The Artist's Presence
​2018

​[Chairs with AR target and AR app]

​An image of the artist’s hand, palm up in a gesture of presentation and offering, is laser cut into the backrest of one of two chairs facing each other. The laser cut image provides a target for an Augmented Reality mobile phone application, available from both Apple and Android app stores. Whilst in the application, when the camera points towards the target, a virtual, 3D image of the artist becomes visible on the phone screen. The 3D image of the artist was created using photogrammetry,and depicts the artist in a royal blue dress with her hair in a long plait. The pose, dress and hair style echo the appearance of Marina Abramovic in her work The Artist is Present (2010), a reference also alluded to in the title of the piece. The blue of the dress was selected for its symbolic allusion to a spiritual or religious presence, as blue is often the colour the Virgin Mary is depicted wearing to symbolise her divinity.