Now that I have finished work on my changelings I'm thinking about how to present them. I'd like to see them laid out on a huge table or a low plinth, as opposed to hanging on a wall, and am trying to work out in my head what difference that might make. Would there be less distance between the viewer and the work? Might the emotional impact be stronger if one were to gaze down on them as if on real clothes in a shop? Alternatively, if I wanted to have them on the wall, I'd like each piece to have its own specially shaped coat-hanger (can't afford to have these made, alas).
I have been looking back over the work I've made these last few years, the shoes made from tissue paper, crocheted dresses, etc. and found that while my concerns are consistent my shapes have become free-er and maybe subtler too. They imagine bodies that buckle under the strain of difference, and draw their lifeblood from it, but disarm with their simple, diminutive and absurd shapes, with a combination of pathos, pain and humour.
7 comments:
happy birthday, Marjojo! you are a gift to us :). yesterday i received your postcard just as i was about to write to you! it's like it's my birthday. happy lucky me :D.
oh Changeling 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, i love you guys. this image here so does not do you guys justice...
so wow, Marjojo, it did not even occurred to me that they would be viewed any other way than on the wall. hard for me to imagine looking down on them and not be able to stand back and take in all of them at once. would they not seem more one dimension laid down? i'll be very curious how you'll decide to present them. i so would love to see the hangers you have in mind for them if you decide to hang them on the wall. hey you should have an art donation fund on your blog!
oh i wish i could be there to celebrate with you and the Changelings. why does each of them feel so right just the way they are?? the colors, the stitches, the precise order of each one...stories they tell me...
wishing you a wonderful happy birthday full like your golden Changeling, Marjojo :).
Thank you, Mien! :)
I wished I could try out how best to place the changelings, but no room here, alas. The laying out-idea is partly influenced by my uncertainty about how they can hold their distinctive shapes when hung on the wall. The coat-hanger idea came to me while I was writing the post, it could work really well: I imagine a set of seven beautifully formed, minimal metal hangers, yes, I'd love that, maybe I should play the lottery...
I can imagine each changeling in a separate cot nursery fashion or is that too obvious?
I like the idea of looking down at them or maybe up at them - something about memory and looking differently!
though i love your little hangers, too, it seems emotive to look down on them, as if somehow into a cradle/crib where i am then looking for imagining the absent "ones
that should inhabit ?
on the wall is as if a sense of future time vs, now. too.
I couldn't imagine them lying in front of me, like Mien said, looking down on them seems not right...
But I could imagine them hanging all around a room, not on the wall but freely moving and pending from the top.
Ich wünsch dir ein Neues Jahr voller Energie und "Posimismus" (ein Wort, das meine 21jährige Tochter - ein Wortverdreher vor dem Herrn- gestern erfunden hat...eine Kombination aus Positiv und Optimismus) :))
.... ich sehe sie zwischen zwei hauchdünnen plexiglasscheiben, leicht gepresst, die plexiglasform vielleicht sogar noch der objektform folgend, schwebend im raum verteilt, so das man sie von allen seiten auf augenhöhe sehen kann...
eine schöne, berührende arbeit die 7!
herzlichen glückwunsch auch von mir, julia
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