TRAFFIC BARRIER
Plaster
200mm x 100mm
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when making this work I started off by explored the area I resided in, at the time Birmingham, where I lived during my uni years. Although I walked through it on a daily basis I never truly knew the area, so I decided to explore the area surrounding where I lived, making sense of it, giving the public my own impression of this city. Noticing that Birmingham mainly consisted of building work, the city was in an ever changing state different day after day, everyone had their own impression of the city. From this I noticed that with this building work came a variety of objects, in particular traffic barriers and traffic cones. Objects placed temporarily, framing that space and controlling the way we interacted with it and who interacted with it.
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With my work TRAFFIC BARRIER I wanted to
draw attention to the objects which had naturally accumulated over time in a temporary situation, each own individual casting almost a case study of the people in which it resided. In areas with large quantities of offices there were large quantities of coffee cups and painkiller in the barriers.
I chose to display the work as a casting as with this piece I wanted the public to interested in what made up each plaster block. By casting it the objects themselves were obscured and hidden, transforming the everyday into something unusual and new. So rather than something ignored and thrown away they became something to look into, understand, learning of each location and its people by doing so and drawing attention to the temporary in Birmingham by freezing in time the ever-changing city.
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