Wai(s)ting Your Time Away – 2017

Site-specific installation exploring waiting, transition and suspended time

Wai(s)ting Your Time Away was a three-week site-specific installation created inside the former railway waiting room at Wandsworth Station. The work began with the everyday condition of the site itself: a place designed for people to remain temporarily while waiting to continue somewhere else.

A large wooden jetty, approximately 400 × 130 × 140 cm, emerged from the floor and extended towards the centre of the room. Visitors and passengers could walk or stand on the structure while waiting for their trains. Two fans generated a continuous movement of air between the end of the jetty and a blank white wall, while a theatrical spotlight and sound altered the atmosphere of the existing space.

By relocating the familiar architecture of a jetty into a railway waiting room, the installation brought together two structures associated with departure, transition and anticipation. The work asked whether time spent waiting is necessarily wasted, or whether waiting itself can become a space for observation, reflection and experience.

Rather than removing people from the ordinary function of the station, Wai(s)ting Your Time Away worked within it, temporarily shifting how an everyday transitional space could be encountered.

Concept and installation: Norman Mine
Venue: Platform One Gallery, Wandsworth Station, London
Year: 2017
Duration: Three weeks
Dimensions: 400 × 130 × 140 cm
Materials: Wooden jetty, two fans, theatrical spotlight, sound installation

Wai(s)ting Your Time Away began with a simple question: is time spent waiting really wasted?

Installed inside Platform One Gallery, a former waiting room within Wandsworth Station, the work used the existing function and history of the site as its starting point. A reconstructed wooden jetty gradually rose from the floor and extended into the room, bringing together two spaces associated with waiting, departure and transition: the railway platform and the water’s edge.

Passengers encountering the installation were themselves already between destinations. Rather than asking them to escape this period of inactivity, the work invited them to inhabit it differently, turning an everyday interval into a space for attention, anticipation and reflection.

At the end of the jetty, two fans circulated air towards a blank white wall. Sound, light and movement suggested the possibility of somewhere beyond the physical limits of the gallery without ever revealing a destination.

The work reframed waiting not as an absence of activity, but as an experience in itself: a suspended state between where we have been and where we expect to arrive.

Artist: Norman Mine
Venue: Platform One Gallery, Wandsworth Station, London
Supported by: Platform One Gallery