Spatial Fragments
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard residency, 2022–2023
Storehouse 9 is a building waiting. Grade II listed, heavy with the residue of centuries of naval industry, it sits in Portsmouth's historic dockyard as both archive and question — a space whose future is entangled with decisions about what heritage means and who gets to decide.
This year-long residency became an investigation into the building itself: its materials, its bureaucratic fate, and the stories it holds. Working with found objects, archival documents, and the fabric of the space, the project developed as a conversation between making and discovering.
Process
The work began with collecting — gathering materials from the building and its archives, combining them, photographing each iteration. Printer paper and old cardboard storage boxes became spatial experiments, thinking through the excessively complicated administrative procedures surrounding the adaptive reuse of historic buildings.
Working alongside architect Deniz Beck introduced an architectural perspective that shifted the way materials were handled. Objects from the building were not just found but read — their placement, their wear, their relationship to the structure all became part of the investigation.
The idea of Robert Smithson's site and non-site became central: the site being the raw, physical reality of Storehouse 9, and the non-site being the selected pieces exhibited elsewhere. This framing opened questions about how archives come about — how objects are chosen for preservation, how they are presented, how their value is assessed, and by whom.
The exhibition includes installations taken directly from Storehouse 9, plasterwork from blueprints, investigations into light, and reconfigured objects that explore how narratives are constructed from the material remains of a place.
“It is more than saving buildings — it is about creating a community, telling stories, and finding fertile ground for inspiration and collaborative experimentation.”