In the video work The Architecture of Shops a narrator gives the viewer an introductory course on shop design and product display. The video is projected on a freestanding screen before six chairs. The video shows six black and white images of London shop interiors from the 1920s accompanied by a voice-over “lecture”. The narrator (all text and images were taken from A. Trystan Edwards’ book The Architecture of Shops. London: Chapman & Hall, 1931) spends much time analyzing an image of a Harrods umbrella display, dwelling on the display’s strange detachment from the real world of utility: “Here the objects on display look like they can’t be touched, let alone purchased.” The fan of umbrellas in the illustration is deemed particularly problematic. The narrator warns, “Remember, a marked
symmetry or formality in the arrangement of the goods may easily be overdone.” But it is precisely this display, with it’s outrageous fan of umbrellas, that I have had painstakingly recreated as a sculpture. The sculpture Display VII is always shown somewhere else in the museum so an uncanny sense of déjà vu occurs when the viewer happens upon it.