The Empty Spaces: Lights of Vine Street
The Empty Spaces: Lights of Vine Street is a site-specific public installation developed as part of Stories of Aldgate, a programme exploring hidden narratives, migration, and lived experience within the urban fabric of the City of London. Installed on Vine Street, America Square, the work transformed a transitional public passage into a contemplative space, inviting passers-by to slow down and reconsider their relationship with the city.
The project builds on The Empty Spaces, an ongoing body of work examining absence, overlooked architecture, and moments of stillness within rapidly transforming urban environments. Originating during the COVID-19 lockdowns, the series began as a photographic investigation into deserted streets and suspended public life. Lights of Vine Street marks a significant evolution of this practice, extending the work from the photographic frame into the public realm through light, movement, and spatial intervention.
Situated within a high-footfall area of Aldgate, Vine Street functions primarily as a corridor—a place people move through rather than linger in. The installation responded to this condition by using subtle light trails and illumination to reveal architectural details, surfaces, and rhythms that are often ignored. Rather than imposing a spectacle, the work operated quietly, allowing the space itself to become visible through gradual shifts in light and perception. The intervention encouraged moments of pause, reflection, and sensory awareness within an otherwise utilitarian environment.
Conceptually, the work explores the tension between presence and absence in contemporary cities. Vine Street, like many urban thresholds, holds layered histories of movement, migration, labour, and memory, yet these narratives often remain invisible within everyday routines. By activating the site through light, the installation sought to momentarily disrupt habitual patterns of movement and invite viewers to acknowledge the emotional and historical dimensions embedded within the built environment.
The Empty Spaces: Lights of Vine Street was developed in collaboration with Aldgate Connect BID, London Metropolitan University, Heard Storytelling, Migration Museum, Urbanest UK, and the City of London Corporation’s Community Infrastructure Levy Neighbourhood Funds. This collaborative framework was central to the project, ensuring that the installation responded meaningfully to local context and community narratives. Through this process, the work became not only an artistic intervention but also a platform for dialogue around belonging, transition, and shared urban space.
Public response to the installation highlighted its capacity to alter perception without instruction. Many viewers encountered the work unexpectedly during daily commutes, experiencing brief moments of curiosity, calm, or reflection. In this way, Lights of Vine Street functioned as a gentle counterpoint to the pace of the city, proposing that even the most overlooked spaces can hold significance when attention is redirected toward them.
As part of The Empty Spaces series, the project reflects an ongoing interest in how minimal, site-responsive interventions can reveal the emotional and social dimensions of urban architecture. Lights of Vine Street represents a move toward sustained public art practice, situating absence not as emptiness, but as a space of potential, memory, and encounter within the contemporary city.
