Eleanor Suess

Curious Cabinets: the wonderous model gallery and its uncanny mise en abyme

Eleanor’s models and model photographs shown in this exhibition are part of an ongoing, project, drawing upon and referencing the conventions and techniques of the architectural scale model, and that of artistic practices of sculpture and installation. Building on the Wunderkammer, or Cabinet of Curiosities (as the precursor to the contemporary museum and gallery), this project uses the artefact of a model gallery, housing its own recursive replicas and situated within its full-sized original, to draw the viewer’s attention to the relationship between representation and reality. The use of such recursive devices are “as ancient as art itself”, but the French term “mise en abyme” was coined in 1893 – the French term does not have a version in English, but is roughly translated as “putting into an abyss”.

The scale replica gallery turns an architectural model into a sculptural artefact, establishing a dialogue with the full- sized original in which it is situated, and with its own replica within, and the one within that. In drawing attention to the relationship between exhibit and room, the work speaks to the nature of architectural representation, its relationship to a material “reality”, and the perceptual processes that take place in a viewer’s mind when they “read” such representational artefacts. The recursive models of models further destabilise these readings – the uncanny nature of the “mise en abyme” afford the viewer an increased level of engagement.

As exhibited artworks, the wondrous nature of the hand-made models can appeal to a broad audience. Recursive iteration injects humour, while also disrupting established understandings of representational artefacts, affording a level of interpretation, understanding, and critical response appropriate to each viewer, building upon the knowledges, experiences and understanding they bring to the work. As Eleanor explains in a recent book chapter, when standing before a scale model its material presence invites us to enter the small space of its interior, and in our inability to do this physically we instead do so perceptually, imagining ourselves inside that model room.