Rev{o,e}l{u,a}tions, 2017
Dimensions: 130cm x 90cm x 110cm
Materials: dressing table mirrors, crystal-cut vases
In ‘On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection’, Susan Stewart defines the grouping of ‘each element within the collection’ as being ‘representative’, where each element ‘work[s] in combination toward the creation of a new whole’.
Stating how, within a collection, the ‘unique and singular qualities’ and intrinsic ‘use value’ of an individual object; such as its historical ‘origin’ or ‘context’, is replaced with a ‘seriality’ that is built through ‘sequence and combination, pattern and variation’, Stewart refers to the ‘new context’ of ‘classification’ formed between the objects of a collective, as a ‘play of signifiers’, which form an ‘autonomous’ and ‘ahistoric’ freedom that is impervious to their former function.
Stewart defines the collection as a ‘contained’ version of the self expressed that is identified by ‘an exterior material boundary and an interior surplus of signification’, where the obsession of finitude is ‘always met with the articulation of boundary’. Stating how, though ‘one cannot know everything about the world, one can at least approach closed knowledge through the collection’, she characterises the collection as a container for content and the collector as seeking to ‘represent experience within a mode of control and confinement’, and illustrates how a collective nature defies the limits of an object, through which a symbol of eternity is formed. [1]
[1] Susan Stewart. ‘On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection’. Durham, N.C. London: Duke University Press. 1993. p151-161