A Personal World. 1993.

As students in the Fine Art section of the one year BTEC Diploma in Foundation Studies in Art and Design, at The West Cheshire College in Blacon, we were each given an A4 piece of paper that had a one line project title, in small print, in the middle of the paper, ‘A Personal World’ and we each had about two weeks to complete our work based on that title. So for this project I interpreted it as, ‘My Personal World’. On that piece of paper I listed anything to do with or about me, family pets, interests, family names, jobs, places visited, family homes, fairgrounds, family cars, clothing, favourite colour, sports and so on. The West Cheshire College, was located in a former high school and the gym was turned into the Fine Art area. So I was allocated a space at the far end of the gym located by an out of use radiator. I thought I could use the radiator as a starting point for an installation of a domestic setting, for ‘My’ personal world. The radiator became a focal point for my installation to revolve around, just as in a house where the fire place, the hearth, the mantle piece are all focal points for domesticity.

I started by covering the radiator with thick paper, but leaving a space for the vent to be left clear. I found two chairs, covered them in paper, made some paper rugs and used the pattern of the vents to make a similar pattern on those rugs. I made a plaster sculpture and a paper cat named Kedar. I used blue, my favourite colour, extensively. I made some small family portraits for the mantle piece which contrasted with several large pictures made on brown paper relating to me, my interests and my family, family cars, family furniture, trains, and badminton. I made some sculptures using bike inner tubes relating to cycling. I wanted the whole thing to reflect some aspects about me, playfulness, liveliness, humorous, seriousness.

At the end of the project I had myself photographed a few times in my installation. I also staged a couple of scenes based on American artist Edward Hopper’s work of alienation, by posing a student friend, Lee Vasquez-Rivera, sitting reading a newspaper and with one of the female Fine Art tutors standing looking away from him and then in the other scene, with Lee still reading the newspaper, the tutor also standing but looking beyond him. I took a photograph of each scene.

Out of this project came ideas for three pictures, ‘My Room’, ‘Shakey, Slip Sliding Family’ and ‘My Family and Cars’. Please see their back stories.