Sara Kelly
Lonely City

3-7 January 2024

open: 6-7January
Sat-Sun 12-5pm
and by appointment: 3&4 January *
preview: Friday 5 January 6-8.30 pm

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'Only once did one of the palaces of Gabriel make me stop and gaze for a longish moment; it was after nightfall, and the columns of stone had been desolidified by the moonlight, which by turning them into cardboard cut-outs and reminding me of a stage set for Orpheus in the Underworld, gave me my very first glimpse of beauty.' 

Marcel Proust

 

With a brief yet profound sleight of words, the narrator performs an alchemical transformation, dissolving the solidity and presence inherent in the architecture. The palaces, once imposing structures of authority, morph into a mere stage set - a backdrop for fictions to unfold.

Marcel witnessed this transformation in the moonlight. My time of slippage is dawn, when walking in a city seems full of fleeting possibilities and the potential for one plane of reality to superimpose itself onto another. A city at dawn echoes my internal landscapes, where ideas can be as elusive as shifting shadows or change according to the light. It’s a solitary place.

Lonely City materialises from this sense of slippage. It is an ongoing photographic exploration of my fictionalised, half-remembered spaces. The models, haphazardly crafted from coffee cups, Styrofoam, sticks, and tissue, transcend their materiality through the lens. The crude constructions metamorphose, rendering spaces at once anticipatory and void of narrative.

Unlike the model which is ephemeral and disintegrates after it is made, the print is the enduring product.

 

Sara Kelly is based in London, holds an MA in Design for Interactive Media from Middlesex University and a BA in English and Drama. She studied with Turps Banana on their correspondence course. Her focus is on exploring the intersection of painting with other genres through photography.

Sara Kelly @arrnnie

* 3-4 January open by appointment. Contact: Sara Kelly

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Five Years:
Unit 2B1 Boothby Road, Archway, London, N19 4AJ
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