Environment Bag
A handbag constructed from a painted floral canvas contains an inner bag of composted matter, referencing elements vital to human survival. Through its presentation in the form of a desirable 'statement handbag' these components question the cost of human status in relation to how we value ecology. The suggestion of putting ones hand inside to investigate the contents were deliberately provocative and misleading offering an acerbic homage to Stephen Willats' Environment Box (1963).
Willats' explored the capacity of art to motivate people to 'note and renegotiate their perceptions of reality', and made the Environment Box [Willats' working drawing is reproduced below] to 'expand the phenomenological and participatory parameters of the art experience through immersive, multi-channel chambers in which the viewer was responsible for tripping the switches of sensory stimulation (including, significantly, the extra-ocular stuff of texture and odour).' [1]
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Environment Bag invites viewers to consider the desirable outward appearance of the ubiqutous 'statement handbag' and its relation to a 'woman’s status and earning power'.[2]
As expected, the invitation to investigate the bag was readily engaged with, while the discovery of its contents were received with disgust. The inner bag's organic contents are perceived as less valuable despite them being the underpinning substance for human existence.
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[1]Networking https://frieze.com/article/networking
[2] ‘Oh, honey! It’s not so much the style, it’s what carrying it means’: Hermès bags and the transformative process https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc.1.1.81_1
