A new way of interrogating space and evaluating it in a ‘super-interesting way’ nets Jolene Liam’s fourth entry to Eye Line drawing competition third place this year
Jolene Liam
Freelance architect, London
Over three years of previous entries in which she has been commended, Jolene Liam has allowed the judges into her world, where slowly and gradually she offers views a unique glimpse that every year expands by an order of magnitude – and secured her Practitioner third place.
She initially started in her flat, but this year Liam takes us on a psycho-geographical journey through the parks of Singapore as she winds into – or unwinds out of – the perceived experience. ‘Developing on from Gordon Cullen’s concept of serial vision,’ she explains, ‘multiple views are merged into continuous loops, creating their own forms. Through documenting my own experience, I wanted to find a way of capturing the spirit of each place.’
Alan Power appreciated ‘what she’s trying to do in terms of changing scale every time she presents her work for judging’. Hamza Shaikh meanwhile, versed in more technologically-generated fly-throughs, was impressed, thinking ‘She’s developing a new way of interrogating space, evaluating its qualities in a super-interesting way,’ with Begum seeing it as a ‘novel way of looking at architecture.’ RIBAJ’s Kucharek saw the uncharacteristic looseness of two images as ‘seemingly drawn more from the unconscious’ – and was backed up by Fernie, who saw the ‘messiest’ drawing as the most convincing, where Liam’s experimenting had most authenticity. ‘She’s entering into a more sketchy, intuitive and imaginative viewpoint where she is no longer obsessed by the detail, to come to a more free-form conclusion.’
Eye Line award winning drawings from this and previous years