The Abandoned Boudoir

A woman inhabits a hotel room. It is unclear who she is or why she is there. Is she just travelling? Holidaying? Is she doing business? Visiting a lover…or all of these things? She changes the room around daily, trying to instill a familiarity into a new environment. She has brought treasures from her home…others collected from her travels…jewellery, textiles and objects to give the space a sense of place, familiarity…things that hide and distract from her own displacement.

 The room displays s a collection of mementos, shows a sense of luxury; things that can provide visual joy and a reflection on places, loves, activities…. she collects these mementos but they could also easily be left behind. Someone has her on surveillance and is watching what transpires, the frenzied changes and musings of how the room should look…and without her knowing, we get to see what lies inside.

 The display in the room begins to reveal growing excess and abandonment – there is a sense of frenzy…as her visit draws to a close  and she realises she must move on, she must leave before…

But the day she leaves she tries to pack, but there are too many things that she tries to take with her, this same day she realises she no longer has any money. So a frenzied sale of items from her suitcase occurs in her desperate attempt to leave as quietly as she appeared.

 She personifies in many ways the ideal traveller, she has no real obvious goal, no final destination…just a suitcase of memories.

The Abandoned Boudoir is an art and design exhibition and potential multi-media performance set within a Hotel, objects, observation and the overall issue of surveillance and privacy. It has been planned to be installed and performed during Salone Del Mobile 2011 in Milan and then as a pop-up exhibition during the 2011 Venice Biennale.

It is hoped that it may be toured further internationally beginning in London during London Design Festival in September 2010.

This project is currently pending government funding approval