UKYA City Takeover

Don't Linger - Installation View: UKYA City Takeover, Surface Gallery, Nottingham, 2019

Don't Linger - Installation View: UKYA City Takeover, Surface Gallery, Nottingham, 2019

Don't Linger - Installation View: UKYA City Takeover, Surface Gallery, Nottingham, 2019

It's always exciting to see members of the public activating Don't Linger and witnessing their reactions to the piece.

UKYA City Takeover Nottingham

Myself with Don't Linger - Installation View: UKYA City Takeover, Surface Gallery, Nottingham, 2019

Don't Linger - Installation View: UKYA City Takeover, Surface Gallery, Nottingham, 2019 

Don't Linger - Installation View: UKYA City Takeover, Surface Gallery, Nottingham, 2019

UKYA City Takeover spanned the city of Nottingham for a week in early February 2019.  The festival united 250 artists from 25 countries, showcasing a huge variety of contemporary work, from visual arts to performance; music; applied arts; literature; digital arts and moving image.

I was very happy to be involved in one of the largest biennials of national and international artists in the world, by exhibiting Don't Linger at Surface Gallery.  I was very pleased at how the public engaged with the work and the conversations it provoked. 

Aftermath of Ladies Room

Ladies Room (close up), Chaz Howkins, 2017, interactive installation

Ladies Room (close up), Chaz Howkins, 2017, interactive installation

Ladies Room (close up), Chaz Howkins, 2017, interactive installation 

Ladies Room (close up), Chaz Howkins, 2017, interactive installation

Ladies Room (close up), Chaz Howkins, 2017, interactive installation

I was very glad to see how many people interacted with Ladies Room while it was exhibited at Queer Art(ists) Now, creating a great pile of discarded toilet tissue on the floor below the dispenser.  Seeing the pile of tissues grow on the floor, being trodden on, dripped on, completely discarded really emphasised the throwaway nature of the comments people make to queer people in gendered spaces.  When someone in the ladies room asks me 'are you a woman?' it's a fleeting moment for them, they don't think about what they're saying, they just throw their words at me... but for me it sticks, it piles up, I can't just throw it away.

Queer Art(ists) Now

Ladies Room, Chaz Howkins, 2017, interactive installation

Self with work - Ladies Room

Queer Art(ists) Now provides a snap-shot of what artists within our communities are making right now; an insight into the thoughts, preoccupations, aesthetics, and politics of queer artists.

I was excited to have the opportunity to exhibit Ladies Room as it is an interactive piece and I wanted to witness the public's engagement with it.  The piece had a very positive response with hundreds of people taking the toilet tissues from the dispenser and dropping them on the floor to create a great pile of the discarded words.

Don't Linger - detail

Don't Linger - detail

Don't Linger - detail

Don't Linger - detail

Don't Linger - detail

Detail shots from Don't Linger while installed at Loughborough Fine Art Degree Show 2018.

Don't Linger detail

Don't Linger (close up pre-installation)

Don't Linger (close up pre-installation)

Don't Linger (close up pre-installation)

Some examples of the text elements of Don't Linger, which can be revealed by lifting up the lids of the toilet seats.

Don't Linger

Don't Linger, Chaz Howkins, 2018, installation (toilet seats, pen, pencil on paper)

Don't Linger - Detail

Don't Linger - Detail

Don't Linger - Detail

Don't Linger - Detail

Don’t Linger is an interactive installation of 27 toilet seats mounted to a wall; the viewer can lift up the lids of the toilet seats to reveal portrait drawings and text.  The portraits are realistic pencil drawings of androgynous or gender non-conforming people and the text comes from their individual stories of anxiety or harassment they’ve experienced in public gendered spaces.

​Don’t Linger questions the difference between gender identity and gender expression as well as the difference between gender and sex while critiquing the rigid segregation of gender in public spaces.  The intention is to showcase the experiences of queer people navigating gendered spaces, particularly public bathrooms, in the hope of making a predominantly non-queer audience reconsider how they interact with members of the queer community within these spaces.

Degree Show Opening Night

Myself with my artwork - Don't Linger

Don't Linger with audience

Don't Linger with audience

The opening night of the Loughborough Fine Art 2018 Degree Show was a great success.  My work was very well received and had members of the public interacting with it all throughout the night.  A very satisfying end to my time spent studying in Loughborough.

DD/MM/YY

Myself with my artwork

08/12/2017, Chaz Howkins, 2018, pencil on paper and pen on toilet seat

DD/MM/YY was an exhibition by students from Beuyce Studio as part of the inter-studio exhibition competition at The Welcome Mat.

Under lid experiments

Under lid experiment

Under lid experiment

Experimentation with alternatives to portraits under the toilet lids as a part of Don't Linger.

Text experimentation

Experimentation with text - printed and written directly on the wall.

Experimenting with backgrounds and surface qualities

With tile effect wall-paper

Text on tile effect wall paper

Finger print effect

Dirty seat effect on dark tile effect wall-paper

Various experiments involving tile effect wall paper as a background to transform the gallery space into a bathroom space.  I experimented with dirtying the lid to create a more realistic experience of using a public bathroom, but decided that this would put people off interacting with the work.  I also consider creating a finger print on the lid to encourage people to touch it, but felt that this was unnecessary and could also put people off interacting with the work.

Interrogation #2

Interrogation #2, Chaz Howkins, 2018, toilet
seat and acrylic on canvas 

Interrogation #2, Chaz Howkins, 2018, toilet
seat and acrylic on canvas 

Interrogation #2, Chaz Howkins, 2018, toilet
seat and acrylic on canvas 

Another interactive work portraying a queer experience of using a public gendered space such as a bathroom.

Interrogation in situ

Interrogation (in situ)

An experiment to see how the artwork would look placed atop a real toilet - perhaps in future I could create these portraits with slogans as stickers to be stuck under the lids of public toilets as a form of activism. 

Interrogation (detail)

Interrogation (detail), Chaz Howkins, 2017, acrylic on scratched toilet seat and lid 

Interrogation (detail), Chaz Howkins, 2017, acrylic on scratched toilet seat and lid

Close up shots of Interrogation showing the detail of the text scratched into the toilet lid.  The text is quotes from experiences of gender non-conforming people in public bathrooms.

Transphobia posters

Poster in situ 

Transphobia Poster, Chaz Howkins, 2017, digitally created poster

After adapting the sanitary bags to read "please dispose of transphobia in the bin provided" I felt this would be an appropriate slogan for a poster so created posters which I placed on the walls of public bathrooms.

Ladies Room

Ladies Room, Chaz Howkins, 2017, installation

Ladies Room, Chaz Howkins, 2017, installation

Ladies Room, Chaz Howkins, 2017, installation

Ladies Room, Chaz Howkins, 2017, installation

This interactive artwork encourages the audience to take a tissue from the toilet tissue dispenser and then either keep it or add it to the pile on the floor.  Each tissue has written on it a quote from real life experiences in a gendered space - the women's bathroom.  The quotes come from either my own experiences of presenting androgynously or the experiences of those who present themselves similarly to myself.