two concepts-two exhibitions

A Selection of Worn Shoes | Polaroid Photographs

Creative Transit | Chinese Whispers : August 2011

As stated in previous posts, I have a correlation between humanity and it's frail walk through life and the process of wearing out a pair of shoes. We are born, we live and eventually we give up the ghost and die. When we buy a pair of shoes we give life to them, we live through them and eventually throw them away when they are unsuitable and worn..i.e. die. It is maybe a flawed concept and can be argued that I am talking a little way-out but, it is a concept that I am serious about and will be working on for this exhibition.

I have bought two pairs of black canvas gymshoes one of which I will be wearing constantly everyday until the time of the exhibition. The other pair will be unworn and free from outside influence. I want to show the effect of the human body and its role in personalising a piece of utility wear. The installation would have three elements in having the unworn (birth) shoes, the film (life) and the worn shoes (death) and would need a single room.
We have had a meeting at the gallery space and I have asked for a single room as I think I need to exhibit the work quite clinically and in a minimalist way. I will be exhibiting my work within tow hand made perspex boxes and they will be placed onto two plinths. I intend to record footfalls to help augment the installation. I have also began to take photographs of the shoes every morning and night and collate them into a looped piece of film.
I am in the process of writing up the finalised concept and I think this is a new direction for me. It is probrably a little personal and I am opening myself for criticism but we have to take risks and I think I need to make work that I feel more forthright about.

No Offence Intended | Child's Play : October 2011


The type of playground that my installation will look like

As I am part of a collective, we decided to send a proposal to the FFAF2011 team entitled Child's Play. We (seven) artists take the tag-line and then create a piece of work based on it. We then explore and then find resolution in the making of an exhibit that will be shown.
I have explored several concepts and now on with the creation of my sculpture. I intended to make a giant tooth and then create a light installation but ended up devising a timbered playground out of pine that is based on the Gemini constellaion. The playground will consist of seven timbered logs at variable sizes and have a four inch augered hole at the top part of the lkog. The to larger logs will be classed as Castor and Pollux and will be the only two to have the augered holes. The other logs will be either 3 and 4 foot. The larger ones will be 6 feet in length.
I am quite excited about this as it involves local industry and will be a precursor to my degree show in June 2012.

[Mythology of Gemini]

The Gemini constellation - please note that Pollux is immortal and is the brightest star and Castor is mortal


Proposed Plan of the Installation

I need to explain why I chose Gemini as the layout for the sculpture/installation here, so I will...

Castor and Pollux where twins from the same mother but with one exception, Pollux's father was Zeus. In the sky they are located next to the Milky Way which were at one time regarded as a herd of cattle. The twins were considered cattle thieves but another story states that they were soldiers and Castors died. Pollux begged his father to make his brother immortal so he reunited them in the heavens as the Gemini constellation. I find this backstory alluring and falls rightly into the Child's Play theme.
I consider thirteen points a little ostentatious so I am experimenting with the layout and finding the more spatial specific plan and want to use sevn points. This also has the tenuous like to having seven artists exhibiting.