Open/ Empty/ Spaces:
by Jennie Savage
The title, 'Open, Empty, Spaces' is, in a way, an iteration and a re-iteration of nothingness; words, which in some way suggest vacancy, a sense of placeless-ness; the non aligned, unfilled, bare, blank vacant or meaningless; an area rather than a location, a vessel rather than that which fills it.
The idea of open-ness suggests inclusivity, availability to all, and an access to something. But it also suggests openness to interpretation, to meaning; a sense of waiting for an assignation to be given, so as to posit an object or a place with purpose (a shop becomes animated, alive with possibility once the 'open' sign is turned).
Emptiness; emptiness is a state, a condition which perhaps suggests an expectancy. Certainly the impulse, when faced with a feeling of emptiness, is to create a diversion from it, to fill that space with activity or emotion something which could act as a distraction from a crushing tide of existential crisis, a fear of nothingness. And likewise an empty space needs to be filled, used, decorated, commodified and made useful. There is a kind of fear attached to empty spaces, a fear for ones safety, both physically and mentally, that the empty space is perhaps a metaphor for our fear of feeling empty. In both senses we understand that to fill is to give meaning, to engage with or to consume the emptiness, which perhaps lives as a shadow at the margins of both our subconscious awareness of ourselves and the landscapes we inhabit.
Space rather than place. Place is full of memory, of feeling and of association. It is a geography that is rich with the invisible layers of history and usage. 'A sense of place' is what architects strive to achieve when they open shells made of concrete and glass to the public. They want their 'spaces' to be places - to seem to be human. The word space on the other hand suggests a place that is devoid of meaning. We show art in 'spaces' because the word suggests they are a blank canvas for the artist to draw on, that they are free of meaning and association, from the messiness of emotion, from the meta-tagging of memory. That we will enter a space and it will be a pure experience untainted by the past and free from the future.
'Open, Empty, Spaces' is a project which in some way challenges or questions these notions not simply by giving purpose to the open, meaning to the empty and placeful-ness to a space, but by actually asking the question, (and in turn inviting the viewer to question), what is open-ness, what is emptiness and how might we find spacious-ness? That these notions which allude to nothing-ness, might simply be enjoyed for their 'no-thing-ness'. For the fact that this is just a noticed moment on the banks of a river, a forgotten box on a wall, unimportant fragments of the urban landscape. The impulse is not to improve these places, to transform them, to make them useful. It is to allow them to be enjoyed for their open-ness, for their empty-ness and for their spacious-ness. It is to show that the place for nothingness is import