my town evaluation

May 27, 2010 Zoe Pease

I have completed the project my town. I based my project on the bad things in my town, Chatham. Being the bad people, e.g. the prostitutes, druggies and the homeless. I then researched artists, had and developed ideas and designed them, planned and made an outcome then advertised and displayed it at the Brook Theatre in Chatham town centre in an art exhibition.

            I choose to focus on the bad side of Chatham because our target audience was young people mainly between the ages of 14 and 19 years of age. In my opinion when your in a place for quite a while or grow up in a pace you get used to your surroundings and don’t notice or automatically block things out. I wanted o re-highlight some of the bad things, bring some of the less ‘nice’ people that are in Chatham and make people be aware of the dangerous of them and let them know that these people actually are around even if they don’t realise it.

            I started off the project by looking at some history in and around Chatham such as Chatham historic Dockyard, Fort Amherst, clubs and festivals. This is where my initial idea of costumes came from. As the project was going to be displayed at the brook theatre I thought looking at costumes would be a good idea. Carnival and festival costumes have always been an interest to me because they are so big and colourful and different. I visited Venice once and saw Viennese masks, there is a festival in Venice where the masks and beautiful costumes are worn. In theatres masks are also worn, so this is where my initial idea of a mask came from.

             The mask would show how I see people in Chatham to be like, basically, drugged, worn down and tired looking. I don’t particularly like Chatham; I find it a dirty skanky area. Although I liked the idea of making a mask it would really put the message of wanted across, that although it may seem nice in your eyes everywhere has its faults.

            I moved my ideas into the area of costumes and looked at artists who’ve used fashion to have an effect on the audience. This is where I came across Caroline Castiglano who gave me the original idea of having a layered dress. I looked at other artists including Simon Williamson, Emie Otis and Silvo Schoisswohl and combining all these and others I had more ideas and developed some further creating a great idea of making a dress to represent prostitutes in Chatham but also Homeless. I wasn’t going to show each one individually I wanted to show both combined because people get involved in prostitution because they don’t want to be made homeless but get made homeless when there found to be involved in prostitution.

            I showed m ideas in my journal and decided I would make both a mask and a dress to represent all three major things in my eyes in Chatham. I looked at what effects drugs have on people. I wanted to also look more into the prostitution for inspiration on my dress but due to it being illegal to take photos of people without permission, and I highly doubted a prossie would allow me to photograph her, I chose to create my own prossies. Barbie prossies. I had three all together, Alana, Destiny and Hope and photographed them in places and poses I thought would suit.

             I continued to look at more artists such as Beth Schaefer and Shirn Franklin and developed my ideas further until I had my final ideas planned.

             My final idea was a salt dough mask to represent druggies because it’s their eyes that have the most effect and an abstract dress to represent the homeless and prossies in and around Chatham that I know are there because I’ve seen them myself. I collected materials I may use and tried out a variety of techniques.

             I made my final outcome and although I thought I could of done a lot better if I hadn’t of rushed them I thought they was ok.

            Then came the exhibition which needed to be advertised. As this exhibition was being held by the entire class we had discussions on whether we would work as a group to advertise it or all do it individually. As we have planned and exhibited work together before we decided it would probably be easier and quicker to all work individually as we would have to make something everyone was happy with as this was time consuming and we didn’t have a lot of it.

I created bright and attractive posters to display and invitations to send out, the exhibition was also advertised on twitter and face book so the word about it got around. There were also other schools and colleges exhibiting at the brook so as well as our posters and invitations they also had theirs. I also made comment cards and info sheets for the exhibition so that the audience could read about my work if I was able to talk to them. The comment cards were there so people who viewed my work could leave me feedback on what they personally thought about it. I thought that doing this proved beneficial as I received quiet a few comments and a lot of people said that my work highlighted points that yes they didn’t realise or chose to ignore where there.

            We set up the room with lights and taped round our work to tidy it up a bit and I think that the room looked great. The exhibition was a great successes and I thoroughly enjoyed it and would do it again

            Overall I feel this project was a success and the exhibition went well.

Entry Filed under: My town Brook project

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