Photobooth III at Erotic Art Week 2011

Eyy. Here are some images from this year's 'Photobooth' installation at the third annual Erotic Art Week. These are all self-portraits, shot using a wireless remote control, of visitors to Erotic Art Week's main gallery @ Bohemia. Participants are given the privacy of the booth to make their portraits and the images are shared with their signed consent.

For the third year in a row, I really have to thank Brianna, Victor, and Dave for their invaluable help with setting up and managing the photobooth.

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Earlier this year, images from Photobooth 2010 were shown in Joy Wai Gallery's inaugural exhibition "Whose Self Portrait: The Subject Behind The Camera" in New York City.

See images from photobooth 2010 and 2009.

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"Cc: Everybody" cont'd at Erotic Art Week 2011

Cc: Everybody is a project by Brianna McCarthy and myself in which tiny black & white classified ads from the local daily newspapers are reproduced, word for word, on huge, colourful, hand-painted 'party signs' (a traditional style of guerilla advertising used here to blast event details to everyone passing in the street ["Cc-ing" everybody]).

The intention is to play with the varying levels of intended 'publicness' of the classifieds to try and open up discussion about their changing appearance, and to document the change. Are we cool with this being public info? If yes, is it okay to blast these messages louder than their original size, or can we only say it so loud? A decade ago, ads like these didn't exist, so there's actually a lot of information in them about how we're communicating with each other right now.

The title of each piece is the date it was published and the newspaper it was published in. These two are "Trindad Guardian, 20 April, 2011" (Text…) and "Daily Express Classifieds, 20 APR, 2011" (Gaza…).

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A note on the change in process/aesthetic in making last year's signs compared to these new ones:

Last year's signs, if you're familiar with the incredibly skilfully painted street signs popularised by Bruce Cayone, possibly seemed a little inauthentic. Maybe they fell into the uncanny valley because, try as we did, given our level of experience making signs, they were no Cayones. This year we realised that instead of speaking a less-than-fluent version of that language, we would embrace our own dialect/tools/skills and produce what would still be recognised by any trini as a party sign, but maybe just another/newer kind. This version does away with horizontal color banding in favour of vertical, textured washes and introduces the use of ornament in the form of lino prints, metallic inks and gold dust in addition to the traditional emulsion. The lettering is also much improved. We are extremely pleased with the movement.

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installation/detail views:

'Carnival Skin' at Erotic Art Week 2011

baby, from ur eyes u can tell these r carnival pictures, fete pictures. very familiar. the exercise here was to fancy print them and mount and install and present them in a gallery as 'erotic art'. to alter the way u might approach lookin at them? to offer a means of noticing other details?

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Photobooth Friday /// LAS LAP TONIGHT

Tonight is the last night of Erotic Art Week and ur last chance to visit PHOTOBOOTH. Tell ur friends! See u later

-Rodell

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