I was at Nottingham Contemporary last Friday night for too short a time. I had received my usual invite to have a launch tour of this latest exhibition – Thomas Demand and Decolonising Architecture. Sadly I was trying to get a number of reports out so had to do whistle-stop tour…

From what I have seen and heard this is going to be of my favourite exhibitions so far. There some great photographs in the galleries – taken by Demand of architectural models they are really quite clever. He shows the models in a fairly raw and basic state, which is rather at odds with the finished article (the buildings). The images are large scale – which I liked! Demand has worked with the architects who designed the Contemporary (Caruso St John) before – so this is an interesting connection. A mix of architecture and photography was always going to get my vote!

The second exhibition is some further, real, architectural models and some interpretations of the lawless line on the border of Israel and Palestine. I have often looks at maps and smiled at the thickness of drawn elements – Roads, for example, would be a mile wide if drawn to scale! But the alternative is that they would be so thin that you wouldn’t actually see them. The lawless line takes this scale issue rather literally – at less than 1mm thick drawn on a 1:20,000 plan, it scales up to nearly 5m wide in real life! And this line permeates buildings and people’s lives – drawn rather arbitrarily on a map, I’m not sure the cartographer realised the implications.

There is an amazing sculpture which includes a floating staircase through the Palestine Parliament – which you have to see to appreciate.

I need to go back to the gallery soon to have a better look. But I would encourage everyone to go to see this exhibition…this one is rather good!