Out of all the projects I have worked on this term, the collaborative installation was the most intense, yet most rewarding, as it gave me a chance to project manage and problem solve on a daily basis. 

Initially my partner and I wanted to build a red light district in the foyer of uni, however it was eventually decided that it probably wasn't a good idea, (but we DID almost convince everyone that it was)

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SO we decided to raise to pay tribute to Hartlepools' thriving older community.  

(it's amazing how easily a brothel becomes a granny flat) 

SO the concept was that we would construct a a living room in  the foyer, and have these two dimensional glamorous old women partying away, showing the passing younger generation how it was done. 

 (above, initial concept sketches and finished wired granny)

Although the concept worked really well, the set filled an otherwise pretty unassuming space, and the use of lower lighting and lamps helped create a sense of intimacy for the viewer of our two dimensional characters.

Over all construction was very straight forward, we painted them on to heavy card, and as the limbs, heads and bodies were constructed separately it meant we could fully collaborate, mixing things up, Devon's bodies on my heads and vice versa...

 
The only issue we had to overcome was the final construction, we could not get the limbs to remain stuck  to the paper paper bodies.

 We tried glue and gaffer tape to no success, although we very much enjoyed the irony of these seemingly delicate old women, being held together with industrial strength adhesive.

At the ninth hour, I resorted to plan G
(we had truly exhausted plans A,B,C,D,E and F )
And used pegs..

 as modeled here by Jamie. We have a very unorthodox degree.

They held the women successfully and we heaved a massive sigh of relief.

Over all  this project has taught me to never leave the overall mechanics and construction of an exhibition till the end of the project. it should have been an integral part of the research and experimentation alongside the character designs.

  

Armén Rotch

"Tempered spaces of intimacy"

When I Encountered Armén Rotch of the work for the first time in 1989, I felt That I was Already familiar with the taste Time of the Old arid universe, Composed of fractures and faults, rocks and decomposed sediment, immanent glows and deep colors. It was a taste of stone and rock, an odor of burned earth, All which incrusts Itself in thoughts That Could Radically changing meaning. In this space of silence telluric Heard introspective traces of a singular proximity Were ble to visually lead me to the very limits of icts memory. This memory was fleeting, a palimpsest of stealthy reminiscences, a landscape of deep year elsewhere so close That It steals away from itself ... Armén Rotch is above all a solitary Being. He Has constructed himself on the sidelines of the dominant ideologies Time of the Old period, in the Time of the Old unchanging silent successive studios. He started in Armenia, Where Were His first canvases EXHIBITED in 1978 (then under the name of Armén Hadjian) with the "Black Square" group, then in the 1980s with the avant-gardists of the "third stage" of All which he was one of the founders, taking share in the "First Gathering of USSR Avant-gardists" in Narva, Estonia, in 1988, the exhibition "The Vanguard of Armenia in Paris" in 1989 and "the third floor in Copenhagen" in 1990. He then Moved to France in the early 1990s, he Where Would Be Represented by the Basmadjian gallery in Paris. The works presented here on the occasion of the exhibition Devoted to him at the Art Space and Freedom Charenton Have Their roots in a series Begun in the 1990s. In em, Rotch explored the pictorial processes Specific to the representation of the temporal dimension on the picture. Primal gestures repeated indefinitely. Vibrations emerging from solid areas of color and brushstrokes That merge into one and spurn Reviews another. Series of temporal sequences Within All which fixed flat punctuate space of time in motion. The gestural energy here is divided into a multitude of moments That retroactive dissect Clearly defined space by time. Lines and runs, marks and scratches, then Become so many dimensions as possible in All which reminiscences and contradictions, certainties and hesitations, are found. The pictorial field That Is Transformed into a series of sporadic seizures, a network of hesitations with irregular rhythms, the space Induces Malthus tempered to rediscover icts own Chronography.  

Source

Images of a highly tattooed elderly woman. 




Rejecting the stereotypes of old age wonderfully. 

Cooking on gas! 

Jacques: All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the canon's mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

(As You Like It, 2. 7. 139-167)

Throwing some ideas around.. 

Awesome old women. 

Researching the technical aging process....