The Museum For Object Research

Riches are arriving at The Museum door in quick succession and the past few days have seen a lot of activity and interest in the project to create a forum for ideas and a resource for artists working with objects. Last night ‘The Gift’ arrived from one of The Museum’s earliest supporters and inspirations, artist Kate Murdoch whose a-n blog you can catch here https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/keeping-it-going-1  And what a gift it is. Striking at the heart of the emotionality often contained within the simplest and most ‘valueless’ objects that pass through our lives Kate turns the question of value upside-down and her arresting photograph brings home the beauty of a gesture underlined by a grim social reality.  Kate’s work is delicate and powerful all at once and the Museum is most grateful for this precious donation.

My offering to the Museum of Object Research is a small, gold-coloured, heart shaped brooch, cheaply manufactured to promote the Variety Gold Heart charity, which was established some 20 years ago. I saw these brooches everywhere at one point in my life, but the only ones I see nowadays are in charity and junk shops. The face value of them isn’t high and they usually sell for around 50p – £1 apiece. A lot of you I’m sure, will be aware of them.

This particular brooch, however took on a completely different meaning in terms of its value because of the circumstances in which it was given to me. Being handed the brooch as a gift, marked a symbolic moment and an exchange of friendship and kindness which touched me, emotionally. It’s something I still find myself thinking about.

I wrote about how I came to be the owner of the brooch in a post on my a-n ‘Keeping It Going’ blog in January of this year – the poignant circumstances in which it was handed to me by ‘yet another emotionally bruised and battered casualty of the recession’, as I described the shop owner at the time. As we spoke, in his abandoned, near empty shop, people were loading vans with the few remaining items – bargains galore! – the owner’s voice was despondent as he gave things away for virtually nothing.

The fifteen minutes or so I spent in the shop saying my farewells summed up value and worth in a nutshell to me. The items in the shop were worth nothing to him now that his business had failed and I saw in the once proud, creatively-driven shop owner ‘…yet another person left feeling devastated about their business ‘failing’ – all that time, all those hours, all that money invested – all for what?’

As it turned out, I came away with something of greater value and worth than anything I could ever have paid money for – this small heart-shaped brooch, handed to me with a quick ‘here y’are, have this’ by the shop owner. His action for me is a pertinent reminder that even in these difficult, cash-strapped times, kindness costs nothing.

The brooch demonstrates perfectly the way in which seemingly insignificant objects can become objects of great personal value. So often, the emotional attachment we make to objects transforms them from being irrelevant into something special – to be valued, cherished and carefully looked after.
For me, donating the brooch to the Museum of Object Research, to sit alongside other objects, all with their own unique attached stories, increases the significance and worth of the brooch still further.

Kate Murdoch.

The Museum is particularly pleased to host a blog post by Kate Morgan Clare, http://www.a-n.co.uk/person/kate-morgan-clare who is near completing a six year part time BA degree in Fine Art at Herefordshire College of Art. Her blog weaves in personal reflection with critical thought derived from her studies and she draws on many of the ideas the Museum would like to explore. I find Kate’s choice of image and her spur to working with objects incredibly moving. A person’s ‘hand’ is indeed animate and of all the traces we leave behind us marks our pulse so very eloquently. I very much look forward to more from Kate’s crystalline thought processes – she has a great deal to contribute. Thank you Kate!

Current ideas and explorations around objects. Kate Morgan-Clare October 2014

In my practice with objects I’m attempting to understand how I perceive the world – why I am who I am and what informs my judgements. I believe that many of our perceptions are formed by childhood experiences and that objects play an important role in recalling these experiences. The familiar object from childhood – or a version of it – is a vessel for a multitude of emotions and associations and in this way is never inanimate.

Initially my interest lay with the stories and objects of other people’s lives – clothing, toys and first–hand reminiscences of children of WWII; a friends’ 1950’s party dress; a 1930’s exercise book kept by a French fashion student.

Quite naturally I turned my attention to objects with a personal significance – and that’s when everything changed dramatically! Since finding a letter from my late father I have been set on bid to explore the intense nature of our relationship to ‘evocative objects’. Firstly I needed to understand and define the importance of objects in our lives. Daniel Miller discusses our relationship with objects of all kinds in his book Stuff (Polity Press 2010) Miller argues that we use objects as outward reflections of who we are and who we wish to become. As we grow and change so our need for more and varied objects grows too.

