Heterotopias and the theme “The Space Between” is everywhere & in everyone, but once you start thinking about spaces in art & in society now, those in-between spaces become more prevalent, in the tangible world, social- online spaces, fictional, or in our own headspace’s.
The word itself was once a medical term, ‘Heterotopia’ - Foucault borrowed the word and re-coined it as a geographical term for spaces of otherness to describe cultural, institutional, & discursive spaces that are ‘other’. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting that which is outside. Such as ships, cemeteries, bars, public gardens, fairs, public baths, and churches. More recently Baudrillard would present digital spheres and genders as heterotopias. Museums and art galleries present us with heterotopias of time, displaced and fragmented, objects from different eras and cultures. Heterotopias of ritual are spaces such as prisons or hospitals where they are isolated and penetrable but not freely accessible. Then there are heterotopias of illusion that expose that which is not within it or a heterotopia of compensation. We invited artists and writers to explore this theme and use it to create some exciting and thought-provoking work, show us how you interpret those other spaces formed by our social structures. And here is their response …
Walter Benjamin wrote, “For every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably”. History and its fragments stand as memories within the human mind, it is only when we confront fragments that memory is awakened, creating a surreal moment of connection with the artwork, object and audience.
This installation was created as a follow-on from the previous research into the North West, its industry and traditions.
The caravan is mourning the loss of both industry and our connections with the working class of Britain.
(the piece above is by our editor and artist Nichola Rodgers, called “Wish thee wurr err” a space within a space where we encounter events and places in our past. -This is part three of my research into the Mills and life of the working women and children in Quarry Bank Mill and other Mills around the North West and Manchester. During this research, I found letters from staff to family and a letter addressed to the people of Manchester for Abraham Lincoln.
this can be found here - https://www.nicholarodgers.com/sculpture
Artist: Paul Bonomini
Instagram: @Paul_Bonomini
Description: Chaos (2022) is my most ambitious installation to date and marks the culmination of a multi-year body of work attempting to push the boundaries of industrial materials and explored their potential reconfiguration. This piece is created from repurposed air conditioning ducting that is transformed , becoming almost impossibly supple, lithe and energised. I am attempting to breathe life into this most utilitarian of materials, with each strand of twisting, interlocking piping simultaneously embodying the meandering of water pathways and cumulatively forming the presence of a weighty, shifting cloud above our heads. Through this contrast between industrial building blocks and the sensual elements of nature that they evoke, Chaos both reflects and critiques our relationship to the environment.
Artist: David Chalmers Alesworth
Instagram: @alesworth
Description: 'Lawrence Gardens Plot Nos.' hand embroidery in dyed sheep’s wool, antique Kashan carpet. 2014- on going
A paradise carpet strongly presenting the charbagh of Jannat (Heaven, Eden) here overlaid with a rendition of Bagh-e-Jinnah (formerly Lawrence Gardens). This is embroidered through the carpet with dyed sheeps wool. The resulting palimpsest references several of Michel Foucault's principles of the Heterotopia. This former botanical garden of empire is now Lahore's major public park but is still teeming with myriad references to the British Raj.
Artist : Daisy-Dre smith
Instagram: @daisydrew_art
Description: These works explore door ways or 'gate ways', as spaces in between other spaces. No one ever thinks of the door way being a space in itself, only of what it leads to or closes on. My practice explores the everyday through elements of horror and the unknown, this theme has allowed me too recognise mirroring of the outside with the inside, in my own work.
Artist: Karen Piddington
Instagram @karenpiddington
Website: https://www.karenpiddington.co.uk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karen.piddington.58
Description: Concept: This 8 minute film with sound invites the viewer to step sideways into a paradoxical space between worlds. Why? To tempt the viewer over the human-nonhuman boundary into becoming something other than human.
Obstacle: allowing technology to lead the work in ways I couldn’t foresee.
Artist: Jessica Russo Scherr
Instagram: @bluelavaart (Tiktok and Instagram)
Description: These works explore heterotopia - the space between through memory, nostalgia, and narratives that glorify the individual subject as well as disconnections to others and place. The works highlight the transition in the juxtaposition between subject and place with some connections to powerful women in art history. They are created in oil and form puzzling double exposures.
Artist: Daniela Lucato
Instagram: @daniela.lucato
Description: Smoke is a reflection about our concept of space.
How do we feel it when we are forced to use space in a different way? How are our feelings changing, the way we also perceive time in the same space? I titled this work Smoke because it is the image that comes to my mind when I think about this moment: symbolically it represents the unclear way we look now at the world, it is a temporary vision but it changes the way we perceive everything. Which kind of projections do we have about us in relation to our environment: are our longings changing? Or are we the same people with a different consciousness?
Who are we in this new constellation?
Artist: Francesca Alaimo
Instagram: @francescaalaimoartist
Description: The project "Astray this Side in the Other Side" is cantered around queer identity and existentialism. It explores the space in between socially defined binary gender borders in which I am drifting unable to conform, searching validation to my radical existence and identity from a place of questioning. Mixed media on paper.
Artist: Chris Marshall
Instagram: @chrismarshall9833
Description: Pavement space between 2023 Brockley SE. London. Night time images walking my local streets.
In the shadow of the car. The pavement space between, overshadowed, hemmed in, trapped, confined, barrier.
