Timekeeper

Installation                                                    

The museum is founded in full acceptance of loss. As a bulwark to this loss, a salve for forgetting, its value is constituted by the broader destruction of the thing it preserves. The existence of the archive is therefore predicated on forgetting, erasure, disappearance and destruction. In this sense then, the archive subsists on the things it protects; if it cannot be an ark for the things which vanish, it has no purpose. Unlike the biblical ark however, there are not two of each here; these precious things cannot replicate and will die childless. 

The administration of the archive is a matter of great seriousness, as befits the role of one who tends the injured while the inevitable approaches. And when the inevitable has passed, what then? Do we continue to shuffle the records, hoping for an afterlife?

Shown as part of BOOK CLUB, Lake Macquarie Art Gallery, 26 Aug- 15 Oct 2017. Curated by Meryl Ryan, the show includes the work of Chris Bond, Simryn Gill, Julie Gough, Stephen Goddard, William Kentridge, Archie Moore, Brigita Ozolins, Patrick Pound, Cyrus Tang, Ahn Wells, and writer Naomi Riddle.