Cabinet (Changing Perceptions)
Thirteen international artists, designers, and architects, working in the School of
Architecture Design and Environment at Plymouth University, were given
unprecedented access to the hidden collection of archives and artefacts within the
Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery. A fascinating experiment in bringing
legacy to life, the project aims to challenge our perception of museums as
oversized storage facilities and to radicalise existing notions of exhibition space.
The exhibition evolved and developed through the direct involvement and
engagement with the collections and archives within the museum. This has proved
timely, as many cultural institutions around the world re-evaluate their relationship
to people, place and space.
The palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould notes that the greatest discoveries are to
be found not in a freshly hewn cliff of shale, but in old museum collections, by
rethinking the relationships between the objects that have already been archived in
our knowledge. Often the most interesting exhibits are the ones that tell us things
that we already know but haven’t yet articulated in our minds. Or more precisely,
they encourage us to look at familiar things in different ways, as if to remind us of
their true meaning; the way we live, the things we encounter, the way we construct
personal journeys and narratives.
Most of the responses to the museum’s collections combine various ideas from
different sources to produce unexpected results. Much of the work within Cabinet
deals with the measure of time, reoccurrence, parallel worlds, and how we view
and represent the future.
The participating practitioners have a close connection to commercial mechanisms
and the production of objects. They share a desire to challenge preconceptions
and push boundaries. Where it is no longer possible or relevant to categorize and
define the objects they have created, there is a conceptual expansion of ideas and
intention in which elements of humour, irony and playfulness characterise the work.
‘For me creativity is about playing with what I find, testing one proposition against
another and seeing how things combine and react. This exhibition is about
reconstructing things that already exist and transforming ideas and stories we
already know. It is about exploring inwards, examining existing assumptions,
squinting at the archive of experience from new angles and hoping for some sort of
revelation or insight’
(Pete Davis, Curator, 2011)
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The event is supported by the Design Knowledge Research Group and has been
coordinated with the generous help of Plymouth City Museum and Art gallery, The Faculty
of Arts and the School of Architecture, Design and Environment and Peninsula Arts.
1. Kerry Whittle:
The work for this exhibition is about the intoxicating excitement and fun of searching
museums and archives, about layers of fragmented information and memory, and about
how rummaging through objects, artefacts and forgotten detail can provide a better
understanding of self, time and place. In my workshop I have tried to represent a personal
response through the physical process of making, by drawing in three dimensions, building
up layers of steel, welding, cutting and bending, experimenting with form and texture and
using fragments to represent an impression of the whole.
Works have been created using mild steel (metal man- 1.9m) video projection and white
tissue.
2. Polly Macpherson: Void
Spaces between are rarely focused on or given recognition for the worth they have to the past
and present; and the progression they permit. There are many less obvious or in fact hidden
marks, finishes and surfaces that when acknowledged can assist and heighten both our visual
and historical understanding of an environment.
As a maker, my inquiry development has been centered on textures and the positive and
negative spaces from both the two and three-dimensions. These include floor surfaces and the
quality, type and age of materials. I have been using forensic methods and techniques to
magnifying the smallest of marks and spaces enhancing their stature.
Works have been created using a toolbox of porcelain, plaster, paper, water, pastels, graphite
and museum matter.
3 x Glass Framed Drawings app. 900 x 340 x 40mm. Selection of fired and unfired porcelain
(1240oc)max length 500mm plaster mould forms/
3. Roberto Fraquelli << PAUSE >>
Pause is a design response to a number of observations made whilst watching a group of
school children working away on the floor in a museum. The response consists of 3
shooting sticks Perch, Skate and Limpet that provides us with the opportunity to slow
down, dwell and reflect on particular areas of interest to an individual so that there is a
better chance to absorb the essence of what we are looking at. The design detail is light,
humorous and intentionally spirited, and pays homage to the designer Achille Castiglioni.
4. Tony Aldrich
Using this metaphor of cartography I developed two drawings. During the voyage of their
making I discovered many places – how Cook sailed from Plymouth to chart unknown
territories, how his ship was poetically named the Endeavour, how works of art, such as
the 15th century painting by Antonello da Messina’s of St Jerome in his study can serve as
the archetypal symbol of this whole condition, and how individual artefacts within the
collection, such as a stuffed partridge, an Imperial typewriter, or the museum building
itself, all reveal the presence of the myth of cartography within our basic understanding of
ourselves. Works have been created using paper, ink, graphite and tissue. Drawing 1
St Jerome transcending the myth of cartography. Pencil on paper. 1100mm x 1100mmm
Drawing 2m A guide and complement to the drawing of St Jerome transcending the myth
of cartography Collage – mixed media 1100mm x 1100mm
5. Sana Murrani and Mat Emmett
Overlaid Realities is a spatio-temporal interactive architectural installation that heightens
the sensory experience of space through multimedia technologies. By emphasising the
dual location of perception and cognition Overlaid Realities merges the sensory
experience of the museum with the environment of the other, hosting participatory
relationships. Works have been created using four museum cabinet, four imacs, producing
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a closed feedback loop, with ‘sniffers’ that relay wifi feedback carried by the viewers,
passing through the installation.