In an essay on the subject of my own evocative object I ask how our important personal objects survive when we are bombarded daily with hundreds of other objects made available to us (with the added pressures of marketing). I looked for evidence of their recognised value in our culture – in the art world where the object is transformed; in museums where it is held and protected and in photography where it is reproduced.

I have come to the conclusion that the evocative object is best cared for in our own curated spaces – our homes – where objects can become part of a personal collection or displayed in ‘pride of place’. Our objects might equally be cared for in secret – kept in drawers or in the loft. Wherever and however we choose to keep our ‘special’ things I believe they have a constant influence on our sense of identity. They remind us how we came to be the people we are and link us powerfully to people, places and events.

I think Sonia’s idea about a museum existing without a physical presence is very important. If we see a museum as a ‘place’ that links us to our pasts or to other places then there is in fact no need for a physical building or indeed for objects at all; only the ability to recall these things and articulate them in some way. The ‘virtual’ world of the internet just reinforces this idea – ‘everything’ is represented by words and images – not by real things at all. This makes the idea of collecting and keeping things very exciting to me as it gives a freedom to meaning and interpretation. It also makes being an artist exciting as there are no limits to how one might transform an object in creative terms.

The idea that objects can be transformed through our relationships with them seems to compliment the concept of transitional objects. Philippa Perry’s article in a recent blog post on The Museum of Object Research discusses how the transitional object allows a child to reveal their internal realities in an external form – the example she gives is the teddy. If the teddy stays with you right through to you leaving home then it sees you transform too. I think that we continue to ‘collect’ such objects with similar emotional value at various stages of our lives. In the book Evocative Objects Sherry Turkle discusses D.W.Winnicott’s theory of the transitional object. “The transitional objects of the nursery..are destined to be abandoned. Yet they will leave traces that will mark the rest of life. Winnicott believes that during all stages of life we continue to search for objects we can experience as both within and outside of ourselves.”(Turkle,2007:314).This idea accommodates the need to collect – and even perhaps hoard!

I’m not a collector myself- instead I feed off other’s ability to collect! Most of my mother’s possessions were given to her, lots of them are old, and whilst some are functional as well as ornamental they all have a sense of mystery around them. We know them but don’t know much about their provenance. My eldest brother has been collecting agricultural implements since he was a young man. Hundreds of tools hang from the walls of his shed and sit in his yard dripping in cobwebs and rusting – they are his and they are ‘alive’ and significant to him. (They also link us to our farming roots which is very important.) I work with an avid collector too – he buys ‘new’ old things every week. Some things are transformed into artworks others are cherished for their reference to a particular time in our industrial past or to popular culture.
Even if we don’t collect ourselves I think we all have a healthy thriving ‘museum’ living nearby which feeds our creative lives.

Recommended reads – with lots of pictures too!
Putnam,J. (2009). Art and Artifact – The Museum as Medium. Revised edn. London: Thames and Hudson.
Naylor,T. (2007). Living Normally – Where Life Comes Before Style. London: Thames and Hudson.

A pilot session for a new series of workshops I will be leading with Claudia Figueiredo beginning in January 2015 (under the whizzy title ARTicles) recently yielded an unexpected question. Unpacking a small suitcase of objects – which relate to my ongoing project Barcelona in a Bag – in front of a group was a richly rewarding experience and plenty of fun. The sessions are designed to facilitate conversation and participation for a group of elderly people in an area of high social deprivation. Over a period time we will aim to build trust, ignite interest and enable hands on making.

The lightest of touches was required I felt in the ‘getting to know’ each other through our objects and my feeling (and I suppose thus my approach to the group) was rewarded with a great deal of banter through which some striking themes emerged. So many of the objects selected by participants to bring to their first session were those treasured and kept on mantelpieces. Many objects related to family members, women seemed to focus on grandmothers and men on their uncles. More common themes will no doubt emerge.

The most telling aspect of this group is that of pre-established connection. They are all members of a church community and the level of confidence in one another seemed high. Later I wondered if the nurture these people received through their church community ‘family’ enabled them to play so creatively (indulging in high jinks in some cases) with the objects provided. Self-consciousness wasn’t an issue.

