WHAT? Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum: It Will End in Tears 

WHERE? The Curve, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS

WHEN?   Now until 5th January 2025.  Free to view 

WHY GO? To walk through a storyboard. Is it an art gallery or film set? It’s both a site specific storyboard and art installation with a difference. 

The Curve presents an interesting space for art exhibitions as it does quite literally create a scoop which makes it even more intriguing to view as a miniature homestead complete with plywood beams, ramps, doorways and bare windows which visitors can amble through. 

Unfolding as an imaginary story roughly sketched on wood, the artist Sunstrum creates the illusion of a film set blurring the boundaries between theatrical design, art and film. 

Make of it what you will and imagine the narrative evolving around the fictitious character of Bettina who arrives in a mid-century colonial outpost and navigates her new life through domesticity, bureaucracy and eventually injustice. 

With a femme fatale film noir aesthetic, it’s an ambitious new take on how installation art can morph into storytelling. 

Sunstrum based her narrative of identity around her grandmother’s life in Botswana but also drew on her own experiences of living in Africa, South Asia and North America. She now lives and works in the Netherlands.

Draw your own conclusions from the imagery as to how it all ends, as it does, in tears. 

IN THE KNOW This cleverly constructed plywood homestead reveals a glimpse of how the Barbican’s real theatrical sets might look behind the scenes, and has been designed in collaboration with artist Remco Osorio Lobato. 

Feel free to knock on wood, for these sets are definitely not built by cowboys!