Paul Coldwell, Picturing the Invisible

Abstract

Paul Coldwell’s recent exhibition at the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London was an example of ‘serious play’ (the Renaissance concept of serio ludere, as Edgar Wind explained, involves the discovery of profound truths through a playful investigation of commonplace experience). Taking his cue from the show’s setting – the basement kitchens of the famous architect’s grand house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields – Coldwell imagined how the unknown cooks and servants who laboured there, out of sight and beyond the pale of cultural history, might have perceived their master’s lofty endeavours. The resulting, fascinating display of sculpture, 3D and digital prints, film and printed ceramics, can be described as an imaginative feat of ventriloquization. If Coldwell is correct, then the view from ‘downstairs’ encompassed affectionate irony, gentle parody, and a good dose of humane understanding. As someone whose ancestors were in service to the celebrity soprano Adelina Patti at the now ‘haunted’ Crag-y-Nos Castle in South Wales, the tone of possessive pride combined with subtle satire conveyed by Coldwell’s proxy creations seems instinctively right to me.