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Morning Glory is a single channel video that takes the viewer on a journey into the heart of a single morning glory flower. The piece starts with a view of the entire flower against the back drop of a flower bed. As the camera moves deeper into the interior a strange world is revealed in which the internal structures of the flower appear to take on a life of their own. Eventually one of these reveals a scene within a scene – the viewer enters a picturesque landscape as depicted on a decorative plate.
The plate is the result of multiple generations of interpretation and appropriation, stretching from the 18th century, when the plate was manufactured by Josiah Wedgwood (one of the pioneers of mass-production), back into the 17th century, from which it takes its imagery. As such the plate presents a condensation of a century long conversation of images and ideas about landscape, travel and exoticism. The camera moves into what appears to be a bucolic European scene in which shepherds tend their flock, rendered in the style of Claude Lorraine the great neo-classical landscape painter of the 17th century. In keeping with this tradition the plate presents a contemporary European landscape re-imagined in terms of an idealized version of classical antiquity. However, unlike the paintings it was based on, this image is rendered entirely in shades of blue, the most well known style of Wedgwood porcelain. The fashion for blue and white ceramics in Europe originated with the first large scale importation of fine porcelain from china by the Dutch East India company, the world’s first multinational corporation, which was founded in 1603, one year after the birth of Claude Lorraine. The soundtrack to Morning Glory incorporates a passacaglia for solo lute written by the 17th Century composer Heinz Biber, also a contemporary of Claude and the Dutch East India Company. One hundred years later it was Wedgwood who perfected the techniques that would allow blue and white porcelain to be manufactured relatively cheaply for the European market. The complex history of the plate is hinted at as the camera moves into the scene to reveal a second, secret landscape. As the layers of the image part and pass away we are taken back through the various stages of cross-fertilization that went into its creation, until we find the Eastern landscape hidden within the Western. This journey down into the heart of a flower has taken us all the way through the earth, as the child’s fantasy would have it, we have traveled through the planet from Europe to China.
Morning Glory is a single channel video that takes the viewer on a journey into the heart of a single morning glory flower. The piece starts with a view of the entire flower against the back drop of a flower bed. As the camera moves deeper into the interior a strange world is revealed in which the internal structures of the flower appear to take on a life of their own. Eventually one of these reveals a scene within a scene – the viewer enters a picturesque landscape as depicted on a decorative plate.
The plate is the result of multiple generations of interpretation and appropriation, stretching from the 18th century, when the plate was manufactured by Josiah Wedgwood (one of the pioneers of mass-production), back into the 17th century, from which it takes its imagery. As such the plate presents a condensation of a century long conversation of images and ideas about landscape, travel and exoticism. The camera moves into what appears to be a bucolic European scene in which shepherds tend their flock, rendered in the style of Claude Lorraine the great neo-classical landscape painter of the 17th century. In keeping with this tradition the plate presents a contemporary European landscape re-imagined in terms of an idealized version of classical antiquity. However, unlike the paintings it was based on, this image is rendered entirely in shades of blue, the most well known style of Wedgwood porcelain. The fashion for blue and white ceramics in Europe originated with the first large scale importation of fine porcelain from china by the Dutch East India company, the world’s first multinational corporation, which was founded in 1603, one year after the birth of Claude Lorraine. The soundtrack to Morning Glory incorporates a passacaglia for solo lute written by the 17th Century composer Heinz Biber, also a contemporary of Claude and the Dutch East India Company. One hundred years later it was Wedgwood who perfected the techniques that would allow blue and white porcelain to be manufactured relatively cheaply for the European market. The complex history of the plate is hinted at as the camera moves into the scene to reveal a second, secret landscape. As the layers of the image part and pass away we are taken back through the various stages of cross-fertilization that went into its creation, until we find the Eastern landscape hidden within the Western. This journey down into the heart of a flower has taken us all the way through the earth, as the child’s fantasy would have it, we have traveled through the planet from Europe to China.
