Shoes Have Names Exhibition
Stories of homelessness have never been told like this before. Shelter has joined forces with conceptual fashion artist Jo Cope for the Shoes Have Names art exhibition.
Part of London Craft Week, this free exhibition was held at the wonderful flagship Shelter Boutique shop in Coal Drops Yard, in October 2020. The show featured a collection of handmade artworks inspired by the personal experiences of real people facing homelessness.
Ten international artists, shoemakers and designers were paired up with a person that Shelter has helped through its frontline services. Its success has now prompted its national tour to start soon in 2021 - 22.
DEMONTAGE exclusive
Here in a Demontage exclusive Jo talks to us about her experiences in getting the exhibition up and running.
DEMONTAGE
Jo we would love to hear how you managed to get such an ambitous project up and running. These things are never easy and take such a long time to get it all going...
JO COPE
Yes indeed!
I guess it all started with those first steps into the Shelter retail space in Coal Drops Yard.
What struck me about this amazing charity retail space was not only the hand - picked second life designer pieces but also the activism in the air. The large posters which lined the walls brought my attention to Shelters history fighting for the homeless. I instantly knew this would be a great space to create an exhibition, to use my work as a conceptual footwear artist for a greater cause. I got in touch with Hattie Lamb the passionate shop manager and started a conversation which turned into me writing a three-page pitch to sell the concept to the wider Shelter charity team!
I had previously exhibited as part of London Craft Week and this was the perfect partner to help us bring new audiences to the Shelter shop. Shoes Have Names concept came out of the desire to make homeless individuals be seen, respected, important and more human rather than invisible under the blanket term of 'homeless.'
Inspired and thinking back to my own 80's childhood when shoes had individual names, I wanted to mirror this in some way so that shoes give honour to individual stories and names of previously homeless people. For the design and craft of the shoe to symbolise the significant parts of their journey and stories.
As a conceptual artist I use shoes as vessels to create a visual language and from this project I wanted to expand on my practice to encourage others to work in this conceptual way.
The project needed a community of designers and artists, to enable exchange of knowledge and contribution.
"What struck me about this amazing charity retail space was not only the hand - picked second life designer pieces but also the activism in the air. The large posters which lined the walls brought my attention to Shelters history fighting for the homeless".
DEMONTAGE
Amazing how the project has come about from those initial first steps! How did you pull together the designers and artists?
JO COPE
i n joining forces.really wonderful network of creatives who are both friends and respected associates, I started to contact people to see if they would be interested
in joining forces.
Richard Hudson, marketing manager for Shelter started working on gathering the stories and participation of ten people they had helped survived homelessness.
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The artists and designers involved were given around six months to research, talk with their partners and make the final artworks. It was a joint effort with everyone involved. Despite the upheaval of Covid we managed to have two really wonderful community meets, where designers and individuals helped by Shelter came together over tea and biscuits which ended with an acapella song by the amazing Missie!
This really gave the opportunity for us to build relationships where we would not have ordinarily met. We all found out that we all had so much more in common than we would have imagined. The designers and artists were chosen for their diverse approaches to craft . I also wanted to be inclusive of people at different stages in their career so chose from student to couturier! Curating and creating an exhibition, working with multiple people takes a lot of work and energy. It was one or two phone calls a week for at least a year constantly keeping up momentum. We continued the hard work right to the end and hand built the exhibition out of around 500 bricks.
DEMONTAGE
What an achievement! You must have been so happy and relieved to see it all happen in the end. What was the general react ion to the exhibition Jo?
JO COPE
I have to say I was so happy - it was amazing to see the success, we often had people queuing outside the door to get in.
The biggest surprise was the emotional response - visitors telling us their own stories and empathising with others . We ran the show as a guided tour as we wanted to make sure visitors had an exper ience and learnt all the wonder ful things about each artist , artwork and the Shelter stories .
DEMONTAGE
Now it's due to go on tour! Would you have imagined this two years ago?
JO COPE
You never know how far a project is going to go - you have big ambitions, but it takes a lot of hard work to get them going.
There has been an overwhelming response to the project which reminds me of how valuable it is to see through your ideas to the end. There are many angles that people are interested in - for some it’s about the craft meet homeless and for others its about the event.
For me it is all about the design, art and collaboration and how the project can be a template for alternative methods of communication between charities, audience and fashion.
– stay posted on the https://www.shoeshavenames.com/blog
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Interview by Davina Hawthorne
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