Hidden Spaces – what do they mean and how do they affect us? Each person carries with them their own sense of home, tied to their sense of belonging, their past and their wished-of future. From this conception of home we construct the world around us – places we feel safe in, drawn to, wary of, excluded from and intrigued by.  Our idea of these places might change as we grow familiar with them, as personal and emotional associations fluctuate, as our bodies move through space and as others enter or leave that space – constructing spaces of migration, dislocation, settlement and even bereavement, each with conceptually structured layers of surface, accessibility and invisibility overlaying the physical construct of our environment.

With such a subjectively-framed starting point, not only will personal interpretations of hidden spaces vary, but these will be carried into the cultural and professional production of spaces, so an architect’s perception of Hidden Space might be very different from a public artist’s, an anarchist’s or a film location scout’s, and each of these professionals will in turn come to influence how we navigate the space around us.

From this broad and permeable conception of space we’ve drawn a few more concrete examples, and we’ll be featuring differing approaches to the theme of Hidden Spaces. From Curator to Artist to Poet, we’ve invited some guest bloggers to write about their relationships with spaces, here are some of the contributors we’ve got lined up to kick things off:

Matt Baker, in the past Lead Artist for both Inverness and the Gorbals, writing on hidden space from the perspective of someone who makes public art. Read his blogs: hiding, finding and the search, space hidden in things, looking for unconformity… & seasoning time.

Sarah Butler, author and head of the UrbanWords consultancy, developing projects which explore regeneration and place through creative writing. Read her blog here.

Richard Taylor, freelance artist & writer, talks about his collaboration on a project focused on abandoned spaces. Read his blogs: ArtEvict – hidden space and revealing performance, SPLICING HORRISONS, Hidden space – tent as a transitory studio, THE CUMBRIA ENERGY CENTRE & getting lost remaining hidden

Collaborative collective, Sans Facon, gave us a continued visual dairy of hidden spaces being enjoyed in everyday life. See their observations here.

We also had contributions from:
Arika – Shadowed Spaces
Johanna Basford – hidden (work) spaces
Neil McGuire – Hidden Spaces: Supreme Social Networks
Erin McElhinney – What’s in a name?
Susan Castillo – Hidden Space
Fraser Denholm – Tracing Places

Tell us about your hidden spaces - add a link to a blog, a video or photographs from the overlooked or concealed spaces of your city in the comments below.

Glasgow

See more from Sans Facon here.
Find out more about Sans Facon here.

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Hidden Spaces – a month of blogs by members about their hidden space – whether they be real, imagined, unbuilt, cut-off from the public, demolished, spiritually significant or politically sublimated. Read more from the series.

Glasgow, Stonehaven

See more from Sans Facon here.
Find out more about Sans Facon here.

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Hidden Spaces – a month of blogs by members about their hidden space – whether they be real, imagined, unbuilt, cut-off from the public, demolished, spiritually significant or politically sublimated. Read more from the series.

North Shields, Fish Quay

See more from Sans Facon here.
Find out more about Sans Facon here.

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Hidden Spaces – a month of blogs by members about their hidden space – whether they be real, imagined, unbuilt, cut-off from the public, demolished, spiritually significant or politically sublimated. Read more from the series.

Glasgow

See more from Sans Facon here.
Find out more about Sans Facon here.

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Hidden Spaces – a month of blogs by members about their hidden space – whether they be real, imagined, unbuilt, cut-off from the public, demolished, spiritually significant or politically sublimated. Read more from the series.

Loch Carron , Lake District

See more from Sans Facon here.
Find out more about Sans Facon here.

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Hidden Spaces – a month of blogs by members about their hidden space – whether they be real, imagined, unbuilt, cut-off from the public, demolished, spiritually significant or politically sublimated. Read more from the series.

Glasgow

See more from Sans Facon here.
Find out more about Sans Facon here.

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Hidden Spaces – a month of blogs by members about their hidden space – whether they be real, imagined, unbuilt, cut-off from the public, demolished, spiritually significant or politically sublimated. Read more from the series.

 

Glasgow

See more from Sans Facon here.
Find out more about Sans Facon here.

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Hidden Spaces – a month of blogs by members about their hidden space – whether they be real, imagined, unbuilt, cut-off from the public, demolished, spiritually significant or politically sublimated. Read more from the series.

These houses were built by settlers coming from Europe at the beginning of the 20th Century. For the sum of $200 you could buy 200 acres of land. People crossed the Atlantic with families and all they owned, bought a wagon and headed out into this vast wilderness.

This is the Lunt residence – built in about 1910 – the Lunts emigrated from Liverpool

The Albertan climate is such that there is very little water, very cold winters and a growing season of approx 3 months. The european migrants came from a tradition where mostly too much water was the issue and the cahllenge was to keep lnd drained so that crops and houses did not rot.

The new farming communities were short lived with most people either returning to Europe or heading for the towns. But the climate means that the marks left in this landscape endure….machinery abandoned in a scottish filed will be rusted solid in a year yet we saw machines that had lain for nearly a century and you could still turn a gear cog.

Wooden houses endured distrted only by the wind and the weight of snow. Poking at a window frame I dislodged a wad of cloth which presumably had been used to prevent a rattle or stop a draugnt more a century ago.

Much of my work is concerned with actively engaging with with the processes of erosion and weathering in materials….I found the Prairie utterly compelling and repelling simultaneously…..It is fascinating to me, that part of our cultural identity and how we see ourselves should be wrapped in our perception of the way things age and weather down…………as our Canadian friend Heather said of her country ‘we don’t rot we shrivel’.

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Hidden Spaces – a month of blogs by members about their hidden space – whether they be real, imagined, unbuilt, cut-off from the public, demolished, spiritually significant or politically sublimated. Read more from the series.