8 June 2010 – 16 January 2011
This museumaker project is the first time a contemporary artist has been commissioned to create an installation for the interior of the Royal Pavilion. Throughout the project, maker Clare Twomey has worked very closely with the Keeper of the Royal Pavilion and its Conservation team, who have a complete knowledge and understanding of the building.
Clare Twomey installed a swarm of 3,000 exquisitely made, black glazed ceramic butterflies in the Banqueting Room, Great Kitchen, Entrance Hall and other rooms in the Royal Pavilion. The butterflies clustered on the banqueting table, across window panes, inside grand lights, on mantelpieces and other surfaces.
The Royal Pavilion was created by John Nash for the Prince Regent (later George IV). An exotic, oriental pleasure palace, its magnificent interior is a reflection of the monarch’s personality and the Regency period. Clare Twomey’s ‘swarm of beautiful menace’ provided a ‘veil of mourning’, enabling visitors to reflect on this building’s past culture of hedonism, as well as inviting them to consider their own values and priorities.
The butterflies were seen in several sites in the Royal Pavilion, with the greatest numbers suspended in ‘angry flurries’ in the windows of the Banqueting Room, between the columns in the Great Kitchen and in the Entrance Hall Vestibule. They were all individually finished: some with wings open, some almost completely folded in on themselves, some in flight, others looking sedentary.
Clare Twomey explains “I was drawn to the Royal Pavilion because of its profound beauty and excess. As I studied the interior, I noticed the icon of the butterfly. It is very temporal and, if you see one, it is for a moment – magical and frivolous. The black silhouettes of my butterflies are very graphic and will be a prominent contrast against the vibrancy of the Pavilion’s colourful interiors.”
David Beevers, Keeper of the Royal Pavilion, reflects “In Antiquity the butterfly, emerging from the chrysalis, came to symbolise the soul leaving the body at death. In Christian art the life cycle of the caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly is equated with life, death, and resurrection. The transient beauty of the butterfly could be a metaphor for the transience of life and the vanity of earthly things. So swarms of black butterflies, though beautiful, are menacing and even deathly."
Now that Clare Twomey’s Dark Day in Paradise has left the Pavilion, the curators and the maker have been working together to secure its legacy. After negotiation, they agreed that MIMA would take Dark Day in Paradise. The installation was dismantled and packed by staff at the Royal Pavilion & Museums and collected by MIMA on 24 January. The acquisition of the piece by MIMA is particularly pertinent as MIMA is one of the 16 museumaker venues. Clare will be artist in residence at the V&A in the new ceramics gallery for six months from April 2011, which may provide the opportunity for MIMA to display the installation. Clare has proposed that A Dark Day in Paradise be shown at MIMA as a ‘ghost’ installation, based on the installation in the Banqueting Room at the Royal Pavilion using a bare table and outline windows against which to set the butterflies.
During the autumn term, the Royal Pavilon held a participative programme inspired by Clare Twomey’s installation.
the museum for visitor information and opening times.
Meet the maker
Clare Twomey
Clare Twomey is a ceramicist who constructs large scale installations, sculpture and site-specific works. She has exhibited at Tate, V&A, ...
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