Pallavi Paul
Wysing Arts Centre
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
24 October 2017 – 4 February 2018
“Spring 2017 Residency artist Pallavi Paul will present a new installation, Terra Firma, at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge inspired by the secrecy and histories of the top-secret code-breakers of Bletchley Park. During her residency at Wysing Arts Centre, she visited and accessed archival material from the Bletchley Park collection for Terra Firma.
Terra Firma will be installed as a ‘carpet’ in Gallery 8 of the Fitzwilliam Museum, amongst the collections of 16th to 18th century Spanish and Flemish art. With the upholstery acting as a textual landscape on which museum visitors can walk, the text on the carpet appears like concrete poems. Inspired by the secrecy surrounding the work that was being undertaken at Bletchley Park during WWII, the central motif is the word ‘secret’, with changing permutations of words around it. These concrete poems are composed to visually look like code and will contribute a distinct, stylistic accent to the gallery…”
PALLAVI PAUL – THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM