Tin Foil Ghost
London College of Fashion x East London Art Prize Commission

Performance work for ‘Designed for Life’ for public programme, East Bank, London, November 2023

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"Artist Sophie Cunningham presents Tin Foil Ghost: a new 28-day performance, which subverts the current fashion trend of metallics, leveraging them as a visual stimulus to interrogate the entangled relationship between the global urgency of the climate crisis and creative expression as a resistance tactic. 
 

On the opening night of the performance, Sophie will present an other-worldly, yet eerily familiar metal sculpture adorned in metallic trench coats and accessories. As part of a series of activations across the 28-day period, live performers will traverse the gallery space, parading around in resplendent tin foil knock-off garments. These performers will gradually replace the original garments with their tin foil replicas, leaving behind a vestige of the original clothes. 

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As each new tin foil garment is added, the original clothes will be packed up and returned to the retailer, along with a message and provocation which, after being read aloud to the audience, will be too packaged for the next parcel recipient. Like a message in a bottle, a method traditionally used by castaways to communicate their distress to the outside world, the artist performs this in reverse, providing those discovering the parcel in a landfill – or perhaps the next customer – with an invitation to respond."