nicepaultheomurray:

THIS IS THE NEW SH*T… [WORKING TITLE]

The project started as a branch from my own on-going project named “Hanging Sh*t From Trees”, the project started as I when I was walking, I realised that people where hanging dog-waste bags from fences, gates and more predominantly, trees. This very much intrigued me to photograph these peculiar items, and I found myself getting more and more interested in the concept of these hangings; strange feelings came across me, such as “sympathy” for those bags which had fallen from the tree, or “happiness” for those bags which appeared to have been thrown and landed on a high branch.

This lead me to a few different ideas about why people did this, however I kept coming back to the idea of the shit itself being ornamental [please excuse the word shit, however I find it much more descriptive of the project than any other milder alternatives]. The way in which most bags appeared top have been carefully “placed” in a somewhat loving manner – this therefore raised the idea in my mind about the bags and shit within them being somewhat ornamental; decorative in the fact that they seemed to be added in a decorative manner to the landscape around them, and around me on my walks.

For NICE, I am let the shit out of the bag. As I earlier stated, I never truly saw the photographs as final works, and more as a documentation process for developing the ideas. I want to use NICE as a route for making my work more 3D. During this I wanted to play around with the idea of the shit being ornamental and to create ornamental replicas of shit, in order to engage with my concept more fully. This is not the end of the project, I will be carrying on the concept further, and using the ornamental shits for installations after NICE; so WATCH THIS SPACE!

Here are a few images of some of the completed shits. Comments with constructive criticism and/or praise are more than welcome for the future of the project.

Paul Theo Murray…