Billie Fee

Exploring Auckland’s St James Theatre as liminal space and picturesque ruin using photography, letterforms, and book design.

St explores the relationship between letterforms and place. It asks the question: How can letterforms and book design conventions express the phenomenological experience of the eerie urban ruin?  It embraces the romanticism historically associated with ruins as liminal spaces which spark fascination.  St is a creative response to the experience of the ruin, centred around letterforms which emphasise the eerie through the interplay of negative and positive space. The resulting decorative alphabet references historic initial letters and illuminated manuscripts. This decorative alphabet is supported by a publication which investigates the history of the St James Theatre and its current derelict state using documentary photography and archival materials. The resulting work integrates text, image and storytelling, to create a new iconography which elevates letters to the Sublime, alongside architecture and humanity’s other artistic endeavours which the St James Theatre represents.