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The LAB 4.3: John Luna The Red Room

John Luna examines the parameters of cultural institutions in The Red Room, a project which transforms the LAB space into a mock turn-of-the-century picture gallery. Luna?s gallery makes thematic allusions to the Art Gallery?s history inside the Gyppeswick mansion.

The salon-like setting reflects the imaginative revision of period restoration rather than an archival past, while the paintings invoke the ?authenticity? of a studio process. Placing the paintings in this setting presents the notion ? relevant to both the Art Gallery and Victoria itself ? that the experience of historical revision hides a flip-side: the acknowledgement of loss or ruin.  

The Red Room mingles the public and the domestic, the formal with the fugitive, and in doing so comments on the possibilities and limitations of paintings in creating, or reacting to, a sense of place.