Client: City of Yarra
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Completion date: 2016
Artwork budget: $45,000
Project Team
Client
Mary Campbell,
The Australian Catholic University
Other
Lee-Ann Boyle
St Mary’s House of Welcome
Artist
Konstantin Dimopoulos
Overview
The Purple Rain is a social art installation about homelessness.
Through the repetitive saturation of color created within defined urban spaces he makes visible the unseen and unheard.
The Purple Rain integrates this saturation with our immersion in mobile technologies, the viewer interacting with the artwork.
Homelessness does not mean hopelessness. The Purple Rain allows the individual to be introduced using their first name, telling their stories of a future less adverse.
You as the viewer can choose to merely browse or take action; at the very least to suspend judgment.
Goals
Purple Rain is a social art installation to raise awareness about homelessness. As an artist I am striving to raise global and social issues through my temporary installations.
Homelessness is an umbrella term to describe a number of factors that relate to why people become homeless. Psychological, social, personal and economic factors all work to create this ongoing dilemma in our communities. The homeless issue is one that continues to grow world wide as financial stresses create social and psychological fallout.
The goal for Purple Rain is not about curing this vast issue but to give greater visibility through an artistic response. Purple Rain stresses the fact that like the rain this social phenomenon is becoming a downpour.
In order to better relate or see the homeless as members of our community the Purple Rain project allows the individual to be introduced using their first name: Bob, Bill, Mary or John.
Process
PARTNERS :
Working with The Australian Catholic University through its Clemente Program provides an accessible university education to people who have multiple disadvantages and social isolation, The City of Yarra, in Melbourne, St Mary’s House of Welcome who provide people who are homeless or living in extreme poverty with shelter, meals, showers, new skills acquisition and a respite from social isolation. and STREAT is a social enterprise that tackles youth disadvantage by providing the life-skills, support networks, work experience and training, we planned and executed the installation over a period of a year to best realize our goal of making the invisibility of homelessness visible.
Additional Information
The Purple Rain is an arts intervention that personalizes this global issue. It seeks to generate greater visibility and empathy through an artistic response. The Purple Rain stresses the fact that like the rain this social phenomenon is becoming a downpour. Through the repetitive saturation of colour, created within defined urban spaces, Dimopoulos makes visible the often unseen and unheard. The Purple Rain integrates this saturation with our immersion in mobile technologies, inviting an interaction with the artwork. Confronted with the downpour, the viewer can choose to merely browse or to take action; at the very least to suspend judgment.