Secret Art 4: Nature & Culture (Travels with C.)

Art usually aims to catch the eye, whether displayed in the gallery or at home, pictures on walls or sculptures in space. Secret Art does not call attention to itself, hides behind an unassuming or even shabby exterior, among the other paraphernalia of everyday life, on a shelf or desk, in a cupboard or a drawer. The owner can keep the secret or share it with others, who might also stumble upon it by chance.

Secret Art can live in a sewing box, a jewellery box or a cutlery case, or wherever it can make itself unobtrusively at home, lying in wait to surprise. Secret Art cannot be caught by a quick glance nor contemplated from afar. It calls for closeness to be found and action to be revealed. Secret Art is sensory art, made for curious hands, eyes and minds.

Nature & Culture (Travels with C.) captures the memories of an actual journey and the conversations that accompanied it. Celebrating meandering, unexpected discoveries and flights of the imagination encountered and embarked upon, the work also pays homage to the spirit of generosity that generated the conditions for the experience to emerge. Offered as a token of gratitude and more importantly perhaps, to create tangible bonds of affection for the future.

Barcelona textiles

Barcelona colours 1

Barcelona colours 2

Secret Art 4: Souvenir Box

What can be in a Souvenir Box?
“The souvenir is the complement to the exciting experience,” Walter Benjamin wrote in ‘Central Park’. “In it is marked the increasing self-alienation of the person who has inventoried his past as dead possessions. In the nineteenth century allegory abandoned the outside world to settle down in the inner world. Relics come from corpses, the souvenir from the extinguished experience which, euphemistally, calls itself lived experience.”

Was kann in einem Andenkenkasten sein?
“Das Andenken ist das Komplement des Erlebnisses,” schrieb Walter Benjamin in ‘Zentralpark’. “In ihm hat die zunehmende Selbstentfremdung des Menschen, der seine Vergangenheit als tote Habe inventarisiert, sich niedergeschlagen. Die Allegorie hat im neunzehnten Jahrhundert die Umwelt geräumt, um sich in der Innenwelt anzusiedeln. Die Reliquie kommt von der Leiche, das Andenken von der verstorbenen Erfahrung her, welche sich, euphemistisch, Erlebnis nennt.”



For sale at Solveighs Textilkabinett

Deutsche Version

Touch & Tell @ the Freud Museum London: pictures from an exhibition

More about the exhibition