Exhibition Information

Night Spotting OZ8993
2016 Digital Pigment Print 50x64cm

Bath road
2017 Digital pigment print 80x100cm

Birdstrike
2017 Digital Pigment 80x100cm

Night Spotting
2015 Digital Pigment Print 50x64cm

			Unnamed Land: Air Port City, Night Spotting
On the Periphery, around you,

He has traveled to and from London's Heathrow airport more than 2,500 times since 2010, working as a driver to and from the airport to keep a writer's life and livelihood. From a year or two after repeated visits, strange images of the airport and its surroundings began to be seen.
The airport inevitably needs a large area of land and huge facilities, which creates a lot of things inside and outside the airport and brings a variety of people to and from the airport. Over and over again, the people who encountered the airport were going back and forth between the airport and the place for living, living or leisure and for other various reasons.
As any modern public facility did, the airport site expanded around and facilities increased during the half-century as demand rose above expectations. As a result, the existing agricultural and residential areas disappeared or were pushed out, resulting in the awkward coexistence of the extended and existing spaces. For this reason, unfamiliar landscapes can be easily found around airports.
The space around which the airport is cut and fragmented acts as a buffer for adjacent dwellings and airports. Unnamed land between residential areas and airport annexes is a site owned by the airport, as if it were an unarmed area, which usually bans entry, but at a certain time transforms it into a space where temporary events and festivals are held for residents and ordinary people. This temporarily dilutes the tension and uncertainty inherent in the amputated and fragmented debris.
In addition, the noisy house on the way down the plane is home to immigrants from various nationalities who have come to work in other countries, conflicts and protests among existing residents over the expansion of new runways, and environmental problems are emerging, all the more acutely around the airport. After all, various aspects of migration and labor, various cultures and histories, religion and race, environment and development issues, leisure life and hobbies are compressed between the airport and the narrow gaps with them.
The boundaries between the airport and its surroundings are clear and ambiguous, direct and ambiguous. The airport's runway is surrounded by high walls, but meets a road that bypasses the airport outside, and along the way, facilities that exist for the airport, such as a huge long-term parking lot owned by the airport, a rental car company and a hotel, are connected like dominoes. It is ambiguous to define exactly where and how far the airport is related to it, and the airport is constantly encroaching on its surroundings.
So I've been working in different ways for a long time around an airport that I can't accurately cut. The exhibition features "Unnamed Land: Air Port City" and "Night Spotting."
Spotting means "observation" and Plane Spotting means observing an airplane as a hobby. Usually, photography and records of airplane unique numbers are followed.
The ‘flight viewing’ hobby, which began in earnest after World War II, has spread rapidly with the development of technology, and today, spots gather to view, record and share planes across airport walls around the world.
Through this exhibition, we wanted to show the unique location of the airport through the surrounding space and circumstances, rather than looking inside the airport through the characteristics of the surrounding area, which has been observed repeatedly around the airport, and through the military presence of several individuals with multi-layered and multi-faceted relationships with a particular place, and to notice the various features derived from the airport.

Kim Shin-wook