

Drowned World (Hotel)

Digital photographic prints which are then ‘drowned’ in watercolour, this is then left to dry over a number of days creating a stain across the image. The Drowned World, which is a reference to the science fiction writer JG Ballard, seemed particularly apt when working in the hotel, the sound of dripping water and the evidence of collapse being constant. The watercolour pigment leaves a very fine and detailed trace as it dries, seeming to describe a landscape, geological structure or growth of some sort.