the exhibition


the gallery space
1)  in the mirrored change room of the galleries @ galleria exhibition patrons can check out handbags for personal viewing in a series of small private rooms. this opportunity offers the viewer a unique chance to secretly browse through the contents of more than 25 handbags that have been designed by the curatorial students. what might eve have carried in her original purse? would madame bovary have concealed a purloined letter from a lover now spurned? what surprises does your local dominatrix have in store. here's your chance to find out. the exhibition is interactive and voyeurism is encouraged.this act of browsing also suggests the technological space of the web where information is encountered in fairly random and disjunctive ways.
2)   a collection of historial purses will be on display.
3)   purses are for sale in the gallery gift shop. make a donation, take home a purse and all proceeds will be donated to a women's breast cancer research charity.
4)   the video monitor in the chnage room depicts clips from different film and television shows where the purse has been represented. please check-out the new video purse by liss platt & kelly in which two butch babes wrangle with this quintessential feminine icon.
the mall space
1)   a large see-through purse sculpture has been constructed as a collective purse in which mall and galley goers can throw an array of objects for others to peruse. positioned directly outside of the gallery space, objects collected in this purse will also be donated to a local women's shelter.
2)   for an hour prior to the official exhition opening the students will perform a series of purse actions throughout the mall. the student-actors will accidentally drop their purses and have their contents spill out onto the floor of the mall. this gesture will be familiar to all yet made strange by the fact that everywhere you go throughout the mall there will be these women accidentally dropping their handbags. this gesture will also be used as a means for disseminating information about the project and handing out invitations to the opening. 
in the city
1)  a number of tagged purses will be left in sites throughout downtown London -- on bus benches, in parks, cafes and places of public communing. inside these bags there will be information on the exhibition and an opportunity for the person who finds the bag to return it to the galleria on opening night for a small surprise reward.

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