Monday 16 November 2009

ACCESS DENIED by Josie McCall



ACCESS DENIED

This installation was designed as a means by which able bodied visitors could experience some of the confusion and frustration that is a daily part of life to those with mobility impairments.

1 Gravel Path

This alternative 'entrance' across a deep gravel path took one ton of gravel and illustrates the difficulties posed by non-accessible buildings for those with mobility problems.


2 Lift

This 'Lift' is in fact, only the access doors from a working lift, installed to appear as a valid working part of the building, including an illuminated call button. It is in a single storey building, and therefore does not go anywhere. It is to illustrate the frustration for a mobility impaired person when a lift is not working which is required for their access to the other floors of a building.





SCREENING by Josie McCall


SCREENING

This installation included a statement, a display of photographs, a book of photographs with comments from a previously completed questionnair, a pile of questionnaire forms for visitors to complete, and a file of completed questionnaires.

1 Statement


2 Book and display photographs



RAM by Josie McCall


RAM

This installation was created as a transcription of "Guernica" by Picasso.






I selected several iconic images of warfare from the last 100 years which I felt resonated with those presented by Picasso in his major work.




Hiroshima and Nagasaki



The Oklahoma bombing



The use of napalm in Vietnamese villages





The Twin Towers





I printed them as black and white images enlarged to fit 6' x 8' boards. This was to reflect Picasso's use of monochrome, and the newspaper photographs which had inspired him.

I was very interested in the work "La Campagne" by Sophie Ristelhueber in which she placed her photographs mounted on boards leaning against the walls of the exhibition area, as if they had been left there and forgotten. I decided that all images of war, while shocking at the time, are easily superceded or replaced by other more recent images. These too, are soon consigned to the stockrooms of the art galleries, the filing cabinets of the newspaper offices, or the recesses of our memory banks.

"La Campagne" by Sophie Ristelhueber


Scale mock up of the installation showing how the pictures were to be arranged in the space.


I placed the boards standing on the floor, leaning against the white painted walls, of a room which approximated the dimensions of "Guernica" (about 30 feet round the walls and about 10 feet high).

From left of the entrance and to the right around the perimeter of the room the boards were placed as shown:-