Mockshades

This project of Foote’s titled ‘Mockshades’ was installed in Melbourne’s GPO during the Motorola Melbourne Spring Fashion Week 2007.

The installation made up of mock lampshades references design but in a completely function-less way, they don’t house lights and have a solid exterior and are ironically externally lit by the skylight above, the pattern work was on the inside of the lampshade not the outside intentionally challenging the normal design functionality of the objects.

Viewers at first glance might only recognize the repetitious pattern work but as they looked closer they would see that the pattern work was made up of figures from Fashion Shows, bottles of Champagne, jewelery hallmarks, shoes, models from fashion shows, and emerging trends and other objects of desire, the closer they looked the more you would discover.

“Like most of my artwork there is a playful element that looks at the influences of design, art, fashion and pop culture surrounding us in the world today. These objects play with the ever-increasing grey area between design, art and fashion.”

Over the 8 week life span of the installation Foote had a public studio in the GPO building where he engaged with the public and incorporated them into the pattern work, each week Foote would add new pattern work to the expanding and changing artwork depending on his environment and inspiration around. (see studio pop up)

Each lampshade-like object ranged in size from 900 mm to 2000mm diameter wide, in total 60 Mockshades were suspended at varying heights filling the atrium space