Global Footprints

Global Footprints was a 2012 Cultural Olympiad and regional Igniting Ambition Festival commission to create new artwork for a group exhibition at Northampton Museum and Art Gallery that celebrated Northamptonshire’s defining creative economy, its historic boot and shoe industry.

Cabinet of Curiosity Studio created 'Footfall' – a cascading chandelier structure composed of multiple paper shoe patterns formed into ‘brogues’. In utilising old maps and historical documents the artworks portrayed the globe-trotting story of the Oxford shoe, from its birth in the Highlands and Ireland, to full scale production in Victorian Northamptonshire, to mass manufacture in the East.

The sole of the shoe featured a cut out Victorian map of Northampton, showing where the shoe industries were historically based. The body of the shoes used a printed map of the county of Northamptonshire. The shoes were all hand made from Japanese paper materials that gave delicacy to our concept, as well as expressing the process of pattern making for shoes within the final work.

The artwork was displayed in Northampton Museum and Art Gallery and subsequently at Collective Collaborations Community Exhibition Space in Market Walk Shopping Centre, Northampton.

Image credits

FOOTFALL, 2012, Cabinet of Curiosity Studio, Temporary Installation

Photos: Cabinet of Curiosity Studio

FOOTFALL: CABINET OF CURIOSITY STUDIO
Global Footprints, Northamptonshire Council UK,
Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, Northampton, Northamptonshire, UK
October-November 2012