Stratigraphic Strips: Variable Dimensions

The two projects created for the exhibition discuss two forms of reality: ‘the constructed and the revealed’. The installation oscillates between the scientific reality of Howard’s painstaking conservationbased stratigraphy and a fictionalised representation of that knowledge through the use of historic colour windows placed at key locations within the East Wing. The actual layering of the decoration within each space is both real and speculative - the distinction between the two often blurred, providing the viewer with an insight into the life of the spaces they use.

Alan Chandler is a Specialist Conservation Architect with the London based practice Arts Lettres Techniques and a Reader in Architecture at the University of East London. Helen Howard is a Scientific Officer [Microscopist] at the National Gallery in London, an expert in non-invasive investigations of wall painting using optical coherence tomography and hyperspectral imaging. Architect Gilles Retsin works as senior designer at Kokkugia and directs computational architecture at the University of East London. Retsin’s computer coding explores the hidden structural details and materiality of buildings.

A full catalogue of this exhibition (Artificial Realities, East Wing Biennial at the Courtauld Institute of Art) is available at: https://issuu.com/alexhowell1/docs/full_catalogue_amended_05.03