Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Forlorn Objects Reunited
On my recent break in the Kent I went to Canterbury, and wandered into the Royal Museum. There I found the Elemental Insight exhibition - 'an exploration by artists of the heavens and atmosphere, weather and climate, environment and earth, a complex system that extends from the surface of the earth to the sun and moon and beyond...'.
Four artists were commissioned to make permanent works for the Met Office as part of the exhibition. (It's now left Canterbury and is continuing its UK tour - you can download the 40-page exhibition brochure here [PDF, 2660kb].)
There were many wonderful, evocative pieces of work on show here - nearly all using natural materials, in earth tones or icy shades of white and blue. This made Bridgette Ashton's handbag pieces really stand out. In jewel-bright colours and formed largely from found objects and beach debris, they were right up my street:
"For...works in her series ‘Forlorn Objects Reunited’, Bridgette Ashton collected plastic debris from the beach near her home in Cornwall. The material ranges from broken beach toys and a surprising number of bits and pieces of dolls to ship’s jetsam-bits of crates, buoys, nylon ropes, container lids, and packaging... The status of these bags of rubbish of beach pollution was then enhanced and elevated by their being embellished and decorated with jewel coloured plastic toys and knickknacks. Thus the banal qualities of the raw materials were converted into ‘talisman-like objects’."
(Extract from 'Transformations, the Art of Recycling' exhibition catalogue for the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford by Jeremy Coote, Chris Morton and Julia Nicholson.)
Trophy Vessel Tethered (1998) mixed media.
© Copyright Bridgette Ashton 2003.
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Four artists were commissioned to make permanent works for the Met Office as part of the exhibition. (It's now left Canterbury and is continuing its UK tour - you can download the 40-page exhibition brochure here [PDF, 2660kb].)
There were many wonderful, evocative pieces of work on show here - nearly all using natural materials, in earth tones or icy shades of white and blue. This made Bridgette Ashton's handbag pieces really stand out. In jewel-bright colours and formed largely from found objects and beach debris, they were right up my street:
"For...works in her series ‘Forlorn Objects Reunited’, Bridgette Ashton collected plastic debris from the beach near her home in Cornwall. The material ranges from broken beach toys and a surprising number of bits and pieces of dolls to ship’s jetsam-bits of crates, buoys, nylon ropes, container lids, and packaging... The status of these bags of rubbish of beach pollution was then enhanced and elevated by their being embellished and decorated with jewel coloured plastic toys and knickknacks. Thus the banal qualities of the raw materials were converted into ‘talisman-like objects’."
(Extract from 'Transformations, the Art of Recycling' exhibition catalogue for the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford by Jeremy Coote, Chris Morton and Julia Nicholson.)
Trophy Vessel Tethered (1998) mixed media.
© Copyright Bridgette Ashton 2003.
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