What's in a Lane? was a series of three sculptural installations in Union Lane in the centre of Melbourne.

Union Lane is a quiet, unadorned lane which is easily passed by, in spite of its location off busy Bourke Street Mall. It was this contrast of environments, in

immediate juxtaposition, that attracted me to this space. The streets at either end buzz with activity of pedestrians and a dizzying array of visual stimuli issuing from shop windows and advertising.

 

Union Lane offers none of this. It is like a narrow slice

removed from the outer form. Inside the lane is another world, which talks more of another time and evokes a different psychological state. Stripped of its former commercial dressings, the lane stands bare. I was interested in creating, through minimal intervention, a place for the pedestrian to catch themselves in a quieter moment and to become aware of their presence in relation to spatial and other

architectural features as they passed through.

 

My means of doing this was to select a phrase for each piece of work that made the link between the site and the viewer. Each of the phrases was embedded within the conventions of signage, except that the content read in opposition to those conventions. The text, always starting with the word, "I", firmly located the viewer as the subject, or the prime mover within the space. The sentence, like a thought, gradually unfolded as one moved through.

 

It was intended not only to mark the viewer's passage through the space but to induce a shift in kinesthetic experience. The piece, "I follow", had a long red strip painted along the length of the lane on the part occupied by the drain.

It was intended to focus awareness on one's relationship to the ground. The red stripe seemed to create a gravitational pull inducing people consciously or unconsciously to walk on it.

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The second piece, "I once looked out and saw", responded more to the width of the lane.

The text was aligned in the manner of sign painting across shop windows that once formed the grand façade of Edmont's department store.

The windows, now blanked out from behind, echoed a process of blocking in, which is evident all up and down the lane- a former history now covered over.

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The final and piece, "I looked up and felt..." consisted of six large translucent signs which spanned the width of the lane and progressively rose from above head height at one end of the lane to the seventh story at the other. Each sign bore one word as in the title, the sentence arriving at its conclusion at the end of the lane. What it is, however, that one follows, sees or feels was left for the viewer to complete.