Untethered

The Untethered installation is the best use of the space in Imperial’s Blyth Gallery that I have seen since I started occasionally visiting four years ago. The normally minimalist gallery let go and featured a flock of origami birds surging out from one corner to finally disappear up into the spaces in the ceiling at the far end. The calm whiteness was a perfect setting for the 2208 delicate paper birds, folded from individual pen and ink drawings and black and white photographs. For me, perhaps even more exciting was the lighting, which was beautifully executed to throw a mirroring flock of hazy shadows onto the bare gallery walls.

Sam Whitcomb, PhotoSoc. Darkroom Manager and last year’s LeoSoc. President seemed well-placed to elucidate the concept behind this collaboration of Imperial’s two artiest societies. He explained that when sitting down and trying to find common ground they eventually settled on paper as literally a “happy medium” since the aim of both art forms is essentially to set down what we experience in 3D in a 2D format. The subtlety of origami is that it turns 2D sheets of paper back into 3D forms, bringing it back to life. There was certainly a sense of life, freedom and motion in the mass of weightless flying birds, but equally a sense in which we saw only a snapshot of their flight, just as we might in a photograph or still-life. An involved explanation, but it added depth to an installation that was otherwise just incredible in its aesthetic beauty.

There was also the opportunity to adopt a bird that didn’t make it into the flock and examine more closely the beautiful picture it was crafted from (I liked the birds that were made from photos of other birds – lovely swans and peacocks). My only disappointment is that photos seemed to dominate and there weren’t as many ink drawings. Pleasingly, some of the birds have been folded so that when you pull their tail the wings flap.

Apparently this project took several hundred man hours, one hundred units of alcohol and ten large pizzas to reach fruition. It was definitely worth it for a few minutes of serenity on Level 5 Sherfield. The Blyth Gallery is always a wonderful space in the chaos of College and will continue to be as we see even more of the products of Leosoc’s talented members in their exhibition ‘Wreckage’, opening Wednesday.

Untethered has now ended.