Recent video interview shines fresh light on ‘Minutes in Blue’ exhibition

With ‘Minutes in Blue’ now extended into the first couple of weeks of October, architect and scenographer Raphaé Memon has released a short film exploring his window installation in greater depth. Filmed on location by Omer Ga’ash, the video picks out some of the most interesting or compelling perspectives of the six display cases, before probing deeper into the material, aesthetic, and semiotic qualities which render their latest contents so unique.

Raphaé opened the conversation with a simple statement: ‘I just want to talk about blue’. In the minutes that followed, he demonstrated that this was more than an observation on his favourite colour. His commentary takes viewers on a roundabout journey along the circumference of a clockface to demonstrate the resonance of the ‘blue hour’ in popular discourse, and in the human psyche. He identifies this brief, colour-coded chapter of the everyday as a synecdoche for narratives of transformation, magic, and identity. And then, he details how he ‘tells the same story through very formal objects and shapes’, each finished in the brightest, most vivid blue he could find.

It is interesting to think that Raphaé’s display cases are not static artworks, but rather ‘framed theatre stages with reference to the idea of scale’ and the experience of proportion in space. With this understanding, the relationship between time and place becomes increasingly unstable and the passer by is invited to imagine the Brothers Grimm scenes he depicts in real time. It is as if observers are being invited to join with the fairy tale characters in their experience of the witching hour; to stop a moment and experience the magic of this everyday phenomenon anew.

‘Minutes in Blue’ comes to a close on 12th October. In the meantime, it is available to view from Bury Place all day, every day, and illuminated at night.  Raphaé’s commentary has been published on YouTube. Watch the full video here