We, the people, speak. We speak by moving metal.
The Beer Can Votive project is a travelling forum of embossing workshops in which people make their own votive offerings from used aluminium drinks cans and offer them to communal shrines.
A votive offering is an object proffered in the hope of fulfilment of a vow. The Beer Can Votive project uses the ubiquity of aluminium sheet reclaimed from empty drinks cans as a democratic, accessible canvas on which to express your hopes, desires and visions. Each person cleans and deconstructs a can, embossing whatever they feel they want to divest into the aluminium, to make self-contained, lightweight metal reliefs that can be hung or mounted. Every votive made is uploaded to the @beercanvotives instagram account which becomes a digital shrine and archive. Literal or obscure, the union of these embodied declarations becomes a chorus and an entangled story of hope and intent, authored by us all.
The BCV project began in 2022 at Smugglers Festival in Kent and has since travelled across London and the South East of England, even making a trip to Cyprus. The project was developed during a period of incapacity in which I wanted to evolve a ‘bedsmithing practice’ and continue to work with metals from bed. As well as travelling in real-time space, the project is interested in developing inclusive methods of remote access for the bed bound. BCV has worked with arts festivals, charities and community groups amongst others, all the while collating our embodied gestures, our mythologies and our desires.
Please get in contact if you would like to work with the project!
