LOST PERSONS AREA

LOST PERSONS AREA
Fanshawe Fine Art 2019 Student Highlight Exhibition

May 22-June 1, 2019
twenty-four-hour window installation

Satellite Project Space
121 Dundas St, London, ON

This second-year student art project began with re-creating a tableau-vivant from the photograph, Untitled, Pasadena, California, 1963 by Elliot Erwitt. The original B&W photograph appears to be street photography of an incident stumbled across in daily life. Erwitt saw a circumstance and immediately staged the environment further to look like a candid photographic moment in the development of this significant and humorous image.

This photography assignment required a variety of creative studio applications to reconstruct the original image. The second part of the project involves anticipating similar subject matter updated to reflect contemporary life. In this case, a choice of digital devices replaces the tedium of waiting or searching, and in so doing presents a contemporary view with a fresh sense of irony.

In the contemporary image, each person appears absorbed within their personal digital device, directing a new twist to the dominant phrasing in the sign; perhaps now the people are a little lost from the surroundings of the physical world.

From the quiet quadrant of a gallery window, the Lost Persons Area sign and a bench face London’s downtown street. Serious or humorous? This installation invites passersby to determine where the ‘sign’ begins and ends.