The Roundhouse celebrates fifth anniversary with opening of Ron Arad's Curtain Call
11 August, 2011
by: Spoonfed Arts Team
A crazy new installation celebrates five years since the refurbishment of the Roundhouse.
An enormous circular curtain opens to the public this week as part of the five year celebrations since the transformation of the Roundhouse. Ron Arad's Curtain Call consists of a strange kind of curtain made of 5,600 silicon rods which acts as a kind of canvas for a broad range of films, performances and interactive pieces – all put on by artists and performers specially selected by Arad himself.
At the media view on Monday, attended by multi-talented Israeli-born artist/architect/designer Ron Arad, the press were treated to a sneak peak of some of the works to be shown throughout the project's three-week run. It's certainly a pretty cool concept, and there's a certain joy in slowly spinning round to watch the images move or walking in and out of the circular curtain and creating little ripples of disturbance. One can't escape the feeling though that it's little more than a n elaborate progression of that 180 degree cinema they used to have at Thorpe Park.
Highlights include a playful piano piece by Christian Marclay (currently garnering worldwide acclaim for his 24-hour film, The Clock), a characteristically dark/weird/funny animation by David Shrigley, Mat Collishaw's vision of a strange exotic jungle (complete with quite terrifyingly loud thunder and lightning) and 'Waking Dream', an unsettling dream-like sequence by digital arts studio SDNA.
Others involvbed in the project include Hussein Chalayan, Paul Socksedge, Greenaway & Greenaway, Babis Alexiadis and selected students from the Royal College of Art. Best of all perhaps is that there's no fixed price – you simply pay what you can. Which is a rather nice touch...
Ron Arad's Curtain Call is at the Roundhouse until 19th August 2011.
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