ARTWORKS

Pruitt Igoe Falls

Cyprien Gaillard (b.1980)

The Roberts Institute of Art

Pruitt Igoe Falls

© Courtesy the artist, Sprüth Magers and Gladstone Gallery. Image credit: Courtesy of Cosmic Gallerie/The David and Indrė Roberts Collection

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The work takes its title from Pruitt-Igoe, a large 1950s urban housing project in Saint Louis in the United States. It deteriorated quickly and demolition began in 1972, 18 years after it was built. Cyprien Gaillard's film consists of two sequences, both filmed at night. The first shot captures the demolition of a building in Sighthill housing estate in Glasgow. The second shot shows the Niagara Falls waterfalls on the American-Canadian border. Both subjects light up the night sky, as though they are official monuments. Gaillard sees this as a celebration of ruin similar to the 19th century tradition of classical ruins appearing in landscape painting. On the one hand a ruined building project and on the other the destruction of the natural world.

The Roberts Institute of Art

London

Title

Pruitt Igoe Falls

Date

2009

Medium

video, colour, no sound, 6 min 55 sec

Accession number

GACY-2009-01

Work type

Other

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The Roberts Institute of Art

Unit 1, 2 Centric Close, London, Greater London NW1 7EP England

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Artist or maker

Cyprien Gaillard

b.1980

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