'M-path'
A5 flyers and 300 pairs
of second-hand shoes
collected from
the suburbs of a city,
and then loaned to visitors
to wear for viewing an exhibition

We leave our shoes at the entrance to a mosque, temple, Japanese restaurant, and certain friends’ houses with ‘special’ floors. We exchange our shoes for more appropriate footwear in bowling alleys and ice-skating rinks. All visitors to the exhibition will be invited to swap their shoes for a second-hand pair for the duration of their visit; a form of parade costume for their procession through the exhibition. A lowest common denominator for the art viewer. But it’s an imperceptible transformation (how will anyone know whether you are wearing your own footwear or the 'official' second-hand ones?).
The shoes, (donated through door to door collections as a result of distributing flyers in a community in the gallery’s city suburbs), directly influence the visitor’s walk through the show.
The wearer might interpret this as an act of cruelty or instead the loaned footwear could feel like a new pleasure. Will you teeter, or develop a gazelle-like agility?

M-path is remade each time it is exhibited. When the exhibition ends the donated shoes go to charity.

M-Path at Arnolfini, Bristol



M-Path at Arnofini, Bristol