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- Artist
- Edward Allington 1951–2017
- Medium
- Paint, graphite and plywood on cardboard
- Dimensions
- Object: 2438 × 2438 × 2134 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of the Foundation To-Life, Inc. 2005, accessioned 2021
- Reference
- T15741
Summary
The Golden Pavilion/As Seen From the Front comprises a wall-mounted drawing representing three temple, and, a free-standing sculptural construction that extends into the gallery space. The composition creates an illusion of a pebble path leading to the main temple, enhanced by the drawing’s perspectival quality. The work tests our perception and creates interplay between the real and the false, the existing and the reconstructed, the authentic and the fabricated.
Edward Allington’s work has been characterised as one of illusion and disillusion, as an art of attempted answers to the artist’s struggle to understand things. Allington was trained in ceramics and worked in that discipline until the late 1970s. A first visit to Greece was to influence his art from then onwards. Following the precepts of Plato, Allington started producing works such as Walking Instructions, 1977-8, and Imaginary Projection of Ideal over Natural Forms, 1979, in which imaginary, ideal concepts were imposed over natural forms. He then produced his Ideal Standard Forms, 1980 (T05214), autonomous sculptural gallery pieces which sought to approach Platonic truth and impose it on the surrounding world. This enquiry led to Allington’s characteristic world view, which both acknowledges and questions disillusionment. Fruit of Oblivion (1982) was the first in a line of sculptures where the artist combined more traditional sculptural material, such as steel, terracotta, wood and plaster, with plastic elements. The use of plastic was, for him, a blatant demonstration of the fact that truth, in a materialistic, ‘false’ world only really exists in lies. This was also conceived by him as a way of questioning the contemporary condition - that is, our simultaneous desire to follow the progress of civilisation, whereby we embrace all things ‘false’, and our disapproval of our increasing alienation from the ‘real’ in nature.
Allington’s long-running interest in Greek culture and his experience of the ‘falsified’ past as a tourist have spurred the almost-exclusively Greek motifs of his work. Apart from his free-standing sculptural works, Allington also creates ‘constructions’ where drawing is combined with sculpture and the boundaries are blurred. This signifies the ‘imaginary/ideal’ juxtaposed to the ‘real’, and the relationship of mind to body.
August 2005
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Technique and condition
A free standing construction made from plastic stones of varying sizes with a white plastic temple resting on top, a number of loose plastic stones and a drawing on cardboard representing two corners of a temple. The plastic stones are attached to a plywood base and upright metal rods by screws and wires. There are also 120 loose plastic stones of varying sizes, arranged around the base of the upright part of the work. The drawing forms the background.
The plastic stones are commercially made, cast from plastic and hollow. They vary in colour from off-white to pink to light and dark grey. The large and medium size stones have a rough shiny surface with a black speckled effect. The small stones are matte and smooth. The temple at the top is painted in white, grey-blue and bronze paint and its underside is black. The plywood base of the upright part of the work is painted black. There are no visible inscriptions.
The work is displayed on the floor. The loose plastic stones are arranged afresh for each new display.
The current structural condition of the work is good and its surface is clean.
Sasa Kosinova
August 2005
