I’ve been invited to participate in an exhibition about the theme of waste,“Used” , in Nhil, Victoria. The exhibition is curated by the gorgeous and talented Tanya and Pauline McCracken, of Lola’s Garage, Nhil.  The exhibition will run from 11 April to 28 April.
Here's my thoughts about the theme...

Objects and tools that we may have once considered essential often become redundant, and unwanted, especially when they are superseded by better technologies that offer bigger, better,  faster, more robust or more efficient outcomes.

The original objects shift from something of value to something forgotten. They become artifacts - evidence of what once was and the way things used to be…”aah I remember those”…They collect in the bottom of drawers, on shelves in the shed, at the back of cupboards…temporarily forgotten, overlooked… waste.

But what is waste, what is redundant and forgotten, to one person can be treasure to another.  

The same is true about memory. What I remember about an event and then store in memory is not the same as what another may store and remember. And when my memory is recalled, the past (it’s origin) is overwritten with new data from the present. In effect the original memory becomes superseded by its recollection.

These necklaces are made from the insides of floppy disks…remember those? Once important because of their capacity to store and transfer data, now superseded...redundant.

What data resides on these? Was it important? I will never know, and now it doesn’t matter…here and now, in the present, they are beautiful things…tomorrow they may just be waste.

If you are in or nearby Yackandandah, North East Victoria this weekend drop in to Yack Station and say hello. I have a studio  in this exciting new space and will have my recent work , My Precious ( I remember) 2014 on exhibition.
For further information go to the Yack Station website.

My precious (I remember) 2014

Memory is a precious but fragile object that we try to hold onto, but that inevitably disintegrates, shifts and changes with every recollection and reconstruction in the present.

My precious (I remember) 2014, is my personal collection of jewels. 

Made from fragments…

… words : that have something to do with the sentiments and memories of my relationships with others…

…images: photographs, reprinted, repurposed, repeated…

…kept and collected objects: stuff I hold onto, sometimes just because I like the way they look and how they make me feel.

My desire to give transient and sometimes intangible memory the shape and form of jewellery highlights the tension between concepts of fixity and flux.

Ideas of preciousness in traditional jewellery centre on perceptions of value and worth of materials and the concept of permanence…(diamonds are forever!). But in this collection of jewels the concept of precious is personal. It is stitched up and connected with concepts of self and identity - something that is fickle, constantly changeable, variable, and to a certain extent unpredictable.

Memory also fluctuates between our desire for permanence (to always remember) and something elusive …something that is not fixed but constantly changeable, as past made present.