Chapter 1 - Four weeks review
Over the past four weeks, many of you have sent observations in response to the weekly prompt, and each studio day I’ve taken one, selected at random, into the studio. And now the paintings for chapter 1 are all complete and dispatched to new owners in the post.
In total, 42 people submitted 75 observations, and 20 of those observations became paintings. Those 20 works now exist in two places: one half sent out, the other kept in The Archive of Selective Memory.
The collection of Right half paintings is shown in the image above. The Left half paintings have been sent out across the UK, France, Switzerland, Italy, Türkiye, South Africa and Australia.
If you’ve received one, you’ll know that what arrived doesn’t necessarily feel incomplete. Many of the halves read as resolved paintings in their own right. At the same time, you know that something corresponds to it elsewhere - the corresponding Right part.
Each pairing has been photographed and stored with the observation details in an on-line digital archive at objkt.com.
Most of the observations you sent in didn’t become paintings, but they are still part of the project. The collection you’re seeing is shaped as much by what wasn’t selected as by what was.
There isn’t a clear pattern to participation. Some of you participated in all four weeks, and some participated only once. One of you participated in only two consecutive weeks and was selected twice (which prompted a ‘steward’s enquiry’ into the randomising process). Others submitted several times and were not selected at all. The process doesn’t favour persistence or effort. It simply runs as it is set.
At this point, everything exists in parts. The paintings are split. The observations are either seen or not seen. The complete version of each work exists, but only as a digital record. There isn’t a single place where everything comes together.
Chapter 1 has been about establishing this structure and seeing if it would hold. It does. Chapter 2 will keep the same approach, but push it further through the prompts, through how the paintings are divided, and through how the archive is shown.
Thank you to K. D. in Sanremo, the recipient of the painting made in Week 2, who kindly sent the photo below. The painting was made in response to:
“Planted my first pot of cat grass. With four cats in the building. It might be fun!”
If you’ve received a painting, it’s yours to keep, alter, or use as you wish. If you’d like to share a photo, you’re very welcome to. It would be very interesting to see what happens to it.
Thank you again to all who participated.