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I sat down to wait for the train the other morning and got a shock. The concrete block wall that I had faced most mornings for the last three years was gone. Painted muddy green, it was not by any means a pretty wall and had formed the canvas for occasional displays of graffiti which gleamed through successive layers and patches of paint. Now it was gone, leaving a few lumps of broken concrete, the odd twist of a reinforcing steel rod poking out of the foundation, a temporary mesh fence and a new view across the street. I was surprised by the slight resentment I felt at this sudden change; that, without warning, this wall with which I had a daily relationship could disappear. It was a confrontation with the idea that our built environment is always in flux, despite its apparent solidity.
Observing the remnants of the wall, I remembered something Fiona Connor had said to me the week before about wanting to show architecture as ‘movable, not a given’ and I thought about the moment of encounter one experiences with her work. Connor makes objects and architectural structures that destabilise our sense of complacency about the material nature of what we are seeing, yet at the same time reinforce presence and materiality.
I encountered Old Buildings (2007) during the crush of the opening preview at Gambia Castle, Auckland. Having negotiated the narrow stairs and made it through the knot of people who clustered around the top of the stairs and spilled into the hall, I had sought refuge in the quieter space of the office. Removed from the crowd, I became aware that the room felt somehow... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline