miles collyer

Home-made Home-grown

September 14 - October 3

The project, Home-made Home-grown, expands the territory of interests that I have been working with during the past three years; issues related to contemporary politics, identity,

re-representation, and materiality. To produce this series I have looked for low-resolution images of the selected flags, which are disseminated on the Internet and in video stills. These low quality examples are then enlarged and become the basis for the final works. Material choices surrounding the colour, shade and form of the felt are based on the information provided in the source images. The crude and pixilated nature of the image sources are translated to the full sized felt flags, evolving to become interpretations of the original source material.

These are the flags of sub-national organizations who use sophisticated and contrasting means to seek attention and signal their individuality, both in traditional and modern ways. The authority and legitimacy of these flags is unquestionable to those who stand under them. At the same time they are internationally questioned and unrecognized. The visual transformations and conceptual issues around re-representation that occurs when an image is realized as a physical object are the underlying motivations of this series.

My process of hand-stitching these flags directly relates to the social, cultural, and political issues which surround the series. Through their meticulous production I am returning these flags back to the point of their inaugural creation and to the moment before they could be reproduced and disseminated. It is important to me that the work momentarily restores these flags as artifacts with a visual and cultural origin, not the entrenched political symbols which they have become.

I have come to understand these critical aspects as the project has developed and I see myself and my choice to hand-craft this work as an integral part of the series. A public performance related to these insights, which will be held at the end of September 2007, will address and demonstrate the origins and manner of the flags creation.

Flags featured in this series:

- al-Qaeda Organization in the Land

of the Two Rivers

- Hezbollah

- Hamas

- Chechen Republic Ichkeria

(currently in production)