By Andrea Butler

Space is an essential component in the successful function of our world (think of the space underneath the table you might be sitting at; the gaps between the words that help you make sense of this page) but we tend to ignore it most of the time, paying more attention to the objects that surround us.

In Western art, we use the term ‘negative space’ to talk about the areas between objects on the page/canvas but this tends to convey quite a static idea of space.  There is a Japanese word, ‘ma‘ (間), that suggests a more evocative and dynamic spatial experience and it was this concept that inspired this workshop, in which we made three dimensional drawings to explore the space around us.

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