Sadie Hennessy is a multi-disciplinary artist whose current body of work is exploring the tension between the natural world, and humanity’s impact on it.
For b-side festival 2021
Outstanding Unnatural Beauty Parlour
“I was inspired by a map of Dorset’s designated ‘Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ (AONBs) – and wondered why Portland hadn’t made the grade. (The AONB map’s boundary stops very abruptly just before the causeway). It left me wondering who gets to decide what is beautiful, and how they measure it. Isn’t beauty subjective anyway, and come to think of it, what actually IS beauty?
These are some of the questions my project seeks to find answers to.
I thought I’d enlist the help of some experts, so I’ll be asking local beauticians and beauty queens for their thoughts on the matter and inviting Festival visitors to create their own ‘Unnnatural Beauty’ look guided by Kiki Bogoff.” . Perhaps it is the industrialised areas of Portland, such as the man-made harbour, the prisons and the quarries that exclude it from the AONB beauty contest, but in my view there is beauty to be found in the man-made world; you just have to look a little harder.
To this end, I intend to put some unnatural beauty into the natural environment. I shall be inviting local people and visitors to enter a surreal beauty parlour, inside a horsebox. Once in, they will undertaken an over-the-top make-over tutorial, and then be photographed in the landscape in their finery. “
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