black and white plane with open door and staircase on runway

James Bridle: Seamless Transitions

A project by artist James Bridle looking to recreate the ‘invisible’ spaces around the detention centers, closed courts, luxury lounges and private jets that are illegal to photograph in the UK.

In the UK it is illegal to photograph the detention centers, closed courts, luxury lounges and private jets Britain uses to deport people.

To address this lack of imagery, artist James Bridle started Seamless Transitions, a project looking to recreate these ‘invisible’ spaces. Bridle used investigative journalism techniques together with academic research and artistic impression in order to describe, and communicate these spaces in ways which have not been possible before.

As the artist explains Seamless Transitions "is not about the individual stories of immigrants and borders" but instead about "the unaccountability and ungraspability of vast, complex systems: of nation-wide architectures, accumulations of laws and legal processes, infrastructures of intent and prejudice, and structural inequalities of experience and understanding."

He worked together with Picture Plane, an architectural visualisation firm, to recreate a series of 3D computer models to depict these spaces.

Read more about the project in James's own words here.