Hair works

I'm still working my way through a pile of existing images that I made webready a couple of years ago when I still had my website, but never got around to adding. Some of the images are of questionable quality and I'm not sure why that is. A bad batch... All the image in this post are works made with human hair. It's a material I've used a lot, and will continue to use in the future. It has lots of material potential, as well as conceptual ones. I'll probably eventually recycle some of my BFA Honours paper here; it was all about hair and its meanings.

This first image is not really a work, it was just a filler for a show I had at UNSW in 2002. I had collected hair from 100+ people to make paper, and I exhibited the bags with the remaining hair, and some people's photos.


This is one of the earliest works I made with hair. I was using a lot of wire at the time, and was looking for things to stuff in these wire shapes, or to put around the outside. The wire's very messy, and there's no order to the colours. As with a lot of my work, things start off chaotically, but eventually firm up and become neat and tidy. This was called The Muses, I think, and was part of the first group show I was in, Crack, at PCL Exhibitionists in 1998.



This is how they ended up: less wire; wire coated in ink and acrylic medium to give support and contrast; uniformity of colour; better photography. This is The Blonde Leading the Blonde, from 2002, and was exhibited in my Honour's year graduation show at COFA.



Also from my Honour's year grad. show was this work, As Above, So Below. The one above is about 15cm square. The one below is about 2m wide and 1.5m high. I thought I should at least make one really large work. There is a close-up below. As you can tell, my skills at colour matching are not that great! Each block is the size of a cigarette packet.


Below is an installation shot from the Sculpture 03 show at PCL. The colour here is pretty lifelike. Below the large panel I've put an installation of hair figures. As I wrote in an earlier post, these dolls have been in a number of shows, each with a different arrangement, and usually a different name. I can't remember what I called them in this show. I'll have to check my archives.



Here's another installation shot from the same show. On the right hand side are three framed dolls. Each has a piece of hand-made paper with a person's hair in it, and that same person's hair is in the doll. They are three portraits: Bob Hunt, Myra Thurner, and Careen Furner.



This is Myra Thurner.


I can't tell which is which of the following two as they both had long dark hair. One is called Bob Hunt, and the other Careen Furner.



This is a work that has never been exhibited as I never thought it worthy! It's a hair doll that has been woven into a bag. I made a double-woven form, put the doll inside while it was still on the loom, then wove up the top. It didn't really speak to me. It was a spin on the idea of cages that I had been working with for a number of years, but it doesn't have the power of a metal "cage".


This was similar to the dolls-on-paper works above, but I used the boxes, and also used anonymous hair. There are two of these, with different-sized boxes, and both called Group Portrait. Also from 2002, I think.



These are two of the earliest hair weavings I did. I'll have a separate post at some point in the future. The first one is the very first I ever made. It's very chunky because I didn't know how to make the hair into a yarn that would stay together other than making it really thick, like a dreadlock. This is called Human, All-Too Human, and is from 2000, maybe 1999. It's about 50cm wide, and nearly 200cm long. It can be seen at the Planet store on Commonwealth St, Surry Hills.



I think this was the third weaving I made. Not a great photo, but you can see that the yarn is much thinner, making a much finer piece of textile. This work is called After Me No Lover But Death Will Know You, and was originally installed along a corridor wall with names of WWII concentration camps leading up to it. One of many works I've made dealing with the Holocaust. This piece will be going to Beijing next month for a show in November. It's called From Lausanne to Beijing: The 5th International Fiber Art Biennale. It's about 13cm wide, and about 200cm long. The hair, like in the work above, and all of the works I first made with hair, is from anonymous people all mixed together. The conceptual concerns were about groups that de-emphasised the individual, and reflected the importance and dominance of the group. Since then my work has tended to show the individual as part of a group, but not subsumed within it.