Periodically the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire open their Chatsworth home to host art shows. Their current offering, Make Yourself at Comfortable (March 28 – Oct. 23, 2015), is a collection of contemporary chairs designed by the likes of artists such as Tom Price.
Chatsworth’s sculpture gallery, however, is getting some special treatment for the show from London design studio Raw Edges with their project Endgrain. The studio outfitted the room with a grid-like wooden floor with colored paths through the gallery. Benches and stools appear to rise from the floor, color creeping up their woodgrain-style legs. The curvy seating was soaked in dye, offsetting the color of the sculptures in the room. Their positions were selected to give visitors a new perspective on the existing collection.
From Chatsworth:
“A tree can carry water and minerals throughout its entire body by using its grains. Raw Edges have used this same method to add and transfer pigment along the grain in order to paint a single block of wood from within. Raw Egdes soaked individual pieces of timber in dyes in order to build up a colourful collection that were later glued to one another in vivid patterns. When sculpting these complex patterned blocks into the finish objects, the three-dimensional shape distorts the rectangular graphic patterns in unexpected and curvaceous ways.
From the designers:
“As soon as we saw the 19th century Sculpture Gallery we were fascinated by the idea of introducing colour to the space, in order to create a backdrop to its monochrome sculptures and interior. Endgrain is a tactile installation that encourages visitors to engage with the space by following a colourful pathway and invites them to sit and enjoy different views of the sculptures.”
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Raw Edges, Endgrain (renderings of Chatsworth installation), 2015. Click to see a larger image.
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