2003, Papiermache Sculptures and Sound, Sculptures, Walkmans, Sound Equipment, Dimensions Variable

“She fled the room after checking to make sure that no one had seen her, that there were no witnesses to the foul deed she had just committed.  She smiled to herself, thinking that she was safe.  That she could walk away with her secret tucked behind her air of nonchalance.  But there were onlookers.  They had no voice, just the capacity to carry the gravity of her act with them for always.  The door handle she had wiped clean, the curtain she had pulled back to make sure no one was lurking outside, the mirror she had given a collusive wink; they had all seen and they all knew.”

To remember a fleeting moment of the day when lying in bed just after you turn the light out.  To recall an incident to a friend, only to forget it five minutes later.  To find yourself smiling on the bus at something you have remembered for the first time in years.  All of these constitute our histories and our personal memories.  And each memory is made up of hundreds of random, obscure objects. Therefore every object has a history.  Yet they have no capacity for recollection due to their very inanimate nature.

This series of work explores the notion that an object has the potential to have a voice, that it has the capacity to tell it’s own story. A number of writers, from many different backgrounds, were invited to collaborate on the project.  People were asked to choose an everyday object and write its history.   The objects were then reconstructed out of papier-mâché and a suitable voice found.

The people who collaborated on the project are:

[‘aisikl] -  ‘u’

Neil Dundas  - Half Jack

Anthony Goodman - Incident on a Welsh Beach

Peter Lemmens  - The Plastic Bag

Richard Penn - The Window People and On Guilt and Divine Judgement

Jennifer Ritchie - The Water Cooler

Nedko Solakov - The Toothbrush