Partly demolished and partly constructed buildings – liminal states between form and non-form - reveal the experiential/potential nature of place. Can something that is between form and non-form still be considered a place?

 

Born out of an investigation of these urban spaces, this work is concerned with ideas of interval space, as embodied by the Japanese spatial concept of ma.

 

In Japanese, ma, the word for space, suggests interval. It describes a consciousness of place, not in the sense of a three-dimensional entity, but rather as an awareness of form and non-form simultaneously, and the interaction between the two. Ma is an experiential place.

 

As a material, concrete is associated with construction and the urban landscape. It is unfrivolous and unabstracted. Its rigorous permanence defines the spaces it encloses and the spaces it inhabits. It converts the space around it from the abstract into the ‘concrete’.

 

The concrete structures’ solidity emphasises the dialectic of division between space and object. This work hierarchically elevates space to equal status with objects, rendering obsolete the traditional distinction between space and those things that occupy it. 

 

This blurring of distinction serves to highlight the dynamic relationship between form and non-form. The space around the objects, according to the principles of ma, creates an ambiguity of meaning and an absence of narrative, suggesting a void in which the viewer can experience place.