Wunderkammer

The inspiration behind this exhibition came from the Wunderkammer tradition. “Cabinet of Curiosties”are encyclopedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were, in Renaissance Europe, yet to be defined. Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history (sometimes faked), geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art (including cabinet paintings), and antiquities. The Wunderkammer was regarded as a microcosm or theater of the world, and a memory theatre. Often placed in a room in a private house and seen as a way of entertaining guests.

I am very interested in the practice of making work as a biographical excercise and found the proccess of making this exhibition in turn became a way of remembering. From a personal point of view the making collecting and generating became an excercise in remembering. Re-thinking my relationship with the museum and the making of art.

In the exhibition there are several recent paintings as well as cabinet paintings, prints, jewellery, taxidermy objects, science models, shells, photography and sculpture. The innocence of looking again at things that have become familiar or over categorized bring about something new. In contrast to the sterile nature and starkness of the ‘white gallery’ space. This exhibition brings the sitting room or ‘home’ into the re-discovered context as gallery space.