In the first week of April 2019, we were given the opportunity to use the space within the warehouse, in order to enable us to be more creative and to make work which could support the project for PHOT202 – Manifesto.
Initially when walking into this space I was unsure what I wanted to do with this space in order to progress with my project. After having a group discussion with Mohini, I decided I wanted to use the wall at the back of the space, a wall which had quite a large crack in it, this had immediately given me the idea to use the crack to my advantage. I wanted to highlight the cracks in the wall and so initially tried using charcoal in order to go over the lines, however, this did not work very well and was not defining the lines as clearly as I had hoped.
I then decided to take a trip to the craft shop for inspiration; it was there that I decided that I wanted to use wall and whilst I was there, I found double sided tape, which would be used to stick the wool to the wall. I was not able to find wool in this particular shop and so I went on to Poundland where I was able to purchase three balls of wool for the price of two of them. When arriving back at the warehouse I was then able to begin highlighting the lines on the wall, cutting bits of tape, sticking it to the wall and slowly placing the wool over the top of it.
Once this was finished, I then began thinking about the placement of the images that I had taken for this project and placed them on the wall almost like as if the crack had become one big jigsaw piece. Whilst at home I searched around for other items that could add to my project and came across the diary that I kept when I was experiencing a stage of mental health illness. I decided to take parts of some of the things that I had written during this time and print them on acetate which would then be displayed on the wall. I also decided to add the labels on the wall. The words/phrases that are written on them have been taken from a survey that I created earlier in the project which asked students to talk about their experience with mental health illness.
Overall, I was very happy with the outcome of my work and felt that this installation clearly displayed the thoughts and feelings that I was trying to bring across to my audience.
