This project responds to the ‘Speaking Surfaces’ brief, an invitation to develop a speculative platform for a then-upcoming exhibition of the same name. The brief centred around the production of object and space that could allow the exhibition’s artists to work with, and work through as surfaces for speaking.

Our bodies communicate through path-finding; the externalization of implicit and subconscious movement patterns. To exist within space, we position ourselves as a result of the internal frameworks that we impart value upon. All actions, thoughts and feelings could be classified as horizontal and vertical extrusions of these thoughts, all existing within different tangential bounds. ‘Within Bounds’ seeks to clarify the self-triangulation of these strange metrics, exploring this subconscious placemaking, and it's impetus.

The project functions as an ecology or topology. It is a collection of surfaces and objects that form interstitial spaces. Each element form contiguous borders that both section and punctuate the St Paul Street gallery. Timber borders present this idea in a direct way, a necessary centre point for viewers and artists to work within, on top of and around. The importance or lack of importance of these divisions is ambiguous. They provide the seed or the question towards the viewer, how important are these spatial divisions and how will you the viewer respond? Within a gallery there is a suggestion they are delicate or to be archived, yet their rough constructional aesthetic implores viewers to tread on them. Their offset placement also prompts viewers to consciously cross them, approaching or maintaining distance from work within their boundaries. They provide a basis or frame of reference that the other works reference.

Outside the galleries are two mirrored platforms. I have titled these Locution platforms, both in reference to a previous exhibition of the St Paul Street Gallery: Title (to be specified), and to the word’s exploration of context and discourse. The concrete objects are separated by a single glass plane, but both inhabit very different contexts. They explore ideas of interior versus exterior through simple but effective means, immediate sense and associative imagery. The user of the exterior locution platform is subject to a wide span of peripheral environmental conditions. Wind, rain, distant chatter, vehicles and sounds of a cityscape oppose the screeched footfalls echoed within an interior. The exterior platform features a downward gradient, rather than the flat platform of the interior. Rain may pool within this excavation. Behind the exterior platform is a small step, with a carving for one to place their shoes. Both users project and anticipate what the alternate user is feeling, through memory and expectation. This means use of either platform provides ‘double-looking’ of sorts, in which someone can identify their own position in an immediate sense, and project their expectation of what the ‘other-side’ could be.

Opposite the largest face of the gallery lies the rendered ramp. This feature is a 10 metre long concrete ramp. Subtle divisions in the long face mark the underlying timber of various structural conditions. The density of these sections fluctuates between complete rigidity and considerable slack.
Across the course of the three month exhibition, footsteps will wear these sections causing visible depression in the surface, paired with an increase in sonic and haptic feedback when operated. As users operate and view atop the ramp, they consciously respond to multiple axis of personal determination.

The gallery is to act as a mediator both in the physical, and metaphysical. Viewers, in positioning themselves within and around ecological points of interest, directly engage with and subconsciously respond to the ecology presented to them, embedding themselves within the thematic systems of the project. Their position and stance exist as a result of their worldview, thought or physical instincts in response to the space.