On Thursday 22 February 2024 I presented a paper titled “Deposessing the Archive” as part of the conference “A Spanner in the Works: Artists’ interventions in museums and archives” convened by Dr. Mark Wilsher at Norwich University of the Arts. To learn more about the conference click here. At the core of my presentation are questions concerning ownership and value creation, and this is expressed in the (ungrammatical) title itself: ‘De-posessing the Archive’. In the language of museums, accession – with its royal sense of ascension – is the acquisition of an item. To ‘de-accession’ an object is to remove it – to dethrone it – from the collection in order to sell it. The preposition ‘de’ in ‘de-possession’ means ‘from’ or ‘of’. While my title is perhaps not grammatically correct, I hoped to convey how Lynda, I think, does not strongly possess her collections. When she gives them to others she is not dispossessed – deprived of property. Here is my proposal:
Lynda Morris was Curator of Norwich Gallery from 1980–2007, during which time she organised EASTinternational from 1991–2009. A self-diagnosed ‘hoarder’, Morris annotated her own collection of art ephemera in the international touring exhibition and publication ‘Dear Lynda’ (2012). Selections from the EASTinternational archive, founded by Morris, were displayed in EAST Gallery in the exhibition ‘EASTinternational: Unpacking the Archive’ (1 December 2023 – 2 February 2024).
Prior to leaving Norwich in 2021, Morris began redistributing objects from her own personal (non-institutional) collections. Studio pottery, bought from charity shops, was donated to the artist-led gallery originalprojects; in Great Yarmouth. These were resold on Instagram as their ‘Pot Rescue’ project and led to the identification of works and the sharing of stories. I was invited to collect two boxes of printed matter – invitations, publications and editions – labelled ‘Contemporary Art in Norfolk’. I want to use this conference as an opportunity to develop a handling account of the material with an emphasis on materiality