In August 2025, I completed a design for an installation in the Feeling and Sensation series including producing the materials for it. Since I had nowhere to exhibit it then I created a virtual animation using CAD software which is shown here. This installation focused on homelessness, cruelty and the anaesthesia which we endure for it to exist.
Installation
The installation is a simple construction. Two panels suspended on two sides of a ‘booth’, creating walls. The other two walls are curtains which are initially closed. There’s gaps in the hanging walls so that you can see there’s something inside especially as you notice coloured lights moving on the floor like in a disco. The space is sufficient that you can walk and stand inside – it’s an enclosure and intended to be claustrophobic. The invitation is to go inside, and to experience it.
Animated fly-through
Panels
In August 2025, I travelled to London for an afternoon of Argentine Tango dancing. On the Tube in London (subway/metro) then I noticed a homeless man in part of it, with a sign begging for money. I was really upset by this! How is it that one of the (financially) wealthiest countries on earth – the United Kingdom – can allow people to become homeless and resort to begging? It is actually a cruelty for us all – especially the homeless person.
Indeed, ‘Bystander apathy’ is a noted phenomenon. But there is also a kind of anaesthesia which overcomes us. It is societal failure and we are all impoverished by it.
Left panel
Note: the photograph of the homeless man shown in the photo holding the sign, was taken with his permission and he gave permission for the use of the image in an art work. To protect his identity then I asked that he raised the sign to cover his face. Hence his face is deliberately not shown.
There a deliberate sense of disturbance in this panel. The joy of dancing set against the pain of seeing people homeless and begging.
Right panel
The second panel seeks to create a sensation in our bodies. It is a sense of suffocation or an inability to breathe. The suggestion to hold your breath is about the feeling of suffocation and breathlessness. Breathing is part of being alive, and an absence of it suggests not being able to feel or sense; of not being totally alive, of being out of touch. Indeed of anaesthesia. As if this is necessary simply to live and exist. The painful is made painless.
Help
If you’d like to assist Crisis – a homeless charity working in the UK, their website is here https://www.crisis.org.uk/