Back to topics
As You Like It - Installation
Hi I am Ashleigh Brown and I study at Warwick University for the English Department's Shakespeare module assessment we had the option of choosing either an essay or a creative project. I chose to create an outdoor art installation exploring the function of the forest in As You Like It. The installation did remarkably well, even the vice chancellor of the university popped in for a visit!
One picture is shown here, but you can see the whole set on Flickr by clicking on this link
Read moreRead less
www.flickr.com/photos/shakespearebt/sets/72157626328417331/show/
This is what I would say about it myself:
This adaptation can be termed as an outdoor art installation, influenced by the central thematic pairing between art and nature, that acts as the core of this pastoral comedy, As You Like It. The pastoral, as an aesthetic, functions in this play as a piece of dated art, most evident in the weak love lyrics hanging from the forests trees at the hand of Orlando. My installation acts as a critique and a celebration of the central tropes in Shakespeare's play, including the relationship between the city and the country, the notion of hunting as an aesthetification of nature and an examination of the synonymic status of the forest and the stage. The wooden structure was made by hand on the day the installation was marked, its purpose being to represent the tyrannous city that Rosalind and Celia flee from. The barbed wire fixed around the walls stretched from the city space to the trees adjacent, representing the migrant’s toilsome journey from city to country. The table in the centre of the installation was home to a variety of objects rich in symbolism, including a globe painted gold, a ship in a bottle, an English bible laid open at the Cain and Abel story, as well as a symbol for each stage of man laid out in a chronological circle. From the trees were hung blank canvasses and paint pallets, reinstating the idea that the Forest of Arden is a blank canvas for the characters who transpose their own identities onto the forest itself, (consider Orlando’s poetry.) This gave the installation an interactive element which was continued through the use of the dynamo bike which, when pedalled, lit up a series of fairy lights which hung in the trees. The final touch included a set of red curtains which, supported by wire, were draped across the front of the installation area, referring back to Jaques’ resonating line, ‘All the world’s a stage.’
