My installation

In my piece I wish to use a play on words with 'concrete poetry', using it to show our views of the city of Portsmouth. It could be in the shape of the Portsmouth skyline or perhaps a more abstract version of some of the tourist spots in Portsmouth like the spinnaker tower or the dockyards. As part of my installation I will take all of the pieces of concrete poetry that people created earlier in the process and draw them onto the walls (concrete) of the city. Because I will obviously not be allowed to draw directly onto the walls of the Round Tower, we decided that sticky backed plastic on the walls would create a similar effect.

Some examples of this a created in the weeks running up to the event:

I want my installation to play with the ‘audience’s’ perception of performance. I won’t interact with them, in fact, I might not even speak. I won’t be putting on a show for their enjoyment. I am just there in the space, drawing my concrete poetry; almost oblivious to people's stares. I also want to experiment with the idea of individuality, authenticity and identity. When an artist paints a picture, they have a distinctive style which is recognisable. I want to play with that idea by being an artist that takes on other people’s styles. In one of the sessions I got everyone to write their own piece of concrete poetry and in my installation I hope to try and recreate as many of these pieces as possible, copying them as best I can. I will appear to be just drawing the landscape or things that are around like a normal artist but when the audience look closer they will see that I’m actually creating artwork with varying styles.

Another area I need to consider is what costume I should wear. To work out whether my piece will be more effective if I am just in normal clothes or whether I should dress as a 'French artist' or perhaps 'graffiti artist'. This would be to look at people's view of an artist. I will be drawing on the 'wall' in quite a delicate way with pens, so to be dressed as a 'graffiti artist', for example, would invert what you would expect to see.