Louise Atkinson
Julie Caves
Katherine Johnson and Stacey Allen
Steffan Jones- Hughes
Simon Lewandowski
Victoria Lucas
Andy Singleton
Collect is an exhibition that features the loved object,
through constructed, found, and represented collections created using
paper based materials. The artists selected are all concerned with the
passionate interest we have for personal possessions, and the objects
of the everyday. Why do we feel the need to archive, to save, to cut out, and to keep? What
drives us to accumulate, record and assemble?
It could be said that to collect is to assert ones own existence, through the acquisition of objects that encapsulate the collector’s subjective individuality. This collection outlives the
collector, allowing him or her to live on through this extension of
self. It is easy therefore, to compare the collector with the artist;
both focused on creating immortality through the creation / collection
of objects, whether this be a conscious effort or not.
Steffan Jones-Hughes for example presents a collection that
reflects his own mortal fragility, archiving objects as a way to
preserve his own existence. The lifeless bodies of birds, collected
whilst on walks in the spring, are photographed, the images positioned
in specimen jars. In contrast, Katherine Johnson and Stacey Allen in
the piece Eat Your Words consume words from a book, the performance
acting as a metaphor for the way humans strive to collect information
and knowledge.
The medium of paper and the Artist’s Book is an appropriate
form in which to explore the notion of the collection. The book, and
its ability to present vast amounts of information in such a small
space, acts almost like a mini museum, documenting and personally
informing the individual of its contents through the turn of a page. Paper is fragile and ephemeral, making works such as Andy Singleton’s Cut out Leaves
extraordinarily ethereal.
Collections are extraordinary instruments that allow us to learn about the civilisations we live in, past and present. They allow us to rationalise the passage of time, putting our fears surrounding
the constant loss time demands temporarily at rest. Most of all they
tell us something about ourselves, allowing us to place ourselves in
the real, to remember, and to make ourselves feel more alive.