During the pandemic, we have been forced to think about how we exhibit our work in the absence of access to a physical gallery space. How do we reach and connect with our audience? When I first started the ‘aluminium can’ project I was inspired by a tatty torn poster on a retaining wall, put up by the council, asking residents to ‘Share your stories of Newham’. The found object comes with its own allegories; the aluminium cans that I collected in Newham contain the stories of the people that live here. Having transformed the cans, by cutting them up, corroding them and stitching them together with wire I decided to exhibit them publicly – to re-present the aluminium cans and to share the stories held within them back in the community. The next stage on my journey of public art would be to invite the viewer to participant, or at least take a piece of the work home with them, for it to have existed in a time and place as a whole and document it as it gets dismantled through photography and film – the performance being as one with the physical art. The restrictions of the pandemic have forced me to operate outside of my comfort zone and to push the boundaries of how I will exhibit my work both now and in the future.
The ‘quilt’ looks like it’s been blown in the wind and has just landed, like a scrap of rubbish, onto railings, bushes and trees. It is only on closer inspection that the viewer notices the detail of each individual piece of aluminium cans stitched together. The work disrupts the space, it is accessible to everyone, not just to those who choose to visit the gallery, in a small part, I hope it challenges the relevance of the institution. It has definitely opened my eyes to new opportunities. Post-Covid, I would probably leave the work in situ for longer, with a QR code linking to my website and sit and observe.
To read more about this project visit: https://joanneforrest.org/aluminium-cans-progress/