Ineligible

for many years, I photograph each piece carefully so I have a record of it.

The detachment of this process also helps me to think of them as objects and to consider which will be best suited to the ideas I have had so far.

I also spend time thinking about how to break them up. Grinding up ceramic had seemed a relatively simple proposition. Breaking up pieces of metal presents more of a challenge to someone with a primary practice of performance and photography.

So here are my artefacts, from which I have committed to make a new piece of work, by breaking them up to use as raw material.

I read the letter to the artists that came with them and am a little puzzled by being exhorted to not think of them as artefactual, archaeological or historic.

When a parcel arrives with unknown contents, the first thing you do upon opening it is identify what is inside. I expected an unidentifiable piece of ceramic, so was delighted to be able to tell that it is cutlery, and that it is pretty, and of different designs. And the corrosion has produced beautiful colours.

And knowing where and when they came from, it is nigh impossible to separate them from their context, not to think of all those mouths they have put food into and what was happening for those people at the time.

I have to either break the rules and follow my heart, or break up the objects as quickly as possible into unrecognisable bits.

So I open my parcel, in some trepidation. I am very excited. It’s come all that way!

What’s it going to be? It’s Priority Mail, very well wrapped and I can’t get in.

There’s a letter to the artist, which I decide to read later. More packaging, then I carefully lift out the inner package, wrapped in a plastic bag.

I can see it’s metal, not ceramic as I expected.

It’s cutlery. It is broken and corroded, with pretty colours and shapes.