We need space. Space to work. Space to meet. Space to be. And these spaces can shape us, how we meet and how we work.

What happens when we really look at the places we live in? What happens when we use these spaces and what happens when we shape them ourselves? A re-connection with our present physical and geographical location can shed light on both our past and our future.

In this issue we look at how artists, thinkers and activists alike consider space. Our human relationship with space has many axis. Site specific works consider the physical aspects of a particular environment and how the history, geography and spatial organisation of that site bears on the human perceptual experience of it. Such investigations of public spaces and city spaces can shed light on the political and social forces that shape our everyday lives. Taking this a step further, we can consider how we would design spaces: spaces in which to practice - whether that be an art practice, a political practice or a social practice. Crucially, space is where we meet: it is where we meet each other and the world through our own subjectivity.

Henrietta Hall revisits a site specific artwork of her own in ‘On Parade’, considering how the history of a place can affect its present, and how institutions organise the spaces we live in.

Following in the footsteps of psychogeographer Iain Sinclair, Sam Sedgman takes a walk to the Thames Barrier to discover ‘The Other Southbank.’

In another corner of London, I spend an afternoon at a unconventional hair salon with ‘The Haircut Before the Party’discussing the need for free communal space. After all, ‘We have the whole of social space in which to find each other’.

Taking it back to the gallery, Tom Walker reviews the current exhibition at the Cube Centre for the Urban Built Environment - Nils Norman: ODE TO CHARLES FOURIER towards a Phalanstery for Manchester.

In her review of ‘Move – Art and Dance since the 1960s’, Alexandrina Hemsley uses her own experience as a dancer within a participatory art work set in the gallery space to explore notions of subjectivity, object hood and a collaborative construction of knowledge to produce ‘work’.

Our selected artist for this month is Emily Speed, whose solo show ‘Make Shift’ is currently being exhibited at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.