Lou Baker, 'Living sculptures', at For Art's Sake, a CMS conversations day, 3.3.20

Lou Baker Living sculptures

Photo: Lindsey Morgan

I was invited to take part in ‘For Art’s Sake’, a conversations day at CMS in Oxford for trainee church pioneers.

I was asked to give a talk and also to set up a participatory installation for the day.

Find out more about my participatory insta llation, Safety net, here.

I decided that I wanted my session to not just be a talk, but to also be interactive, so I took along some of my Living sculptures.

I called my talk ‘Curiosity, creativity, conversa tion and community.’

Please click on the image or the link above to read my presentation.

I store my soft sculptures in plastic body bags.

They’re the right dimensions and cheaper than anything I could make. They do, however, also add associations with death!

I left the trolley with the body bags on it beside me so that it was clearly visible as I was talking. I like the idea of using curiosity to attract attention.

Then, when I started talking about my Living sculptures, I unzipped each body bag and revealed the sculptures one by one.

As I revealed them, I hung them on coat racks to display them. I provided a mirror too.

Coat racks and mirrors both have associations with garments and, consequently, bodies too.

Living sculptures are garment-like soft sculptures which I invite my viewers to wear, so that they become living sculptures.

I was slightly nervous about inviting my audience to try on my Living sculptures half way through my talk as I wasn’t sure how they’d respond.

I needn’t have worried though; as soon as I asked whether anyone wanted to become a Living sculpture almost half the audience joined in straight away, and others gradually did too. I was delighted.

With some of the Living sculptures there’s just one obvious way to wear them….

Others are more versatile.

I really enjoy seeing how people pose or move differently when they’re wearing my Living sculptures.

Identity is often communicated through the clothes we wear, but, at a deeper level, the multiple selves we reveal to the world can conceal our true sense of self.

Living sculptures enables the passive viewer to become an active participant by trying on various temporary identities.

I love seeing how the sculptures make people smile and act as connectors‌

‌and all the idiosyncratic ways that people decide to wear them!

We did, inevitably, have conversations about how vicars like dressing up in strange garments on a regular basis!

I was very touched by the enthusiasm and the ways that people engaged with me and my sculptures.

Some people chose not to try on the Living sculptures but told me how much they’d enjoyed watching the ever changing scene before them.

It was the first time I’d used the Living sculptures as part of a talk and I think it was very effective.

It was so interesting to see how the energy levels changed in the room as people began to try them on, laugh and talk to me and to one another about how it felt.

Many thanks to everyone who participated, to those who watched and to CMS for inviting me.

My Living sculptures are certainly provocations.

They stimulate laughter but also thought and conversation.

For more information about the research and development of my Living sculptures click the image above or the link. For more about my most recent Living sculptures: prison series click here.

www.loubakerartist.co.uk Instagram, Twitter, Facebook: @loubakerartist Issuu: Lou Baker Artist YouTube: Louise Baker Vimeo: Lou Baker