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.

CWND Artists Residency

Residency activity outcome

Residency activity outcome

Outcomes from an 'introduce yourself/your practice' activity on the first day of CWND artists residency.

Queer Art(ists) Now

Ladies Room, Chaz Howkins, 2017, installation (toilet tissue dispenser and ink on toilet tissue)

I'm very excited to finally have an opportunity to exhibit Ladies Room.  The work will be at the Rose Lipman Building from October 11-14th as part of the Queer Art(ists) Now exhibition.

The audience is invited to take a tissue from the toilet tissue dispenser, read it and then either keep it or discard it by adding it to the pile on the floor below.  On each tissue is written something which has been said in a public women's bathroom to an individual who presents themselves in a gender non-conforming manner.

https://www.facebook.com/events/442765912884481/

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.

Interaction with Don't Linger

Don't Linger with audience 

Don't Linger with audience

Don't Linger with audience

Don't Linger with audience 

Don't Linger with audience

Public interaction with Don't Linger at Loughborough Fine Art Degree Show 2018.

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 set up

Some in progress shots of the degree show installation.

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.

Face Your Fear

Face Your Fear (detail)

Face Your Fear

Face Your Fear - installation view, Chaz Howkins, 2017, installation

I created this installation in response to a week spend in Venice.  As someone with a phobia of pigeons, I spent most of the week in distress, having to dodge crowds of pigeons in the streets and hide in toilets when they wandered into cafes.  I chose to exaggerate the scale of my pigeon sculpture to make it more fearsome, so that the audience gets an idea of how pigeons make me feel.  There is a painting of Venice hidden behind the pigeon to represent how pigeons got in the way of fully enjoying my time spent there.

Process of creating Face Your Fear

Process images of creating Face Your Fear.  The sculpture was created using polystyrene, which I cut  by hand with a saw because the hot wire machine was out of use, and then coated in paper mache.  I chose for the finish to be bare newspaper as I felt newspapers and pigeons have a lot in common in terms of how they are discarded and overlooked by most.

Strada Veneziane exhibition

Face Your Fear - exhibition view

Strada Veneziane is an exhibition of 4 artists responding to a trip to Venice, each of us chose to respond to the city rather than any of the artworks we saw at the Biennale.

Nine Frames Project (stage five)

At this stage the piece is being cleared up and all the drawings very amalgamated into a pile, which I then took home and sorted through to see if any were salvageable.

Nine Frames Project (stage four)

Stage four exhibits the aftermath of my performances.  The room is now covered in blood (paint) to portray the death of my creativity in a very literal sense.  Everything has been torn off the walls and now lays on the floor in heaps, showcasing my hatred for my work and how I don't care what happens to it.  The plastic sheeting became very effective at this stage as the space was now less accessible due to the paint covering the floor but viewers could still see inside through the 'walls' and their view is now distorted by the paint splatters.