It's about time I wrote some sort of description of and about 'What the Chamber Maid Saw' – for some reason this task has grown into a monster in my head – not sure why, but can't be bothered to dwell on it – there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason about which tasks 'bother' me and which ones don't.
My particular area of interest is around gender roles in domestic labour, contemporary roles for parents, fantasy roles, exploring private and public identities.
My work often involves a voyeuristic element, as I create environments that reveal traces of inhabitation or human activity. The space and the objects within are cast as witnesses to an event, and the audience is left to imagine their own narrative. Collections of dust, dirt, detritus and bodily emmissions are often gathered as evidence of a life lived, of feelings and strong experiences.
This installation incorporated all of these things. Room 315 in The Grand Hotel revealed the story of the absent female tenant, and was open to a lot of different interpretations by viewers. Visitors booked the room for 20 minutes, and were left uninterupted to poke around in drawers and cupboards. They then checked out and returned the key. The crumbling grandeur of the hotel also deserves a mention as part of the visitor experience.
The drawers in the bedroom each contained a pair of womens knickers with photographs of details of the room stitched into them. Some are funny – a light switch, or a fire exit sign in a gusset. The knickers range from the extremely large and sturdy to the barely there.
The bed was covered in a shiny gold bedspread, with screens embedded in 5 windows, showing videos of close-ups of body parts – perhaps an uncomfortable reminder of the many people who had used this bed.
The hotel TV played a looped video of a woman in a sparkly dress spinning slowly round, arms outstretched, interlaced with footage of washing spinning in a machine – the two images fading in and out of each other.
The sparkly dress re-appeared hanging above the toilet in the en-suite bathroom, which also contained photographs of details of the room, and blurred polaroids of the woman in the sparkly dress in the bathroom.
The wardrobe had lots of empty honey jars and a felt cone dripping honey into an oval dish.
On the desk there was a clear plastic file full of index cards. Each card held a labelled packet containing human debris – hair from the plughole, nail clippings, bogeys – with notes about when where and why they were gathered.
A handmade notebook/diary offered more insights and intrigue.
So – I think you get some idea from that?
