When I was asked to write about Spacement gallery, the brief outlined the discussion of the qualities and my experience of an art gallery without necessarily discussing the art work within the space. This posed quite a challenge. But I do like a challenge.

I have decided to approach this project from the varying points of view that make up my professional life. I am an artist who uses photography, sculpture and space as my media. I am an academic who teaches landscape architects about the complexities of space. I am a founding committee member of Bus, artist run space. I am an avid gallery goer. The discussion, engagement, use and manipulation of space tends to occupy a considerable amount of my time.

the challenge

'Space calls for action, and before action, the imagination is at work. It mows and ploughs. We should speak of the benefits of all these imaginary actions'.

In his seminal text, The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard discusses space from a phenomenological point of view, discussing the memories that hover within and around intimate recesses, niches, features within space. I come to this space as one that is driven by the ontological potential of the built environment, of the primacy of lived experience and the interplay of sensations.

How do I describe the specific sensations, thoughts and imaginings this space evokes? How do I discuss the interplay between these responses?

I experience a journey to this space. I am faced with the physical reality and qualities of the space outside the space. I am faced with the physical reality and qualities of the spaces inside the space. I explore and discover spaces within each space. I am thoughtful and speculative of the history that informs this space. I imagine my response[s] to this space.

I perceive, I think and then I imagine. I project and I analyse. I question.

what, where, how.and?

Spacement has been fully operational for just over 6 months. It is a commercial gallery. It is in the CBD, off Flinders Lane . It can be loosely described as providing three spaces for artists to show within. Gallery director, Rebecca Holborn, is 23 years old and she has been working on this project for three years.

These are the facts. I am also keen to pursue how this space deviates from the 'standard' commercial model, how the space sits in the broader context of the CBD, and what the spatial and material qualities of the gallery offer to artists. I would also like to discuss the gallery as a series of spaces, within which I experienced several moments of transition, and varying degrees of interiority.

setting the scene

The entry to Spacement is located in a service laneway off Watson Place , which is off Flinders Lane . These lanes gradually decrease in size and types of detail. If I were an art lover/buyer setting off on a Saturday afternoon 'gallery crawl', I would easily sashay past Spacement, if I were one of the uninitiated. This already sets up a challenge for the gallery: how do you spread knowledge of the gallery to inspire a deviation off the main 'drag', secure an audience base and financially sustain this particular commercial model?

This service laneway comes complete with elements that have come to define the City of Melbourne 's official and unofficial 'palette': scattered green 'wheely bins' and stencil art of varying skill, content and anonymity. I am wondering whether or not the advent of a gallery space entrance in this service lane may inspire another level of engagement once this site transforms from your every day 'non-space', to a place where smokers and gallery-goers congregate at openings. There is a potential similarity to the 'City Lights' project off Centre Place and along Hosier Lane . We can see how the formalisation of these sites as ones for public art has inspired other inevitable [and necessary] by-products or signs of life that define a city. This marking of territory that no amount of continual 'erasure' will eradicate becomes an extension of the 'official' space. As far as Spacement is concerned, only time will tell.

I am next met with a stairwell. And as I descend two flights of stairs into the gallery I continue on into the next phase of interiority, or removal from the surrounding context, external sounds of the city become increasingly muted. It is relatively confined and minimal. The clean white walls and 'soft industrial' remnants initiate the material transition of the gallery space to come. Within this spatial transition, I am met with myself: my own sounds and impact on my immediate space.

have you seen this scene?

'Was the room a large one? Was the garret cluttered up? Was the nook warm? How was it lighted? How, too, in these fragments of space, did the human being achieve silence? How did he relish the very special silence of the various retreats of solitary daydreaming?'

As I enter the basement space, its material and structural qualities immediately grab my attention: a neat combination of 'white cube', commercial 'slickness' and industrial remnants of its former lives. I experience another spatial transition of subterranean openness, a large, loosely divided space, from which several points of departure stem: a staircase leading upstairs to the bar, a series of doors of ambiguous functionality, an alcove into a third gallery space. Gallery 3, or 'Blackspace' is comparatively 'lo-fi', it has black walls, and is more intimate and further removed. I have since learned that this space will be running almost independently as a more 'experimental' space, resembling a more 'artist-run' model.

I like the fact that certain details throughout the gallery have not been smoothed over or removed. I am hoping that the restraint in 'schmicking over' these details is maintained. From an artist's point of view, these architectural quirks are ripe for site specific appropriation that need not be exclusive of commercial potential.

There are also some architectural features that appear to be deeply embedded in the site's history: the wood-panelled wall of the bar space and the wooden bookshelf niche in between Galleries 2 and 3.

