Barbican Collectibles
2026
Project overview
A series of 12 original paper relief artworks abstracting spatial moments around the Barbican Centre in London.
Each piece depicts an abstract vignette from the building complex. Whilst recognisable through characteristic architectural details, the pieces are not a literal representation of any particular space, but rather a series of spatial moments built from the most distinctive visual building blocks of the Barbican.
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I’ve explored the public spaces within the Barbican through breaking the architectural space into its constituent parts before recomposing them into playful vignettes.
From the immensely rich architectural context of the Barbican this collection concerns itself solely with public spaces. As iconic as the residential and private aspects may be, I chose to focus on publicly accessible areas, highlighting the paramount importance of high quality and freely available public spaces in the city, which are increasingly and painfully few and far between.
I have been visiting the Barbican for over a decade, during which this special place has inevitably played host to many personal experiences.
As an artist with an architectural training, I began noting and analysing my favourite parts within the public areas. I’m particularly drawn to certain lines of views - sequences of spaces interconnected through geometry, structure and visibility.
I’m interested in deconstructing these views to see how they take shape. What makes these spaces what they are? In a literal way - how do the walls, the ceiling and the floor work together to create a meaningful space?
Negotiating the complex spaces around the Barbican can feel like traversing a brutalist maze - a wonderful experience that I wanted to celebrate with this series.
Each piece makes sense on its own, but having constructed them within a loose grid system they also connect and speak to each other within a modular framework.
I like to think of each combination as a snapshot into a vast, open ended network, much like the wonderfully labyrinthine Barbican itself.
The pieces are all constructed from layering paper and card ‘blocks’. This method creates a sort of flattened architectural model, compressing spaces into images while retaining depth and hierarchy through the stacking process.
The use of various textures of paper and card is an expressive medium that I use to communicate the tactile qualities of a space.