For #Five2Watch this week we've selected five artists who have made inflatable artworks: Steve Messam, Yoke, Chester Tenneson, Joseph Cotgrave and Claire Barber.
Watched, 2019
Watched is a series of temporary works in disused and historic architecture in the landscape around Hanstholm, Denmark. The various buildings, originally for watching and waiting are now watched over as visual accents in the landscape and identifiers of moments in history and time.
Watched temporarily transforms these unremarkable artefacts with a playful use of colour and form where the gaze is altered and their role in the wider landscape is elevated for a short time, and then gone.
The three main locations are very temporary and will be documented with photography. Large format prints - one of each location - are to be presented at the exhibition. The photographic documentation capturing a slice of time - a fragment of the narrative of the architecture in the landscape.
Keep Boat Forward of Cill Marker, 2018
Fabric inflatables with hand sewn reverse appliqué detail.
From solo exhibition 'Undercurrent' at The Art House, Wakefield, 2019
More, more, more (when heaven waits), 2019
Artist's own shoes and inflatable walking sticks (when heaven waits assembly)
Inflatable, 2015
Fan, polythene dust sheet, masking tap and spray-paints. Part of my degree show installation of varying objects.
Ventilation Dress II, 2016
‘Ventilation Dress II’ consists of digitally printed vinyl inflatable created as part of ‘Da Vinci Engineered: From Renaissance mechanics to contemporary art’ exhibition, presenting the opportunity to rethink my practice in relation to engineering and Leonardo Da Vinci.
‘Ventilation Dress II’ is a rework of an inflatable sculpture originally created in collaboration with Steve Swindell’s at Snibston Discovery Museum in Coalville, Leicestershire based on an auxiliary ventilation fan installed at Snibston coalmining village in in 1976, embellished with the dress design of the 1972 National Coal Queen. In 1976, noise abatement regulations lead to the replacement of the ventilation fan at Snibston colliery. The new “Silent Fan” was the national prototype for an engineered solution to contain the motor noise within a ventilation unit. While the silent fan was being fitted at Snibston colliery the 1972 National Coal Queen Margaret Dominiak was wearing a new blue floral dress at the National Coal Mining Reunion in 1976 made of light translucent fabric.
For ‘Ventilation Dress II’ the blue floral dress and the silent fan act as a plinth to each other. Both elements are borne from the concept of inducing fresh air into miner’s lives. In this context fresh air is conceived as a vital source for a miners’ well-being be it literally a flow of air used in mining underground as much as the wearing of a blue floral dress above ground that signatures the celebration of a community bound together by a distinct shared identity.
Published 15 July 2021