Combining fragments of personal history, of memory and imagination, Oobanken builds photographic narratives through constructions and performances. The spaces created are different in character from their wider surroundings, as if confined in an enclave or compound, revealing an attentiveness to what lies beyond the threshold of this self-imposed isolation. Made while living in Yangon, Myanmar, this series derives from Jerome Ming’s early interest in built structures and interventions. While Oobanken may direct us to inquire about the function of objects and the actions presented, Ming’s photographs also mirror the context in which they are made: that is, during a time of transition, in a place once isolated, a place once suspended in time.

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The Ballroom Maquette considers the book/object and expands Jerome Ming’s labored yet playful process of involving multiple revisions, layers of reproduction and reconstruction. Based on an actual event and entwined with personal experience, the photography for the Ballroom Maquette emerged while Jerome Ming lived in Warsaw, Poland – and the location forms a backdrop for a mesmerizing fictional narrative drawn from it’s history.