Lost in the Memory Palace | Home
9 BRUCE GRENVILLE Containment is not only a physical constraint, it is profoundly psychological. Storm Room (2009) unites key aspects of each of the earlier works, producing a tour-de-force theatrical illusion within a space that is clearly identified as a stage set. There is a fine line between abject abandonment and purifying emptiness, and the Storm Room suggests that the sublimity of nature may unite the two. This room is yet another kind of open-world space, now one where the viewer enacts an embodied narrative that is beyond language and temporality. The "memory palace" is an ancient mnemonic technique that utilizes a form of embodied memory in which the orator deploys the rooms of an imaginary palace to contain a sequence of thoughts that can later be unlocked as the orator moves from room to room. The technique can be applied to remembering simple everyday tasks or elaborate narratives. This exhibition offers a memory palace of sorts, a series of rooms containing narrative fragments. We are free to wander from room to room, establishing a narrative of our own making and meaning, but when the exit door can no longer be found we are left with the recognition that the grand narrative, if such a thing exists, must remain incomplete. For Cardiff and Miller this is the true nature of memory, loss and desire.Bruce GrenvilleSenior Curator Vancouver Art Gallery installations enacted within the context of a room. The theatre is also a recurring space in their art and The Muriel Lake Incident (1999) is one of its earliest manifestations. The theatre is a room where we passively anticipate an immersive experience, yet the artists play with that anticipation—through structure, scale and interruption—offering instead an uncanny self-awareness within a narrative of suspense and desire. Road Trip (2004) suggests an imaginary room, a "rec room" perhaps, from the era of the slide projector. As with the theatre, this is a space of projection and the imaginary. We are offered the story of a road trip across the continent, but as the narrative is unravelled by the narrators, the parameters of the room collapse. Opera for a Small Room (2005) announces its artifice with its rough, utility-grade exterior and an elaborately contrived interior. We are left to watch and listen through the window, eavesdropping on a world of memory and desire, held within an archive of music and song. The open world of The Dark Pool is replaced by a closed stage set. Theatrical gestures—a rattling chandelier, a fleeting shadow, an explosive guitar solo—evoke an unnamed presence, but this closed world remains empty. The Killing Machine (2007), offers only the barest suggestion of a room yet the sense of confinement is overwhelming. This dark and frightening work proposes a world of unrelenting aggression without reason or meaning. 8 INTRODUCTION The Muriel Lake Incident 1999 Road Trip 2004 Opera for a Small Room 2005 Storm Room 2009