Homage to 'Hay on the Highway'
Coekin, Chris (2009) Homage to 'Hay on the Highway'. [Installation, Photography]
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This work was commissioned for the Marks of Honour exhibition/project at the Foam Museum of Photography, Amsterdam. Thirteen internationally recognised photographers were each invited to contribute a piece paying homage to a photobook that influenced their work. I chose Hay on the Highway (1993), which looks at farming communities in Finland and asks questions about sustainability, recycling and organic farming. Hay on the Highway inspired my conceptual approach to photography, collaboration, performance and subversion of the documentary genre and I had been searching for this rare book since 1995. For Marks of Honour I produced photographic self-portraits on the road (highway) metaphorically searching for this mythical book, using cardboard signs saying 'Hay on the Highway': this became a performance piece (also referencing my earlier photobook The Hitcher). I combined the new images with my re-representation of the original book, and made boxes from recycled cardboard, etched with the design of the book's cover; the original book was placed in it on a bed of hay along with my images and cardboard signs. The box was then placed in a specially produced hessian sack.
For the exhibition my self-portraits were framed on the wall, and the other artwork was installed along with the original book in a vitrine. The book documenting the project, Don’t talk Bullshit, What are You Doing? was published alongside the exhibition, in a limited edition, with a set kept in the Marks of Honour archive.
Marks of Honour as a whole constitutes a singular library and system of reference on some enduring influences in contemporary photography. Each work contains the original photobook and its complementary homage. The project was funded by the Foam and private collectors, and has been exhibited at Kaune Sudendorf Gallery, Cologne and the Kassler Photo Festival, Kassel, 2009; The Photographers' Gallery, UK, 2010.
Marks of Honour Exhibition is also known as MoH/08 and MOH08 a Striking Library.
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