untitled from Some Dwellings, summer 2012                                  image © andy lock 2010

untitled from Some Dwellings, spring 2011                                  image © andy lock 2010

Neither the origins nor the location of the interiors and structures in these images is immediately clear. Photographed in the building workshops of further education colleges where trainees practice plastering and construction techniques, the interiors in these images seem little more than crude parodies of domestic spaces. Insubstantial, sparsely furnished and possessed only of the rudiments of shelter, they call to mind cells (penal and religious), but their precise status is difficult to ascertain. They appear provisional and suggest temporary dwellings, reminiscent of the building traditions of shanties or favelas, however, even in the absence of decoration and embellishment, the structures possess a distinctiveness which emerges from their materials and forms.  Just as Goethe’s Urpflanze a mythical, primal botanical form, contained within its originary structure, the possibilities of all future plant forms, these structures and interiors seem to hold within them something of the primal form of the dwelling place.

untitled from Some Dwellings, winter 2010                                  image © andy lock 2011

untitled from Some Dwellings, winter 2010                                  image © andy lock 2010

untitled from Some Dwellings, winter 2010                                  image © andy lock 2012