Strange Chambers - Attic
2001
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
2001
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Dominant colour
Strange Chambers - Attic is a 2001 by Marlene MacCallum, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
This print, *Strange Chambers - Attic*, shows an eerie indoor scene. A lily towers over a dollhouse room, and a toy skeleton stands in the dark. The mood feels unsettling, like a child’s room left too long untouched. The print uses photogravure, a technique with soft shadows and deep tones. It’s not just a photo—light-sensitive gelatine transfers the image to a metal plate before printing. That makes the shadows feel alive. Look up MacCallum, Marlene next.
Created in 2001 as part of the "Strange Chambers" series, the photogravure print depicts an abandoned attic space once used as a child’s bedroom, where peeling wallpaper and a bunk bed remain alongside scattered holiday decorations and debris. Light filters into the room through an opening, illuminating the decaying interior and contrasting with the surrounding shadows. The technique of photogravure, involving a photographic negative and etched printing plate, contributes to the atmospheric quality of the image. The work was first shown in 2001 at Engramme Galerie, Québec, as part of a solo…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Marlene MacCallum makes prints that feel like quiet, close-up stories. In her 2001 work *Strange Chambers – Attic*, she turns an attic into a small, shadowy world of corners and boxes. Her prints often zoom in on…
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