One year bridging the gap

'One year bridging the gap' was a student run exhibition curated by Helen Leary. The exhibition aimed to talk about global issues and widen the audiences knowledge of the damage being done and the changes we need to make to stop climate change. Although there was an overall objective for the show each of the artists had very different approaches and spoke about different issues. 

In the centre of the exhibition there was a rail containing a variety of clothing which turned out to be a cloths swap. I like this idea of interacting with the audience and spread the message of how negative buying new cloths all the time can be and taking that step to swap and work with others to reduce this. 

Another artist Gemma Strachan used clothing in her work as she transferred images onto jeans. The piece speaks about the true cost of "cheap jeans" as she narrates the life of a Cambodian sweatshop worker and how they have been exploited for our inexpensive clothing, showing the impact on people around the world as well as the impact on the environment. I think how Gemma displayed this work, using the jeans to show this story was  extremely effective. Showing a clear meaning that most could relate to and change people's perspective. 

I really enjoyed the work of Clay Hackman who created a short video in the style of an amateur journalists interview. The video showed Clay being interviewed as 'the artist who wants to destroy the worldv and throughout the video Clay had a great use of sarcastic humour and even though it was funny to watch the video really did help others find a deeper understanding of what changes they can make to reduce their carbon footprint. Here is the YouTube link to Clay's video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPIGpdm5zCg&t=2s

Out of everyone's work I probably found Kyle Evans' work most useful in relation with my own practice. As I try to use only recycled and found objects and I found Kyle uses all found materials. As he up-cycles plastic waste to create a sculptural representation of what our use of plastic is doing to to the world. In this piece he uses plastic bags, bottle tops and plastic bottles to create poisoness weeds presenting the catalytic growing plastic crisis. Seeing Kyle's work has been extremely helpful as I have a lot of materials that I've just been collecting and haven't figured out what to do with them yet and seeing Kyle's work has helped me think of new ways of manipulating and using these in my work.