A small piece of joy in Norwich.
The Marble Hall, Surrey House, Surrey St, Norwich. ‘The magnificent heart of Aviva.’[1] Aviva formerly the Norwich Union, an English building society.
‘Norwich Union was founded in 1797 in Norwich, when 36-year-old merchant and banker Thomas Bignold formed the “Norwich Union Society for the Insurance of Houses, Stock and Merchandise from Fire”, a mutual society owned by the policyholders who received a share of the profits’[2].
I was there to meet a group of people to do something, part of ‘Twelve Instructions’ by Mark Wilshire, this instruction was:
‘Wednesday 26th February 1pm
The Marble Hall, Surrey House, Surrey Street
Trisha Donnelly
Untitled’
I went because I am curious. I know who Mark Wilshire is and I know that Trisha Donnelly seems to be a slightly frighteningly intelligent artist; she is way up on my list of artists who seem to be doing interesting things. I also went because of the Marble room, a kitsch overdose of marble, the physical embodiment of the dream of wealth and security for the small trader, insurance for the insecure.
There were 4 of us, Sophia who was to do whatever was to be done, the rest of us were the audience, or the watchers, or the participants, or the witnesses, the last is probably the most accurate, we witnessed the proposed activity. We met on the steps of Surrey House. This is a imposing but unimpressive building, historical, but not historic. Inside it becomes almost ridiculous, like a parody of a renaissance Italian church.
There is a heat fountain that resembles an overly ornate baptismal font. The whole space is bizarrely strange, including two mannequins dressed in eighteenth century clothing, providing a frayed, faded moth eaten example of livery in eighteenth century England. It is still used as the entrance hall to Aviva in Norwich and has a set of modern desks with living receptionists. It is a marble room, every surface is plated with the stuff, the columns – 40 of them – are a kind of vomit green marble with markings that reflect like an oil slick on water.
The walls are a kaleidoscope of tessellated marble slab. In this ugly space Sophia has agreed to read out a short text in Russian. Sophia is a Russian speaker, she has no idea what she has to read out, and Mark who has prepared the text has no idea what it means as he can’t speak Russian. The text has been created by Trisha Donnolly as Part of Manchester International Festival 2013 at Manchester Art Gallery, it reads:
‘Find a Russian. Ask them to please read this to you. (Without questions and with feeling. Loud if they don’t mind.)’
We stand in the marble room, Mark hands an envelope to Sophia who opens it, stares, doubles up and then giggles uncontrollably before she says in an extremely ‘Russian’ accent `oh gib gib gib grrrrrprip’ (this is my phonetic translation) she tells us that the text is nonsense. We all seem to be pleased that it is such a lovely piece of silliness to be performed in such an equally ridiculous room. I am happy that I have been a part in a small piece of life for no other purpose than curiosity, in a building that is open to the public (from 9 to 5)