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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- Paul Doll
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- Pixall Record Cleaner in Box
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- Cheiro’s Palmistry For All
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- Gas Bottle Key Spanner
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- Novelty Norwegian Postcard
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- Super 8 Cine Film
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- Chad Valley Savings Tin
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- Compass with Sight Glass
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- 5.25″ PFS Floppy Disk
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- Stevie Wonder “Innervisions” 8 Track Tape
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- Telegram from The Three O’s
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- Metronome
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- Electric Chair Maurice Fulton Gig Flyer
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- BT Wall Telephone
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- Self Adhesive Go Faster Car Stripe
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- Metric Conversion Apron
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- Wooden Toy
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- Audio Cassette Tape
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- Children’s Favourites 7″ record
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- No.2 Birds of a Feather
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- Miniature Deckchair & Whittling Magazine
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- Sindy & Paul go to the Discotheque
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- “Come Go With Me” LP
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- Spur Shelving Playing Cards
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- Kung Fu TV Annual
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- Electric Souls Flyer for an event at The View Frodsham, England.
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- No.13 The Corfu Affair
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- How to buy Fish and Chips
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- Learning Development Aids Box with Contents List
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- Morse Code Practice Record
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- Snoopy & Woodstock Solar Powered Calculator
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- Carpet Needle
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- Japanese Handkerchief
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- “The Dark Side of The Moon” LP
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- Rug Wool Tool
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- Football Medal
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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