| Project title: | Relics of a Past Future |
| Location: | Stryx project space, Digbeth, Birmingham, UK |
| Date(s): | 2 Aug 2024 |
Artist statement
My practice is concerned with the nature of space and structure with a particular focus on built environments. I am interested in the dynamic relationship between people, objects and spatial situations and the impact that it has on our perceptions of social, political and historical networks. Our spatial understanding is being affected by technology; physical space is becoming increasingly hybridised with digital applications, and we are at the frontier of a virtual expansion of our spatial world.
My practice aims to capture this new digital existence in relation to the physical materiality of our constructed environment through mixed media installation. I am interested in the ways that physical and digital, hi and lo-tech materials interact. I use digital manipulation, image, video and projection in combination with built structures, assemblage and collage to explore our changing spatial practices to expose something new or unseen. I orientate my work in the site, responding to experiences gained by being situated in place. I am interested in what can be revealed through direct engagement with place that then speaks to wider spatial experiences.
About the project
Relics of a Past Future was a site-orientated investigation in search of heterotopias based at the Gravelly Hill Interchange or more commonly known as Spaghetti Junction in Birmingham, UK. The labyrinthine spaces of the modernist relic offered liminal and non-spaces created through the incidental processes of development and abandonment. Producing juxtapositions with shadows of the past and future.
In Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias Michel Foucault (1967) defines heterotopia as a real site in contrast to utopia, a counter-site that represents, contests and inverts all other real sites. The implied tension and opposition informed the investigation. The idea of inversion became a theoretical and visual anchor for the project, giving it a language to communicate the way the site operates as an antithesis to the space beyond it.
Using walking, site-writing, visual and sound recording the investigation uncovered a complex spatial/temporal dynamic unique to the site. An accumulation of histories and functions stratified creating a world for different active agents in the junction heterotopia. The project culminated in a multi-media installation held at Stryx Digbeth, an artist led space in Birmingham UK. The exhibition included 3 projected video works (Liminal Techtonics 2024, Purposes Vital and Forgotten 2024 and Distant Proximities, 2024) a soundscape (Compacted Matter, 2024), a collage installation (Relics of Voidland, 2024) and a found object assemblage (Living Confederations, 2024). In addition to the gallery show 10 collages were placed in-situ creating an art trail, taking viewers from the heart of the city out to the Spaghetti Junction.
Relics of a Past Future: Exhibition Images 2024
Relic Trail: Art Walk images 2024