Mezzanine Exhibition

Following the exhibition at school I was invited to participate in a flat exhibition. This was a great opportunity and very useful for my experience. As well as getting a chance to show my work to more people I learned something about how to create a work in a short space of time (1 week) and as a result of that I learned the strength of having thorough investigation in a work to fall back on.

As the installation was created to be specific to its space I couldnt recreate it for the exhibition. Instead I took some elements and tried to apply the ideology behind the installation to the new exhibition.

I took the cow as the main focus again but this time the context would be to encourage people to feel closer to him. This time the context would be hinted at but not made so clear.

The cow could not be fixed into the floor like last time so making a plinth was necessary. I tried to make a plinth with a space at the front so that it was an invitation for the viewer to join him on the plinth but instead it made the sculpture look more dynamic as if it were moving or about to move. To remedy this I added footprints to the front as a further prompt. Standing with the cow was a strange thing as he is much shorter than most people and the distance that was forced by the size of the plinth didnt make you feel so much close to as too close to the sculpture. It was now invading your private space.

To create an outer context I wanted to use the existing means of manipulation in galleries (the alcohol) to manipulate people to feel closer to the cow. To do this I made up beer bottle labels which each showed the cow holding signs that had emotionally blackmailing messages:

'he beats me'
'take me with you'
'i heard nothing'
'leave now! its not safe!'

Its still too soon to know exactly how well this piece worked but there are details that I was quite pleased with, for example the fact that the cows fingers covered some of the lettering on the signs made the signs look like they were really being held by the cow. This helped to make the signs appear to be the cows messages and not messages by me being held by the cow.