(for full screen double click on the video)

February 2008

Mixed media Installation

Front Space, Barnes Building, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, Scotland

A Collaboration with Rosie Hughes-Jones

This work originated from the discovery of an old Greek banknote from the 1930s belonging to my Grandmother. The female figure depicted on the note represents ‘Mother Greece’, who supports and cares for her people. I became particularly interested in the metaphorical and propagandistic use of the female figure. There is something enigmatic in her look, which I feel is at odds with her supposed role as ‘Mother Greece’. I decided to explore this by detaching the figure from its monetary hypostasis.

Rosie made a large flour dough whilst I digitized the face of the ‘enigmatic’ woman and created an animation in which she is blinking her eyes. During the final installation, the heavily yeasted dough was expanding and smelling, whilst the woman, projected on a nearby wall, continuosly blinked her eyes; undermining her symbolic use as the figure of a banknote, and furthermore the use of the female body to represent ‘Mother Greece’.