School of Art, Media and Design, UWE Bristol:
Tom Sowden
Exploring the Non-place: artists’ books and digital media
19th July – 31st August 2004
My current body of work has been evolving over the past eighteen months. The work produced during this time concerns ‘places’ that explore and draw inspiration from the experience of a passenger within ‘non-place’. Non-place, a term taken from Marc Augé, refers to environments such as air, motorway and rail routes, mobile cabins, the airport, the railway station, the supermarket, hotel chains, leisure parks and large retail outlets. I have concentrated on two ‘non-places’ in particular, those that have had the greatest impact upon my life during this time: the motorway and the supermarket.
I wanted to treat the journey in these spaces as the destination, to observe the users, the people and the surroundings. I wanted to try and make sense of this space and others like it. I also wanted to see if it was possible to create place from non-place through documentation and commentary.
Whilst commuting on the motorway, I rigorously record and photograph all the coach seats that I occupy. These seats are then isolated from their surroundings and become devoid of human presence. As I am trying to highlight the shared history that we often have within non-place, I feel that the connection becomes more apparent with the lack of human presence. There is no figure to focus upon but we know or assume that the space has been occupied many times by a society linked through the act of travelling in this same location. In our attempts to relate to unknown others, we contemplate this space and therefore turn it into a ‘place’.
The other regular brush with the non-place is the weekly shop at the local supermarkets. Looking for the connection with others who use the shop, I was drawn to the shopping trolley (the contents of a trolley can say a lot about a person). As with the coach seats, I wanted to remove the trolley from its surroundings. Taking the empty trolleys out of the context of the supermarket and into isolation again highlights the shared history. The trolleys also metamorphosise into their own characters: the shy, the bold, the sporty, or the lazy. By retaining the view through the trolley itself, the viewer also sees a glimpse of the grey, drab car park. The space that holds these mobile baskets in an empty state is waiting for another customer to fill them with their wants and needs.
The power lies in the basket; this is the space that contains the embodiment of its user. The view through is disrupted only when the shopping is contained within. Through no fault of their own, these trolleys can be rendered impotent. When removed from the usual environment of the supermarket and its swathes of car park, they take on an altogether different character. Outside of non-place they appear lost, lonely and helpless. They have no function and can only await their collection or destruction. The power of embodiment has vanished.
In the video pieces, I recorded the act of shopping by placing a camera in the basket of the trolley. The generic supermarket is then observed in a smooth motion from the lower level of the trolley. In some cases, the supermarket becomes smothered by my family’s personality as the produce piles up to obscure the camera’s view. In others, we continually chance upon the other inhabitants of this space, many repeatedly, as we journey through at the same speed, observing them not so much personally but through the contents of their trolley.
This series of work does not intend to transform non-place but to create place through the work itself. The format in which the non-place is presented here, becomes the place – through the book, the print or the video. These ‘places’ require an engagement with and emotional response from the viewer, asking them to contemplate and become aware of their own presence within non-place.
has recently completed his MA in Book Arts at Camberwell College of Arts. This exhibition includes a selection of works from his MA show.
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