This was a group show at Wimbledon College of arts. The group were all interested in the body in different ways and had agreed that we wanted to do something less conservative with the white cubed gallery space that we had to exhibit in. So we decided that as the body has no angular lines or corners, we would eliminate these elements within the viewing space. The room was curved with white lycra stretched from corner to corner and spot lights shone onto the works. There was some red light which gave the whole room a slight womb like setting.

I had two pieces shown at this exhibition. The first piece was galled The Pink Lady – Plastic dream. For this piece I created a viewing porthole from the stretched lycra which cornered my work, this viewing hole was very vaginal in its shape with a long tube made from lycra which connected from the lycra to the work. The Pink lady sculpture was hung behind this lycra with a large mirror behind it, reflecting its behind to the viewer.

The second piece was a cubicle called To Be or Not to Be. The audience members would have to take it in turns to walk in to the cubicle, through the curtains. In front of them was a reflected image of a sculpture which was hidden below them. The room was pitch black other than this floating cast of a women holding her breasts up slightly. This left the viewer feeling as though they had just witnessed a private moment but with the permission to look. The viewer had become a voyeur, however because they knew that the sculpture was a simulacrum and therefore not real, they felt that they were able to stare at it more easily. Just as pictures in magazines allow you to look and think for as long as you like, when you are faced with a real person there is an element of embarrassment and perversity on the viewer’s part which I hoped to re create to an extent in this piece.   

 

The Pink Lady and To Be or Not To Be Installations shown at Curvacube

Wimbledon, London 1.2.07