OBJECT / The Object Project (Solo with collaborative component) - NorthSite Contemporary Arts (2020); Tablelands Regional Gallery (2023).
A Quiet Archive of Memory, Loss & Belonging
OBJECT (2023) and Object Project (2020) investigateed how domestic detritus carries biography and memory. The project employed community contribution, cataloguing and studio re‑arrangement to create a living assemblage of everyday artifacts. Bringing together two interlocking bodies of work — a visual archive of ink-wash drawings and a community-curated collection of everyday artifacts — these projects explores how personal objects become vessels of remembrance, absence, and shared history.
Monochrome Memory Drawings
Featured 150+ intimate ink‑wash drawings based on community-supplied keepsakes each rendered in soft washes that evoke scientific specimen studies and quiet reverence. These artworks transform mute domestic detritus into tender memorials: objects that “speak of love and loss,” sitting at the threshold between presence and absence.
Community Co‑curation & Live Processes
Participants contributed their own memory-holding objects, which were catalogued, redrawn, and integrated into a studio assemblage. This living archive invited the public to handle, guide, and author the meaning of each artifact. The participant-driven model extended into performance-based selection and archiving sessions — engaging communal approaches to remembering, cataloguing, and sense-making.
Thematic Resonance
Both strands investigate how ordinary objects ground us in time, relationships, and loss. They exist in tension: private keepsakes reframed within public exhibitions, silent objects assuming voices through shared attention, and personal memory enlivened through collective engagement.
Through sensitive presentation and interaction, the works ask us to reflect and question the ordinary items in our lives. What memories do these objects hold? Whose stories do they carry? And how do we, as co-witnesses, become co-narrators?
OBJECT (2023) and Object Project (2020) investigateed how domestic detritus carries biography and memory. The project employed community contribution, cataloguing and studio re‑arrangement to create a living assemblage of everyday artifacts. Bringing together two interlocking bodies of work — a visual archive of ink-wash drawings and a community-curated collection of everyday artifacts — these projects explores how personal objects become vessels of remembrance, absence, and shared history.
Monochrome Memory Drawings
Featured 150+ intimate ink‑wash drawings based on community-supplied keepsakes each rendered in soft washes that evoke scientific specimen studies and quiet reverence. These artworks transform mute domestic detritus into tender memorials: objects that “speak of love and loss,” sitting at the threshold between presence and absence.
Community Co‑curation & Live Processes
Participants contributed their own memory-holding objects, which were catalogued, redrawn, and integrated into a studio assemblage. This living archive invited the public to handle, guide, and author the meaning of each artifact. The participant-driven model extended into performance-based selection and archiving sessions — engaging communal approaches to remembering, cataloguing, and sense-making.
Thematic Resonance
Both strands investigate how ordinary objects ground us in time, relationships, and loss. They exist in tension: private keepsakes reframed within public exhibitions, silent objects assuming voices through shared attention, and personal memory enlivened through collective engagement.
Through sensitive presentation and interaction, the works ask us to reflect and question the ordinary items in our lives. What memories do these objects hold? Whose stories do they carry? And how do we, as co-witnesses, become co-narrators?
Images: Michael Marzik