gaelen pinnock

This series has both printed and sculptural works. Both deal with the exertion of power and control through urban and built form.

Architectural drawing is used to represent real structures. It communicates achievable shape and form in a pragmatic and reproducible way. But what if we see a structure as a conveyor of an idea or a state of being. Already buildings shape our emotions, direct our movements, make us feel free or actively exclude us. In trying to represent these less overt affinities, we can uncouple an architectural drawing from functional obligation and enter a space of fantasy or incubus.

In the South African urban context, there is an underlying commonality. It is that of division. From city-scale to domestic, one can find stark structural divisions. Much of this is due to the legacy of apartheid and modernist planning ideology, but it continues to be constructed on platforms of class exclusivity, neoliberalism, fear and crime.

These fortresses attempt to distil that sense of inhospitable exclusion into fictitious architectural forms. They also attempt to convey the uneasy, disquieting sense imparted by less overt expressions of power, control or authoritarianism in the built environment.