Keeping It Going

30 pieces of silver

 

It’s now a week since the opening night of ‘In The Future’ at the Collyer Bristow Gallery in Holborn, London. The show’s title was taken from a David Byrne song of the same name and I was asked to respond to a line from it:

‘In the future all material items will be free.’

The show’s curator, Rosalind Davis, also informed me that it was the Gallery’s silver anniversary. Being aware of interactive events I’ve created in the past, when I’ve either given away small objects or put them up for exchange, Rosalind asked me if I might be able to come up with an idea to acknowledge Collyer Bristow’s amazing 25 year run of supporting artists.

 

My thoughts quickly turned to what I’d be happy to give away for free, as well as how to introduce the silver theme. The 30 pieces of silver associated with the Biblical story of Judas Iscariot came to mind pretty quickly and is how I came to present 30 silver objects, laid out on a silver salver.

 

On the opening night, I asked actor James Haslam to give them away by approaching people who were there and asking them to choose one. I referred to the 30 objects as ‘silver’ right from the start – but of course (as I’m sure most people suspected) they weren’t real silver. They were actually a mixture of 50p items from charity shops, Christmas cracker prizes & other bits and pieces I’ve gathered over the years – some sprayed with silver paint, all looking like silver and masquerading as the real thing. But there was a twist …

 

The original 30 pieces of silver before being given away, February 2018

 

The theme of value and worth is very much at the core of my work, and the idea behind ’30 pieces of silver’ was to explore that concept in a real life situation. I therefore used part of the budget I was given to buy an actual, genuine piece of silver. It was an antique 1815 hallmarked vinaigrette (a sort of miniature pomander, which used to be filled with smelling salts or perfume, so that it could be brought out and sniffed when confronted with foul odours).

 

It excited me to see it nestled amongst the other items on the salver, unidentifiable to the untrained eye as something ‘worth’ infinitely more than any of the other 29 objects. Would people recognise it for what it was? Would it be the first item chosen? And if so, would it be because of its monetary value, rather than its aesthetic or emotional appeal? Or would it be taken by someone who had no idea of its value and simply liked the look of it?

 

After all, is a real piece of silver ‘worth’ any more than a small sparkly deer, a 1998 Esso football coin or a spray painted pig? And is it inevitable that when people find out that they could have taken a genuine ‘valuable’ piece of silver, they will regret choosing the item they did? Will the silver pig, once it’s identified as mere plastic sprayed in silver paint, appeal less when it becomes clear it’s not real silver? Or will the person who selected it still be happy, as they took the object that was worth most to them in terms of aesthetic appeal?

 

These are just some of the many questions I’ve been wondering about since last Thursday evening. I have yet to discover who took the antique vinaigrette box and why – but I do know that it wasn’t the first item to go, and neither was it the last. If you were the person who chose it, I’d love to hear from you. And I’d also love to hear from anyone else who took one of the objects. Was there a reason for taking the thing that you took? Do you now wish you’d taken the vinaigrette box? Do get in touch!

 

The genuine piece of antique hallmarked silver, a vinaigrette dated 1815, February 2018

 

In the meantime, I’d like to thank everyone who participated in the event – especially those of you who have already been in touch with your stories and photos of the objects in their new homes! And I’d especially like to thank James Haslam who distributed the silver so beautifully – a pretty challenging mission considering that there were over 400 visitors attending the opening night.

 

And of course, last but by no means least, a very special thank you must go to both Rosalind Davis and all those involved in the Collyer Bristow Gallery itself. Rosalind has created and curated an excellent exhibition in ‘In The Future’ and I’m delighted to be given the opportunity to show my work alongside a group of hugely talented artists. In addition, the fantastic financial support of the Collyer Bristow Gallery enabled me to create a completely new piece of work and I’m very grateful to them for this. As many of us know, it’s so often lack of funding that prevents us from being able to realise particular pieces of work – and indeed, in the long term, reach our full potential as artists, even. I’m  grateful to the Gallery for their financial support, as well as for being so accommodating in helping the ’30 pieces of silver’ performance go ahead on the opening night. It feels sweetly ironic that, through creating a piece of work which essentially explores the concept of value and worth, I should find myself working with a curator and a Gallery who both clearly have the interest of artists at heart and demonstrate through the work they do, how much they truly value them.

