Small Finds (Reboot)
My sculptural piece Small Finds and two associated prints from my Ghost of Small Finds series are featured in the first show of new gallery space Prompt, which opens tonight as part of the new ANU Pop Up Village. The exhibition also includes the work of Vice-Chancellor Collaborative Artist Fellows Clem Baker-Finch (2017) Jen Fullerton (2016) and Al Munro (2014).
Small Finds is a creative response to my residency in the Department of Archaeology and Natural History, ANU College of Asia & the Pacific, where I worked in collaboration with Dr Sally Brockwell and Professor Sue O’Connor. Many other members of the department assisted me in the collaboration, and their hands, faces, rooms and research feature as part of an assemblage of images printed on small fragments of brick. The images are selected from photographs I took during my time in the department and were made as a kind of visual ethnography of my encounters there. A specific focus of my approach was an exploration of the techniques and practices of ‘looking’ that archaeologists themselves employ in the process of undertaking their research.
A selection of these photographs were then printed onto fragments of brick wall that I salvaged from the department when it was being remodelled to house a new ARC special entre for languages. I was able to print on the wall fragments using the School of Art (ANU) Inkjet Research Facility printer, and in the process produced a series of prints which I called Ghost of Small Finds. At some point soon I’ll add more images of these to the website, but for now two appear below.