Earlier this year I came across a really excellent set of images by an art student at Edinburgh College of Art (part of the University of Edinburgh). I traced them back to the artist's Tumblr, and here they are:
"another good art day today, I took out the most clunky, archaic projector from my university media shop and projected confessions around my house. things I wouldn’t and couldn’t say to my parents. this was perhaps the most cathartic thing I have done, I also did it whilst my parents were in the house, so I felt sorta James Bond as I was doing it" |
In the caption, the artist talks about how they projected all these confessions around their own home, whilst their parents were still in the house. I was really drawn by these images, both by the aesthetic quality of them and by the subject itself, and it inspired me to explore the idea of displaying people's confessions in unexpected places. So I did!
From the off, I wanted the confessions to be from other people. I thought it would make for a more interesting project if I was working with other people's words, so I put links to my website on my social media with encouragments to confess something. I thought it would be cathartic for other people to confess something knowing it would be totally anonymous.
From the off, I wanted the confessions to be from other people. I thought it would make for a more interesting project if I was working with other people's words, so I put links to my website on my social media with encouragments to confess something. I thought it would be cathartic for other people to confess something knowing it would be totally anonymous.
An anonymous confession on my website. The letters are laser cut out of MDF, then I drilled two holes in each letter. The drilling took a really long time and I snapped two bits doing it, after which I was informed that I could have just laser the holes out of the letters in the first place. I was annoyed. Above is the text installed in my bedroom, right is the text installed in the toilet of The Island, a gallery in Bristol, during an exhibition I was part of. |
Now, the trouble with art is that nothing is ever really original; there are always allusions to and influences by other artists and other pieces. With this project, I was actively inspired by the projected confession images above, but as I've carried on with it I've come across and been told of projects that have been going on for years that are really similar. I like to imagine that this means I'm obviously really in tune with the artistic world. In any case, I am one of many people to explore the idea of displaying anonymous confessions in public places. One idea I'd really like to try was done by Candy Chang. Chang is responsible for multiple really amazing public art projects like Before I Die, a project that encourages people to write down something they wanted to get done while they still have time. I came across her confessions piece on Tumblr, where it was an uncredited series of images from a gallery in LA in 2012.
Chang set up these confession booths, (inspired by confessionals in Catholic churches), in which members of the public could write confessions on wooden placards. The placards were then hung up all around the gallery in a manner similar to a Shinto custom in Japan, where people write wishes and messages on wooden plaques and hang them up on shrines. These confession booths were also installed in Greece for a time in 2006, but in public, not a gallery setting.
What I'm basically getting at with all of this is that I want to explore the idea of displaying people's confessions. If you've managed to read all the way to here and you'd like to get involved, you can confess on my work website, here.