Continuing the Royal Opera House series I completed the latest 100x100cm painting entitling it ‘Mule Post’ after the post in the immediate foreground of the work. This image of an emptying opera house after the performance shows the interior in a very different light, literally. The grandeur and spectacle of the performance has gone, the special effect lighting and atmosphere reduced to a mere memory, the only remnant was the odour of stale air.
In ‘The Order of Things’ (1966), Michel Foucault advises us that places such as theatres, museums, cinemas etc. are “…Heterotopias of Time” they exist in time (the building or space) but also exist out of time due to the experience one is receiving or immersed in. We maybe in the 21st century but the mid 19th century performance (La triviata) inside a mid 19th century building with a live unamplified orchestra transports the audience back to the 1850s. On completion of the performance the artifice of the theatre disappears and you are essentially left with a very large empty room albeit a sumptuously decorated one.
Michael Palmer 