A Wet Archive

 

Feeding sample (Ship wood), glass container, dry rot (serpula merulius), 19th Century wooden ship parts, 2023.

 

 

Water damaged exhibition catalogues from WAL collection.

Relocating History: an exhibition of work by 7 Irish women artist, Belfast: Fenderesky Gallery, at Queen’s Derry: Orchard Gallery, 1993.
Riviera: seven artists from Glasgow, Andrew Wilson, Llandudno: Oriel Mostyn, 1994.

 

 

 

 

Pigment made from roof debris, Goldsmiths library, 2023.
Hydra (VI), cotton fabric and Hydra water leak detection dye, 2023.

 

 

Becks Beer, design by Rebecca Horn, 1994.

 

 

Feeding samples (Hardboard, gypsum board, rock wool, aggregate sand), Dry rot feeding sample in plastic grow bags, 2022-23.

 

 

Bacterial Sample,(EQUAL PAY NOW, poster on cardboard, artist unknown, item F71), 2023.

 

Hydra (I), plaster board and Hydra water leak detection dye, 2023.

 

 

Hydra (IIII), cotton fabric and Hydra water leak detection dye, 2023.

 

 

Hydra (III), cotton fabric and Hydra water leak detection dye, 2023.

 

 

Hydra (I), cotton fabric and Hydra water leak detection dye, 2023.

 

 

A Wet Archive

20 October 2023- 2 February 2024

This exhibition began as artistic research in the Women’s Art Library collection and expanded into a reflection on the hidden life of the archive and its built environment manifested through fungi. Spanning the height of the Library building, the works explored the material damage from a ceiling leak as it travelled to the ground floor. Linking this with the traces of researchers left on items kept in the climate-controlled sanctuary of Special Collections & Archives, this exhibition provides a new perspective on the archive as a static entity, and considering what resists preservation as well what is overlooked in these spaces of recorded histories.

The collected samples, live fungi and water damaged material from the collection form a display with footage of interior spaces of the Rutherford Building accompanied by an essay Sophie J Williamson titled “Architectures of Inverted Bodies”.

The text can be found here.

The exhibition was displayed on two sites in the Rutherford Building, in the Special Collections & Archives entrance on the ground floor and the Buchi Emecheta space on the second floor.

This exhibition received support from Arts Council England.