thoughts from the past few weeks

A while ago I came to a realisation and have decided to do something about it before the end of uni.

It occurred to me that I’m a bit of a collector.

When I move to somewhere new, after a while, I take out my camera and explore the intricacies, and general points of interest for me in whatever place I’ve adopted as a place of meditation (aka that chill out and breath space), generally the garden.

My current place is a garden.

This kind of garden is like the forgotten fingerprint of a place. A tell tale imprint of tenants past and present: The remnants of a proverbial flat BBQ; a stone placed haphazardly on a tree by some friends, mid conversation; a sofa, threadbare, exposing its weather-worn rusty springs; a thread of strawberry plants, once cared for and cultivated, now barely distinguishable amongst the overgrown, under tended foliage.

A garden.

Not in the traditional ‘white picket fence plus one’ sense, but a place of being, attached to a building. A little bit of outdoors, a shameful attempt at nature, that does barely more than facilitate a gap between one building and another. This says something about a place. This is what I collect.

So now I’m at a point where I have four or five groups of definite documentations of my spaces I find and don’t want to let another one go by without realising. This one I want to respond to a little, like some sort of thank you to the space for letting me use it, by using it a little more.

These photos have been a big influence on the work I’m doing now, but don’t fit into the whole degree show thing so I’m going to do it as an outside thing so as to bring some sort of context to the work inside.