Untitled (Celebrated Violinist)

Dominique has interpreted the De La Warr Pavilion as a personal expression of its architect Eric Mendelsohn (1887-1953). The clean modernist lines of the white building and its nautical features act as a visionary metaphor which expresses Mendelsohn’s hope for his own life: a ship sailing into the future, representing a new start, a new course being navigated.

Dominique has cast several features from the building itself, in white concrete mixed with marble dust. The resulting objects have qualities which effectively contrast the smooth with the crystallised. The cast objects include the clock that used to hang in the Pavilion’s Edinburgh Room, a section of a door with a port-hole window, an air vent, and a section of a table. Individually and collectively, this miscellaneous assortment of objects symbolise and emphasise the clean white lines, and the curves and the circles which characterise the architecture of the building. The objects also carry with them an awareness of what the De La Warr symbolised for Mendelsohn. All the fixtures except the table are original, creating a juxtaposition of the old with the new - a theme which is consistent throughout Dominique’s work.

During her research, Dominique found in the Pavilion archive scraps of elaborately embossed wallpaper that had been used throughout the building in the 1960s. She has incorporated reminders of this wallpaper into the objects she has cast. Also found in the archive was a newspaper dating from 1936. Sections of a photograph from the newspaper, depicting performers in the Pavilion, have been enlarged and incorporated into the cast objects, giving these images the effect of being scratched and worn.

Salthouse 04
“The Glass Exposed To The Stone”