2020
stuffed toy dog, paper hole punches
36 x 55 x 20 cm
672: WW1 Poppy Installation
2018
An installation at Pinner Parish Church London made with poppies hand knitted by members of the congregation, their families and friends to remember the end of the First World war one hundred years ago. Altogether over 3000 poppies were knitted for displays inside and outside the church. The font installation commemorates all the local men and boys who lost their lives in the conflict. Each of them is remembered with a poppy displaying their name. The poppies are suspended on eight strands of fish wire. Each poppy is held in place by making a small knot in the fish wire. Fish wire is largely invisible and used to convey a sense of the poppies falling. Names were printed on individual paper labels and attached to each poppy with velcro
682: Distance Travelled Time Taken
2007 – 2012
used window envelopes, pva glue, 3 extending metal poles
300 x 300 x 300 cm approximately
Installation assembled at The Gallery HAC Harrow Arts Centre London 2013
‘Distance Travelled Time Taken’ is an installation that addresses Ann Kopka’s engagement with the research, process and transformation of discarded everyday ephemera and disposable objects of little or no intrinsic value. Through the concept of ‘making something out of nothing’ Ann seeks to draw attention to the throwaway nature of consumer society and question our perception of its value systems.
‘Distance Travelled, Time Taken’ is made from thousands of used window envelopes collected by Ann, her family and friends in homes, offices and schools. The willingness to save used window envelopes was clearly captivating and rapidly spread from person to person as a network of collectors grew across the country and mountains of window envelopes began to appear on Ann’s doorstep.
The windows were hand cut from the envelopes and glued together by Ann to form chains eventually reaching a mile long. The collectors constantly asked to be kept informed when certain ‘milestones’ had been reached. This spurred on both collectors and Ann. Without this enthusiastic and encouraging support this project would not have been realised.
However Ann had not anticipated the disappointment that would be expressed by some of the collectors once enough envelopes had been received or the disappointment of others who wished that they had made a contribution. Ann resisted the pressure to continue and felt the ‘mile’ to be an appropriate cut off point if the project was to be completed: from conception to completion took about five years.
Dispatched with a lick and opened with a rip, each envelope has travelled on its own unique voyage through the post connecting people together in a web of communication. The handmade links of this installation evoke both the distance travelled and the time taken to realise the work and provide a playful antithesis to the technology of electronic mail.
697: Celebrity Tea – Dunked, Drunk & Dumped
teabags, found magazine photographs, cotton thread & net curtain
100 x 100 cm
Installed at The Gallery HAC, Harrow Arts Centre 2012
‘Celebrity Tea: Dunked, Drunk & Dumped’ addresses Ann Kopka’s engagement with the research, process and transformation of discarded everyday ephemera and disposable objects of little or no intrinsic value. Through the concept of ‘making something out of nothing’ Ann seeks to draw attention to the throwaway nature of consumer society and question our perception of its value systems. ‘Celebrity Tea’ is a wall hanging made from teabags, found papers, cotton thread and net curtain.
Each tea bag acts as a repository for a small photograph of a ‘celebrity’ cut from magazines found lying around on tube trains. Famous for something or other over for a limited period of time the ‘celebrity’ represents yet another commodity in our throw away consumer society, precious for a few moments then dumped like a teabag.
The repetition and uniformity of these images lends them an air of anonymity and results in a loss of individual identity. Some of the images you may recognise, some are unclear and some have faded from our view, dissolved into nothing, just as ‘celebrities’ fade quickly from our collective memories.
Ann found the process of stitching to be a contemplative and nostalgic activity, with connotations of femininity, domesticity and home. The fragile teabag papers were prone to splitting and tearing, and the sewing became a constant act of mending and preserving, mirroring the way the plastic masks of celebrity are mended and preserved to hold back time.
Stitched to a net curtain to add stability, the grid like formation of ‘Celebrity Tea’ and the uniformity of the tea bags create a pattern reminiscent of wallpaper or a decorative quilt. The net curtain itself conjures up notions of privacy, concealment and hidden suburban lives as it filters the light and obscures the ‘celebrity’ faces waiting to be dunked, drunk and dumped.
699: It’s Raining Tea
2006
teabags, wax, acrylic sheets, fishing line, PVA glue
presented on rotary washing line
An installation based on rainfall statistics for England & Wales 2005.
The idea of mingling two British Institutions, ‘drinking tea’ and ‘talking about the weather’ was the starting point for this project. Ann’s aim was to make a 3D bar chart using teabags as a unit for measuring rainfall. She constructed 12 square transparent plastic columns based on discarded roller blind packaging, one for each month of the year.
The size of each column was established by the amount of rainfall which fell in a given month, rounded up or down to nearest 10 mls.
If 1 teabag = 10mls of rainfall, a column of 5 teabags high would represent 50 mls of rain falling in 1 month. As each column has 4 sides 20 tea bags were required in this example.
The teabags were reinforced by ‘brewing’ them in hot liquid wax which gave the overall structure of the installation a translucent ‘wet’ appearance.
The installation was originally exhibited in the City Lit Fine Art Show 2006. All 12 columns were suspended by fish wire giving the impression that perhaps it really was ‘Raining Tea’.
700: The Great Wall Of China (detail)
2006
tea bags, wax, PVA glue
Size: Flexible
A studio presentation
A free standing 3D structure made entirely of teabags ‘brewed’ in hot liquid wax and held together with PVA glue. Based on the principle of a ‘house of cards’ the height and the length of the wall was determined by how much weight the tea bags could support before collapsing.