Passage

Installation, 2006/2018

Plywood, emulsion paint, steel

Metalwork: Phil Rutter

Passage was the first of a series of works comprising objects on the verge of becoming paintings. This reverses the trajectory of Michael Fried’s disapproving comment that Donald Judd championed ‘paintings on the verge of becoming objects’. Passage, first installed in 2006, treated the window of the m2 Gallery in Peckham (open 24 hours a day) as a conventional picture frame, inserting a sheet of painted plywood immediately behind the glass. The 

relationship of the work to the beholder resembled a situation in a gallery, only here the viewer was standing within a Peckham street. A narrow slot cuts into the space behind the ‘painting’, a stepped passage into another, unseen space beyond. In its subsequent manifestation at APT Gallery, as part of the show m2@15 celebrating 15 years of the m2 Gallery, the spectator was able to see ‘behind the scene’, revealing the work’s armature.