VALUE PERCEPTIONS I _ artists

As a way of considering other perceptions of value I looked at the work of several artists who record their experiences of environments similar to those I had initially found 'least valuable' in Caledonian.


George Shaw


Shaw documents forgotten, left-over and in-between spaces, exactly the kind of spaces that encourage loitering and antisocial behaviour, the spaces everyone tries to design out.  But such spaces can have a more positive value - certainly as a child these were exactly the kind of spaces I would hunt out with my friends, not to vandalise and cause trouble, but because we could make them our own and adapt them to create our own little worlds.

Matt Small

A portrait artist, Small looks beyond the facades of estates and sees the lives being lived within them:

“These landscapes are from my journeys around town. I find there is something beautiful about these estates. You can walk through them and think they look horrible, you never see anyone but in each house there is a drama going on, there are thousands of lives being lived, there is a lot more than just the outer walls.”

The next time I walked through the 'least valuable' bits of Caledonian I stopped to sense the lives 'being lived'.  I need to understand the value Caledonian holds for these people beyond the outer walls.

Rosalind Davis

“I seek out buildings that on the surface might seem neglected. But for the individuals who use the them, they are a refuge and are of vital importance. Often, the buildings house communities in areas of widespread social deprivation that may seem hostile or full of pathos. I am interested in transience and survival, community and isolation.”