Musical Mobile for Dulwich Picture Gallery
DPS spatial designer Jill Sung has created a series
of mobile installations for Dulwich Picture Gallery
These bring the painting of artist M.K. Ciurlionis to life through different “movements” of individual elements presented in Ciurlionis’s Sonatas paintings.
The opportunity of collaborating with Dulwich Picture Gallery was to create products for the M.K. Ciurlionis exhibition. This opportunity pushes me as a spatial designer to work with 2-dimensional painting as inspiration and breaking the boundaries of my design process which results in a series of mobile art installations.
The mobile arts are created with three of Ciurlionis' Sonatas paintings. Intrigued by the layering of shapes, the scale of objects, and the connection of art with his music. I was inspired to create my version of the Sonatas' painting into a three-dimensional space and to expand the emotion we feel from looking at the paintings into an atmosphere of the room. Looking at Ciurlionis' painting with the perspective of a spatial designer viewpoint, I was amazed with the graphic spatial organization and wanted to transform this element of the painting into a mobile art. A mobile art installation which is tangible and can bring the painting to life with different movements of individual elements presented in the Sonatas painting.
The process of creating the mobile art began by selecting my favorite key structure of each sonata and rearranging them in a new spatial setting. Where sizes and movements create dimensions into our space. Then it was the art of balancing each shape from the painting into a three-dimensional structure. From prototyping with cardboard, acrylic, to steel then experimenting with different lengths, and thicknesses of the structure. Next was the colour spray painted for each element, which aims to find coherence with each Sonatas' characteristic. Finally, each mobile is assembled by hand to create a one and only mobile art.
Image 1: Acrylic mobile
Image 2: spray painting each part of the mobile art
Image 3: cut out steel plate ready for assembling.