From its inception, the architecture of the 221A Artist Run Centre relates back to its initial design as a commercial shop. The shops’ store front focused on encouraging the passing public to stop and take in all the product. The substantial front windows revealed the stores content while inviting viewers to consider their possibilities, eliciting consumer desires. As a result, the public was prompted to imagine what they may want from the inventory and how they might interact with those enticing objects on display.
Utilizing these same windows, the buildings current manifestation as a project space became an opportunity to position my work relative to the viewer standing outside. Possibly persuading the passersby to consider how they may relate with the objects placed on the other side of the window. While inside the project space, the empty space around the work encourages the viewers to feel exposed when they consider the function of the works. This exposure became particularly intriguing to me as it relates to my ideas that surround public hygiene and sanitary wear. In this case specifically, the awareness of social awkwardness and vulnerabilities when interacting in public sanitary situations. Placing these hygienic objects (urinals or bidets) in proximity to the display windows, allowed me to investigate my observations of public hygiene. Placement of the sanitary wear gently implicates those on both sides of the glass, because they become aware of themselves in the space the objects occupy and through the window. Such a double view is not possivble within the confines of contemporary bathroom decorum. A typically private act would then be placed in the public eye, implicating the awkward discomfort that may exist if acts of hygiene were positioned in a public viewing space. By removing the partitions of the bathroom stall, one is left to consider their own somatic and cerebral vulnerability.
The sanitary wear employed in this exhibition were a stand in for the body rousing thoughts of vulnerability, as we consider their function. These cool white ceramic objects highlight the meeting point between body and the plumbing system, hinting at the access point of both.
One such arrangement in the exhibition included a female urinal placed in front of one window and several feet away from the internal walls. The potential user would be faced with thoughts of howtheir body and the use of such an object might make them feel in such an exposed setting. Another example of the work includes two connected bidets facing each other and placed in front of a window. Multiple viewers might start to imagine the discomfort of a shared experience during this normally solitary moment.
These porcelain fixtures also examine how architecture and the simple plumbing system function as an extension of our own bodies, as we rely on plumbing for everything from sustenance to hygiene. Plumbing systems exist within and beyond the wall and are mapped through blueprints. Although the point of these drawings is to provide technical information, they begin to reference a decorative pattern relating to systemic symbiosis and design.
These blueprints or drawings, fused onto large porcelain tiles, bring the system plans directly to the walls they are describing, and at the same time create a decorative surface for the project space. The drawings reference the input and drainage diagram indicative of plumbing and its function. Where the sanitary wear designates our somatic connection to plumbing, the drawings reference these objects and map the imagined plumbing systems behind the walls.
This exhibition remains part of an on going project exploring the vulnerability we experience in public spaces that invite us to relax ourselves, while maintaining our awareness. The project further investigates the relationships between the mundane industrial plumbing system and internal human plumbing. In these works I have observed our relationship to public hygiene through the proxies of; the viewer inside and outside the storefront, the awkwardness of object placement and the wall tiles that serve as both speculative illustration and decoration of the plumbing system within this exhibition.
Jennifer Woodin