A room of my own

Because I have made it up, doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Who would not like a room of their own, of their own making? Filled entirely with dreams, hopes and aspirations, also of own making. A room of one’s own; – a space defined by mental or physical boundaries where we organize the coordinates that we measure our existence against. Where we filter and verify reality to become a controllable and predictable place to be. Into our room of choice, we collect our mementoes as reminders of that which has happened. A memory collection for making sense of time that is no longer now or here, but inexplicably has become past and then.

Collecting, or gathering in system, is one of the more endearing human endeavours. Fulfilling the need for pleasure, the want for security; – and on a tangible scale making order out of chaos. We collect as individuals, and the society in which we

belong make collections for us. The former gives identity, a sense of belonging and pleasure, the latter knowledge, information and insight. A collection may be defined as objects categorized according to familiarity, group or sameness, and logically displayed in an orderly fashion. The objects are largely of sentimental or monetary value, or of historical, sociological or anthropological interest.

My collections are scraps and fragments of time and history, mundane relics and objects not necessarily viewed as inherently meaningful. Neither are they precious nor valuable. The objects themselves are insignificant in nature, discarded by design, and fragmentary in appearance. In the process of searching for, selecting and displaying these items, work has emerged that with deals both with the notion of perceiving time and the response to experiencing it, viewed through the connectivity of history, the work questions what we deem as valuable. The idea of what the work represents overrides the matter the work consists of; – The objects are as such larger than themselves in that tied together create a work of different relevance than the value of each single component.

During the selection and decisions of what to collect, a kind of organic growth principle has been at play, encrusting the objects with meaning they did not from the onset have. It has been about looking and finding – and about all which has been forgotten. It is the individual obscured by the veil of history, and the remnants of time left for viewing. Presence becomes past, – which can never occur again, cannot be lived or experienced again; – and is only attainable or readable through mementoes that somehow belong to the past in question.

My room of my own is inhabited by visual memory-traces of participation and oblivion. Scraps of matter, as brittle as breath, rendered meaningful through manifestations of me being in time, and my understanding of time.