Labyrinth in the sheltered Prince’s Gardens square, with its landscape garden, is hidden and tranquil though very central and found just off Exhibition Road where countless people pass through every day. The fenced square invites visitors, or passers-by, to walk the path across the green. The path guides one to it’s destination, making entry onto the lawn unnecessary when passing through. But if staying and enjoying the enclosed area, the grass or a garden bench invites one to rest and reflect.
Within the square near the south entrance to Exhibition Road is the installation site for the over life size sculpture Labyrinth. As one walks around the work to view it from a distance, one finds its form and depth change constantly and gets the feeling of its enclosure, the inner space with help from walls opening, entrances or exits and the see through hessian walls. It has been stated that I “choreograph the viewer’s movements and experience, diverting the focus points and resisting the notion of a full overview”. I invite people on a journey to enter the seven wall structure or to just ignore it. On that journey one will have to go out of one’s way from the path to enter the Labyrinth where it expresses it’s being both by form and name.
A publication accompanying the exhibition will be available in June 2015.
On show at the Nordic Exhibition SKULPTUR in London http://rbs.org.uk/exhibitions/skulptur
Previously exhibited in Leicester England, Guernsey, Torino Italy and Reykjavíkin 2010, 2011 and 2015
The work of Gudrun Nielsen attempts to thwart people’s routine sense for their surroundings. We project the identity of a place onto it, depending on recognition and experience. Nielsen contests this detached association of the known with the new. Drawing on geometry and reflecting on Japanese aesthetics, she develops ways to reinvigorate attentiveness. Her background studies in the relationship of art and architecture motivate her position for the sculpture, Labyrinth. She introduces a maze in the Botanic Garden, a structure that momentarily choreographs the viewer’s movements and experience, diverting the focus points and resisting the notion of a full overview. A subtle moment of indeterminacy alerts our senses and gives way to a conscious engagement with the immediate environment.
Catalogue 27.June, 2010 text by Markús Þór Andrésson