I have been thinking of doing something involving my hair and a chair ever since my group crit. We spoke about antimacassar’s which people use to cover their chairs in their homes. Even public transport such as aeroplanes and trains have these on to ‘protect from others hair?’ The idea of these, especially on transport I think, is to make the passenger believe their head will stay clean as this cover is in place. When in fact there has probably been many heads already Lent against them, meaning lots of hair is probably already embedded onto them from others. Are we just naive to not believe this? And just want to tell ourselves it is clean, even when we know many hairs are already hidden away on it?
I feel it is the same if not perhaps worse on buses or public transport where these covers aren’t in fact used. How likely is it that these seats are cleaned regularly? Anyone could have sat in that seat and shedded their hair over it … Probably in fact hundreds of people in a day. There is something about that which is quite abject I feel, having your hair against where so many others hairs have been. This is what has inspired me to try an idea out involving a similar idea. A lot of people appear to be disgusted at what I have already done with hair, so what if I made it even more subtle, but obvious enough with this chair. If I were to use it in the degree show I would want people to sit on it, but then once sitting on it they notice the hair or even just as they get close to it. I want it to have this abject feeling I have become so interested in lately; but subtle abject.
I was lucky enough to get an arm chair off of a level 5 student. I just need to carry out this idea. In a tutorial with Jane today we discussed this sofa and how patterned it was. This might mean the viewer is distracted by the sofa and doesn’t notice my work as much as I would want them to, as everything else in my space is so white and this chair really isn’t. It was also mentioned that perhaps people wouldn’t want to sit down on it because it does look like quite an old chair. As much as I quite liked the chair how it is, for me to get the best effect with it for the degree show I think it would be best if it were white so it does fit in with all my other work. Next is the hunt for some white material to cover it! Then I can start experimenting with my hair on it…
While I was searching online about artists who use hair in art I came across an article about how hair was used in the civil war and the Victorian era for making jewellery. This was done for celebrating someones life or mourning them. Hair was also used used to make jewellery and gifts to give to friends and relatives to express their bond and even suggest romance. I think now-a-days if you were to make a gift out of hair people would think you were mad. Soldiers would often carry a watch on a chain made from their loved ones hair. This was to give them something to be close to them all the while. Hair was also ground down and used as paint. Apparently if you were to make hair jewellery you had to have straight hair, it had to be cut; not fallen and, it couldn’t be tangled. Not sure what they would think of my work.
I appear to have become distracted at what I was first searching for however I find this really intriguing. It proves that even back in those days hair was seen as a close to bond to whoevers that hair was. Although it was used in a much neater, aesthetical wasy to make ‘nice’ things, rather than to disgust people which is what I am doing with my hair.
I have also just found out there is actually a hair museum in America! ‘Leila’s Hair Museum’. There are 159 wreaths and over 2,000 pieces of jewellery containing/made of human hair dating before 1900. I find this fascinating in itself that there is actually a museum for hair, and that something so abject can be made to look that beautiful.
Often hair is kept from a child’s first haircut or when someone cuts long hair, short. Nothing is really ever done with this hair, just preserved to look back on, but once this hair is made into something it appears to become abject. I find hair in the plughole or in food a horrible thought, but hair falls out all of the time and can be used to make some really interesting pieces.
I have just found this artist online who uses hair in her work. It’s so abject; yet so fascinating at the same time.
Andrienne Antonson. She uses her hair to give new life to old objects and transform them. She mentions how it gives her patience spending time doing the repetitive action of sewing with it. I feel all her work has some really interesting elements. I especially like the gloves. I think this is due to the hair not appearing to be neat, it seems quite fragile and matted yet really interesting how it holds this glove shape so well.
I was sat in my space yesterday having a break from work and realised how much of my work is actually waste material. Then started thinking what am I going to do with all the wipes and cotton wool which I have collected earlier on which aren’t on my boards or aren’t made into something. I started thinking about how could I display them in my degree show without taking over too much of space overloading it with my collections, if I were to use them.
I started thinking about some artists I have looked at this year, and went back to Dieter Roth. I thought about how he displayed his collections away in files with only a few displayed on view in clear plastic lit by a lamp. I wondered if it would work if I were to file away my collections in ring binders for example?
Therefore I took a trip into town and bought one hundred plastic wallets and three white ring binders for which I would use to display these objects in. I came back and began my filing. I ended up using all one hundred of these plastic wallets for my wipes so only managed to do one folder until I go back to town to get more for my other collections.
While I was separating my wipes into each individual wallet I noticed how on some wipes my eyelashes had obviously fallen whilst i was taking my make-up off for those particular days. My first instinct was to remove them from the wipe and add them to my eyelash collection, then I thought surely removing my eyelashes from these wipes will take away the abject feeling when looking through the folder and finding an eyelash and wondering why it’s there? Therefore I decided to leave them on, once I had noticed one I kept noticing them throughout my folder. I also noticed there are a few eyelashes just hanging off my dress too. There is something I really like about this. Like a secret surprise for the viewer…
Theses are some photos of a few days of my daily collections. I feel they look better as a group, so hopefully as I keep collecting and creating these boards they will really work together in harmony. I still have the dates written on the wall at the moment, but I plan to write the dates on the boards. I wasn’t too sure whether to or not at first but a tutorial with Jane helped me realised that the dates are actually quite important with these pieces. Without the dates it is still a collection of daily items discarded from me, but will the viewer realise this without the dates?
I realised how fragile these boards are going to be once I accidentally caught one of my contacts and it flicked off the board taking the paint with it. So I will have to be careful when handling them for the degree show when I move all my stuff to my space, as I don’t want to damage them.
