16 artists

16 days

16 chalks

A wall

The grey area gallery invited16 artists to take part in ‘Last Words’, each visiting the gallery individually, 1 a day for 16 days, and wrote/marked on a wall what they would like, imagine, or accept their last words to be. One wall of the gallery was painted with blackboard paint and artists used a single piece of chalk to write their words. All preceding words were erased before each artist applied their own, meaning that nobody was privy to what came before. Artists were asked not to discuss their contributions with one another. Before the words were recorded with a digital camera, each artist was photographed standing before the wall with a Polaroid camera.

The remains of the 16 chalks were used to cover the black wall, creating a surface upon which the photographs of the words are digitally projected in chronological order. The Polaroid photos rest on the floor of the rear room in pools of blackboard paint; the same used for the wall. They were thrown all at once into the room to create an order of placement. The audio for the room speaks transcripts of the last words, in random order, with the voice of basic ‘text to speech’ software.

                             Last Words                                                                      Huw Bartlett                                                                      Daedalus

             Polaroid photos, blackboard paint

               artificial voice recording, 2006

© Daniel Pryde-Jarman

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