Andrew Pepper 2011

Light Liquid – a hologram containing the three-dimensional shadow of liquid is formed to the exact shape of one of the flat- top buildings in a miniature townscape.

It rests on the roof, hardly visible from the ‘street’, except for a black glass ‘line’ around the edge of the building.

From above (the divine view held by curators and exhibition visitors), the roof is covered in a ‘lake’ made up of liquid shadows – volume-frozen at the moment the hologram was recorded.

The undulating image of the water ‘hovers’ just above the surface of the building, occupying the space between the architecture and the viewer – a ‘no one’ space.

As viewers move over and around the townscape, the liquid shadows undulate and shift, a kinetic ‘covering’ to the building activated by the point of view of an observer.

Roof spaces occupy a place of secrecy and seclusion in our city architecture. Gardens hidden from the reality of the street, spaces in which to be unobserved, locations for machinery which feed the buildings below. Things we shouldn’t see.

Here a lake is elevated, without the physical restrictions of weight or volume. Something which shouldn’t ‘be’ – a contradiction on so many levels – made possible only by the scale of the townscape and the placement of the holographic surface.

Shown in the Miniments installation, 13 April – 20 May 2011
Nottingham Trent University

Bonington Building