 

‘In The Future’ continues at the Collyer Bristow Gallery until mid June. Twenty artists were invited to be in the exhibition and it’s a great line-up with some very interesting, diverse work on show. All details re the best times to visit are in the link below, followed by a link to the press release and information on all the artists involved in the show.

https://www.collyerbristow.com/item/2165-in-the-future

http://collyerbristow.newsweaver.com/InthefuturePrivateView-1i74ewqs6pc/jjdhn56yt5r

 

 

Thoughts are returning to ‘The Museum of Object Research’ and my commitment to creating more assemblage pieces for the ‘Nana’s Colours’  body of work.  I’m currently re-examining what’s already there, in the archive and making decisions about what stays/what goes, what can be improved, be better photographed, etc.

The two objects above are definite ‘keepers’, symbolic of the quieter, more subtle colour palette present in my late Nana’s life. They are also very clear indicators of a recurrent theme in my work around issues of value and worth. Both these objects are respectively worn out and broken – of little or no use and of no monetary value. It’s almost impossible however, to put a price on what they mean to me, emotionally.

This is what I wrote about the individual items and the memories they evoked in my original proposal to the Museum:

The knife: completely worn with use, a poignant reminder of the times I spent chatting to my Nana at the kitchen sink, as she peeled huge piles of vegetables in preparation for family dinners.

The broken comb: representing not just the incredibly strict ‘waste not, want not’ mantra by which my Nana lived her life, but a symbol of another aspect of her personality – snatched moments, away from relentless domesticity, focusing on herself. Vitapoint combed through her honey blonde hair, curls carefully caught up in a hairnet – in private, of course – for bedtime only; intimate, shared moments.

 

 

‘All that is left …’  is a recent piece of work which was inspired once again by my Nana’s ‘waste not, want not’ ethos. Slithers of soap would be crushed one on top of the other to create a ‘new’ more substantial. useable bar of soap.

 

Though I haven’t (by choice) been ‘keeping it going’ in terms of maintaining this blog in recent months, the sifting and sorting through one hundred plus boxes, stored away in a friend’s garage, continues to be a large part of my working process.

On the whole, it’s been an exciting few months – unearthing some great, forgotten finds amid the boxes. But it feels important to also acknowledge just how emotionally demanding it can be. Life, after all, isn’t (and by no means, has been) a bed of roses and there are plenty of reminders of that in the midst of the memorabilia – photos of huge sentimental value, letters from past loved ones, notifications of death – shattered dreams, broken promises, broken hearts.

I still have moments of feeling completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff; fret and feel guilty about just how much storage space is required, question why I even HAVE all this stuff – and so on and so on. But while my friend is happy to allow me the spare storage space and while I have the incentive to keep going back, digging & delving through a lifetime’s collection, I will continue with my commitment to keeping it going – sharing random images along the way and bearing in mind that it is after all, through the sorting process, that the work so often gets made.

Post script:

There’s always room for error when it comes to participatory work and I anticipated that ‘Borrow a Cup of Sugar’ wouldn’t be without. One of two of the mysteries was solved today when I heard from Deborah Burnstone who left a fragment of pottery/china inside a cup. Deborah found the piece on the banks of the River Thames while out filming one day. I’m sorry that I didn’t get a chance to speak with her during the artist’s talk on the last day of the show, but really pleased that I have been able to match up the fragment with her name and can credit the photo below accordingly.

As a result, I’m now curious to know who left the dark-coloured metal coin with a square cut-out hole in the centre, as per the image below.

