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Anne O'Callaghan
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Re-collect, Curated by Patrick Macaulay
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Re-drawing my shelves:
While my work over the past 15 years undeniably alludes back to nature, I resist a reductive mythologizing concept of nature; my work is driven by a chemical sense of process, while at the same time retaining a very intimate quality.
An important part of my work is collecting natural objects and (much stuff), which I then use at a later date. The very act of collecting alters the nature of the temporal: the object is removed from its original context, creating a new order; an order beyond temporality; a shift from natural time and order to cultural time and order. This shift this creating of a new order, new context is at the heart of my work.
In re-collect- I have included boxes that were collected for their utilitarian value storage, and over time were reframed. This reframing of the objects its classification and re-ordering, is predicated on seriality, and formal interest/aesthetic value.
With the natural objects some are cast in bronze- reordered, or recast in immutable materials. By contrast to the mutable and familiar forms from nature, there are the works created from bones and thorns, found objects and thorns. Objects that are not fixed: they are precarious, unstable and eluding classification.
The vitrine. can be seen as a précis of my work.--
Anne O’Callaghan
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Why do people collect? There can be all kinds of reasons why
people feel the need to surround themselves with teacups,
postcards or cookie tins. For many collectors the reason why is not
important. What is important is the impulse to add one more object
to their collections.
What about people who create objects? Why would artists need to
satisfy the need to surround themselves with ‘things’? Why gather
when you can create?
In Re-collect, the artists involved all collect and then re-collect by
having the objects either inform their art or fuse with their practice
to create new objects. These re-collections are a re-thinking of
collecting. What is the purpose of accumulating all this stuff? Here
are eight thoughtful suggestions.
- Patrick Macaulay
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