Layered Visions In The Teleorama: Constructing Spaces Of Ruination Through An Expanded Drawing Practice

Abstract This paper examines whether the form of the Teleorama or paper peep show can be used to generate new ways of making and exhibiting drawings of contemporary sites of ruination. The Teleorama will be used as a physical and conceptual vehicle for testing out a diverse range of investigations relating to form and content in drawing practice. Within my practice, paper ruins, inspired by Teleoramas, are constructed and used as maquettes from which to make two-dimensional drawings that are retranslated into large-scale, three-dimensional installations. Through the process of (re) construction, the research will develop an understanding of the Teleorama as a partially imagined, partially ‘real’ space that can transport the viewer conceptually from one place to another. I use the Picturesque, as a spatial and perceptual theory relating to painting and garden design, to explore how the Teleorama can be conceptualised as both a series of drawings on two-dimensional planes and a three-dimensional space, focusing on the fundamental ideas of ‘absorption’ and ‘theatricality’ as expounded by Michael Fried (1980), and ‘immersion’ as expounded by Arnold Berleant (2004). By identifying aspects of the Teleorama that cannot be compared to either paintings or gardens as spaces, I foreground its unique ability to represent the apparent collapse of space and time in a material form and enable an oscillation between two- and three-dimensional design and construction. By focusing on how space is created and experienced within selected contemporary installation practices, I aim to position my practice within the broader discursive fi eld of installation, distinguishing their use of space from my use of the Teleorama to create immersive drawn environments reinterpret ruin sites in gallery settings. Through interrogating and reconfi guring the historical form of the Teleorama, I aim to propose new models of installation practice within the field of contemporary drawing. Keywords: installation, drawing, space, picturesque, absorption, immersion