Finders keepers

To be able to record found objects, they first need finding. They are found by following paths, or making new ones, by walking. The walking has primarily taken place in Beechworth. In the process of walking, questions arise: who moved through this same physical territory. As I notice what has been dropped in the present, when did the loser realise their loss of the object? As the paths of the walking, the finding, the collecting and the drawing intersected it was clear that the direction of this research lead me to a natural destination of the Cabinet of Curiosities within a Museum. The objects original ownership and purpose are refigured, given new lives and contexts. New narratives have been created for these objects in small tableaus within drawers, boxes, on shelves and interned within bell-jars. The collection interned and eternalized within a cabinet becomes tied up with a desire to keep time from slipping away, refusing to acknowledge the inevitable process of change, decay and of loss.

Autorentext

I returned to my birthplace Beechworth, Australia in the early 1990s to resume a career as a secondary school teacher and a visual artist, responding to refugee and immigration issues in my artworks and researching the lost and found in the detritus of contemporary consumerism. I am currently continuing a decade long daily drawing project.