I first posted images of the objects below a year or so ago as part of an artist call on Twitter. I can’t remember what the theme was now, but I do remember being aware of how personal and precious the items were to me.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen and handled them and when I found them again yesterday, it felt good to be reunited with them in a different setting, uncluttered. I was able to see them properly and was more aware of their unique qualities – the marks of wear and tear, the patina of age and use – each object so evocative of my childhood and the many times I spent with my Nana as a child.
Memories came flooding back – 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 bone, left overs of a Sunday roast lamb dinner from eons ago, hung for years by a piece of string on an apple tree in my Nana’s garden – originally put out for the birds to peck on. These objects are steeped in social history and powerful reminders of the huge impact Nana’s way of life has had on my own – particularly her unerring devotion to domestic chores; how not to live my life, perhaps. I don’t strip the beds every day and remake them with hospital corners (pre-duvet days) or stand the dining room chairs on the table to polish their legs every Monday – or iron my tea towels & sheets.
The hairnet, the mirrors and the broken comb represent another side of Nana when she was alive – the side that turned her attention away from domestic life and focused on herself – Vitapoint combed through her hair, curls carefully caught up in a hairnet – in private, of course, for bedtimes only – intimate, shared moments.
The subject of our mortality is one that has always fascinated me – the fragility of our existence and that very thin line between being alive – or not; using that knife, that comb, that hand mirror – or not. Examining my late Nana’s objects yesterday was exactly about that – these objects, unlike her, have lived on – the permanence of objects versus the fragility of life.
