What do the objects we choose to surround ourselves with say about us? Our possessions, like words in a sentence or actors on a stage, convey messages about who we are, what we like and our relationships with other people.
An object that speaks so loudly about us is an important medium in Motte’s work. She re-presents these objects so we can examine how we feel about our own possessions and what important messages they convey to others.
Her work concerns the rituals of exhibition within the home and the connection between the home and gallery. She is inspired by the sorting out we have of our possessions. How by rejecting certain objects we place more importance on the ones we choose to keep. Rejected items still have a provenance, they have been bought, owned, loved and ultimately lost, turning up in charity shops and sale rooms. In their alteration and display they acquire new meanings and allow unexpected experiences when considered out of context, exhibited in a gallery, elevated once more to a place of importance. ‘The Collection’ has a cabinet which simultaneously protects and exhibits, a support which is never neutral in its significance and its influence on the objects inside it.
Since her degree Motte has spent a lot of time as a founder member of an artist run initiative with the primary objective of providing professional exhibition opportunities and affordable studio workspace to local artists. It has an exciting and innovative programme of exhibitions to educate and stimulate debate about contemporary art and its place in society. Motte regularly exhibits and has taken part in many group shows.
She has also spent time assisting the artist Julian Walker with two exhibitions in ‘Words and Forgetting’, 2007 and ‘Births, Chimneys and Lightermen - Collecting Greenwich Peninsula,’ 2008.
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| details of the work 'collection' |
