Salon Adrienne

Adrian Howells creates an artistic piece centrered around a hair salon and explores the bonds that can be made with the clients that visit there. He investigates the relationship between the hairdresser (portrayed by himself as Adrienne) and the client he is looking after. The video shows the break down of certain boundaries we may expect these two people to have; normally at a hair salon there would be a certain amount of small talk between the client and the hairdresser but to a certain point, not usually revealing anything that could be seen as ‘personal’. Adrienne asks the clients to take ‘a long hard look at yourself in the mirror’, commenting that usually people start to describe the superficial things amount themselves such as ‘the bags under my eyes’ but Adrienne pushes them further, getting them to concentrate on the metaphorical things they see when they look at themselves. To enable his customers to share more about themselves, Adrienne will always give something back to them, a personal thing about himself that then creates a bond of trust and respect, meaning that the client can then respond and share something equally as personal. What’s interesting to think about with this video is what effect the piece being set in a hairdresser has upon the performance. Personally, I think that it symbolises how a hair salon can be quite a personal space, where people become very aware of themselves, thinking about both flaws and positives about themselves and how exploring this is important in understanding the mindset and emotions of people in certain places compared to others.