helen shanahan - abandonments

This is something I've been meaning to post for a little while. My friend Helen Shanahan started work on a piece during Mill24 at the end of May that I alluded to at the end of this post. She made a pair of dancing figures from wax, based on people she has worked with. The figures were then placed in a kind of woollen nest and abandoned in the courtyard of Islington Mill after being photographed. I saw them in place and they were pretty easy to miss, but by the next day they were gone.

In June Helen launched a blog for the project, now called Abandonments, and has recently updated it with a lot more information. Her proposal for the project has been there from the beginning and is probably the best summation of what the work is actually about:

I will make miniature figures that will represent people in my life. They will
resemble the individuals physically and each figure will represent both the
individual and my relationship with them. They will represent people who I do
not wish to abandon. After making each figure, I will live with the figure until
I feel ready to abandon it. This will be a symbolic abandonment of the person
the figure represents, and a literal abandonment of the object that I have made.
I will choose a location through a reflective process which will be documented
here. I will photograph the figure where I am about to leave it, and post
the photographs here. I will take as long photographing as I feel I need to, but
after ten photographs I will walk away. I will not re-visit the site of the
abandonment and I will not return to try to retrieve the figure or to take
further images. I will post my reflections leading up to the abandonment, but
after leaving the site, the action will be finished and no further comments or
reflections will be posted. Only the ten (or fewer) images from the abandonment
will be posted. The work will last for a minimum of twelve months, and then stop
when I feel it has finished.

I think it's a really fascinating, personal, and worthwhile project. The documentation in terms of the photos taken and text provided is informative and well judged. Keep an eye out for this one.