Project description:
Catherine Jacobs held an interactive exhibition of 16 photographic prints entitled 'Uncertainties' at the Theatre Foyer Gallery, Midland Art Centre, Birmingham in September and October 2005. In its six week run, the exhibition was visited by around 10,000 people. Each work was presented mounted on aluminium (size 20” x 24”, Edition 5), with a section of string placed below it allowing people to record and share their individual responses to the photographs on luggage labels. 





Installation and Shared Responses
Photographs in the Uncertainties series are taken without using digital processes, being constructed from small installations that Catherine Jacobs creates in the studio from everyday materials such as body creams and lotions. These fluid environments exist only temporarily; created just for the camera. Alex Boyd, exhibition curator at mac, writes in the Uncertainties display poster ''Aesthetically, there is a play on scale where a tension prevails between the macro and the micro essence of the work. It is this push and pull between the everyday and the ethereal that tugs at our consciousness'. The artist, who has a background working in psychology, describes the work as 'Constructing psychological terrains which recall in viewers physical sensations and interior states”.

The series is titled 'Uncertainties' to encourage people to examine their responses to the photographic prints, with viewers told the actual origins of the work clearly in the exhibition documentation.
How do these photographs make us feel? Do they remind us of a particular time or place? Have we been here before? These are only some of the questions we night ask or find ourselves thinking about. Individual pieces may provide an immediateresponse, while others make take longer to penetrate our minds. Whatever our understanding and the diversity of our interpretation, Catherine Jacobs is interested to know what we think. She celebrates the way art can provide opportunitiesfor multiple readings and meaningsaccording to our individual backgrounds and experiences. (Alex Boyd) 

Shared responses
Nearly 1000 people shared their responses to the work with each other during the show with comments rangingfrom the descriptive, to the emotional, to the poetic, the imagined and the remembered. The following paragraph lists a few of these:- 

"Like looking at a diamond up close and seeing reflections of light",
"A Storm without Place", "A mouth with a tongue coming out",
"A strip of scar tissue", "The landscape outside Stockholm",
"The Loch Ness monster", "A scene from a World War 1 battlefield", "Dark and sad",
"A view from an aeroplane window", and "I feel I'm in a dark cave and I'm scared".

Following the success of Uncertainties at mac Catherine Jacobs is currently considering possibilities of touring the show to other UK venues.