Arboretum Park Derby - residency and exhibition (2017)

 

Formed from months of thoughts about archives. What is an archive?? Why do we collect things? Why have we thrown those things away. 

What is an acceptable collection (archive)? What is a guilty pleasure of collecting? A collection of chillies or a collection of nail polish?

Looking at the kinds of archives, collections, hoards off the streets surrounding the Arboretum park and cooperative nature of items being thrown out on the street. Why was it not put in a bin? Was it left to be taken? to be claimed? Was it too good to be thrown away? Are these street collections are archives in themselves?

Research into how we (the #youth) perceive content, through memes, txt speak, how we adopt tropes. How we label thing such as the compositions of the street archives, as

R E L A T A B L E. things that reflect our feelings, our mental health, the textures of our queerness, the fragility of our gender, the temperance of everything in our lives.

Items were collected and information on them archived. I took items I liked, I thought would be good in a sculpture. Documents were created on each sculpture with these back stories of each piece.

I then created compositions with the items. Ones I felt reflected the surroundings they were found in, as well at the thoughts I was having unconnected to the work. works I could look at, think ‘same’ ​

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Information on each item used throughout the exhibition are detailed here