This series of images began with an investigation into the notion of inhabitation as a negotiated process. Through practice-based research, the series has become focused on the interiors of concrete fortifications along the east and south coasts of Australia. I am interested in the ‘shudder’ one experiences when encountering a room that has resonance; that has duration; where past, present and future collapse.

‘Interiority’ (McCarthy 2005) has been a useful concept for exploring this shudder. It is a term that traverses a number of relevant fields. In architecture it is used to describe the experience of being in an interior space; it is used in psychology to describe one’s interior life, what it feels like inside your head. Indeed, it was originally a theological term relating to one’s interior relationship with god. I am interested in the shudder, the collapse between ‘what it feels like inside this room’ and ‘what it feel like inside my head’. I am interested in the physical experience and construction of space (Grosz 2001; Pallasmaa 2005; Tuan 1979; Pringle 2004)

These derelict and redundant spaces stare blindly into the liminal interstitial boundaries forming our notions of inhabiting the interior (Drew 1994; Teyssot 2005; Osz 1998-2002). The psychology of their construction and occupation is immanent to their materiality, characterised by Vidler as ‘paranoiac space’ (Vidler 2000).

This project has a strong relationship with the work of Charles Bayliss. Specifically, the composition and atmospheres of his Nettle Cave images (Bayliss c1888), held in the National Library collection, and his use of the overlapping panoramic image making technique, first employed by Fox Talbot in 1845 (Hyde 1988). Of specific relevance is Baliss' panorama of Middle Head Defences in Sydney (Bayliss 1874).

Selected bibliography

Bayliss, Charles. 1874. Middle Head Defences. Sydney: State Library of NSW.
Bayliss. c1888. Nettle Cave. Jenolan Caves NSW: National Library of Australia collection.
Drew, Philip. 1994. The coast dwellers : Australians living on the edge. Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin.
Grosz, Elizabeth. 2001. Architecture from the Outside: essays on virtual and real space. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hyde, Ralf. 1988. Photographic Panoramas. In Panoramania! the art and entertainment of the 'all-embracing' view. London: Trefoil Publications.
McCarthy, Christine. 2005. Towards a Definition of Interiority. Space and Culture 8 (2):112 -125.
Osz, Gabor. 1998-2002. The Liquid Horizon. touring exhibition: Gabor Osz.
Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2005. Eyes of the skin : architecture and the senses, Chichester: Wiley-Academy
Pringle, Patricia. 2004. Seeing Impossible Bodies: Fascination as a Spatial Experience. SCAN journal of media arts culture 1 (2).
Teyssot, Georges. 2005. A Topology of Thresholds. Home cultures 2 (1):89-116.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1979. Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective. In Philosophy in Geography, edited by D. Reidel.
Vidler, Anthony. 2000. Warped Space: art, architecture, and anxiety in modern culture. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

See also: Dereliction and the space between
paper presented at antiTHESIS symposium on deja vu
Melbourne University 7 July 2006
Click here to download this file