Detail and Performance Images, Understory, 2023, D’ Orquevaux Residency

Preserving jars, vintage collage paper, cardboard roll, tracing paper, battery light, gel. 

I attended an arts residency in France with my wife Penelope Bartlau where we developed an installation and performance in a soon to be demolished 18th-century kitchen. Before arriving, we visited one of my favourite museums, La Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature, in Paris. It is a museum that incorporates art and artefacts in an ever-changing, playful collection. Throughout the museum were miniature dioramas that inspired me to create my own. At the residency, I found an old preserving jar in the kitchen and created a three-dimensional collage inside the jar using images from some old books.  The effect was a kind of “preserved” moment in time. I made more and decided that each would hold a memory or a nightmare.

The jars were lit with internal lights and placed about the kitchen, creating little illuminated worlds in the darkened space. The jars became central to the narrative of the final performance which we developed after the installation’s creation.