Monday, 20 January 2025

#279: The Shop Triptych: Shop Window / Shop Floor / Out the back

An installation in three parts that together form a full size replica of a retail unit.  The viewer enters at one end, and is free to roam through the whole installation before leaving at the far end.  

The first part is the shop window.  In it are the highlights of you - all the best things that you would like others to know about you - the things that you think would make people want to get to know you.  

You could position a person or stand outside with the purpose of distributing leaflets to summarise yourself and entice people inside (whether straight away or later).

Inside is the shop floor.  This is similar to the shop window but goes into more depth and shows more about everything that makes up you.  Divided into different areas, or departments, the shelves are filled with items that represent different elements of you whether that be hobbies, interests, personality traits, career and so on.

There are no tills but you could still have a front desk or information point where you could position yourself to answer enquiries, or have a box in which questions could be posted for you to answer later (or a tablet on which questions can be submitted).

The third and final part is everything "out the back".  This consists of the storeroom, office and staff room.  The storeroom and staff room are reached by a corridor that runs from the shop floor to the back door.  

The storeroom is where you keep everything that you would like to stay hidden.  Above the storeroom is an office, from which the viewer can secretly look out at the shop floor and beyond the storeroom, along a corridor.  The office and staff room are designed for you to hide in while either working or resting.  They can be left locked or kept open.

Once they have finished looking around, visitors exit through the back door.

Monday, 13 January 2025

#278: Follow The Doubter’s Path

A picture of a stone path with grass on either side.  On the path are painted the following two phrases: 

Take Care and Thought when making Choices

Always Question until you have found the Right Path



His Dark Materials: Season 3, Episode 3: The Intention Craft (2022) BBC, Released: 18th December 2023. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dgc88r/his-dark-materials-series-3-3-the-intention-craft.

Monday, 6 January 2025

#277: It is always New Year

Oil on canvas.  A view from behind of a naked person walking towards an open door (one of several in a wall).  Through these doors can be seen further doors and more beyond them.



Hessel, Katy (@thegreatwomenartists) (2024b) “As 2025 approaches, I'm thinking about Dorothea Tanning, and in particular her painting "Birthday" (1942 – image 1)...” [Instagram] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DECl8YnILOU/?img_index=1 (Accessed: 26th December 2024).

Tanning, Dorothea (1942) Birthday [Oil on canvas]. Philadelphia Museum of Art. See: https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/93232

Monday, 30 December 2024

Monday, 23 December 2024

#275: Another Christmas Scene

The scene we have been brought up to avoid and not think about: the discomfort, pain and mess of giving birth in a stable.  



Hessel, Katy (2024) The great women's art bulletin: There’s nothing meek or mild about childbirth: why have male artists sanitised the Virgin Mary? Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/dec/20/virgin-mary-sanitised-paula-rego-esther-strauss (Accessed: 20th December 2024).

#274: A Christmas Scene

Create a Christmas scene in your mind: your favourite of all time, perhaps, or a fantasy, or future, you would like to see, a landscape, a city scene, an activity, a food still life, anything or everything you consider to be Christmas, or Christmassy.

Monday, 16 December 2024

#273: Journey and talk with your teenage self

Journey with your teenage self on your shoulder.  


How would they see the world now?  

What would they think of your life?  

What would you say to them?  

Would they listen to you?

What might they say to you?

Would you listen?

What would happen?


Maybe retrace a journey your teenage self often did.


How have things changed?

How do you like the changes? 

How would your teenage self like them?

How did you see the route back then?  

How do you see it now?

Where were you going then?

Where are you going now?


Or reflect on an event from those years.


How did it affect you?

How did it change you?


What would you have said to your teenage self in its aftermath that no one said to you at the time?




Smith, Zadie (2023) The Fall of My Teenage Self. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/27/the-fall-of-my-teen-age-self (Accessed: 23rd November 2023).