Iris Brickfield Installation

I want to make more of my artistic abilities so here it is, my first big plan for an installation.

 

Objectives :-

To utilise the space and environs of Iris Brickfield to create a representation of the cultures living in Heaton, in order to allow myself and others a way of visualising the multicultural nature of modern city life, to show just how varied life in these sort of conditions actually is.

 

It's very easy for people to over simplify the people around them, to reduce the world around them, 'to people like me who live here' and 'students' an attitude I see all to often, but there are so many subcultures living here it's just not accurate. I am also very curious myself, as to what other forms of life are just round the corner, different ways of being and of behaviour which are strange and alien to me and part of this project is to increase my understanding of these people and thier lives.

 

Means:-

The tricky bit of course it how to go about doing all this. My intention is to basically go house calling. To take a few questions and go knocking on door and see who will talk to me. Of course this will no doubt include an awful lot of doors slammed in my face and I'm going to have to be prepared for that. So I also intend to take notes of my impressions of these houses. Just a snippet of information about what I can glimpse about the people who prefer not to talk. The most I'll be able to get is general demographic such as age and sex of the person who answered the door, maybe a guess about the affluence of the household. This does of course mean I will have to do a little research into data protection. I'm going to have to find out what information I can present on the website out of the information I gather, I will also have to be very careful that my own biases do not bite me in the ass. I am however putting directly up the list of questions I'll be asking people, and once the questions have been asked and some minimal stastics done on the results, there should be some graphs of the cultural groups in Heaton going up as soon as I can.

 

The representation itself will also be a bit tricky, since I only have acces to a small kiln, so I'll be making many smaller pieces rather than a few larger ones, the space is quite large and also fairly empty, so I'll be aiming to make the pieces to fit around the periphery and to have a minimal impact on the area itself, placing piece at the edges of paths, hidden in bushes and in out of the way places, as though a subtle, extra dimension to the place is revealed to careful observers. I have so far scouted out more than thirty potential sites that pieces can go, small out of the way locations, the photos can be seen here, I've also taken some panoramic shots of the area so anyone not familiar with the area can see what it is like. The pieces themselves will be fantastical in nature adding an extra touch of otherworldliness to an otherwise ordinary place. I have a few ideas for representations of certain subcultures, but I've yet to do any sketches, once they're done I'll scan them in and show them here.

And heres the link to the photoset ready for me to print out at the Library