WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

​

Mixed media installation: metal frame, low pressure sodium light, halogen, re-cast window glass

 

Organs on show in a mock-scientific display case in a light that deceives the eye invited the observer for a journey into inner space. The raw material for the organs was the recycled glass crushed during the work Longing for the ocean, from which also came glass used to make the rocket in Red Shift.

 

As important as the organs and the box-frame that displayed them was the low pressure sodium light. It is a discarded form of street lighting. It created a monochrome room where it is impossible to read the colours; everything was black and yellow except for a small part of the frame, lit by a tiny halogen bulb that revealed the frame’s actual colour was red. The observer could also recognize that perception was being distorted by the change in colour of skin and clothing.

 

This particular light filtered away the natural sense of how to understand colours. This gave the viewer little information with which to create an image and only misleading information. The observer thus became part of the piece as imagination had to work overtime to fill in the colours.