Ventilation Dress

The inflatable sculpture Ventilation Dress, was inspired by the 1970’s as a period that recalled strength and celebration for the coal industry and subsequently the community. The sculpture was inspired by two artefacts, a blue floral dress once worn by the 1972 National Coal Queen Margaret Dominiak held within the National Coal Mining Museum archives in Wakefield and an auxiliary ventilation unit, one of many large items of industrial archaeology on display on the Snibston Discovery Museum grounds in Leicestershire. The synergies between these two artefacts revealed how mining technologies and female sensibilities may complement each other, which inspired various fabric compositions to be developed directly onto defunct mining machinery on the Snibston Discovery Museum grounds. Ventilation Dress was created from an exact copy of Dominiak’s blue floral dress printed onto vinyl and constructed into a full-scale reproduction of the auxiliary ventilation unit used to boost the air supply to coal seams. Using bouncy castle technology Ventilation Dress appeared to breath rhythmically as air that was pumped into the sculpture gently seeped from seams in a continuous cycle of inflation and deflation.