Melek Zeynep Bulut builds a ghostly threshold inside London’s Painted Hall

Technical difficulties delayed the opening of Melek Zeynep Bulut’s mesmerising installation, Duo, during September’s London Design Festival, but good things come to those who wait.

Installed within the Old Royal Naval College’s Baroque Painted Hall in Greenwich, the sculpture delicately explores perception and synaesthesia—a condition where sensory crossover allows people to taste colours or experience sounds as textures or sensations. The Turkish designer lives with this rare condition and uses immersive artworks to bring this experience to a wider audience.

‘First, I perceive an abstract energy field, and then I find myself shaping it,’ says Bulut.

Duo takes the form of an illuminated rectangular prism, mimicking a ghostly portal that runs through the centre of this historic space, originally designed by Sir James Thornhill in the 18th century and adorned with over 3,700 square metres of Baroque depictions of kings, queens, and mythological creatures.

Playing with ideas of solidity and form, Duo incorporates a complex mechanical system made up of magnets, sensors, perception-altering surfaces, and acoustic reflectors that respond to and are activated by the viewer’s presence, triggering what Bulut playfully calls a ‘game of perception’.

The installation also heightens the contrast and wonder within the setting, forging a dialogue between past and present, old and new.

‘Essentially, Duo is a portal, and all my works are portals, offering spaces for dimensional transition and equilibrium,’ she says.

Duo by Melek Zeynep Bulut is open to the public from 28 October until 3 November 2024 at the Painted Hall, Old Royal Naval College, in Greenwich