Art

[gothick]

Art Shoes
Originally uploaded by gothick_matt.

These shoes are a work of art. No, literally. I went down to the opening night of the British Art Show 2006 this evening. The first piece I came across was in the Arnolfini. It looked a bit like a shoe shop, with many shoes on shelves.

I admired it for a while, and then an attendant asked, "would you like to swap your shoes?"

Turned out that it was an interactive piece, and you could leave your own shoes behind for a while, and take a pair of shoes from the installation to wear.

"Please feel free to walk around the gallery, or even visit different venues around town"

Odd, but quite nice. So I left my Converse All Stars behind, and wandered around in J Random Shoes In My Size for a while, including wandering out to the harbourside and having a pint of Magners cider, and taking a photo of the small chunk of art that I was wearing.

I enjoyed this quite a lot, in fact. A bit of a cliche, I suppose, walking around in someone else's shoes, but hey...

So, for an hour or so, I wore these, and left my own shoes as part of an installation in this year's British Art Show. Cool.

This was Adam Chodzko's installation "M-path", by the way....

Comments

[gothick-matt.livejournal.com]

All the shoes which stock the "shop" at the beginning are numbered and stamped with the name of the artwork, and you only get to borrow those. When it's a pair of swapped shoes on display, they put them a different way around on the shelf, too, so I guess that acts as a "don't lend these ones out" sign to the attendant.

I probably shouldn't mention to a foot phobia sufferer that all the display shoes started off secondhand...

I did worry a little about not getting my shoes back, but hey, if you want to be part of a work of art, I guess you have to take some risks ;-)