A Month Outside my Head: Participatory Artwork using wax heads

 Chatting about the wax heads from A Month in my Head, Roz made a comment that I should explore the colour and texture, perhaps in photos. My head was in a very different space (pun intended) so I parked the comment for the time-be-in. I've been having a lot of internal struggle around how I should present the wax heads, to the extent that the piece has stalled a bit, plus the practical consideration that I haven't been able to get much time recently to work on it. Reflecting on this while driving, I was suddenly struck by the idea of the wax heads as a sort of 'contact sheet print' in a grid. I remembered Roz's comment and I was inspired to photograph a few and try different effects:

I need to explore these further - both basically use a semi-transparent layer derived from the detail over a plain red outline. The first uses edge-enhance and the second is just playing with contrast to effectively posterise the image. The first has a lot of texture and a certain primitive charm, the second is closer to my normal aesthetic, but is maybe a bit 1960s paperback cover? I think I need to try with more heads and more effects. It should be fun.

However, I was further thinking about the question of labels - people have rightly pointed out that they could be distracting, but I also think they could add a lot to the meaning/richness. I was thinking about adding ironic/humorous labels e.g. "rabbit face" or whatever, effectively mocking the gravity of the topic, when I thought :- why buy a dog and bark yourself? Far funnier/more interesting/more meaningful to allow other people to come up with labels, and see what they do - some might be rude, some funny, some earnest, some well-meaning... Plus it would be a great commentary on how we interpret/filter/misinterpret both art and mental health...

So that's what I really want to do - get a public space, a bunch of probably postcards (to give people the chance to consider the heads as individual pieces as well as a set), and let them come up with their own 'captions'.

Blockers:

• Cost - printing 30 designs in usable numbers will cost a shit tonne of money :(
• Venue - I need a ready source of people!

I need to think about how I might get a space, and then maybe consider how to mitigate the cost :(