Plans for a Temporary Space (2008) | Performative Sculpture

A. Drawing 1

A room is measured, its plan is drawn, and its four walls are unfolded into a single plane. The resulting view is folded once again, cut along its lines, and subjected to a process of transformation.

The work developed from research undertaken at the British Library where I signed up "to search for the roots of space" in 2007. The research traced changing definitions of space from the mid-fourteenth century onwards: from the comparatively precise, two-dimensional notion of a lapse of time between two definite points, towards the increasingly expansive and indeterminate description of an extensive and immeasurable expanse.

The first stage of this work was an exploration of a changing space through the physical manipulation of the architectural plan. Measured, mapped, and contained the space becomes unstable through the processes of folding, cutting, and reconfiguration. The plan moves between space as a measurable object and space as something more elusive, constructed through acts of perception and representation.
 

B. Drawing 2

A room is photographed and reconstructed as a three-dimensional collage. The photographic image is then rebuilt through a network of threads extending from the image onto the wall (as seen above), attempting to re-draw the original room that has been lost through the act of representation.

The work moves between photography, collage, drawing, and sculpture, using each medium to reconstruct – and simultaneously further transform – the spatial information contained in the previous one. The room exists only through a succession of translations, each introducing a distance between the original space and its representation. 

C. Drawing 3

An object is displaced within a room, and with its displacement the spatial relationships that define the room are also altered. The original location is erased, while the object carries the memory of that place into its new position.

The work considers the possibility that space is not simply an existing container within which objects are placed, but is produced through the relationships between objects, bodies, and positions. If an object can carry the memory of one location into another, can its displacement also redefine the structure of the room? What happens when a relocated object becomes the point from which the space itself is understood?