Once here

Once here was made during my six month residency at the Three Storeys creative venue in Nailsworth in 2020. At that time, the building was in a process of deconstruction and renovation, having previously hosted The Comrades Club for ex-servicemen and, before that, the Nailsworth Brewery. Due to lockdown, building work was suspended, and we were able to document a moment in time in the life of the building – almost like time stopping on the inhalation of a breath, before it could shift once again and breathe out. Once here utilises a salvaged fragment of 1960s wallpaper marked with cigarette burns, held up and illuminated by a fluorescent light. The light hits the reflective surface, drawing you into the detail of these small, repeated ruinations, taking you back in time to a moment of vandalism that also feels like an assertion of existence. What was this unknown person thinking at that moment? There is a slippage of time between the now of looking and the now of stubbing out the cigarette. In peeling back the layers of material history accrued within the building, a splicing of times occurs, a mixing of past and present actions. Whose moment is it? Whose action is it? We are each making our own marks, our own interventions in the space, for our own reasons.