In Which Once Was, Darcy Patterson works with discarded doors to explore how objects can cross thresholds of meaning, function, and identity. Her practice begins with a simple question: What happens when a door is freed from the architecture that gives it purpose? Doors usually depend on frames, hinges, and walls — structures that dictate whether they are open, closed, locked, or left ajar. Patterson’s sculptural installations test these limitations by removing the doors from their expected roles and reassembling them into new forms.
In this piece, three separate doors are interlocked, balanced, and made self‑supporting. Alone, each door would fall; together, they stand. Their stability depends on cooperation, tension, and interdependence. Patterson treats the doors not as barriers but as bodies leaning on one another — a quiet metaphor for collective strength, shared vulnerability, and the idea that thresholds can hold us up as much as they hold us back.
Installed across the gallery floor, Patterson’s arrangements transform everyday objects into sculptural gestures. Angled, leaning, or partially open, the reclaimed wooden doors evoke moments of transition. They feel caught between states — neither useful nor useless, neither closed nor fully open — echoing the theme of the exhibition: the fragile, unsettled space of the threshold.
By working with discarded materials, Patterson restores value to what has been overlooked or thrown away. The familiar becomes unfamiliar; what once blended into the background of daily life becomes newly visible. Through her subtle reconfigurations, the artist encourages viewers to notice the quiet beauty of the mundane and to consider how objects carry traces of movement, memory, and former use.
Within the broader context of Art in the Park, Which Once Was speaks to the threshold as a space of potential. These doors, liberated from their frames, suggest that transformation often begins when something is dismantled, repurposed, or allowed to fall out of its original role. Like many of the works in the exhibition, Patterson’s piece invites viewers to reflect on the moments when structures — physical, social, or emotional — loosen just enough to let something new take shape.

Artist Talk & Walk at Swan Park & Barrick Hill

Saturday 2nd May 2026

Book for the bus tour now