2005/ Installation with shoes, astroturf, and video projections | Exhibited at Citizens, Pitzhanger Manor House, London (2005); The City Gallery, Leicester (2005); Oriel Davies Gallery, Wales (2005); Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast; (2005).
Lost New Shoes confronts the notion of the ‘citizen’ by looking at the absence or void where a person may be. One way of looking at a pair of shoes (just shoes) is to regard them as hollow objects from which someone has withdrawn themselves. Used and thrown away shoes, like used-up people, are hollowed out by the absence of meaningful usage. One is shorn with citizenship as one is with shoes. And often the fit is much too tight for comfort.
Measurements index the effort involved in making bodies count. Bodies, like shoes are examined if they measure up to the claims that can be made about them and often, they are found wanting. Sometimes, as people disappear, shoes are the only things left standing. Shoes leave bodies. Bodies leave shoes.
‘Lost New Shoes’ looks at shoes that went astray in search of places that were considered safe to walk in. Shoes that confronted new terrain that approached rest but didn’t quite get there, that stopped where maps and walls made them stand still. We are looking at the emptiness in them that asks to be filled with a claim to just be. The images that make up this installation are only a record of an itinerary in search of somewhere to stand.