The question most eloquently and gently put, after much unpacking and explanation on my part of the origin and significance of my objects, was genuine. What is the difference between what you do and a hoarder?

My response went something like this:

We might think of a hoarder as someone who collects objects and can’t throw them away. I’m quite good at throwing things away and while there are some irreplaceable things I could never get rid of, my philosophy is that life takes things from us in every sense – including our lost objects. It’s what we do with the objects that remain with us that interests me. But yes, one of the very important techniques in my work is to find replacements (usually approximations) for lost objects too – so this does mean I acquire a lot of stuff.

A hoarder might be someone who is limited by their objects, certainly the cases we see on TV are of people whose houses are crammed full of objects to the point that they literally can’t move around freely. Perhaps they don’t do much with their objects and perhaps the acquisition of new objects isn’t so considered? I could be wrong of course.

Some people might see me as a hoarder but for me the act of collecting and arranging objects is for a very specific purpose – to create new works and tell a story. Objects also lead my research and spur me on. It is true that my tiny studio could do with being bigger and needs more storage capacity.

Perhaps there are elements of the hoarder in the object artist? I wonder what others think!

Another Happy first for The Museum and it’s a double! A first post from Kate Murdoch feels like something of a coup and a first book review is equally significant. I am in constant awe at the calibre of contributors to the Museum and delighted at the variety of post that is emerging. It was my hope from the start to build a resource including links to articles and reviews alongside the posts about practice. So here it is Kate Murdoch’s review of Sherry Turkle’s (ed) Evocative Objects. It’s a resounding thumbs up!

Sherry Turkle the editor of ‘Evocative Objects, Things We Think With’ writes eloquently about the impact of objects on our emotional lives. I became completely entrenched in this book on a first reading and have returned to the various stories time and time again. I’ve searched back, but unfortunately, can’t find who it was who recommended the book to me in the first place – I’m sure it was a fellow a-n artist/blogger, so thank you, whoever you are.

Many wise words about the power of objects on our lives are written by Sherry Turkle in her introduction to the book – here’s a short extract from it that, to me, perfectly sums up the impact of the connection we make to the things that surround us. It ties in very well also, with what’s already found itself into the Museum of Objects – the objects and their related stories and related articles – the bra, for example; the soft toy; Jenni Dutton’s self portrait and the article on transitional objects by psychotherapist, Philipa Perry:

‘We find it familiar to consider objects as useful or aesthetic, as necessities or vain indulgences. We are on less familiar ground when we consider objects as companions to our emotional lives or as provocations to thought. The notion of evocative objects brings together these two less familiar ideas, underscoring the inseparability of thought and feeling in our relationship to things. We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with.’

On a similar note, this is what I wrote in my artist statement about my own relationship with found objects:

The objects we surround ourselves with are loaded with meaning, reflecting both our internal emotional world and the external image we present to others. From the mundane to the meaningful, they are steeped in social and political history. Objects are a part of our identity; they provide us with a sense of self and reveal our connections to the wider world.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough to artists whose work is concerned with working with found objects and investigating the emotional connections we make with them.

Kate’s blog can be found here: https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/keeping-it-going-1

Cross pollination at the Museum for Object Research!

Object artists have been stepping up to blog about their work and now Elena Thomas has blogged in response to the Museum’s latest post about ‘transitional objects’ on home turf over at her a-n blog Threads. This is exactly what the Museum has been hoping for – cross pollination of ideas, stimulating discussion and a growing resource of ideas and theories with which to conjure in our object work.

What I love about Elena’s post, aside from the wonderful photographs, is the way she teases at the underside of what we might think of as the ‘transitional object’. These objects are thought of most often as facilitators but can they also hold us back or be used to restrain us? I ‘m fascinated by the push-pull within these works and the complex relationships of nurture in which such powerful emotions reside. The ‘transitional object’ is usually referred to  in the context of the child, but Elena observes from the dual perspectives of the adult care-giver and the child.

Elena  has kindly given me permission to link to her post here, and yet for now I can’t! It’s proved impossible to attach links to any of my blog posts but I’m hoping this can be resolved. Meanwhile I’m resorting to cut and paste and very much hoping that you will take the time to view Elena’s work over on Threads: Chuck the theory at the work and see if it sticks. https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/threads