“Tongue Ties”, 2018, plastic, vinyl, fishing line, stickers, 400cm x 45cm x 1000cm
Throughout 2018 I was commissioned by The Showroom to work with Church Street children and their families through the FLIP programme at The Portman Family Centre and Gateway Academy primary school.
We started with a series of workshops, which investigated ideas of identity, language and code-switching, along with personal and cultural mythologies. As a final a public piece with Gateway Academy, it was important to consider that 98% of the students come from bilingual or multilingual homes. We invited every child to choose and share a word that spoke to their personal history and made them feel welcomed, in any language, which became their contribution to a large-scale collaborative artwork that has now been installed permanently in the school’s entrance.
“Tongue Ties” (detail), 2018, plastic, vinyl, fishing line, stickers, 400cm x 45cm x 1000cm
“Tongue Ties” (detail), 2018, plastic, vinyl, fishing line, stickers, 400cm x 45cm x 1000cm