liz knox | deep purple

14 march to 26 april 2008

Over the past few years I have created bodies of work exploring interaction, social connectedness, identity and chance encounters. Using myself as the paradigm, I am constantly searching for ways to become a part of my surrounding environment.

The exhibition will bring together two projects, Chance Encounters and Deep Purple. Deep Purple, as a project, really began a year ago. I was walking down the street and passed a woman with her hair coloured the same as mine. This woman was twice my age and had a very different style than I did and I found it interesting that she too had deep purple hair. I began to really think about the visual constructs of our identity, the codes within the visual parts of our selves and how these are adapted and impacted by time. Even fifteen years ago, having deep purple hair would have told a very different story about its wearer.

Chance Encounters is very much tied to this sort of investigation, how one person can find one’s self quite similar to many others who are seemingly very different through something as simple as clothing. Small assumptions are made about me based on many facets of my visual identity – the colour of my hair, the length of my skirt, the logo on my shirt. I am interested in how these assumptions change when another person is wearing the same garment, piercing or hair colour. For this project when I meet a person whose clothes match my own I will take a photo of the two us.

For Deep Purple, rather than documenting those who are already similar to me, I decided I should offer the service of dyeing Deep Purple the hair of any and all interested. Like a semi-permanent performance, the effect I will have on strangers will last until their hair grows out or they dye over their new shade. This is a relational art piece where the relating happens briefly and the outcome is potentially evident for months – longer if someone really loves the colour. I am very interested in a very brief social encounter with a long lasting visible effect.

In both of these projects I am forming an alternative portrait and I am still undecided as to who it represents, myself or the strangers whose lives I have entered. The exhibition will bring together a series of approximately forty photos documenting these encounters.