Excerpt from catalogue essay that accompanied the exhibition à la derive:
The phenomena of transitional space teases us – its indeterminate slippage between site and non-site, real and unreal, and the way in which it facilitates contemplation of the unknown. Space is rendered transitional by virtue of its unknowable geography, unknowable chronology, or because of its interstitial existence between two reference points: function and dysfunction. The broken poetry of concrete entropy releases a cloud of calamity into the air. The transitional space is in a chronic state of flux – undergoing change, mutilation and decay.
Transitional space also occurs in the slippage between remembered place and actual, present place. As the power of recollection recedes the places in our memory become increasingly remote and inaccessible.
Green fields and abandoned structures are rendered transcendental in this way, by dint of their transitional state. We are reminded that spaces and places are in constant states of flux and renegotiation, and that as life speeds up our built environment becomes less dependable. The process of transition creates gaps in our knowledge; it distinguishes the now from the then and defies our attempts at definition.
Simon Gregg, 2009