In Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film Contempt, starring Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli, the
actors must compete for attention with the film’s setting. Contempt’s climactic sequence
takes place in the Villa Malaparte, a house on the island of Capri in southern Italy. The
villa’s uncompromising architecture seems to exert a force of its own on the characters, as
they perform the pas de deux of an unravelling marriage.

The Villa Malaparte, a vertigo-inducing modernist folly in tropicana pink, was built in 1941
for the writer Curzio Malaparte on a narrow, rocky peninsula on the eastern side of Capri.
Sheer cliffs drop away on either side of the house, which remains accessible only by foot
or, on calm days, by boat. Broad concrete steps like those of a Mayan temple lead to a flat
roof terrace which, without fence or barrier, opens onto a dizzying view of the open sea. In
Godard’s film, this rooftop stage with its endless, precipitous view becomes part paradise
and part prison for the villa’s inhabitants.

Sixteen years after the Villa Malaparte was built, Munich’s Alte Pinakothek (Old Gallery)
was rebuilt to the design of architect Hans Döllgast. This grand building, which was an
exemplar of art gallery architecture when it opened in 1836, had suffered heavy damage
during World War II with over a third of its structure destroyed. Döllgast’s design for the
Pinakothek’s resurrection did not attempt to hide the scar of this destruction. Re-using
bricks from the rubble, the gaps in the façade were filled with plain brickwork in a modern
style, their discontinuity from the building’s original ornate face becoming a permanent
memorial to the wreckage.

Appearing as reproductions in Nell May and Blaine Western’s exhibition at Snake
Pit, Without ending at an edge; sound novels in the silent days, these two buildings
characterize architecture as a force to be reckoned with, but also as an aggregation of
local history. Settling lightly over the gallery space at 33 High St like an architectural
plan superimposed across the structure it describes, Without ending at an edge is an
examination of the walls that contain it. With a series of subtle interventions, May and
Western puncture and punctuate the gallery space, calling attention to where and how it
begins and ends.

Unlike the modern, hermetically sealed art gallery described in Brian O’Doherty’s immortal
essay Inside the White Cube, Snake Pit is a temporary conversion of an existing building.
Formerly a drum & bass club, clothes shop and internet café, it is currently three levels of
studios and gallery space. Operating like diligent and enterprising squatters, the Snake Pit
artists moved fast to adapt this space to their needs, but the setup is provisional. When the
building is leased again they will have to move on. May and Western make manifest their
exploration of this temporary playground through objects which take their design cues from
stage props and event posters – items without a long shelf life.

Small wooden steps grafted onto the skirting board under the windows act as viewing
platforms, directing our attention outside. Pasted up like gig posters along the opposite,
external wall of the neighbouring building, images of Villa Malaparte and the Alte
Pinakothek are interspersed with diagrams describing Snake Pit’s architecture. Acting
as an index to the exhibition, these drawings identify elements of the building that May
and Western have highlighted, or altered. A pink-painted cementboard screen inside the
gallery exactly duplicates the eccentric angle of the building’s false street frontage – the
back of which is also painted pink, and is visible through the front windows.

Without ending at an edge presents an out of kilter, exploded architectural view. We see
the building as a whole, and in relation to its surroundings. The walls become permeable: artworks are pushed out to hang on neighbouring buildings; the false front wall slides back
to reappear halfway through the gallery space, where it emanates a soft pink glow. May
and Western’s objects give us precise and subtle directives which cause a perceptual
shift: it is not, in fact, Snake Pit’s false front which is out of alignment – it is the rest of the
building which is skewed away from the street.

Urban space is parcelled up organically: as the metropolis grows, new structures are fitted
around and between existing ones. As space reaches a premium, spaces become more
eccentric. There is a bank of nine windows in Snake Pit’s southern wall which overlooks
an irregular void enclosed by the backs of neighbouring buildings. Replacing the textured
glass of the central panes with clear glass, May and Western open a view into this odd
residual area. Inaccessible except via a window, and invisible from the street, this left-over
space has become a tiny wasteland of air-conditioning ducts and a midden of mouldering
objects turfed out by past residents.

The ideology of the modern gallery space dictates that the architecture has to disappear
so that the art doesn’t. Floating in a hushed and seamless white void, artworks are
clearly identifiable as such. The gallery walls act as a buffer, protecting the art’s cultural
and monetary value. Without ending at an edge uses the window as a metaphor for the
permeability of architecture: windows become interstices, in-between spaces, gaps and
fractures. Entering into negotiation with the architecture, May and Western acknowledge
art’s lack of autonomy. Creating slippage between architecture and art, they experiment
with inhabiting an imperfect space.

Written by Anna Parlane
Assistant Curator, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki