Joanna Williams
Shadowed City, 2013
Laser cut cardboard
60 x 40cm

Shadowed City explores entropic tendencies in an attempt to represent a juxtaposition between the permanency and fragility of the city’s architecture and landscape. Inspired by the smoky remains of the laser cutting process as well as the improvised chance encounters of pattern making using light and shadow developed the experimental concept. By paying tribute to the entropic processes of Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark, the work seeks to create a tension with the permanency and deterioration of the architecture, consequently providing for a duel sense of ephemeral and metaphorical experience of space combined with the enduring architectural stance. Shadowed City conveys the disorder and chaos of Smithson’s non-site earthworks, however articulating a less literal interpretation of site, rather simply existing as a conceptual tribute.