Week 1

This week was my first proper investigation of St George’s Gardens. I didn’t go in with a fixed idea; instead, I tried to respond to whatever felt visually or atmospherically striking.

When we were asked to choose a site, I actually picked this place because I didn’t like it. On my first visit, it felt strangely uncomfortable- quiet, but not peaceful, and visually caught between being a public park and a historical cemetery.

That uneasy feeling made me curious. I thought that choosing a space I didn’t immediately connect with might push me to look harder and understand what, exactly, felt off. In a way, that discomfort felt like an invitation. If Perec urges us to look at what is so familiar that we don’t see it anymore, then I decided to do the opposite: look at what felt so unfamiliar that I wanted to look away.

Initial Methods

• Observation & close-up documentation: I walked slowly around the site, photographing details, surfaces, and any interactions happening in the space.
• Sketching: I made on-site sketches to get a feel for forms, shadows, and textures. Even though the drawings weren’t polished, they helped me notice things I would have ignored in photos.

Week 2

This week I returned to St George’s Gardens with the intention of pushing my observations further. After reviewing my Week 1 work, I realised that textures were becoming the strongest entry point into the site, so I began exploring them at two scales: macro (the wider forms) and micro (the fine details that make up those forms).

How This Shifted My Enquiry

The macro/micro studies made me realise that the garden operates on multiple temporal scales too:

• Macro = slow change (stone wearing down, trees expanding)
• Micro = constant subtle motion (grass bending, bark peeling, flowers opening/closing)

This deepened my interest in how textures reveal time passing. The garden isn’t static.. it’s made up of tiny changes happening continuously alongside slower, heavier forms of change.

Developing My Method

Through this week’s drawings, my approach became more structured:

• observing the site →
• zooming in/out through drawing →
• noticing patterns that only appear when switching scale.

I also became aware that drawing itself is my method of “seeing,” not just recording.

Week 3

This week I brought together everything I explored in Week 1 and Week 2 and developed a more intentional body of drawings. What started as discomfort with the site has now become a much clearer enquiry into how the textures of St George’s Gardens reveal different rhythms of time, decay, growth, and coexistence.

Instead of treating the garden as a single space, I now see it as a collection of materials, each with its own logic, pace, and “voice.”
To explore this, I created a set of texture studies, almost like a small field guide, using multiple drawing techniques.

By Week 3, my relationship with the site had completely changed:

• The garden isn’t a space of death; it’s an ecosystem constantly renewing itself.

• I no longer felt unsettled by it; instead, I understood why it felt ambiguous.

• The discomfort came from the coexistence of different temporalities.

• Drawing helped me see these hidden dynamics, and became my main method of enquiry.