Introduction to the 2023 exhibition.

You have just entered a territory. It is neither inside your phone, nor your mind, those are just portals to this place, a vast and infinite space where sometimes we meet, and sometimes we see the same things, though never quite in the same way. As you see, I was here and I left this trace. I have left these traces throughout the exhibition, and invite you to cross borders like you have now, to expand the conceptual dimensions of the work. It is my hope that on both sides of the border, my thoughts and ideas and merge with your own conceptual formations and in those spaces, there is a wider, deeper perception of these structures that form part of human existence.

Border theorist Johan Schimanski, points out that we think that the border crosser, crosses the border, and that the crosser is always the active agent. But there are instances where the border crosses the border-crosser . This is what has happened here. Your physical presence, your mind, your senses are still located in the gallery, but a part of you is here, on the other side. The border has in a way, crossed you. You carry with you the traces of the last territory, through memory and mind, and will return to the former place with traces of this place. 

I think that locates us right on the border, in no-man’s land, or, in a space of liminality. That is also the place from which I have seen these works, and from where the name Grey-Zones emerged. It’s a place where we perceive the mutability of a border, that it is a time-based structure, that it has agency on us, and us on it. That when we speak of borders, we must speak of being in a constantly changing relationship with them. Schimanski states that when we cross a border, it is split and reveals itself as a passage and that its status as a barrier is compromised; it is both affirmed and denied. I find that so intriguing, since in many ways we are itinerant and come face to face with these structures daily, and as much as we want free passage, we also want everything that a secure and stable structure should provide. It is the meeting,  as always, of chaos and order, and the negotiation of these forces. It is a relationship that should be constantly engaged with, constantly analysed and constantly interrogated. 

Which is, I hope, what this exhibition does.

Greg Shaw,

July 7, 2023.

 Schimanski, Johan. (2011). Crossing and reading: Notes towards a theory and method. Nordlit. DOI: 10. 10.7557/13.1835. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/33417018_Crossing_and_reading_Notes_towards_a_theory_and_method (Accessed 4 February 2021).