This project came out of the ‘Liminal Space’ Residency at TAP gallery in Southend.
The above text was circulated to visitors on arrival, the story running parallel to the ideas addressed by the project but also with a glaring clue about how to find the work.
I spent a week painstakingly hand-painting copies of ambiguous but sentimental photographs of mine on to the walls of the gallery. I then painted over these with latex to preserve them, then white emulsion, losing them to the walls.
What I wanted was to facilitate discovery and begin to understand the ownership that comes with it. The discoverers were asked to name their work in an attempt to reassign it.
As the first people cottoned on to my very smart coded message, the dynamic in the space changed. Everyone was whispering, comparing papers, pointing out the circled words, being the one with the knowledge, being the one to receive it, and then the one with the knowledge.
Gallery goers started to trace the walls with their hands, fingering bulges and flecks in the paintwork. The first piece was found, and it started a frenzy of wall rubbing, asking who’d found what, what was left, a swell whenever one was found, quiet whilst the latex was peeled back, and then subsidence and return to the hunt.
The final pieces after everything was found and claimed were relics- some so much removed that they were unrecognisable, others more or less whole- and the floor underneath was carpeted in halos of shattered emulsion.