All of these objects belong to me or are from my household and in their way form a portrait of the artist through their associated meanings. Objects can say a lot about the person who owns them so I carefully chose objects that say something about where we are now and how technology has also rapidly made a lot of objects obsolete in recent history. In effect the collection of objects make up a 21st Century Cabinet of Curiosities that reflects my cultural background and the associated values and significance of the objects.
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- Compass with Sight Glass
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- Football Medal
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- Chad Valley Savings Tin
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- Children’s Favourites 7″ record
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- Telegram from The Three O’s
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- Gas Bottle Key Spanner
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- Miniature Deckchair & Whittling Magazine
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- Morse Code Practice Record
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- Wooden Toy
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- Metronome
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- Carpet Needle
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- Self Adhesive Go Faster Car Stripe
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- Paul Doll
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- Cheiro’s Palmistry For All
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- Super 8 Cine Film
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- “The Dark Side of The Moon” LP
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- Pixall Record Cleaner in Box
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- Japanese Handkerchief
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- Novelty Norwegian Postcard
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- Rug Wool Tool
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- “Come Go With Me” LP
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- Audio Cassette Tape
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- No.2 Birds of a Feather
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- No.13 The Corfu Affair
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- 5.25″ PFS Floppy Disk
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- Sindy & Paul go to the Discotheque
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- Learning Development Aids Box with Contents List
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- Metric Conversion Apron
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- BT Wall Telephone
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- Electric Chair Maurice Fulton Gig Flyer
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- Stevie Wonder “Innervisions” 8 Track Tape
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- Electric Souls Flyer for an event at The View Frodsham, England.
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- Kung Fu TV Annual
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- Snoopy & Woodstock Solar Powered Calculator
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- How to buy Fish and Chips
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- Spur Shelving Playing Cards
One day all museums / galleries will be like this, showing snippets of C20 life, of interest to each and everyone. Just think of the attendance figures, and the beauty of the concept is the public is stuffed full of collectors who would love the chance to see some of their treasures on secure display. Even better, there would be special cabinets, with our temporary curators having a key. They could swop display objects about for the duration so we’d see something new each time we went. The best display in Sheffield City Art Gallery is the little stand given over permanently to the local stamp collecting group; it’s always fascinating. And you just know the powers that be would love to get rid of it…
In the mid 90s Walsall Art Gallery did a fantastic exhibition called ‘The People’s Show’ curated by Jo Digger on the theme of local collectors and their collections. This was very forward thinking at the time and seemed to point the way to how museums and galleries could work with collectors to do something amazing.
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