Prior to Departure
Five layers are suspended in a structure made of rusted reclaimed architectural steel. Though measuring only 6’x5’x3’ it creates a massive space where different scales operate together unashamed.
The top layer has a block-board floor and is sparsely furnished with model furniture. Dauntingly large, it feels as though the occupant has packed hurriedly and left. Its’ open sides provoke a sense of vertigo.
From a slot in the floor an alarmingly long unprotected staircase leads down to the next floor, made of cast concrete, which takes up only half the area described by the steel frame.
Here a super 8 projector, with a chair next to it, shows a film loop of a ship moored in a sunlit bay with waves breaking on a beach in the foreground on a screen held in the steel frame above the void.
Below is a cast iron grid on which there is a telephone and below that a ship sailing away above a bottomless tank of black water.
(Whitechapel 1992)