Monday, October 21, 2013

Lucy Pullen | Interval for Halifax






There were many highlights of the Nocturne festival in Halifax last weekend, but one of my favorites was Lucy Pullen's Interval for Halifax, which managed to be both discreet and a crowd-pleaser. A series of seven children's swings were installed throughout the city, hanging from trees and posts and appearing as rudimentary play things. But they were sheathed in reflective Scotchlite, so when the inevitable photo-documentation occurred (as culture is increasingly reduced to background imagery for Facebook and Instagram selfies) the flash illuminates the swing. The effect is not noticeable in person, but when reviewing the photographs the swings appear ghostly and glowing, as if an aura had been captured.

Above: an audience member tries it out as her friends take pictures, and Nocturne curator Eleanor King swings.

For more information, visit the Nocturne site, here.

The somewhat tenuous link to artists' books and multiples, is that Pullen used the same material about a decade ago for a Bookcover published by Art Metropole. The buyer sent in the dimensions of a favorite book and Pullen produced a dustjacket made of the reflective material, which would sit dormant on your bookshelf, activated only by a flash photograph.

For more information, visit Art Metropole, here.





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