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Keyword

Enmesh

Start Date
02 December 2024
End Date
04 January 2025
Venue
Madsen Sylvester Studio
Location
Ramsgate, Kent
Curator
Alexia Marmara
A window display featuring an installation of a collection of objects. At the bottom right hand corner there is a long black boot with laces, and vintage photographs. There is a metal case which can be seen supporting a brown box with a framed vintage photogram in black ad white on top. On the left hand side is a tall wooden block which has layers of white material wrapped around it. Suspended above is a large gold photo frame with a colourful painting and to the right is a black cape. There are paintings stuck to the widow itself.
A metal cage displaying a tall black boot with a small heel. On the bottom left corner is a black and white photograph. Placed on top of the metal crate is a vintage brown box with black material draped on it.
On a flat lay display is a woollen garment with the words stitched onto it 'All these things I want to tell you'. There is a white twisted rope and a silver metal needle also on display.
A corner of a black and white photograph on display, which is placed on top of a brown surface.
A close up of the brown mount which is wrapped in white material. There is a silver ring with is secured with two white loops in the middle.

Exhibition 4: Enmesh

Curator: Alexia Marmara

Date: 2nd December 2024 – 4th January 2025

“‘The Archive is this kind of place that [has] to do with longing and appropriation. It is to do with wanting things that are put together, collected, collated, named in lists and indices; a place where a whole world, a social order, may be imagined by the recurrence of a name in a register, through a scrap of paper, or some other little piece of flotsam.’
– Carolyn Steedman

Personal archives are borderless and unlimited visions of the past and contain invaluable testimonials to the unfixed nature of our worlds. The objects within Enmesh are points of entry into disjointed and hospitable narratives. There is an entrenched connectivity within self and what we encounter through archival objects that opens internal and private passages: a collection of disused cloth, paper or metal becomes a means of constructing and understanding self-hood on top of disused artefacts. Though being surrogates for the vanished past, it is the trust in the beauty and strength of these archives that has enabled a variety of artists and keepers to translate them all into new contexts. Despite its crumbling, shattering or disappearance, the vulnerability of the archival piece finds new power. Through the work of the artists, archivists and fashion designers featured in Enmesh I have traversed the ways in which these virtuosos have enfleshed archives and enmeshed themselves within. Tightly squeezed together and pulsating separately within a small window, consider this a petri dish of precious components of the ever expanding worldwide dust hysteria and archive fever.” (Alexia Marmara, 2024)
Enmesh (2nd December 2024 – 4th January 2025) was an exhibition exploring evolving negotiations between self and archives, curated by Alexia Marmara (co-curator and co-programmer at The Horse Hospital; previously HYMAG).

Images Courtesy of Madsen Sylvester Studio.