Colophons II

Work made for 2 Willow Road, architect Erno Goldfinger’s modernist home in Hampstead as part of This is How To Live – a project between Studio Manifold and National Trust 2012.

Colophons II, 2012

Acrylic, Paint.
Stethoscope, clockwork watch-faces.

The house is like a machine or a body, its mechanical workings hidden in the walls. I have made a stethoscope instrument to listen in, using hand-wound watch faces as ear pieces, allowing a moment of intimacy with this time-capsule of a building.

The glow of the gloss-paint from the central core of the house, like bright red light from the crack in the doorway, led me to make these dipped fragments of neon-like acrylic and paint. These are like archaeological artefacts; modernist sherds or relics. They act as material colophons, shorthand notes for the fabric of the house, reflecting Goldfinger’s delight in industrial material, lines and surfaces. Colophons refers to printers’ indexes on books and manuscripts.