{"id":1075990,"date":"2026-07-08T09:56:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T09:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1075990\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T09:56:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T09:56:21","slug":"review-isaac-julien-at-the-cosmic-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1075990\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Isaac Julien at the Cosmic House"},"content":{"rendered":"

Entering the Cosmic House<\/a> through its main public entrance, you are met by a kaleidoscope of imagery. It\u2019s an installation by artist Isaac Julien \u2013 a filmwork, All That Changes You. Metamorphosis, showing on a single screen but reflected and fractured by a series of mirrors that surround it in a loose structure. <\/p>\n

This effect was designed to amplify and augment the experience of the work, which, in other iterations, has appeared on up to 10 screens simultaneously. Here it had to be re-edited and reduced to one in order to fit into the relatively low semi-basement entrance space of the house, which also acts as its temporary gallery. <\/p>\n

In fact, the fractured, reflected imagery spinning off around the central screen nicely reinforces the film\u2019s driving focus \u2013 reflected in its title \u2013 of change, or, as the accompanying press release terms it: \u2018a visually poetic exploration of the concept of transformation as a defining condition of existence\u2019.<\/p>\n

The piece, created by Julien together with his long-term partner Mark Nash, is visually sumptuous, in common with his past film works. Its allusive narrative, carried by its two female protagonists, played by Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie, is threaded against a dizzying succession of gorgeously textured and highly coloured spatial imagery, filmed in a series of spectacular and richly atmospheric settings and among close-up details. These mix the natural with the man-made: mountains, redwood forests, insects and starfish with gloriously expressive and cleanly pared-back architectural interiors: Giulio Romano\u2019s 16th century Palazzo del Te in Mantua, the Cosmic House itself \u2013 the ultimate Postmodern retrofit by Charles Jencks \u2013and a highly glazed modernist house.<\/p>\n

This mixing of the natural with the human and man-made is a deliberate play on the key theme running through the mythic tales related in Ovid\u2019s poem Metamorphoses, written in 8CE \u2013 of mortals\u00a0 being cursed by vindictive Gods and finding themselves transformed into animals, trees or flowers. Sequences filmed at the Palazzo del Te in particular dominate the work \u2013 a building which is packed with iconography drawn from Ovid\u2019s Metamorphoses. <\/p>\n

The architecture of this palace, designed by Giulio Romano in 1574 for the Duke of Mantua, plays a high-Mannerist game of rough rustication, dropped triglyphs and refined Classical detailing. Inside, this is amplified by rooms plastered with jaw-dropping murals, also by Romano, most famously in its Sala dei Giganti, which tell the Ovidian tale of Jupiter\u2019s vengeance on the mortal Giants who had sought to rival the Gods. <\/p>\n

This is played out in a chaotic whirl of collapsing columns and crushed Giants \u2013 the very architecture depicted as falling around you in the room (I\u2019d encourage anyone who hasn\u2019t to visit). In the film, the discombobulating effect is further added to by footage taken by drones hovering in the palatial spaces. <\/p>\n

Just as loaded with iconography \u2013 of a more personal kind and fabricated in MDF \u2013 is The Cosmic House, which architectural historian Jencks retrofitted in the 1980s, and is the only Grade I-listed Postmodern building in the UK. In a style that could be termed late-late stage Mannerist, it\u2019s packed with references to the sun and the cosmos, hence its name. A favourite detail here, though, is in a more playfully mundane vein: a frieze running around the kitchen where the Classical triglyphs have been replaced by spoons.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Cosmic House<\/p>\n

Source: Sue Barr<\/p>\n

In this architectural company \u2013 and given a budget able to stretch to the Californian Redwood forests \u2013 it feels somehow disappointing that the film\u2019s minimal modernist interiors are not those of some Palm Springs\u2019 Case Study house or, say, Mies\u2019s Tugendhat, with its onyx wall frozen in metamorphosis, but those of a contemporary house in the Cotswolds. But that may just be architectural churlishness. <\/p>\n

Against these loaded settings, the characters intone a script that draws on feminist science fiction and critical theory, referencing the work of Octavia E Butler, Ursula K Le Guin, Naomi Mitchison and Donna Haraway. It\u2019s mesmeric, if a little portentous, throwing out thoughts of humanity\u2019s fractious relationship with the natural world and of a post-human future. <\/p>\n

The imagery, too, is at times so abundant with colour and detail that it almost tips over into the OTT AI-produced imagery currently invading every Instagram feed.<\/p>\n

But the installation creates a richly enjoyable and allusive dialogue with the rest of the house. It should act as an added cue \u2013 if any were needed \u2013 to visit the Cosmic House this year.<\/p>\n

All That Changes You. Metamorphosis runs until 18 December at the Cosmic House, 19 Lansdowne Walk, London W11<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Entering the Cosmic House through its main public entrance, you are met by a kaleidoscope of imagery. It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1075991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,294736,294737,4022,77,16,15],"class_list":["post-1075990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-charles-jencks","tag-cosmic-house","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116883764412544293","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1075990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1075991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1075990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1075990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1075990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}