Client: Mad Art Gallery

Overview

Lure is a site-specific installation by Clayton Binkley, and Dream the Combine. Lure explores how the gallery engages with public space. The open front doors permit direct entry into the work, encouraging visitors to seamlessly move from the exterior street to the interior building, meandering through fragmented and overlapping passages. The structure consists of hovering pathways formed by a lattice of steel supports and sliding opacities of mesh surfaces. The structure reaches up to gently touch the structure of the building, mirroring and merging into the existing architecture. This immersive, looping circulatory system encourages exploration, curiosity, and reciprocal engagement between the form and its audiences.
We drew inspiration from theatrical scenography and cinematography and their relationship to narrative, image, space, and experience. As in previous works, we engage with the visual perception of space through its representation, creating an image that the audience can step into using these formal devices to address issues of access, observation, and spatial demarcation in Seattle’s urban context.

Goals

It was important to us that we engaged with both the physical space of the gallery as well as the social context of the gallery and the specific urban condition of South Lake Union, Seattle.

The off-camber surfaces of the ramps and elasticity of the fabric underfoot, while safe to walk on, leave the audience feeling slightly unsteady. This feeling combined with the expanding, contracting and twisting walls and ceilings induce in the visitor a heightened awareness of their body in relation to its environment as they navigate the space, snapping them out of the usual, automatic way of moving through the world.

Process

Lure was developed collaboratively between Clayton Binkley, and Jennifer Newsom & Tom Carruthers of Dream the Combine. Mad Art Gallery in Seattle, a venue for installation work, commissioned the project. This gallery is unique in that it is expected that the artists will create the work in the gallery space and the gallery is open to the public during this time.