[Inhabitants of the structure have been moving up and up, navigating girders, racking and broken furniture for a period of time so long and unmeasured that it has become indeterminable and taken on a physical quality, a line that extends behind and in front of them, as though the structure has made manifest the duration of its ascent. They refer to themselves now as climbers, keepers of an unraveled clock.

At one station, their climbing slows as they stand in formation one behind the other, rows of hands holding onto cold poles like rehearsal room dancers. Where their elevation is automated, they clutch hand rests that chug slightly slower than their feet are carried, their bodies bending into choreographed contortions.

Beyond its intersecting tubes and almost vertical tunnels, the structure unfolds as a vast auditorium of steps. Built at a gradient not so steep as to loom, mentally exhausting in the suggestion of physical strain, the steps appear rather as geological features, rough grey hills of old road interrupted by stacked pavements.

The climbers stop for long periods and disperse, at times lying down or drifting up, along and back down the graduated bank of their arena. In a basin emptied of time they dwell on an ersatz ground, surrounded from all aspects and temporarily attached to a feeling of absent contentedness.]

Corridors of blue and grey, powder and charcoal.

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[At times climbers feel restless and try to bisect certain levels. Scrolling through flicked and torn pages, they push away timber obstacles and turn leaves. At first, some considered descending and even tried, but found themselves on levels and platforms they had already crossed. Others began to recognise within themselves a feeling of reassurance, caused by their place within a construction of uncertain scale and on a journey of uncertain duration.

At various points the structure flattens out ahead, giving the impression that the ascent might be nearing its finish. During these times, the surroundings calm into settled washes of illusory blue-green.]

Red bricks enclose a space, out of which exits a tube of red and yellow plastic. A palm tree bends through primary coloured concentric circles.

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[The distance of their journey shrinks and stretches. On walkways between scaffolds and shelves, climbers pace back and forth sketching scenery that lies beyond planed wood and welded sheets, closing their eyes to draft the contours of foliage and architecture. Rocky, cut glass and flagged surfaces, oddly shaped leaves, inhabitants engaged in unfamiliar cycles of activity and a tartan of materials and patterns appear to some in all their detail and nuanced difference; for others they expand far enough to retreat into anonymous unity, swallowed by their own sprawling mass. The site remains obscured by coloured tints and bleached out patches.]

Toes dipped, swirling water.

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More about Charlotte’s work is here. As part of COPY she is in residence at Site Gallery, Sheffield as part of print it, 11 Aug-8 Sep 2012.