31 Days without Light

Justin Balmain

Within the archives of The Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations in Marseille, France, is a malefic mirror that has haunted at least one artist, museum staff, and institutions across temporalities. It has been subject to an exorcism (if objects can be exorcised?), has been held responsible for an appendix removal and a driving accident and now exists within archival limbo. Viewing the mirror, it seems diminutive for the magic it holds; the size of a 7” EP. (I’m on Discogs trying to find an Eddie Amador 7” but I don’t think they exist. That’s an aside.) The idea of objects always seems more potent than their actuality.

31 Days without Light was a sculptural, architectural and artistic intervention within, and outside, of Gertrude Glasshouse. Acting as a precursor to an in-development film, which draws upon ideas of magic, reflection and representation, this exhibition utilised and reimagined the architecture as a means to think through inversion, power, shadows and doubling. Like a mirror, the exhibition seeks suspension, a further image obscured, transient, held together by something outside itself. I think that is magic?

Download the exhibition room sheet here.