SHED
A durational sculpture made from household waste
Sometimes the death of someone close to you, manifests in a refusal of loss. It might start with some thing that touches you, a photo, a souvenir. Then that 'touch' comes to replace the
significance of the thing, and you hold on to an
object, any object, anxious for some kind of presence from someone no longer there;
you keep...
you collect...
you hoard.
Because memory is fallible, and your loss too tangible for there to be nothing. As though the detritus of a life could fill the space once occupied by one.
Bits and bobs,
clutter,
rubbish.
You become a hoarder of objects whose only significance is symbolic of that initial loss.
The components of this sculpture took some ten years to accumulate. In response to this, the piece became a durational one, in the two person show Behind The Arena, with fellow Bloc Studios artist, and Contemporary British Painter, Sean Williams. On the opening night, the sculpture began as a couple of pallets on the floor, marking the space it would come to inhabit. A wicker in-tray of
domestic paperwork; bills, letters, flyers. And a leather wallet lay gaping on top of the pile, stuffed with old receipts, mementos and unspent money. Throughout the exhibition, more objects were added - overnight, so that they would appear to have a life of their own. They took over the space on the pallets, overwhelming it, until eventually a structure was formed. A life-size shed. A defunct one, of solid and claustrophobic mass. And as a shed is traditionally a space of retreat and quiet industry, this sculpture becomes a monument to the futile work of hoarding, and the false notions of safety stored in the objects a hoarder gathers around them. As hoarding is a fortress in which one is kept prisoner.
