The spectacle of the Empty Room, show mostly in colour and exclusively American from the period 1945-1965. This is the raw material for something more ambitious on the theme of Mystery and Melancoly.

Potential themes

 

• the desk set, twin barrels pointed at the heart

• the fluidity of space and the lack of it

• the open door

• partitions

• a space for him and a space for her

• bringing the outside inside

• curtains, drapes and blinds

• ominous sounds

• desk and chair confound in conversation

• the family framed, the vestigials of sentiment

• empty shelves and pulsing vessels

• when does a corridor become a room?

• when does a room cease to be?

• the paw print of aliens, molecules,

• the Telephone as Crusoe

• whatever happened to the Blotter?

• ectoplasm in the Work Place

• light fittings of a feeble throw

• the smack of the briny, the niff of the littoral

• intercourse of the kneecaps

• the ashtray its own Discobolos

 

MODEL ROOMS, THEBES (see also miniaturisation )

This a set of visual options where you can look at/into unpopulated rooms. This allows you a full scrutiny but with an uneasy feeling of Voyeurism, that you are being observed, or are about to be caught in the act. The obvious examples are Van Gogh's paintings of his own room, Luke Fildes' depiction of Dickens' work room after his death. There are some exercises in the genre by Adolph Menzel.

Wirth's illustrations manage to drain any interest out of the interiors. I constructed in book form for The House in the Middle exhibition at the Towner Art Gallery Eastbourne in 2004.The Koch books repay study and some examples have the mad intensity of Diane Keaton's Reservations book.

The Drawn Interiors show how line and wash can invent perfect inner Utopias.