Whilst walking around the 1st year exhibition, it’s
easy to be unassuming of the actual thought processes that went behind the finished
work. Especially when the context is left to the viewers interpretation. With
Hazel’s work however, the immediate impact made sure you understood the notion and
thought about it just as much.
The set up appeared as 3 integral sections. Primarily the
provocative carnival cut-out, of a faceless bikini clad woman. She was a little
larger than life, kneeling, neck turned toward the camera. An openly voyeuristic
mentality is set up for the viewer. This in its self is explored as friends
take it in turns to be the model and the photographer, this switch between the
two vastly different persona starts to break down these poles, prey and
predator, object and objectifier. The
people themselves are the last and most crucial component in the piece. Without
them it loses its potency as a political statement if the viewers don’t
interact, playing with the devices learning through this simplistic childlike
education onto something much grander. You catch yourself out doing something
that perhaps by unconscious thought you
would presume wrong but only by
involving yourself in it do you reassess it with any sense of feeling.
The Opposite side of the carnival cut out is filled with
black writing scrawled in lines across a white background. Its covered
predominantly with cat calls, ranging from the run of the mill generic
misogynistic phrases to more aggressive, sexually hostile and threatening.
