Blueprint - May 2005
Creative Collecting - Liz Farrelly
Coke bottles, toys, defunct electrical
devices… all manner of discarded objects make up the personal
collections of designers. Liz Farrelly explains why accumulation
is an important part of the creative process.
For more than a decade museum curators and museologists have been
asking, how do we collect and why? While the rhyme and reason
for amassing collections, which for many are crucial to their
practice, has remained a mystery, a recent exhibition asked some
penetrating questions. Why is that one person's inspiration may
look like a bunch of old junk to the rest of us, and how is it
that artists and designers interact with their very personal selection
of objects? And do they collect in a particular way that affects
the process of creativity?
A curving, white structure stretched the length of Brighton University's
gallery at Grand Parade, home to the institute's art school. Eighteen
fire doors were placed at intervals along the anonymous façade.
Still in their original state, painted gunmetal grey and complete
with official signage, the doors came from the skip outside a
refurbished nursing home. If you passed through any of these doors
you would have entered a maze of small spaces housing alcoves,
shelves and cabinets. Within these were the flotsam and jetsam
of more than 30 collections contributed by artists, designers,
filmmakers, lecturers, writers and historians, all linked in some
way to the university. Entitled 'You never know when you might
need them…' the exhibition, held in January, showed collections
of objects, which have been inspirational to their owners' creative
practice.
The exhibition may have grown out of a random selection process,
but eventually it came to represent different ways of collecting.
There are those collectors who focus on amassing every example
of one particular object or type of object. Illustrator Lawrence
Zeegen (Programme Leader in Communication and Media Arts at Brighton
University) represents the classic collector, much studied by
the museologists and interpreters of material culture.
'The coke bottle collection started when I was a student. They're
cheap and easy-to-find design classics; it just snowballed from
there. I see one, and then I need it. I travel a lot and can't
rest until I have a particular one. The bottle has to be full
and different. People also bring them back from their travels
for me, and I'm always saddened if they're empty. I buy on eBay,
but only if have to!'
Pop culture aficionado Zeegen has another collection too, '… of
Clip Art, which is integrated into my way of working'. Large office-type
ring binders of sheets of photocopied 'art' constitute the collection.
'It's what I'm most interested in, because I love design that
has been created by non-designers,' explains Zeegen. 'I educate
designers and illustrators, but crave the work of those not influenced
by people like me. Clip Art is honest design, for the people,
because it communicates. I've also taught myself to draw images
that look like I've found them.'
This is an abridged version of the
original article by Liz Farrelly
