New Media Public Artist Eileen Botsford launched her latest project – The Bodymode Show – at the Pearlfisher Gallery, West London from May 10th 2007. This exploratory project into the controversial world of the human body was designed specifically for the Pearlfisher space, and brough together film projection, photography and interactive performance into a visually stimulating experience. By exploring ways in which we perceive our actual body, from beauty to ugliness, sensuality to strength, health to wisdom, the artist presents an authentic documentation of each individual’s uniqueness.

Eileen describing her intentions comments, “I aim to promote and celebrate diversity while exploring alternative ways of viewing our body. I would like to open debates on what is right and what is wrong in terms of body image, who the right judge is and how we can be happy without needing to meet certain illusive standards. In a few words, I aim to raise crucial questions through beautiful moving and still images” view more in her interview ot visit the projects site www.bodymode.co.uk

The exhibition was inspired by BodyMode - the latest piece of research in LifeModes, a future-focused insight programme created by design agency Pearlfisher to help predict future consumer behaviour. BodyMode takes as its starting point the fundamental shift in the way we understand, experience and imagine the body in the twenty-first century and the unprecedented importance it now has in our lives.

Review by Maria Nicolacopoulou Cultural Theorist:

Inspired by international design agency Pearlfisher’s LifeModes, a research program targeted on predicting consumer behavior, the Bodymode show incorporates all elements relating to the portrayal of the human body through the eye of media public artist Eileen Botsford.

Based in the UK headquarters of a global image-generating agency and using the same medium responsible for the deterioration of our perception towards our own physical appearance, the Bodymode show is reversing that process and raising awareness by using the camera to celebrate the human form and its particulars. The lack of substantial artistic ingredients that would be necessary for critical discourse in other areas of fine art, in combination with the use of anonymous body imagery out of the everyday, add even further to the commercialised effect depicted, strengthening the distorted notion we have of, and interpretation we give to, our figures, as a result of the media propaganda.

As public art is targeted towards creating experiences rather than attachments, the simplicity of the works manages to create an effect, which, although weak in intensity, is strong in delivering its objective. The viewer is called to review and re-evaluate one’s image through the depiction of the ‘real’ and the ‘common’ rather than the ‘idealised beautiful’, which although we may all be familiar from examples like the Dove commercial, here is strengthened due to its static nature which compels us to ‘look inside in order to see outside’…

The Bodymode Show will be traveling to Athens this year, please check www.bodymode.co.uk for updates.