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…
