Above are the final images of the degree project installation for the Endangered Plant Index. This installation took a lot of work and calculations to get right – including having to take a lot of the drawings and labels off the wall, in order to make sure that everything was aligned and fitted straight on the wall. Now that everything is up and straight however, I am really pleased with how the installation looks in the space – I think it does what I had always wanted my install to do, to be organised and look archival (aided by the method of hanging the work, which is with washi tape and brass nails), whilst also relating back to Susan Hiller’s works Monument (1980-81) and From the freud Museum (1991-96), in the way that I have used but also disrupted the grid through my utilisation of the gaps in where there are no drawings.
I did experiment with adding blank sheets of paper into the spaces, and although it made the space look more full, I didn’t feel that it carried the same weight and was as clear that these plants are missing because they are critically endangered, very fragile and disappearing from the wild all the while, so I therefore have decided to stick with my original plan to have the spaces where the labels are.
I also finished installing my Endangered Plant Index Rewilding Project yesterday, which is an installation that I am very proud of – but for different reasons than the Endangered Plant Index. The Rewilidng Project represents my biggest step away from my artistic comfort zone – creating entirely conceptual and action-based artworks, that will eventually involve audience participation as well. My installation reflects this, I feel, in the fact that it is set up to look as though there was a person working there who has just stepped out – but will be back any minute – giving the work a feeling of vitality and life that I feel that ‘traditional’ works and even the Endangered Plant Index doesn’t have.
The installation of this work went pretty much as I had planned it to, as I followed the plan that I created yesterday, and made sure that everything adhered to it – which meant that the space does, I feel, look authentic and successful. The addition of the chair, and my last minute placement of the wildflower book open on one of the flowers that I will be planting in the rewilding not only helps to create the atmosphere that someone was working there very recently, but also just completes the installation, and makes it feel real and engaging.
Overall, I am very pleased with both installations. I feel that possibly, had there been more time between the crit and the hand in date, I could have experimented with the addition of the blank pages on the Endangered Plant Index installation more, but I am nonetheless pleased and proud of what I have managed to achieve, and I believe that it shows my work off effectively and in an interesting and engaging way.
