Abstract
Jean Paul Sartre said “People are always tellers of tales. They live surrounded by their stories and the stories of others; they see everything that happens to them through those stories and they try to live their lives as if they were recounting them”. As a social construct and an artistic inquiry this paper considers the impact on the community with the closure of its main industry. Through a series of artistic artworks shaped from interviews of people that worked at the factory, it will consider the artistic narratives of the community and the impact it had on its closure. According to Sharp, when artists participate with local community it can become a form of public art to “engage with communities and existing social struggles, to develop collaboration and dialogue with residents”. He defines this approach as ‘new genre public art’ and operates with ‘connecting’ a community. In doing so this paper will demonstrate how communities can engage with artists and how the town they live in can operate as an exhibition gallery of artistic artworks and narratives from the community. In doing so this paper reflects on the worker’s stories through a series of artistic works and how they were exhibited throughout the town and embraced by the local community. It also gives concerns to communities having political agency when the artistic narratives are expressed and exhibited inside the local communities of the workers’ lives that are being expressed and translated into artistic works.
Presenters
David SinfieldAssociate Professor, School of Art and Design, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Artistic, Narratives, Connecting, Community, Workers, Narratives, Artistic, Inquiry, Political, Agency
