AirSpace Gallery - #InTheWindow Exhibition

The Saturday following my mentor meeting I installed my work in the window. The most challenging part of the install was installing the bed of nails upright in the space with their being concerns of both the bed and the window breaking were it to fall. Due to the weight of the nails, if stood upright, the bed naturally wanted to fall forward. We used gallows brackets at the back of the bed which were screwed into the floor and attached to the bed by lining the brackets holes up with one of the bed of nails holes each side and using one of the nails to secure them to each other - with the help of a little epoxy resin. Hanging the mask on the milliner's head was so much simpler in comparison but it did take a little while to get the mask to face in the right direction. We did discuss adding a motor so that the head would spin but the disco mirror ball motor I ordered did not arrive in time. Finally, I placed a single nail beneath the hanging head which I wanted to frame with a painted rectangle that was the same measurements as the bed of nails. Unfortunately, having painted the floor and walls white after the install, the floor was too wet to paint. I marked out the area which needed painting and returned in the morning to finish the install. In the studio, I had used masking tape to delineate the form of the bed of nails with various arrangements of loose nails within to 'sketchbook' ideas for the window but the tape would not have been as visible in the window due to the white walls and floor, so I opted to paint the rectangle instead. I considered doing it in black originally, as there was black paint available in the gallery, but having installed the other work in the window, I began to feel that would be too dark. Instead I chose a flesh tone colour to match the mask above which I think worked well. 

Deinstalling the work, as always, was much quicker. I was a little concerned about getting the bed of nails out of the window space safely, but managed it! 

Within the week, the work will have been seen by passers by as well as the studio holders at the gallery but friends and peers also made special trips to see the work which I appreciated greatly. Seeing the exhibition appear on people's social media was great and was a good way to collate images and feedback. I will also be creating a short online survey to ask for feedback which I can bear in mind for future.

Fellow resident artist Maya said "the hanging head related to this obtuse non-organic form of the bed of nails and reminded you of the human body's potential interaction with the bed of nails" which I had planned, and friend and fellow artist Jon Paul Green said it was one of his favourite window installs to date which was particularly kind but he may be slightly biased! 

The statement for the work is as follows: 

SIDESHOW is an installation featuring sculpture and prop The Bed and wearable art piece The Mask. Historically, the sideshow has provided “a designated and unique space which offered access to the ‘other’” (Pugh, 2020) and whilst operating outside of society has been a site for both societal reflection and continued negotiation regarding the politicised sphere of the body, creating a space in which to confront, and exaggerate. According to Durbach, sideshow performers were in “collaboration with the audience whose spectatorship itself shaped the construct of the performer’s body as aberrant” (Durbach, 2009). By deconstructing the props used in sideshow performances and focusing on and exaggerating the reactive moment where the object meets body, the artist attempts to dissect sideshow and performance through her art practice in which she explores the body as material. The Bed is directly inspired by traditional sideshow stage props. Through the deconstruction and reconstruction of this bed of nails, the artist explores the dichotomy of disempowerment and empowerment for women onstage, as well as notions of objectification and fetishization, and women’s bodies relationship to pain and endurance, in life and as spectacle. The Mask acts as a presence in the absence of the performer. The window itself is the stage.