Lucy Malley and I collaborated on a project proposal for PARK 15, a weekend of site specific art in Cannizaro Park, Wimbledon.

Our proposed piece, A Postcard From Cannizaro, was to be an immersive and interactive public artwork, site-specific to Cannizaro Park, exploring the site in both a physical and conceptual way.

The placement of the piece in front of Cannizaro House is symbolic of the way in which people experience places, so often observing them through a lens which may or my not reflect the reality of the space in question. We are conditioned to expect physical places to resemble the photo-shopped images we see; idyllic landscapes, the sky always blue, the paint always fresh. The expectation of these idealised images, then, can negatively affect our reaction to an authentic space, which can be perfect just as it is.

Our collaborative research into postcards – specifically, the emotional connection we have to the archived image of personally and socially significant spaces- led us to this exploration of Cannizaro Park through a lens. We proposed to paint the scene almost as it would appear in life, but as if through an exaggerated ‘postcard-esque’ lens. By then placing our postcard to partially obstruct the view of the house, we would  compound the experience of reacting to the image rather than to the scene itself. Cannizaro House is now a hotel and we wanted to highlight the nature of tourism and historic use of the postcard, as intrinsically linked to shared experience and our need to document places holding memory and emotional context.

The public nature of the site was essential, as the piece required audience interaction. We saw our audience as all visitors to the park, regardless of demographic, thus mirroring the universality of visually experiencing places of significance.

The piece had a participatory element as we were inviting people to write messages on the back of the card. In this way we would capture and archive very specific moments and personal experiences over the time.

Considerations:

Our proposal was not successful. In retrospect there are a number of ways I would have altered the proposal. I feel we were quite conservative with the sizing of the postcard as we were not sure of the transportation and we were worried about the costing. I think we could have researched further into transportation, and put in a larger more costly option, and cut back at a later date if we couldn’t get sponsorship.

Our initial idea was to print the postcard like a huge billboard. Again we changed plan and decided to paint the postcard to keep costs down. Again I think we should have submitted the strongest proposal and looked into funding at a later stage.

We could have given further examples of our work and included more drawings and photographs to explain our work.