Artists Davy & Kristin McGuire took part in Culture24's Connect! competition. This presentation explains their initial idea, how they selected which pitches from museums and galleries would go through to the public voting stage, how they collaborated with winning venue the Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, and the Starkers projection-mapping installation they ended up creating for their Museums at Night event.

1. Connect! 2015
Davy & Kristin McGuire

2. 1. The Result

3. 2. Artists’ Objectives
“Davy & Kristin McGuire are British/German multidisciplinary
artists, famous for their idiosyncratic experiments in digital
projection and storytelling.”

4. 3. Artists’ Proposal
Imagine a classical goddess come to life in a museum at night
time, her marble body starts to move gently, her eyes start to
twinkle and she begins to tell you about the things she‘s seen
throughout her long life... Our artistic practice revolves around the
creation of hybrid art works that come to life through projection
mapping and storytelling. Through the Connect project we would
like to explore the potential of projection mapping onto existing art
works in combination with narrative ideas from staff and museum
visitors in order to breathe life into sculptures, paintings or similar
figurative art objects.

5. 4. Museums’ Responses
“We have a marble statue,... “
“Davy and Kristin McGuire’s practice will unlock mesmeric
stories, bringing to life the voices in the paintings [...], “
“With enchanting and intriguing figurative art, and magical yet
dark stories, similar in theme to Ophelia’s Ghost and the
Haunted Dress, the [...] hopes to lure the McGuires.”

6. 5. Museums’ Responses
“We’d like the artists to create a path of installation
through the dimly lit museum, with each piece
referencing a case or object within the collections. “
“a Lotte Reiniger inspired silhouette performance with
the young people using a McGuire designed
backdrop.”
“Equipment hire: £200”
“Our event should be appealing to local families with
young children,”

7. 6. Museums’ Responses

8. 7. Collaboration

9. 8. Benefits
“The charming but confrontational statue is a sure fire way to completely reinvent how
you think about figurative sculpture. The installation explores the relationship we hold
with sculpture from the perspective of the statue. On some levels it is a very well told
joke, but on others it is an incredible question to ask of an eternity of gallery goers – a
question rarely put to the gallery going public: Why are we so obsessed with the
human form that we’ve become paradoxically indifferent to it?”