6. Nick Kary
Moving the old and hidden back into view and relationship. I will be looking at how to bring
a hidden collection of delicate stereoscopic slides out of storage and back into interactive
use, thus exposing to the public stories that have been suppressed due to the need to
protect artefacts. Works have been created using hand made viewing platforms and
original slides from 1900.
7. Dorren Bernath
From the Golden Egg to Oology, this installation takes the museum’s egg collection back
into the limelight and re-enacts its stories. Since time began eggs have been the
extraordinary vehicle that brings life into form. This is how we all started - a sense of awe
comes with such recognition. Eggs have inspired vast dimensions of imagination,
symbolism, ritual activities, artistic expressions, social and scientific functions. Works have
been created using, original eggs from the museum’s collections.
8. Mike Woods and Pete Davis
Mike Woods and Pete Davis are developing a concept that redefines the museum
experience under the working title of My Museum. Their work is exploring the potential
for a ‘distributed museum’ format to enable more tangible experiences of the artefacts of
museums and their stories. The work was created in large format printing and exists as a
concept drawing model.
9. Roy Tam
Nature is good at optimising structures, such as in tree trunks, and skeletons. This is why I
used timber to make this piece, choosing solid oak because of Plymouth’s maritime
history. I was fascinated by the flying bird skeletons display at the museum entrance
paying homage to Plymouth’s industry, the piece can on one hand remind you of a paddle
wheel, and on the other a jet turbine. The work has been created in steam bent oak
10. Vladimir Geroimenko and Roberto Fraquelli
SCOPE
Scope is a digital viewing compass that encourages the on-looker to study an object from
different perspectives. By the simple use of a ‘smart application’ that can be downloaded
to your phone or ipad museums and galleries can provide an augmented and customized
experience to their visitors. By pointing your device at an encrypted marker placed close to
an object viewers will be able to see a superimposed image on their screens. Scope offers
a new level of interactivity aligned with readily available wireless technology that most of
us now have. It can be fun, mysterious, surprising and customised for different visitors
particularly school visits. It may also provide possible new revenue streams to maintain
and self-fund this new experience.
11. Peter Quinn Davis:
This piece is a direct 1/50 model of Plymouth Museum, constructed from the original
footprint of 1910, no details were offered in the plans concerning, pilasters, columns,
decorative moldings etc and no model was ever made. It is presented on top of two glass
cabinets and the viewer is required to reconsider their line of thought in order to embrace
an ambiguous reality
12. Peter Quinn Davis
This piece is about the possible identities of a single object. The work converts the object
into a series of sounds. It relates to the work of astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert
Wilson who discovered a radio frequency remnant supposedly from the Big Bang while
using a microwave receiver known as the Horn Antenna. The work makes a connection
between several layers of 3D recordings of a coffee pot made in 1768, these are then,
converted through a processor to play the object’. In effect the listener, listens to the
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embodied sounds of the object relaying the sound of itself.
13. Peter Quinn Davis
This is one of four pieces Cookworthy created of the four continents. The failure of the
scan (in technical terms) fascinated me, it was like looking forward and backward at the
same time, I have intended the work to be undefined, making it difficult for the viewer to
completely and accurately locate references. The works retro-futurist aesthetic has an
inherently surreal quality that is intentionally mysterious. The work is four Giclée
prints, printed on fine art etch paper. A0 (841 × 1189)
14. Nick Gilbert Scott
A series of photos in the Plymouth City Museum Archive taken on a few special days in
the 1890ʼs, portray a group of men and women, attending a special occasion – the
opening of a new dam. These figures are clothed for a special day in ways that make them
striking in outline, with their tall hats, voluminous dresses and elegant parasols;
they lend themselves to being interpreted as exaggerated silhouettes. I have juxtaposed
these outlines with other outlines of a more contemporary kind and created a kind of stage
set in which these people might have found themselves. In viewing this small installation
people are asked to experience through their own motion the parallax of this 3D
environment.
15. Adam Cowley-Evans
The initial collage acts as a parti pris for the main body of work. Fragments of the cover art
of Street Sounds Electro 10 (the opening track being Johnny the Fox by Tricky Tee) are
dispersed to form a re-reading of the stylized geometric graphic, an investigation into detail
and a representation of the Boyʼs disjointed critical understanding. This is then overlaid
with three key sketches of references from the Encounter: the Watcher, Sony Walkman
and the Dark Lane. An additional fourth sketched element of the Bush stereo operates as
a broader and less personal cultural reference.
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