Published
March 19th, 2010
in
lure |
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Published
March 12th, 2009
in
hands-on thinking, lure |
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| Lure (2009) is a spatial installation using handmade miniature passports, handmade real-size passports, and a claw vending machine. |
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| The installation consists of two coherent parts — the Intro and the Main part. The Intro is a long line of colourful miniature passports that is composed along the exhibition space, analogous to Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breadcrumbs leading back home. Each of the miniature passports is positioned vertically, with pages open, so the audience can see the cover and the inside sequentially as they are walking pass a horizontal line of miniature passports. When they are attached to the floor and the audience is standing directly above the trail looking down, and when they are attached to a frontal wall, the visual form that the audience sees resembles a bird’s footprints.
Visually and spatially, the audience can follow this line of colourful miniature passports, which leads them the to Main part. |
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| The Main part is a claw vending machine, analogous to the witch’s candy house in Hansel and Gretel’s story. In the machine’s transparent container, instead of a big pile of prizes (or chocolate bars), the audience sees a big pile of colourful handmade passports from all the current nation-states in the world. |
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| The audience has the option to play the machine by inserting a gold coin into the machine’s slot, and controlling the claw to win some handmade passports. The claw mechanism is setup so it is challenging for the audience but not too difficult to win. When they win, they can bring the handmade passports home with them. |
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| In Lure, passports are like candies: people want as much as they can have, and it is attainable for just a small fee. You still have to be either lucky or highly skilled, but neither as a boat person nor as a skilled migrant, nor even as a native to the land — as a player controlling the claw, instead. |
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| Stemming from my ongoing project (Re)Collection of Togetherness, in which I collect and remake passports of all the current nation-states in the world, Lure examines the relationship between chance and citizenship in a re-imagined world. |
| (Lure is part of Some Rooms exhibition at Osage Gallery Hong Kong, 27 Feb – 24 May 2009. Curator for Lure in this exhibition is Eva McGovern.)
Photos courtesy of Osage Gallery and Eva McGovern.
Many thanks to:
• Daniel Wolfson for assisting with the Melbourne part of the production.
• Miranda Harlan for supervising the Yogyakarta part of the production.
• Carmen Ho for liaising with the Chinese part of the production.
• Eva McGovern for supervising the installation at Osage Gallery Hong Kong.
• Roslisham Ismail a.k.a. Ise for assisting with installation at Osage Gallery Hong Kong. |
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Click on this thumbnail to read what Doretta Lau says about the exhibition, and about Lure, in Time Out magazine, Hong Kong.
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