Surprisingly, both of these features have been recent additions to the space, but nonetheless offer an ambiguity as to the site's history to those not 'in the know'.

Several 'non-spaces' exist within this space, or have emerged by default as a result of construction. These spaces are difficult to define, but as architectural elements that artists may respond to and incorporate into their work, they carry the potential for installation applications or as spatial signifiers to differentiate or isolate bodies of work. I am very drawn to them. I imagine setting up 'micro zones', small intimate details and gestures in only these niches and alcoves, and possibly using the rest of the conventional wall and floor space as a spatial device to isolate these intimate zones.

I have specific memories of how these non-spaces have been responded to by artists. And as I manoeuvre my way through the spaces, the most resonant remembered images are triggered and relived.

I would like to refer to two artists' work in light of this discussion: Nicholas Jones and Nick Mangan. Both artists' work featured in the 'Work in Progress' show, in May 2004, curated by Hannah Mathews, as part of the Next Wave Festival. This show essentially launched Spacement.

'Each one of this nooks and corners was a resting-place for daydreaming. And often the resting place particularised the daydream. Our habits of a particular daydream were acquired there.'

Nicholas Jones' site specific piece, The Red Bower , 2004, made clever and poetic use of the wooden shelving feature mentioned previously. Jones' seemingly endless use of books as a subject and as tools to build with, and from, has become the artist's trademark. In this 'ready made' installation, Jones placed a selection of old [looking] red books spanning from 1880 to 1980 that filled the entire book shelf and spilling onto the floor space, as if some obsessive scholar's collection had outgrown its storage. The materiality of the books and that of the shelf poetically coalesce. Both recent additions to the space - that of the shelf and the artist's response to it- looked as deceptively established as each other. It was as if they had always been there, or as if this commercial space had grown around this feature. It is very easy to ignore the passing of time in a basement space. As I recall Jones' piece within this space, I imagine the previous subterranean histories of the site. My memory space is suddenly interrupted by the distant tremors of a tram passing above at street level.

I am back in real time. I walk around the space some more.

This leads me to the landing attached to the staircase that leads to the bar. It is this bar that sets Spacement apart from the commercial gallery norm. However, as a source of income for the gallery, the bar is limited to private functions and openings. I do not see how it differs greatly to drinks normally served at openings, other than providing a more formal and removed environment than the stairwells, laneways and street fronts that we are accustomed to socialising and networking within. And although I see the problematics of opening this bar to the general public, I cannot help but think about how it could also be a consistent commercial outlet for the gallery. Presenlty it seems to function within a strange intermediate zone.

At this landing, I experience another material shift and interruption to the 'white cube'; stained plywood panelling. It is slick and contemporary looking. I recall Nick Mangan's piece, Untitled , 2004, which sat in the corner of this landing. This semi-abstract object's form that followed that of the corner's, was constructed out of western red ceder. It was drilled, dremeled and sanded to resemble a termite mound. It cleverly mimicked and referenced the material and formal qualities of the site it was placed in, as if it had grown out of the corner, as if it would continue to grow. I imagined this form's gradual appropriation of this space over time.

.departure points

I come to this space primarily from the viewpoint of an art practitioner who has shown in a variety of spaces and contexts. I guess one of the main questions is: would I want to show here? At this stage, I would have to say: 'definitely maybe'. That is obviously dependent on the nature of my practice, or, rather, which stream of practice I would deem appropriate to show in this context. And, no, this need not be about the compromise of modifying my work via commercial intentions. Who would be the audience for this work? Which body of work would be best received in a commercial context? Would it be worth my while? How much 'room to move' has the artist within this space?

After speaking to Rebeeca Holborn, it appears that her intentions of supporting emerging or peripheral artists is solid, as is her intention to sustain the gallery commercially. Therein lies the challenge! The gallery also strays from the commercial norm by allowing artists to show more ephemeral, experimental and non-sellable projects. This, of course, is open to negotiation. It is this gradually evolving 'hybrid' model, sitting in between commercial and 'artist-run', that could determine how this gallery sustains itself generally .

This space has much potential. At the end of the day, the interrelationship between several complex factors determine the lifespan of a gallery space, particularly those which attempt or claim to challenge conventional commercial models. Such factors include: business decisions made by the director and/or committee, the degree of discussion that is generated by the work that is shown, the artists' experience of showing in the space and the circle of followers [otherwise known as 'the scene'] who believe in the space and those that show there.

And as I begin to emerge from this basement and gradually reacquaint myself with the hum of the city, my general impression is that Spacement has only begun establishing its identity and its relationship to that organic machine that is 'the art world'.

Notes

All quote are from Rethinking Architecture ed. Neal Leach, Routledge, London , 1997