There are still some borrowed tea cups out in the world which may/may not wend their way back to me at some point in the future. This uncertainty reflects the precarious nature of lending – because, despite our best intentions, we don’t always remember to return what we borrowed.

borrow: take and use (something that belongs to someone else) with the intention of returning it

When Jane Boyer and Rebecca Fairman, curators of the group exhibition ‘Something Borrowed’ first spoke to me about the premise behind the show, my thoughts turned to the past – neighbours at the door, often in the middle of baking – hands covered in flour. They’d run out of something or other; could they please borrow a cup of sugar – some flour, or an egg, perhaps – just until they got to the shops, or their Family Allowance came through?

It was a part of family life for me and a way of keeping the lines of communication open between neighbours. There would inevitably be an exchange of information about the news, the weather or tidbits of gossip about one of the villagers while the borrowing/returning went on. And it was of course, an excellent excuse for knocking on the door of newcomers to the area.

There was a strict etiquette about borrowing – if you wanted to be respected, you brought back what you borrowed – that was the expectation and god help anyone who erred.

Being invited to be a part of ‘Something Borrowed’ also made me wonder about borrowing today: how much has the borrowing tradition I remember from my childhood survived? How much has improved access to credit and extended shop opening hours impacted on the need to borrow? And if the tradition of borrowing has waned in any way over the years, has it now gone full circle – through necessity perhaps, in light of the current government’s austerity measures and the consequential effect of living hand to mouth?

I presented a new piece of work ‘Borrow a Cup of Sugar’ inspired by the theme of the exhibition. It was made up of 25 sugar-filled tea cups, displayed in a cabinet, in the Arthouse1 gallery in Bermondsey, London. I invited visitors and other artists in the show to borrrow, through taking away one of the cups of sugar with ‘… the intention of returning it.’

I also gave people a choice of leaving something in exchange for the borrowed sugar when they brought the cup back – just a small gesture of some kind, to acknowledge the borrowing. There was no obligation to do so – the choice was theirs, completely.

I was curious. How would people respond? Could I guarantee they’d even borrow the cups, let alone return them – many of them rather unique, beautiful objects to my mind. Or, was this going to prove to be a sure-fire way to say farewell to some of the cups from my collection? Participatory events like this rely on an audience – and a ‘good’ audience at that – nobody can ever be sure about how things will turn out, however deep one’s faith in humanity.

But as has been the norm in my experience, humanity and people’s overall sense of generosity and goodness always fares well. This particular case was no exception and people responded very positively. Some amazing, creative items were left in exchange for the sugar, as well as many fascinating stories, told through the personal experiences, histories and memories of those who shared them. A vintage cup with an image of Queen Elizabeth called to mind a beloved grandmother for example, while a pretty, royal blue and gilt-painted cup stirred up memories for another of taking tea with a great-great uncle in his garden, ‘surrounded by hollyhocks and bees.’ This uncle, J E M Mellor, was a renowned entymologist, hence the significance of the bees.

Another story involved the extraordinary lengths that people will go to to both borrow and lend, as relayed by one artist who told the story of her neighbour, who borrowed her internet by hooking a cable out of her window and into one of his. If that’s not the modern day equivalent of borrowing a cup of sugar, I don’t know what is!

It would take too much time to list every single exchange made in the course of the exhibition’s two week run, or to include the entire narrative that ran alongside much of the the borrowing that occurred, but I hope the images presented below will sum up a lot of the amazing ways people contributed. Experience has also taught me that it’s not always necessary to document every single thing that happens and that it’s the overall experience that matters – in this case, experiencing the actual process of borrowing and what it feels like to have temporary ownership of something that belongs to someone else.

Here is evidence of some of the wonderful interactions that took place – all in the name of borrowing.

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I’m very grateful to those who participated – all the visitors to the gallery, including friends and other artists, as well as fellow artists involved in the show itself. Thank you for getting involved and participating in such thoughtful and imaginative ways.

Thanks are also due to Rebecca Fairman (co-curator of the exhibition, as well as director of the Arthouse1 gallery) for encouraging people to take part and for helping make the images above look a lot sharper than I ever could.