Showing posts with label The Found Artefact. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Found Artefact. Show all posts

The Found Artefact


This pot was found while walking near Altona beach in Melbourne. The pot was in a rubbish skip outside a house that had been restumped. As it was lying in amongst the stumps I assumed it came from under the house and decided to retrieve it. I subsequently took it home and put it in the studio where it has become a contemplation piece. Through working in Altona for a couple of years, I learnt that the area was originally settled by Scottish immigrants. I also know that it was initially a very poor working class area surrounded by heavy industry. 

Found Pot, Altona Beach, 2007.
So fascinated with this pot have I become that I have been imagining its history, for it looks as though it has had a long and needy life through tough times vastly different from the commodity-rich world we live in here today. So used was this pot that it literally wore out. However, unlike today, it was not discarded but patched up and repaired many times over with different size washers and bolts as more and more holes appeared in it to such an extent that it transformed from a functional cooking utility—a pot—to a pot incorporating elements of ‘makeshift’. In a further process of discarding and rediscovery it moved—lost and found—from functionality to ‘found object’ and I now consider it art.