The shroud of a shadow.
Artist: Jess Hargreves
Instagram: @hargreavesart
Description: 'Unhemmed' is a project that explores the interruptions of space through mediums of painting and textiles. Using low cost and recyclable materials traditionally associated with historical contexts of femininity, these forms have been weaved and squeezed into corporate/historical spaces to re-contextualise their origins and explore feminist practice from a working class perspective. This project is a culmination of inhabiting spaces in-between.
Artist: Fiona Liberatore
Instagram: @liberatorefiona
Description
These three works are self-portraits. Acrylics on canvas: -The Alien Who Thought Could Be Human cm 120 x 160 - Self Candy Portrait cm .100 x 100 - Me and the aliens cm 50 x 60. I project myself into a parallel space, where my imagination makes me vulnerable and terrified.It's all inside my mind, but really projected on the outside.What is real and what is not, everything is confused, like in a limbo between Mars and Earth.
Artist: Robyn Mallery
Instagram: @robynmalleryart
Description: As the prompt mentions, a heterotopia is a world within a world. Such worlds exist all around us, overlooked every day. Collages are a unique way of expressing this concept of a hidden world, or perhaps hidden perspective, that’s there all along. Fragments of memories, ideas, and thoughts come together as something new and sometimes not all that pleasant. It is a beautiful and perfect representation of life in its notable imperfection.
Art should be an experience. It should make you feel a million emotions and leave you baffled in some way or another. It should bring amusement and wonder, keeping you on your toes. The art I create is meant to make you think and to tell a story. Welcome to the experience.
Artist : Jane Gibson
Instagram : @diva_jane_gibson
Description: Bloodflower - Felted merino wool, cotton gauze
The sagging womb vessel is a symbol of perimenopause – a space between, no longer fully fertile but still semi-functioning. The changes on the inside mirror changes on the outside – as the womb shrivels and becomes useless a society which values youth above all perceives the older woman herself to be shrivelled and useless. The perimenopausal woman is defined by otherness, disturbing to and incompatible with a youth obsessed culture. But as a woman this is a time of transformation from one state of being to another, a metamorphosis into something else, potentially something of her own choosing.
Artist: Sarah Woodward
Instagram : @sarah_woodward_mostly
Description: A window, I am inside looking out to the Sussex countryside, so far from home.
An Australian House, the colony that is a deviation, an idyllic imitation.
The image, a polaroid unique, unlike my analogue and digital brothers, not clear, clearly a moment.
Artist: Claudia Tong
Instagram: @cxt.art
Description: “ Through the Looking Glass” Heterotopias are around us. They are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside. The mirror is a space of otherness: surrounded by withered leaves on the dusty ground, the space in the mirror presents a lively scene in parallel. Is this an illusion or the other side of the reality? Probably both. Illusions always draw inspirations from the reality, while the reality is not always what it seems to be.
Artist: Lyudmila Kalinichenko
Instagram : @lk_lyuda
Description: I emigrated with my family from Russia to the UK in 2022. We found ourselves in a borderline psychological state and outside of any social group.
I used to work mainly in gallery and museum spaces. Now my art practice has found its place on the street. In order to continue working, I began to place video projections with texts on the street. These texts are very similar to social media news feeds. They are just as ephemeral, appearing unexpectedly, hanging on the surface for a while, 15-20 minutes, and then disappearing.
They are faceless, they have no author. These inscriptions are made for themselves and have a direct appeal: "Restart your life", "Be happy, be nice, be careful", "It won't always be like this".
Those watching from neighbouring windows become casual observers of how the place they are used to has changed. They are witnesses to a local event that is extended by their personal interpretation and inclusion.
By changing the angle, the perception changes. Viewed from a busy street, the text sounds like an advertising slogan lost among the signs, and the casual passer-by is likely to ignore it. And only the viewer's similar experience can make it more visible. In this way, the personal story loses its meaning when it is confronted with the masses, but it rings loud when it works point-by-point and locally.
Artist: Sarah Strachan
Instagram : @sarahstrachan
Description: Title: Interface, 2022. Media: Site responsive sculpture - wood panelled wall, found photographs
Size: Variable, approx 200 cm x 300 cm x 10 cm
Description: Exploring the porosity of spaces, personal photos permeate the institutional wall – entangling flesh and matter. The monocular aperture of each rolled image reduces the depth of perception and creates a sense of proximity to the boundary or interfacial layer. The interface is a liminal or threshold condition that both delimits the space for a kind of inhabitation and opens up otherwise unavailable phenomena, conditions, situations, and territories for exploration, use, participation and exploitation.
Artist: Thomas Griffiths
Instagram: @tlgrrrr
Description: Inspired by spaces that have intended purpose and specific access, usually male dominated, which percolates into the public sphere. The other is that of a locker, 'Lockuh', found in a locker room environment, containing personal belongings and someone’s own view of the world. Within the locker is a football kit with text 'Garland 39', representational of Judy Garland, which forms a queer icon dream time. A mouthguard worn for anxiety and used socks, linking to fetishism and ideals of masculinity. The idea of voyeurism appears by the viewer peering in to the locker which is ajar. Entering another world within a space they are uncomfortable. Material composition: MDF, Plywood, Acrylic (bubble-gum blue), metallic spray-paint, metal fixings, socks, mouthguard, tablet, football kit.
