Remaking the Crust of the Earth
Remaking the Crust of the Earth, 2023
5 minute edit of 20 minute film
“The aphorisms contained in Paul Scheerbart’s Glasarchitektur of 1914 set out the agenda for modern glass architecture. ‘Coloured glass destroys hatred’ may seem like an absurdly optimistic claim, but it epitomised the feelings of the new architects such as Miles van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. For Scheerbart, and many who followed him, glass architecture encompassed the scope of total reconstruction of the world—‘remaking the crust of the earth’—for the pleasure and comfort of all people.”
Michael Wigginton, ‘An instrument for distant vision’ in Glass, Light & Space, New proposals for the use of glass in architecture, Crafts Council, London 1998
Remaking the Crust of the Earth presents a layered, cultural history which examines the ways in which glass has transformed society, how humans situate themselves within the environment, and how we view the world. Through the unlikely accident of its discovery to its present day ubiquity, it considers glass in its myriad guises: from the modular prefabrication of Joseph Paxton's ‘Crystal Palace’ to the optimism of Paul Scheerbart's Glasarchitektur, both of which in their own way lay a path for modernism, the curtain wall, and the 20th century ‘glass house’. Traversing time and space, the exhibition explores previous and unfulfilled stages of the material's history, revealing alternatives which belie an ‘inevitable’ contemporary (and its futures).
Its visual centre-point is a recreation of a series of photographic tests to illustrate the concealing power of glasses, that were produced for the encyclopaedic 1937 publication Glass in Architecture and Decoration, by Raymond McGrath & A.C. Frost. Born in Australia, of Irish descent, McGrath was among the pioneering architects in 1930s England, pre-eminent in the use of glass, light and colour. During the Second World War McGrath moved to Dublin, to a position in the Office of Public Works, becoming Principal Architect from 1948–1968.
An accompanying publication features new essays by Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll and Chris Fite-Wassilak, alongside a series of restaged photographic glass tests conducted by Gavin Murphy and Louis Haugh, and reproductions from the Raymond McGrath collection in the Irish Architectural Archive, published by Set Margins’, Eindhoven.
Film credits
Remaking the Crust of the Earth, 2023
Film with sound
19 minutes 15 seconds (looped every 20 minutes)
Direction & editing: Gavin Murphy
Cinematography: Michael Kelly
Participants: Alex Keatinge, Jamie
Cross Camera assistant: Grace Abbott
Production assistant: Frances Hennigan
Narrator: Bryan Quinn
Sound & music: Karl Burke
Colour grading: John Beattie
Exhibition credits
Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin
16 March—28 April 2023
Link
Workshops
Schools workshop series, devised by artist Marian Balfe
Publication
Gavin Murphy, et al.
Remaking the Crust of the Earth
Set Margins, Eindhoven, 2023
Funded by The Arts Council
Supported by: Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council; IADT Dun Laoghaire/National Film School