Mile End, from The Overcoat series

Artist/Creator: Sarah Dobai (Artist)
Date: 2015/2018
ID #: BG6301

Physical Description

Medium: C-print
Support: paper
Dimensions: 75.9 cm 94.5 cm (Object)
Object Description: The Overcoat is a commissioned bookwork by Sarah Dobai for publishers Four Corners Books. Dobai's work is in conversation with the darkly humorous short novel by Nicolai Gogol (1842) of the same name that tells of the life of a lowly and impoverished government clerk, who works as a copyist and whose existence is briefly transformed by a new coat. For this publication of the story, Dobai produced a body of photographic works that picture commercial display windows and vitrines in London and Paris. The photographs consider these displays as a form of vernacular picture making, the glassed-in rectangle referring back to the medium of photography itself. Shot mainly on location with a large-format film camera, the images are a reflection on the status of the commodity both in the text and on the streets of the city.

History

Collection: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery Permanent Collection
Credit Line: Gift of the artist, 2023
Related Exhibitions: –

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