nothing concrete

Casting the broken, unfinished and reclaimed in blue, nothing concrete explores materialities whose ghosts distantly recall their utilities' past. Constructed in response to the premises of Inspection Pit, Ali Glover's site-specific interventions interrogate functionalities, those overlooked and taken for granted. Building as artwork, and vice versa, the artist’s gestures uncover structures through concealment, lowering them in the acts of elevation. Layering the narratives of urban planning with the rural architecture of a refurbished barn, nothing concrete subverts the spatial experience – disorientation results in an unexpected sense of comfort. In diligent criticism of urban mechanisms of behavioural control, where one’s being and movement in the city is dictated by hidden infrastructures, the exhibition feels like being in a dream that may not be your own.

Lowered strip lights, cast carpet floor tiles, and Victorian-esque mouldings, alongside the silicone moulds they came from, become an archaeological site wherein rests the memory of nothing concrete and, perhaps, things to come. As the eye adjusts to the cold hues of tinted sunlight, discarded sketches, stainless steel cable ties and inked straps appear in hidden places, unforgotten. Just as coherent narratives start to take shape, scattered objects – a fish vertebra, a toy car, a fossil-like mould – render the site unknowable again. In a deserted office turned ancient ruin, utility objects become sacred, and liminal urban spaces are rendered an unfamiliar fantasy. In it, the blue filter blurs and conceals, creating a contrast to cleaning practices where ultraviolet light reveals and removes dust, dirt, and unwanted presence. The eerie sensation of being in a controlled environment is entwined with the melancholy of liberation from functional demands. As a distorted memory of urban realism, the emergency lights mimic the daylight that seeps into the space through the arbitrary cracks and malfunctions.

Within Glover’s abandoned – or newly unearthed – site, radio still blasting, it is unclear whether something is being built or dismantled. Caught in a frozen architectural moment, functionality is suspended, revisited and repurposed. In the artificial blue light of the dimmed windows and LED strip lights, a soundscape reverberates through the desolate space. The result is a mosaic of urban noise and distorted, amplified samples of local streams that Glover collected during his residency. In the background runs a muffled radio, projecting murmurs of a busy office, keyboards typing, typing, typing. Occasionally, the corporate humdrum is interrupted by the ghostly, cheerful adverts, trapped in a perpetual loop among Glover’s constructed ruins. Snippets of sounds and remnants of objects remain buried in blue, in a seemingly ancient eternity.