Eight years ago while shopping in a local camping store a friend and I spotted a peculiarly shaped camouflage print tent on display. I was attracted by it’s form, which reminded me of some of my earlier wearable sculptures. The tent was advertised as a “wheelchair accessible hunting blind”. It was on sale.
I starred at this “blind” in my studio for three years before it began to infiltrate my work becoming a habitat for the artist on several occasions. Because it was so portable (fit into its own backpack) and related to the current international situation (The Iraq War), I took it with me for my 2003 Fulbright Fellowship in Portugal, where it insinuated itself into some very unexpected environments. Extending from the Portugal project, I’ve used the blind and constructed mini-blind reincarnations of it to explore issues of voyeurism and paranoia in an era of surveillance and domestic, as well as international, terrorism.
Jane Gilmor, 2006